LOS ANGELES: Moroccan American Marwa Lahlou fulfilled a childhood dream when she was crowned winner at the Miss Arab USA 2022 pageant in Arizona, telling Arab News she overcame “severe bullying” to get to where she is today.
Now, the beauty queen is on a mission to champion her roots while celebrating her life as an American, a responsibility she says she does not take lightly.
“As an Arab American, I’ve done my best to represent both of my roots in the best way possible before the title. And now with the title, it’s a true honor and a big responsibility, and I’m willing to take it and I’m so happy to have it,” she said.
She was chosen out of 20 outstanding Arab American women for the prestigious title.
But when she first joined the contest, her victory dream seemed very much out of reach.
“Even from my relatives or close friends, they were like, ‘oh, I don’t think you can make it. You are short. You’re this. You’re that. It looks like a very tough competition.’ Which it was, definitely. All the contestants that were with me were amazing and great and smart and beautiful,” Lahlou said.
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However, it was not the first time Lahlou had overcome obstacles. Moving to the US from Morocco when she was 12, she struggled as one of the few Arabs in her school.
“I experienced severe bullying, unfortunately, my first year there, but I was happy, and I was proud and lucky to have supportive parents and family. I decided to not let that experience break me and instead shape me into the person I am today,” she added.
Lahlou gained a master’s degree in international business management and marketing from the University of New Haven, in Connecticut. She is also fluent in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish.
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The soon-to-be beauty queen began teaching English and American culture to Arabs moving to the US. Her community service mindset was shared by the Miss Arab pageant.
She said: “Their mission exactly matches my mission, helping those in need, helping refugees, helping children, the homeless, young women, being the spokespersons for people who need help. And they focus more on internal and inside beauty and intellect.
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“As an Arab American, I’ve done my best to represent both of my roots in the best way possible before the title. And now with the title, it’s a true honor and a big responsibility, and I’m willing to take it and I’m so happy to have it,” she added.
The annual pageant event returned this July after a two-year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic. American Palestinian Joanna Rashid was the first runner-up, with American Lebanese Maria Bassil coming in as the second runner-up.
DUBAI: There has never been a television series more ambitious than “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” The first season, which premiered on Amazon Prime on Sept. 2, cost a staggering $465 million to make — roughly 10 times the price of the first season of “Game of Thrones” 11 years ago — with a planned $1 billion for the intended five-season series on a whole. If any franchise can justify that kind of investment, though, it’s the world of Middle Earth.
“It just goes to show how universal J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories still are,” Markella Kavenagh, the series’ 21-year-old star (born the same year as Peter Jackson’s first ‘Lord of the Rings’ film was released), who plays the halfling Nori Brandyfoot, tells Arab News. “These stories highlight the importance of community, finding strength in vulnerability. Across generations, people see themselves in these stories.”
In the world of high fantasy, no story has ever come close to the global impact of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” (We’re classifying “Harry Potter” as low fantasy.) While wizards, dwarves and elves existed in tales long before the English author began crafting his own Elvish language and expanding it out into a sprawling story back in 1914, it was the publication of his masterful trilogy in 1954 that cemented them in the cultural imagination and changed the genre forever — an influence that grew even greater after its adaptation into three Academy Award-winning films in the early 2000s.
“The Lord of the Rings,” as it turns out, was actually the very end of the immense tale that Tolkien crafted, pieces of which have been published since his death in 1973. The true scope of his classic story of good versus evil spans thousands of years of invented mythology, and no attempt had been made to dramatize the tales of the time in which the ‘rings of power’ were crafted, the dark lord Sauron rose, and humans and elves united to defeat him — at least until Amazon turned to writers and superfans John D. Payne and Patrick McKay to do what many thought was impossible.
“In crafting this world, Tolkien always felt like he was discovering something that already existed. For us, it was more about parsing the clues he left behind, like dinosaur bones in the soil. It was a joyful process of collaboration with Professor Tolkien,” says Payne.
Payne and McKay worked closely with the Tolkien estate and a number of Tolkien experts to put together all the pieces so that their narrative was true to what the author had intended, and to figure out what had to be changed in order to ensure the multi-generational story made sense as a TV show.
“The biggest liberty that we took is compressing the timeline. If you tell Tolkien’s story documentary style, then human characters would be dying off every few episodes. With the estate’s blessing, we had to change that for the sake of a serialized story,” says Payne.
It wasn’t just a matter of mapping out Tolkien’s lore, but mining that material for stories and characters that could, as McKay puts it, “motor a 50-hour mega-epic,” and find actors that could do this world the same justice as the film trilogy’s celebrated cast once did.
