When four top film studio musicians formed the Hollywood String Quartet in the late 1930s, its name was presumed an oxymoron. Exalted string quartet devotees belittled film soundtracks, while studio heads had a reputation for shunning classical music longhairs.

The musicians spent two intense years in rehearsal before disbanding when war broke out, and the quartet was brought back together in 1947 by two of its founders, Felix Slatkin (concertmaster of 20th ^{Century Fox Studio Orchestra) and his wife, Eleanor Aller (principal cellist of the Warner Bros. Studio Orchestra). Oxymoron or not, Hollywood produced the first notable American string quartet.}

Throughout the 1950s, the ensemble made a series of revelatory LPs for Capitol Records performing the late Beethoven string quartets and much else, while also joining Frank Sinatra in his torchy classic, “Close to You.” Everything that the Hollywood String Quartet touched was distinctive; every recording remains a classic.

The legacy of the Hollywood String Quartet is a celebration of Hollywood genre-busting and also of string quartet making. Today, the outstanding Lyris Quartet is one of many outstanding string quartets who can be heard in the latest blockbusters. Another is the New Hollywood String Quartet, which is devoting its annual four-day summer festival to honoring its inspiration as it celebrates its 25th ^anniversary.

The quartet’s festival began Thursday night and runs through Sunday in San Marino at the Huntington’s Rothenberg Hall. The repertory is taken from the earlier group’s old recordings. And the concerts are introduced by Slatkin and Aller’s oldest son, who as a young boy fell asleep to his parents and their colleagues rehearsing in his living room after dinner.

The celebrated conductor Leonard Slatkin credits his vociferous musical appetite to his parents, who, he said Thursday, enjoyed the great scores written in this golden age of movie music and also championed new classical music as well as the masterpieces of the past. L.A. had no opera company in those days, and Slatkin said his parents likened film scores to modern opera scores.

Just about everyone has heard his parents in one film or another. Take “Jaws,” which is celebrating its 50th ^{anniversary. That’s Aller’s cello evoking John Williams’ shark-scary earworm.}

You’ve no doubt heard New Hollywood violinists Tereza Stanislav and Rafael Rishik, violist Robert Brophy and cellist Andrew Shulman on some movie. IMDb counts Brophy alone as participating on 522 soundtracks. You might also have heard one or more of the musicians in the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Opera Orchestra or Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The New Hollywood String Quartet, from left: Rafael Rishik, Andrew Shulman, Tereza Stanislav and Robert Brophy.

(Sam Muller)

The New Hollywood’s programming may not encompass the original quartet’s range, but it is nonetheless a mixed selection of pieces that have somewhat fallen by the wayside, such as Borodin’s Second String Quartet. The original quartet’s performances and swashbuckling recording of the Borodin surely caught the attention of L.A. director Edwin Lester. In 1953 Lester created and premiered the musical “Kismet,” which adapts parts of the Borodin quartet, for Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, before it went on to be a hit on Broadway.

Times have changed and the New Hollywood brings a more robust tone and more overt interaction to its effusive interpretation compared with the silken and playful Slatkin and crew, who were all Russian-trained players. Hugo Wolf’s short “Italian Serenade,” which opened the program, was here lush and Italianate, while on an early 1950s disc it dances more lightly.

The big work was César Franck’s Piano Quintet. Slatkin noted that the recording, released in 1955, didn’t sell well, probably thanks to the album cover’s saturnine painting of a composer that few would recognize. Slatkin also noted that his parents weren’t enamored of their performance, but then again, he explained that they were temperamentally ever ready to find fault.

That recording, which features his uncle, Victor Aller, a graceful pianist, is slow and commanding. Jean-Yves Thibaudet was the right guest in every way for the big-boned performance at the Huntington. He is a French pianist with a flair for German music, well suited for the Belgian French composer’s Wagner-inspired score.

Thibaudet is also a longtime L.A. resident and an especially versatile performer who happens to be featured on the new soundtrack recording of Dario Marianelli’s “Pride & Prejudice,” which tops Billboard’s classical and classical crossover charts. He and Slatkin also go back decades, having performed together and become such good friends that the conductor turned pages for him in the Franck.

