Los Angeles Times - 29.08.2019

From pop star

to festival mogul

The Cure and Robert

Smith headline the

Pasadena Daydream

fest; he’s curator. E3

Comics................E6-E7

What’s on TV..........E8

Kevin WinterGetty Images

CALENDAR

THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019:: LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR

E

The new movie “Ad Astra,” which

makes its world premiere Thursday at the Venice Film Festi-

val, is a delicate balancing act — a science-fiction action-ad-

venture epic on the one hand, and a quiet, ruminative treatise

on masculinity and the necessity of human connection on the

other.

Directed, co-produced and co-written by James Gray, the

film stars Brad Pitt as Roy McBride, an American astronaut

sent on a top-secret mission to discover the source of de-

structive power surges coming from deep space. Roy’s father,

an astronaut played by Tommy Lee Jones who disappeared

while on a space exploration mission many years earlier, is

believed to be hiding in orbit somewhere near Neptune and

could hold the answer.

The movie’s dazzling, energetic action sequences include a

lunar rover chase on the moon, McBride breaking into a

rocket as it prepares to launch from Mars and later hurtling

through open space. All while tracking McBride’s interior

journey as a man living a life of isolation and solitude, coming

to the realization he needs more.

“In a sense, the truly unknown, the true terra incognita is

the landscape of the human soul,” said Gray during a recent

interview in Los Angeles. “And sometimes instead of looking

outward, look inward. To keep looking outward, it doesn’t

really give you answers.

“There’s a quote by Arthur C. Clarke where he said either

we’re not alone in the universe or we are and both notions are

equally terrifying. So all of this went into the movie and the

action beats really were an attempt only to illuminate and ex-

pand upon these ideas.”

BRAD PITTstars as a U.S. astronaut on a secret mission in the new science-fiction film “Ad Astra” by writer-director James Gray.

Francois Duhamel20th Century Fox

In a moody space

Even as veteran indie filmmaker James Gray rockets into the

big-budget universe of ‘Ad Astra,’ he gives the sci-fi epic a soul

BYMARKOLSEN>>>

[See‘Ad Astra,’E5]

President

Trump,

members of

his admin-

istration

and some

conserva-

tive politi-

cians get a

lot of grief for their use of the

term “real Americans.”

The grief is justified,

because, at best, the term

implies that certain citizens

of this country — residents

of the Midwest, say, or folks

with “working-class” jobs —

are somehow more Ameri-

can than others, which is

just ridiculous. At worst, the

term is dog-whistle short-

hand for “white people who

are tired of having to share

this country’s resources

with anyone whose face,

faith or family might look a

little different from theirs.”

Either way, the phrase

is regularly mocked and

decried by late-night hosts

and members of “liberal

Hollywood” who are active

in politics or on social

media.

Yet Hollywood does

more to perpetuate the

myth of “real Americans”

than any politician, or any

other cultural force in the

world.

Go to the movies, turn on

whatever screen you use to

watch the art form formally

known as television, and

what do you see? A wide

array of stories revolving

around a fairly narrow

group of people, mostly

white, mostly male.

If you were a newcomer

to this country or planet,

looking, as historians and

They

do not

reflect

the real

U. S.

MARY McNAMARA

[SeeAmericans,E4]

SAN FRANCISCO —

When Netflix plunged into
India’s vast market with its
first original animated kids
series in April, it turned to a
curious baby known as
Bheem who crawls through
his rural village overcoming
challenges to nab the perfect
white flower to complement
his mom’s purple sari.
Company executives an-
ticipated that “Mighty Little
Bheem” would be embraced
by Indian audiences, but
they were pleasantly sur-
prised when the series tar-
geting preschoolers took off
worldwide, becoming the
second-most-popular origi-
nal kids program to launch NETFLIXwas pleasantly surprised by the global success of its investment in In-
dia’s animated preschoolers show “Mighty Little Bheem,” starring a superbaby.

Netflix / Green Gold Animation

India’s ‘Bheem’ lifts Netflix

Streaming giant sees

growth opportunities

by expanding globally

with more family fare.

By Wendy Lee

[SeeNetflix, E5]

SALZBURG, Austria —

There is so much being

made about the mystique of

Kirill Petrenko, the seem-

ingly otherworldly 47-year-

old conductor from Siberia

who began his tenure as

Berlin Philharmonic music

director last weekend, that it

hardly seems like mystique

at all anymore. The fact that

he does not sell himself has

been made a selling point.

The New York Times has

dubbed him the anti-anti-

maestro (does that make a

maestro?).

He shies away from inter-

views and is said to be truly

shy, a rare and you would

think undesirable trait for a

conductor. He is also said to

leave his ego, if he even has

one, at the stage door. Again,

it is said (everything comes

second hand with Pe-

trenko), that rather than

genuflect before the greatest

orchestral machine the

world has ever known, as

many a maestosomaestro

has for the most sought-af-

ter job in the profession, Pe-

trenko was genuinely sur-

prised to have been selected

by the players, who pick

their music director them-

selves.

So was the music world.

Petrenko had never before

headed an orchestra, only

opera companies and only

one big one, Bavarian State

Opera in Munich, where he

remains for two more sea-

sons. He is a perfectionist

MARK SWED

MUSIC CRITIC

Conductor steps

onto world stage

Berlin Philharmonic

chose Kirill Petrenko

for the job. In concert,

he makes it clear why.

[SeeKirill Petrenko,E4]