lifestyle WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2014

Music & Movies Indian maestro seeks harmony with Vienna New Year’s Concert ndian maestro Zubin Mehta will seek to inject music marking the 650th birthday of Vienna became a much-loved, regular event in the classical what he says is some much-needed harmony into University as well as the 200th of the Austrian capi- music calendar. In the 1980s after the 25-concert Ithe world when he conducts the illustrious Vienna tal’s Technical University and the 150th of Vienna’s reign of Austrian Willi Boskovsky and six-times New Year’s Concert on January 1. “All over the world grand Ringstrasse boulevard. These include for American successor Lorin Maazel-who died this year- there are people who hate each other,” Mehta, 78, example “Accelerationen” (“Accelerations”) and the it was decided to have a different conductor each who is holding the baton for a fifth time at the annu- “Elektro-magnetische Polka” by Johann Strauss jun- year. These have included such greats as Herbert von al waltz fest beamed live to 50 million people world- ior, as well as his “Studenten-Polka” (“Students’ Karajan, Claudio Abbado-who also passed away in wide, told Austrian daily Die Presse. “This music can Polka”). Non-Strauss pieces include the “Champagne 2014 — and Mehta in 1990, 1995, 1998 and 2007. at least bring people together for two and a half Galop” by 19th century Danish composer Hans The Mumbai-born conductor, who first came to hours,” he said. Christian Lumbye-which starts with the pop of a Vienna to study in 1954 and whose posts have Indeed, the 90 or so countries able to watch champagne cork. included music director of the New York Thursday’s concert live include for the first time con- Certain works such as “Wein, Weib und Gesang” Philharmonic, said though that he was “just as excit- flict-riven Ukraine, as well as other newcomers as far (“Wine, women and song”) will be accompanied by ed” as before his debut 24 years ago. “I can think of afield as the Bahamas, Armenia and Mehta’s native ballet performances by Vienna State Ballet soloists no greater (honour),” he said. “When I walk from the India, organizers said. The Vienna Philharmonic’s choreographed by Italian Davide Bombana. “Certain Imperial (hotel) towards the Konzerthaus of the annual “Neujahrskonzert” ringing in the new year traditions give people a feeling of safety,” said Musikverein, it’s like I was in my living room. I feel so from Golden Hall of the exalted Musikverein is devot- Andreas Grossbauer, the Vienna Philharmonic’s new at home here.” — AFP ed largely to the kings of 19th century waltz, the chairman. “Bedtime stories, birthday cakes-and per- Strauss family. Each year has some variety, however. haps also the New Year’s Concert.” A picture taken on December 27, Last year, alongside favorites like “The Blue Danube” 2014 shows Indian conducter and “The Radetzky March”, with Daniel Barenboim Dark beginnings Zubin Mehta rehearsing with the conducting, the program included works commem- The event started life on December 31, 1939, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra orating the centenary of the start of World War I. under the Nazis but in the subsequent years these for the 2015 New Year’s Concert This time the occasion is a happier one, with dark beginnings were forgotten and it gradually in Vienna. — AFP

Review In ‘A Most Violent Year,’ the capitalist as gangster n his exciting first three films, writer-director J.C. pressuring him to take more drastically illegal steps even Chandor, the son of a Merrill Lynch investment banker, while the suspicious local district attorney (David Oyelowo) Ihas proven to be a canny, clear-eyed studier of capital- is investigating. ism, sensitive to its strivers and alert to its ethical storms. His debut, “Margin Call,” plunged into the board rooms of a Gritty marketplace Wall Street firm in crisis. He followed that with “All Is Lost,” a These pressures enflame the film’s slow-burn, never metaphorical survival film about a man (Robert Redford) igniting with the fury the film’s title promises, but adding literally wrecked by the global economy. In “A Most Violent up to a lean, always absorbing examination of what suc- Year,” Chandor widens his scope, fusing a solemn medita- cess takes in a gritty marketplace ruled by raw power. “We In this July 29, 1999 file photo, actress Luise Rainer poses in her central London apart- tion on the American Dream with a ‘70s-styled gangster are so weak now,” laments Morales at a moment of lever- ment. — AP flick. Oscar Isaac plays Abel Morales, the young head of a age. The performance by Isaac (“Inside Llewyn Davis”) is Brooklyn heating company. With a risky bit of lending, he’s commanding. His restrained businessman and aspiring trying to expand his business while at the same time fend- immigrant clearly evokes Pacino’s Michael Corleone, and ing off mysterious hijackings of his trucks. It’s 1981 New it’s a testament to Isaac that he can get even within a mile Double Oscar winning actress York, one of the city’s most crime-ridden years, and vio- of that comparison. lence crackles in the streets. If there’s something that holds back Chandor’s films, it’s Luise Rainer dies at 104 The atmosphere is exceedingly rich. The