Seeing the 80-year-old Slatkin onstage evoked a remarkable sense of history, reminiscent of the roots to L.A.’s musical openness that his parents represented. On my drive home Thursday, I couldn’t resist following the route Albert Einstein would have taken after practicing his violin when he lived a 12-minute bike ride away during his Caltech years — the time Slatkin’s parents were making music history at the studios. Like them, Einstein played with the L.A. Philharmonic (although invited once not because he was a good violinist but because he was Einstein).

The New Hollywood and Thibaudet made no effort to relive the past in Franck’s quintet. Instead, in their opulence and expressive explosiveness, they showed Hollywood how to produce a remake that’s magnificent.

In the meantime, Leonard Slatkin, who is a former music director of the L.A. Phil at the Hollywood Bowl, returns later this month to the venue where his parents met in 1935 at a Hollywood Bowl Symphony competition. He will conduct a July 24 program that includes a recent work by the next generation of Slatkins. His son, Daniel, is a film and television composer.

Over the years, Rajkummar Rao established a good will among the audience with his performances and script selection. More often than not, his films are backed by commendable scripts and relatable characters. In an attempt to give an image makeover to himself, he selected the script of ‘Maalik’, a rags-to-riches story. After generating enough curiosity with the trailer, the film was released in theatres today. How did Rajkumar Rao perform in a ferocious gangster role? Did the director, Pulkit, come up with a well-packaged commercial action entertainer? Did the Miss World 2017, Manushi Chhillar, finally score a hit? Let’s figure it out with a detailed analysis.

What is it about?

Deepak(Rajkummar Rao), based out of Allahabad, is from a poor family. Just as in any of the ‘rags to riches’ stories, he aims to become a Maalik(Owner) from a Naukar(Servant). What are the challenges, Deepak, faced in his quest to become a Maalik? Did Shalini(Manushi Chhillar), the wife of Deepak, help him to come out of the mess in which he’s stuck? What is Deepak’s relationship with Minister Shankar Singh(Saurabh Shukla)? Forms the rest of the story.

Performances:

Rajkummar Rao in the role of a deadly gangster performed well. However, he’s miscast in the role. The character like Maalik, commands the actor to possess inbuilt swag but unfortunately, it was missed in the way Rajkummar Rao carried the role. Saurabh Shukla in the role of crooked politician delivered a commendable performance as well. All other actors delivered a standard performance. There’s nothing special to talk about the performances.

Technicalities:

Cinematographer, Anuj Rakesh Dhawan is the only technician whose work is worth mentioning in the film. He captured the Allahabad raw and rustic locales of the 1990s Allahabad well. Editing by Zubin Sheikh is a big letdown, especially in the second half. At least, twenty minutes in the second half would have been edited easily. The last forty minutes of the film dragged on forever and it was a mistake from the editor. Sachin–Jigar’s songs & Ketan Sodha’s background score are very average. Let’s discuss more about the director and writer, Pulkit’s work in the analysis section.

Positives:

1.⁠ ⁠Pre-Interval Fight Sequence
2.⁠ ⁠Watchable First Half

Negatives:

1.⁠ ⁠Boring Second Half
2.⁠ ⁠Predictable Story
3.⁠ ⁠Routine Execution
4.⁠ ⁠Editing

Analysis:

KGF & Pushpa franchise movies worked out well all over the country but their performance in Hindi markets in India stood out compared to other languages. The commercial performance of the second parts of both KGF and Pushpa showed Hindi audiences’ appetite for well-packaged commercial action entertainers. There is a huge market for such films in the Hindi heartland of India but unfortunately, the Bollywood film makers in the last few years are unable to come up with solid commercial action entertainers. Rajkummar Rao’s Maalik is a desperate attempt to tap the commercial cinema potential in the Hindi markets but sadly what we get to see is a very predictable movie which was heavily inspired by KGF and Pushpa franchises.