“We have 22 series regulars in the show. For each of them, we knew we had to find a unicorn. One, they had to be a fantastic performer and a master of their craft, and two they had to have ‘Middle Earth’ in them. We saw hundreds of tapes, winnowed that down to a couple, then finally, the ones who came to the fore had something really special in them,” says Payne.
For the performers themselves, that process put them on a particularly long and arduous journey to the project. Ismael Cruz-Córdova, who plays Arondir, became the first person of color to play an elf in the franchise after a seven-month battle, guided by the singular belief that he could do justice to the role better than anyone.
Cruz-Córdova first auditioned in New York, then twice more in Los Angeles. Weeks later, he got the news he’d been dreading.
“I was filming in South Africa in the desert when I got my first rejection. I was ferocious about it. I said, ‘No, I’m going to keep fighting for this thing.’ Somehow, my agents were able to (get) me back in the process. I made a tape in my tent in the desert, traveled to the next town to find Wi-Fi, sent it off, and got another response saying no,” says Cruz-Córdova.
“I told my agents I was going to show up at the creators’ house and convince them, and they told me, ‘We’d like for you not to go to jail,’” he continues.
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Cruz- Córdova gave up his fight briefly, before he received an unexpected invitation to New Zealand, where the series was filmed. There, he was given a screen test with five others, pretending that his life didn’t depend on this moment, and finally secured the role.
“By the end, I was so tired. And I’ve been tired ever since,” Cruz- Córdova jokes.
With a cast made up of relative unknowns, Payne and McKay left themselves room to play in their five-season plan for each character, allowing the actors themselves to help define who these people would become as the story went on.
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Megan Richards, who plays Poppy Proudfellow — another halfling and best friend of Kavenagh’s character, was one actor whose real-life skills became a part of the show’s narrative.
“We knew Megan was an incredibly talented actress, but we learned on set that she’s an amazing singer. We thought, ‘How do we take advantage of that?’ So now Poppy sings,” says McKay.
“It’s one of those great moments in the show that we never would have been able to envision until we actually started developing it with an artist that you’re handing the role to. That ultimately became true for every character across the board,” adds Payne.
Each performer had a different process in figuring out their character. “I really found Poppy through her movements,” says Richards. “Our movement director gave me the direction to walk like a five-year-old child. That was the basis for all her movement, and then I was able to build in personality traits and personal things from there, just by figuring out how she walked.”
Ultimately, although many outsiders may focus on the gargantuan budget for “The Rings of Power,” for those making it, it was a true labor of love, and one the team is excited to see the world respond to.
The Bahraini pop star dropped her new single on Platinum Records last week and the accompanying video has already racked up over 1.3 million views on YouTube. The lively, danceable track is the first that Al-Turk has released in the Egyptian dialect, and the video plays on that country’s cinematic heritage with a glamorous old-school vibe.
‘Al Sa’aa Al Oula’
Jeddah-based synthpop artist Statues of Sinking Men (real name Abdulmalik Zubailah) cites Depeche Mode and Arabic indie veterans Cairokee and Jadal among his influences. His latest single is, according to his label Wall of Sound, about the “inner struggle of an outcast, who seeks an impossible love, sinking in his despair not by choice, but because he is forced to.”
‘Where Do We Go From Here’
The Lebanese indie outfit led by Sandra Arslanian have just released this second single from their upcoming album. It’s a subtle, evocative piece of melodic indie-pop which, Arslanian told Arab News, is “about seeking guidance from a trusted person. The person might have a mental health condition, such as Alzheimer’s, but it is her guidance within, her guidance to our hearts, that is sought.”
The Lebanese singer and composer’s latest release on Universal Music is a collaboration with the popular Algerian producer ElJoee and introduces some North African raï melodies to Yussef’s repertoire in what the label describes as a “Maghreb electronic track.” ElJoee was surprised at how well the pair worked together: “I never thought a collaboration with a Middle Eastern voice would go this good,” the producer said in a press release.
DUBAI: Things could have turned out very differently for acclaimed Indian chef Himanshu Saini, who runs the kitchen at Trèsind Studio in Palm Jumeirah’s Nakheel Mall. Right now, he’s one of the hottest properties in Dubai’s dining scene: Saini basically has free rein to create his own tasting menus for the 18-seat Indian fine-dining restaurant (he changes the menu up every four months) and has established it as one of the must-visit venues in the city. Trèsind Studio was awarded a Michelin star in the prestigious dining guide’s first Dubai edition earlier this year.
