Hans Graf, Houston Symphony music director, was at the helm on opening night ofthe renowned Aspen Music Festival.
Photo by Alex Irvin
Graf substituted for James Levine, conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra atits summer home in Tanglewood.
Photo by Hilary Scott
Hans Graf also did relief conducting at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.
Photo by Zach Mahone
Insiders at the Houston Symphony just can't help themselves. They've dubbed their respected music director Hans Graf as the "Red Adair of Guest Conductors."
The reason is simple enough. More than once this summer, the peripatetic conductor has loaned his talents to symphony orchestras in the lurch. (In other words, putting out fires as the renowned Adair once did in the oil fields.)
When the call came from the Aspen Music Festival for Graf to step in as one of six guest conductors to fill in for David Zinman, who had unexpectedly resigned in April, Graf was at the ready. He led the opening night concert.
His next stop was not far down the road — in Vail where he subbed for Dallas Symphony Orchestra conductor Jaap Van Zweden, who had been sidelined by rotator cuff surgery. Graf led the Dallas musicians at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.
Graf's final 911 substitution was at Tanglewood, home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Lenox, Mass. Houston's maestro was tapped to pinch-hit for conductor James Levine, absent due to health problems.
In addition to those last-minute duties, Graf also conducted the Houston Symphony Dollar Concert in July and then jetted to Chicago to conduct at the Grant Park Music Festival.
After intermittent stopovers in his native Salzburg, Austria, Graf is back in Houston for his 10th season as music director. Look for him on the podium in Jones Hall on opening night Saturday, conducting the evening's presentation, "Vienna Soiree."
One of the oddest things about the blockbuster era we live in is that while Disney owns the rights to the majority of Marvel comic book characters, Sony Pictures owns the rights to Spider-Man and any affiliated characters. Since they’re sharing Spider-Man himself with Disney, Sony has been trying to capitalize on those rights by making stand-alone films using niche characters that only comic book fanatics would know.
Having exhausted Venom and whiffed on attempts with Morbius and Madame Web, they’re trying again with Kraven the Hunter. Also known as Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a self-styled vigilante who, as the film tells it, travels the world exacting vengeance on the truly bad people of the world. He’s the son of Nikolai (Russell Crowe), a hard-edged Russian oligarch, and brother to Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), who is relatively weak compared to the rest of his family.
The origin story has Kraven gaining his animal-like powers - including super-strength, speed, and jumping abilities - as a teenager from a mysterious serum given to him by a girl named Calypso (played as an adult by Ariana DeBose) after he was mauled by a lion. The two maintain a tenuous partnership as adults, with Calypso helping him hunt down other villains like Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott).
Directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, the film looks and feels enormously lazy, something made merely to hold on to potentially valuable intellectual property. Other than the tense family dynamic between the Kravinovs, little makes sense in the story. Kraven has an indecipherable moral code that has him going after poachers - because he’s part lion? - in addition to other high-powered criminals, with no clear goal except to … get back at his father?
The laziness extends to the action scenes, which feature Kraven being mostly impervious to any damage, whether it’s hand-to-hand combat, knives, or guns. The CGI-heavy scenes don’t even allow moviegoers to enjoy an R-rated bloody free-for-all, as all of the blood splatter is computer-generated, too. Since apparently one Spider-Man villain is not enough, three others make appearances with abilities that are under-explained and CGI that is poorly done.
That’s not even counting Calypso, another Spider-Man villain whose purpose in this film is nebulous at best. Her early connection with Kraven is so coincidental as to be laughable, and her continued reasons for helping him as an adult strain credulity as well. The only saving grace of her presence is that the filmmakers don’t try to shoehorn romance into the plot; perhaps they’re saving that for the (inevitable?) sequel.
Taylor-Johnson has had one of the most prolific-yet-anonymous careers in modern Hollywood, with appearances in big films like The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, and Tenet that have made very little impact. Even as the star here, he fails to hold your attention, with the story and visuals doing him no favors. DeBose has followed up her Oscar win for West Side Story with schlock like I.S.S., Argylle, and this, which doesn’t bode well for her career. At least Crowe gets to chew the scenery.
With a contractual inability to mention the name “Spider-Man,” movies like Kraven the Hunter exist in a weird area that forces filmmakers to make up stories for characters to which most people have no attachment. And just like Sony’s previous efforts, it is a very poor way to spend two hours in a movie theater; avoid at all costs.
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Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13.