The actors(i.e. Yash and Allu Arjun) who played the protagonist role in both KGF and Pushpa are relatively new and yet the Hindi audiences loved those two characters. It is because both Yash and Allu Arjun delivered quite a few ‘playing to the gallery’ moments with their swag and mannerisms. For a commercial entertainer to work well, the actors who play the lead character in the film should have an inbuilt swag and style. It is where, Maalik, struggled. Rajkummar Rao is a very good actor. There’s no doubt about it. He even delivered a good performance. However, it looked strange to see him in such a heavy gangster role. There was no style or swag or anything that we associate with a ‘mass’ hero in a commercial film, in Rajkummar Rao’s persona. Apart from the pre-interval action sequence, his seemingly ferocious performance as a gangster looked forced and out of place.

Another big letdown in the film is the predictability. The writer and director, Pulkit, selected a very routine script and the screenplay he chose to narrate a routine story is utterly predictable. Right from the word go, the audience will easily be able to guess the next sequence, including the twist in the climax. It is surprising to see a young director coming up with such an outdated twist. We have seen that twist in multiple movies in the past thirty years or so, starting with Krishna Vamsi’s Gulabi in 1995. There are two conflicts in the film, one in the first half and the other in the second half. The biggest mistake the director made was to come up with the face-off sequence between the protagonist and the main antagonist, upfront in both halves. It is almost impossible to sustain an audience’s attention with the remaining when a director decides to kill the main antagonist character at the very start of a tug of war. It is where the film lost track. The last forty-odd minutes in the film dragged forever with irritating action sequences one after the other.

Overall, Maalik has a watchable first half at best with a very well executed pre-interval action sequence and a boring second half that dragged on and on with a very predictable screenplay. You may give it a try watching the film when it releases on an OTT platform but it certainly don’t deserve a watch at a theatre.

Bottomline – Man’s KGF & Pushpa

Rating – 2/5

Related

Is it finally clocking to you? Justin Bieber is back.

The 31-year-old singer surprise-released a new album, “Swag,” Friday after teasing fans the previous morning with a series of billboards and social media posts. Bieber’s first album since 2021’s “Justice,” the new music prompted an online frenzy and revived a devoted community of Beliebers.

From his marriage to his paparazzi encounters, Bieber has faced incredible scrutiny over the last few months, which he addresses head-on in “Swag.” After listening to all 21 tracks, here are our biggest takeaways.

R&Bieber is back

Bieber has incorporated R&B elements in his music since early in his career and embraced the genre fully on the 2013 compilation album “Journals.” But even after coining R&Bieber in 2019, he’s struggled to be taken seriously.

When 2020’s “Changes” received a Grammy nomination for pop vocal album, Bieber expressed his confusion at not being nominated in the R&B category.

“To the Grammys I am flattered to be acknowledged and appreciated for my artistry. I am very meticulous and intentional about my music. With that being said I set out to make an R&B album. ‘Changes’ was and is an R&B album,” he wrote on Instagram. “It is not being acknowledged as an R&B album which is very strange to me. I grew up admiring R&B music and wished to make a project that would embody that sound.”

“To be clear I absolutely love Pop music,” he added. “It just wasn’t what I set out to make this time around. My gratitude for feeling respected for my work remains and I am honored to be nominated either way.”

On “Swag,” Bieber shows off his R&B chops. From opening track “All I Can Take” and the seemingly SZA-inspired “Yukon” to “Daisies” (which reportedly features Mk.gee on the guitar), he takes a more intimate approach than on previous albums. But still, longtime fans will hear hints of “Journals” and “Changes” throughout the project.

In one of the album’s unconventional moments, comedian Druski comments on Bieber’s more “soulful,” R&B-infused sound.

“I said this album kinda sound, you got some soul on this album too, bro,” he says on the interlude track “Soulful.” “Your skin white but your soul Black, Justin. I promise you, man.”

He’s not ‘Walking Away’ from his marriage

Since Justin and Hailey Bieber wed in 2018, their marriage has been under a microscope. Divorce rumors circulated within months of them tying the knot, and it didn’t help that many fans were still rooting for the singer to get back with ex-girlfriend Selena Gomez.