But he very nearly didn’t come to the Middle East at all. In 2014, the Delhi native was working as an executive chef in Mumbai when he was offered what seemed like a dream job in New York.
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“I was looking forward to it. I’d had this offer from Dubai to open Trèsind, but New York is New York, so I’d decided I was going to go there,” Saini says. “But I was really struggling in America: I wasn’t happy with the team, I wasn’t happy with the concept of the restaurant, I wasn’t being given a free hand to work the way I wanted to work, so within a month I decided to come to Dubai and take the opportunity to launch Trèsind.”
He hasn’t really looked back since. Which is perhaps as well, because as Saini tells it, there has never been a Plan B for him.
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“Cooking was something I always loved. I grew up in a big family, living in my grandparents’ house with about 50 people — extended family. So even though it was a home kitchen, it was run like a professional kitchen where everybody has an assigned job. Growing up in those surroundings, and in Delhi — which is a big foodie hub with lots of unique street food — I was always surrounded by food.
“In India, being a chef — 10 or 20 years back — wasn’t really a career your parents wanted you to pursue,” he continues. “Everybody in India wanted their children to become a doctor or an engineer, or a lawyer. But I wasn’t good at anything else. This career wasn’t really a choice so much as a necessity.”
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Here, Saini discusses flavors, theater, and the importance of simplicity.
Q: What’s your top tip for amateur chefs?
A: When I cook, I try to maintain a harmony of flavors. I don’t shy away from using salt in desserts or something sweet in savory preparations. These are all mental blocks that cooks can have. A recipe is useful as a reference, but it’s always best to use your own palate. I always say to younger chefs that you should cook something you’d eat yourself a hundred times. If it’s tasty to you, then it’ll eventually be appreciated by others.
Is there a single ingredient that can instantly improve most dishes?
The generic answer would be salt. Like I said, I don’t shy away from using it in my desserts. But cooking isn’t about just one ingredient. And, for me, the humble ingredients in the kitchen are more important than any luxury ones: I don’t use expensive meat, I don’t use foie gras, or caviar — I’ll only use it if I can make better use of it than just serving it on top of a dish. The tomato is more important in my kitchen than truffle. The umami in the tomatoes is probably as good as the umami in the truffles; you just have to know how to respect that.
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What’s your favorite cuisine?
I always look forward to Indian or Thai food the most. They’re two cuisines which are very flavorful and full of aroma.
What’s your favorite dish to cook?
My menu will sometimes have three or four broth preparations. It’s something I always look forward to. I find peace when I’m cooking broths. It’s so harmonious: You can have so many flavors. It’s delicate and needs a deft hand, but at the same time it’s full of aroma and flavorful. It’s something that a lot of people get wrong, but a good hearty soup or a good bouillon is something that’s one of my strengths. I get all the flavors in the liquid, but it’s still delicate and flavorful. I find peace in simple things: A few spoonfuls of broth can make my eyes light up.
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When you go out, do you find yourself critiquing the food?
It depends. Sometimes I go out to eat because I want to see what other restaurants are doing. In that case, I try to pick restaurants that I look up to and my professional side kicks in. But it totally depends on my intentions. If the intention is just to relax with friends, then I don’t judge — I’m not thinking about how the sauce is seasoned, or how the pasta is cooked. My brain won’t work in the same way as it does if I’m going out to, say, Ossiano, when I want to know what thought process has gone into the dish, why certain combinations have been used, where the ingredients have been sourced from.
So you’re able to turn your chef’s brain off sometimes?
Yeah. When I’m having a good time with my friends, I keep my mouth shut.
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What request or behavior from customers most frustrates you?
Since we’re a tasting-menu restaurant, the experience can take up to two hours. We do it that way because, for every preparation, the temperature is important, the way it’s being eaten is important… So I do get frustrated when people say, ‘Can you bring everything together?’ If it’s all served together, it’s not the experience we want to give. We want to be sure we’re serving the dishes at the right temperature, with the right texture. These small details make a big difference on your palate. A dish that has been kept on the table for more than two or three minutes, for me, is not as it should be.
At home, if you need to cook something quickly, what’s your go-to dish?
I’d probably make a spaghetti al olio. It’s my kind of dish: Super-easy, super-quick. My house is pure vegetarian — no meat, no eggs. My wife is pure vegetarian, so I don’t cook eggs at home, otherwise I would’ve said an omelet.
As a head chef, are you a disciplinarian?