greatest pleas- their conceptual neatness and their hard-to-miss allusions. ures of “A Most Violent Year,” vividly shot by the excellent (A tragic side story involving a driver in Morales’ fleet is this ollywood actress Luise Rainer, who screen test). At Paramount in 1942 she did a up-and-coming cinematographer Bradford Young (who film’s most glaring misstep.) But his control is impressive won back-to-back Oscars in the 1930s, screen test for “For Whom the Bell Tolls” but also lenses “Selma”), are the earthy browns and yellows of enough to make me want to him to - like Morales - get a lit- Hhas died at the age of 104. Until her the part went to Ingrid Bergman. In 1943 she its moody period details: Morales’ beige overcoat, the bare tle dirty. “A Most Violent Year,” an A24 release, is rated PG-13 death, she was the oldest living Oscar winner. appeared in the Par war film “Hostages” with winter trees of its suburban Westchester, the electric wide by the Motion Picture Association of America for “language Rainer won her twin best actress Oscars for William Bendix and Paul Lukas. It was her last shots of New York highways. Where we are can’t be mistak- and some violence.” Running time: 124 minutes. Three stars 1936 biopic “The Great Ziegfeld,” drawing the bigscreen appearance until 1997 Dostoevsky en. This is Sidney Lumet territory: street-level New York, out of four. MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 nod despite a fairly small role as impresario adaptation “The Gambler.” alive with corruption, danger and moral quandary. It’s a requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. — AP Florenz Ziegfeld’s first wife, and 1937’s “The street corner of cinema Lumet so definitively staked out Good Earth,” an adaptation of the novel by Television work that, though Chandor is far from his direct descendent, Pearl S. Buck in which the heavily, if charming- She appeared onstage in England and Lumet’s spirit can’t help but loom over “A Most Violent Year,” ly, accented Austrian-German actress played a then in J.M. Barrie’s “A Kiss for Cinderella” on set in the year his “Prince of the City” blazed across mar- humble Chinese peasant. Broadway in 1942. Bertolt Brecht wrote a play quees. The high expectations generated by her in which Rainer was to star but they had a Oscar achievements did not, however lead to falling out. In 1947 she toured the US in a pro- Clever adaptation much further success in Hollywood. Some say duction of Maxwell Anderson’s “Joan of The movie is doted by the standby scenes of gangster the death of her producer at MGM, Irving Lorraine”; Rainer played Joan of Arc several films: the clandestine gathering of rival family businesses, Thalberg, as well as bad advice from her hus- times over the course of her career. During the the shootout (handsomely done on the 59th Street Bridge), band, the playwright Clifford Odets, con- late 1940s and 1950s she did some television the sudden police raid of the boss’s home. The film’s excel- tributed to the precipitous decline in her work in the US and UK, including appearances lent chase sequence leads irrevocably to the era’s great career. Her first movie was “Escapade,” with on “Schlitz Playhouse” and “Lux Video Theatre”; icon of decay: a graffiti-covered subway. That “A Most William Powell. The film was a remake of one much later, in 1983, she made the seemingly Violent Year” builds all of this not on the usual glamorized of Rainer’s Austrian films, but she received the obligatory appearance on “The Love Boat.” misdeeds but on the residential oil business - a line of work part only after Myrna Loy gave up the role. Federico Fellini almost lured her back for a whose terrors usually only come monthly by mail - is both Rainer had impressed Powell on bigscreen appearance in 1960’s “La dolce slightly reaching and a clever adaptation of the crime “Escapade”; he told a newspaper reporter, vita”-she traveled to Rome for the part but thriller. This is about the dirty work of mainstream “She is an extremely sensitive organism and pulled out before shooting. Born in American business, not the underworld. has a great comprehension of human nature. Dusseldorf, Germany, and raised in Hamburg For Chandor, the backdrop of money, oil and guns make She has judgment and an abiding under- and Vienna, she auditioned for the Dumont rife fodder for big American themes. Morales, elegant with standing which make it possible for her to Theater in Dusseldorf at age 16 and subse- a politician’s manner, is grounded by a belief in his clean- portray human emotion poignantly and truly.” quently studied with acting teacher Max ness. “We’re at war,” he’s told of the cutthroat industry, to Her next film was “The Great Ziegfield,” for Reinhardt, becoming part of his Vienna acting which he responds: “Well I’m not.” But his remove from the which she reunited with Powell. She wowed ensemble and gaining recognition for stage fray gets tested; idealism not be enough to survive. His This photo released by courtesy of A24 shows, Oscar Isaac, left, and Jessica Chastain, in a audiences and the Motion Picture Academy work in Berlin. wife Anne (a slinky Jessica Chastain) is the daughter of the scene from J.C. Chandor’s “A Most Violent Year.” — AP particularly with a single highly emotional