Bieber’s love for his wife is evident throughout his catalog — from 2020’s “All Around Me” to 2021’s “Hailey.” But in case anyone is still skeptical (they are), Bieber sets the record straight on “Swag.”

On album standout “Walking Away,” Bieber gets candid about his relationship troubles but also reaffirms that he’s committed to his marriage. “You were my diamond / Gave you a ring / I made you a promise / I told you I’d change / It’s just human nature / These growing pains / And baby, I ain’t walking away,” he sings.

Elsewhere on the album, he cheers on his wife. On “Go Baby” (which lyrically echoes 2021’s “There She Go”), he sings, “That’s my baby, she’s iconic, iPhone case, lip gloss on it” — a reference to the Rhode founder’s famous lip gloss-holder phone case.

Recently, Hailey sold her skin-care company, which she launched in 2022, to e.l.f Beauty for $1 billion. There she goes indeed.

The pregnancy announcement song

The Biebers’ pregnancy announcement in May 2024 was accompanied by an unknown instrumental track. Now, fans have identified it as “Devotion” featuring Dijon.

On the heartwarming track, Bieber sings, “When your lips and fingernails are all mine / I promise to take my time givin’ you devotion.”

The singer also celebrates being a father to Jack Blues Bieber, born Aug. 23, 2024, on “Dadz Love.” As rapper Lil B declares we need “less hatin’” and “more love,” Bieber repeats the track title (which sounds like “that’s love”) over and over.

There’s no cure for Bieber fever

Soon after the singer announced the surprise album, fans flocked to social media to express their excitement.

“New album – bieber fever hitting like it’s 2010,” TikTok user @jennyboba posted to the will.i.am collab “#thatPOWER.”

“Justin Bieber is back… I used to pray for times like this,” singer d4vd posted on X.

Others reactivated their old X fan accounts and created group chats to celebrate the release. “We’re creating a SWAG group chat to keep up with all the updates! Like or reply so I can add you,” @statsonbieber announced in a post that’s since received almost 6,000 likes and more than 600 comments.

Bieber fever may have been latent for years, but it’s making the rounds once again.

Bieber’s ‘Standing on Business’

Bieber’s had his fair share of viral paparazzi moments over the past year. Most notable was his encounter with photographers while leaving Malibu’s SoHo House, when he declared, “It’s not clocking to you that I’m standing on business.”

The singer’s misuse of African American Vernacular English has turned into an internet meme, but Bieber’s in on the joke. He’s shared several fan edits of the encounter on his Instagram, including one that riffs off the hilarious “I’m a mommy” moment on “Love Island USA.” And on “Swag,” Bieber includes an interlude aptly titled “Standing on Business.”

“I like that you pronounce business. Usually, when I say, ‘Standin’ on business,’ I say, ‘Standin’ on bih’ ’ness,’ ” Druski says after the now-famous audio plays. “I think that’s why he ain’t leave right there. You were pronunciatin’ every word — you can’t pronunciate every word when you doin’ that.”

Bieber samples another paparazzi moment on “Butterflies”: “You just want money. Money, money, money, money, money, money, money. Get out of here, bro. Money, that’s all you want, you don’t care about human beings. All you want is money.”

The song then transitions into an honest reflection on money and fame: “When the money comes and the money goes / Only thing that’s left, uh, is the love we hold,” he sings.

To be clear, Bieber’s contentious exchanges with the paparazzi are nothing new. “[What] do your parents think about what you do?” he asked one in 2012. “You tell them, ‘Yeah, I stalk people for a living’?”

But recently, these encounters — coupled with his sometimes outlandish social media activity — have led to increased scrutiny and speculation about Bieber’s mental health. Many have even drawn comparisons to Britney Spears.

“People are always askin’ if I’m OK, and that starts to really weigh on me,” Bieber tells Druski on the track “Therapy Session.” “It starts to make me feel like I’m the one with issues and everyone else is perfect.”

Following her husband’s surprise album announcement, Hailey reposted the tracklist on her Instagram story with the caption, “Is it finally clocking to you f— losers?”

Perhaps it finally is.