New Zealand Listener – August 10, 2019

108 LISTENER AUGUST 10 2019

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

The Best of the Week

SUNDAY AUGUST 11

Opera on Sunday (RNZ Concert,

6.00pm). There was much

praise in the UK for Span-

ish baritone Carlos

Álvarez, who

was the lead in

Verdi’s dark

political opera

Simon Boccane-

gra at the Royal

Opera. Not only

did he sing with

“burnished warmth

of tone and an impeccable

sense of line”, but also he is “a

subtle actor”.

WEDNESDAY AUGUST 14

Music Alive (RNZ Concert,

8.00pm). BBC Prom 23 begins

with a slice of British his-

tory before turning to Russia.

Malcolm Arnold’s 1968 Peterloo

Overture was commissioned to

commemorate the killing

of 18 people at a dem-

onstration in St Peter’s

Field, Manchester, in

1819. Amid a period of
      famine and unem-
      ployment, a crowd of
      80,000 had assem-
      bled to demand the
      reform of parliamen-
      tary representation
      and hear radical orator
      Henry Hunt, but local
      magistrates ordered
      his arrest, and sent
      in the cavalry
      to disperse the

crowd. In addition, the BBC

Philharmonic plays excerpts

from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake

and Ukrainian virtuoso

Alexander Gavrylyuk

performs Rachmani-

nov’s Rhapsody

on a Theme of

Paganini. Other

Proms this week

include the

National Youth

Orchestra of Great

Britain, whose players

range in age from 13 to 18,

performing works by Auerbach,

Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev,

accompanied by violinist

Nicola Benedetti (Music Alive,

Thursday, 8.00pm); baroque

orchestra The English Con-

cert taking a journey through

Europe with works by Purcell,

Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre

and Handel, with South Afri-

can Kristian Bezuidenhout

directing from the harp-

sichord; and exciting

Canadian conductor

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

leading the Bavarian

Radio Symphony

Orchestra in a

programme of

Sibelius, Prokof-

iev and Strauss,

with violinist Lisa

Batiashvili (Music

Alive, Monday,

8.00pm).

by FIONA RAE

CH

RIS

SI
NG

ER

Radio

RNZ^ Con

cert’s

best^ tan

go

Mu

sic^ A

live

Tuesday

,

8.^00 pm

Lisa Batiashvili, Music

Alive, Monday.

Through a Screen, Darkly

The Guardian’s podcast Chips with Everything explores

digital culture in short, pithy weekly episodes. A recent show

explained “Dark Patterns”, the techniques that shopping

websites use to trick us into clicking. A team at Princeton

University studied 11,000 shopping websites where they saw

such tricks as “hidden subscriptions”, “sneak to basket” and

“visual interference”. tinyurl.com/NZLDarkPatterns

PODCAST OF THE WEEK

Mercury’s relationships with

men, but even screenwriter

Anthony McCarten says he

did not expect to discover

that the love of Mercury’s life

was a woman – Mary Austin,

who is played by Lucy Boyn-

ton. (2018)

Philomena (Māori TV, 8.30pm).

A lovely performance from

Judi Dench in this true story:

she is by turns hilarious, sad,

tragic, poignant and annoy-

ing as she and grumpy Martin

Sixsmith (Steve Coogan)

search for her son. Philomena

Lee spent years trying to find

the child taken from her by

nuns at an abbey in Roscrea.

The movie was nominated for

four Academy Awards, includ-

ing Best Picture, Best Actress

for Dench and Best Adapted

Screenplay for Coogan and

Jeff Pope. (2013)

Independence Day: Resurgence

(Three, 8.35pm). The aliens are

back and so is master of dis-

aster Roland Emmerich, who

must have blown up every

major city on Earth by now.

You know the drill: plucky

humans, including Bill Pull-

man and Jeff Goldblum, fight

another wave of aliens (Will

Smith having declined to

reprise his role from the 1996

blockbuster) and stuff goes

boom. It’s not rocket science.

(2016)

Aftermath (Choice

TV, 10.30pm). Arnold

Schwarzenegger: actor. A

drama, based on real events,

in which grizzled grandpa

Arnie loses his wife and

pregnant daughter in a

mid-air collision. Usually,

this would mean going after

the terrorists who did it, but

this is a serious film about

the real aftermath of such an

event, including the paltry

financial recompense offered

by the airline and the threats

made against the air-traffic

controller (Scoot McNairy) on

duty at the time. You never

quite get past the fact that it’s

Arnold-freaking-Schwarzeneg-

ger, but it’s a significant

mellowing. (2017)

THURSDAY AUGUST 15

The Wife (Movies Extra, Sky

031, 8.00pm). Glenn Close

makes full use of her impas-

sive, unreadable face in this

film based on the 2003 novel

by Meg Wolitzer, and yet her

unnatural calmness as the

wife of a great writer is hiding

a lifetime of subjugation to

her husband’s reputation. The

secret at the heart of Joan’s

relationship with Joseph (Jon-

athan Pryce) unravels when

they travel to Stockholm so

he can receive a Nobel Prize.

It’s a very dark comedy that

addresses a male-dominated

literary world (it’s set in 1992)

and also flashes back to 1958,

when Joan (played by Close’s

daughter, Annie Starke) is a

student in awe of her profes-

sor, Joe (Harry Lloyd). The

brilliant Close won a Golden

Globe for the performance

and was nominated for an

Oscar. (2017)

Warcraft (Three, 8.30pm).

There are more buttons on a

PlayStation controller than

there are successful video-

game movie adaptations,

but the nerds apparently

consider this to be one of the

better ones. Despite being the

highest-grossing video-game

adaptation of all time, it still

didn’t make back its $239 mil-

lion budget at the box office.

Nevertheless, director Duncan

Jones and co-writer Charles

Leavitt (Blood Diamond) craft

a decent, if simple, storyline

out of humans versus orcs.

With Vikings’ Travis Fimmel,

Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Ruth

Negga and Dominic Cooper

and the voices of Clancy

Brown and Daniel Wu. (2016)