former owner of Morales’ business, and she slowly reveals scene in the film in which she was on the American career the measures she’s stealthily taken to prop up the compa- phone with Powell’s Ziegfeld, seeking to She appeared in George Bernard Shaw’s ny. Morales’ in-house lawyer (Albert Brooks, who’s amass- cheerfully congratulate him on his new mar- “Saint Joan,” “Measure for Measure” and ing a tremendous late career as a character actor) is also riage but failing in the attempt; for this scene Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an she was dubbed “the Viennese teardrop.” Author” and then in several German-language films. MGM talent scout Phil Berg discovered Screen test her in 1934, believing she might appeal to In her next pic, “The Good Earth,” she Greta Garbo’s audience. Arriving in played the humble, submissive wife of Paul Hollywood the next year with a three-year Sofia Vergara, Joe Muni’s character, and the sheer contrast to her MGM contract in hand, Rainer worked to part in “The Great Ziegfield” impressed many; improve her English before beginning her she picked up a second best actress Oscar. American career with “Escapade.” In 2010 the Manganiello to wed Thalberg had insisted that she play the part actress appeared at the TCM Classic Film odern Family” star Sofia Vergara — America’s best while MGM’s Louis B. Mayer had been against Festival in Hollywood, where she was inter- paid TV actress-and Joe Manganiello of “True Blood” it, and Thalberg died before production on the viewed by Robert Osbourne. fame plan to tie the knot, US media reported film was complete. Rainer made five more The British Film Institute also hosted her at “M Monday. Colombian-born bombshell Vergara, 42, has been dating films for MGM, in 1937 and 1938, including a tribute to the actress in that year, her cente- the American actor, 38, for six months since breaking off a rela- “Big City,” in which she was strangely cast as nary. Rainer and Odets were divorced in 1940. tionship with businessman Nick Loeb. the wife of cab driver Spencer Tracy. Only one She married the publisher Robert Knittel in A spokesperson for Vergara, famous for playing Gloria Delgado of the five was a hit, the Oscar-winning musi- 1945; they remained together until his death on the Emmy-winning series, did not immediately confirm People cal biopic “The Great Waltz,” in which she in 1989. She is survived by a daughter, magazine’s report that the couple became engaged over Christmas played the wife of Johann Strauss. Francesca-who confirmed her mother had in Hawaii. Manganiello-known for playing Alcide in “True Blood” Rainer struggled for more money and died of pneumonia at her home in London; and for stripping off in Steven Soderbergh’s “Magic Mike”-recently meatier parts at MGM, but Mayer was increas- two granddaughters; and two great-grand- produced a documentary on a male strip club. — AP ingly unsympathetic, though the actress- children. Leo Barraclough contributed to this despite her accent-was among those nominal- report. — Reuters ly considered for the part of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind” (she did not receive a

UAE follows Egypt, Morocco in banning Moses epic he United Arab Emirates said yesterday that it had also fallen foul of the council for its depiction of that it “represents God”. In remarks published will not allow screening of Hollywood’s Moses receiving the revelation from God through a Tuesday by TelQuel magazine, the director of the TBiblical epic “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” mirror- child. Representation of God and prophets is taboo Moroccan Cinematographer Centre said the ban ing similar bans by Egypt and Morocco. The in Islam. The UAE is a Muslim country where for- had security in mind. National Media Council, charged with vetting films eigners, including millions of non-Muslims, make “You saw what happened in Tunisia after the for release in the UAE, said the Ridley Scott movie up the majority of the population. screening of ‘Persepolis’,” said Sarim Fassi-Fihri, in about Moses’s escape from pharaonic Egypt con- “We do not allow the distortion of religions... reference to a 2012 attack by Salafists on a Tunisian tained “religious and historical mistakes.” “The film When it comes to religious and historical movies, TV station that had aired the controversial animated shows Moses not as a prophet but as just a preach- we care about having a correct narrative and avoid- film depicting Iran’s Islamic revolution. The 3D er of peace,” the council’s director of media content ing hurting the feelings of others,” Leem said. But he “Exodus: Gods and Kings”, starring Christian Bale as tracking Juma Obaid al-Leem told AFP, adding that insisted that film censorship in the UAE is not Moses, earned $24.1 million in its debut weekend in the storyline contradicts the holy books. tough, stressing that most movies are approved for the United States, according to box office tracker In addition to his place in the Christian and release. “It is normal if we express reservations Exhibitor Relations. — AFP Jewish faiths, Moses is also revered by Muslims as a about one movie out of 1,000,” he said. On prophet just like Mohammed. Leem said the film Saturday, Morocco banned the film on the grounds