No. I’m the opposite. In Trèsind Studio we have a maximum of 18 guests at one time, and we turn around two seatings every evening. All the guests face the open kitchen. For me it’s like a theater. I really enjoy working like that, I can see every guest and whether they’re liking it or not. In the kitchen, everybody’s doing their job and enjoying it. It’s very peaceful. It’s not a busy kitchen with loud noise. For me, it’s like meditation. You get that kind of vibe; everybody’s calm. Everybody knows what’s expected from them and I trust my team and I’m super-proud of them.
DUBAI: Is it really a red carpet without Arab designs? Certainly not.
The 79th edition of the Venice International Film Festival kicked off this week, and stars including Isabeli Fontana opted for head-turning gowns from regional couturiers.
Brazilian model Isabeli Fontana wore an off-white form-fitting dress with a long cape by Doha-based label Layla Atelier to the screening of Adam Driver’s “White Noise” at the opening ceremony on Wednesday.
The catwalk star added a glitzy bird-shaped brooch on her chest.
The Middle Eastern fashion house shared Fontana’s pictures on the page’s Instagram Stories and wrote: “We made it to the red carpet.”
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Fontana also wore a gown by Lebanese designer Rami Kadi. She opted for a multi-colored mini dress from the couturier’s Lucid Algorithms spring-summer 2022 collection. It is fully embroidered with ethically-sourced feathers and sequins that form a leopard design, featuring a jeweled bust with crystals.
US actress Julianne Moore, who is also the jury president, opted for sleek shoes by Romanian Jordanian footwear designer Amina Muaddi.
She paired the Robyn sandals with a silk dress that featured a heart-shaped bustier top and a black and yellow polka dot skirt from Maison Alaïa, which was founded by late French-Tunisian couturier Azzedine Alaia.
DUBAI: George Clooney and Julia Roberts reunite for a rom-com, Netflix gives us an inspiring Syrian refugee story, and we return to Wakanda as Arab audiences gear up for an autumn of surefire hits.
Starring: Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira
The follow-up to what is widely regarded as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s finest film to date, 2018’s “Black Panther,” will surely be among the year’s biggest box-office blockbusters, even allowing for the fact that the late Chadwick Boseman cannot reprise his acclaimed performance as T’Challa/Black Panther. Marvel wisely chose not to recast the role, and the character’s demise serves as the jumping-off point for the sequel. With the resource-rich nation of Wakanda (the only source of the fictional metal vibranium) now perceived as weak following its king’s death, its leaders must fight off invading forces from a number of parties aiming to exploit its wealth of energy reserves.
Starring: Nathalie Issa, Manal Issa, Ahmed Malek
This Netflix movie, which will open the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday, is based on the real-life story of Sara and Yusra Mardini, the Syrian refugees and competitive swimmers who dived into the water to drag a dinghy of fellow refugees across the Aegean Sea for hours to reach safety. Yusra went on to compete in the Olympics as a member of the Refugee Olympic Athletes Team. The film was written by BAFTA-winner Jack Thorne and directed by Egyptian filmmaker Sally El-Hosaini. Kinda Alloush, who plays the sister’s mother, Mervat, told Arab News earlier this year: “‘The Swimmers’ is so interesting, because every bit of it is true to life, with all the characters still living, including these two famous swimmers. Working with German actor Matthias Schweighöfer, Ali Suliman from Palestine, and Ahmed Malek from Egypt also brought a real multicultural spirit to the project.”
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody
There’s some serious talent in the ensemble cast of this joint US-British whodunnit set in the 1950s in London’s famed West End theater district, where a famed Hollywood director is murdered as he prepares to adapt a hit play for the silver screen. Much will depend on the chemistry between the film’s central double-act — jaded veteran cop Inspector Stoppard (Rockwell) and idealistic rookie Constable Stalker (Ronan) — as they investigate the seedy glamor of London’s theatrical district.
Starring: Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, John Boyega
This historical epic focuses on the Agojie — an all-female unit of warriors who were protectors of the former West African kingdom Dahoney in the 1800s. The excellent Davis plays the veteran General Nanisca, who is responsible for training the next generation of warriors to fight for their way of life against would-be colonizers, aggressive neighbors, and the slave trade.
Starring: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pine
Styles makes his debut as a leading man in this psychological thriller about a young couple — Alice and Jack Chambers — living in a surface-perfect company town in California called Victory. The town was created Jack’s employers, a mysterious company running the secret “Victory Project.” Jack is a workaholic, and Alice becomes consumed by a desire to find out more about what exactly he’s working on. Her investigation does not go down well in the community.
Starring: Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner
The super-creepy trailer suggests this will be a genuinely frightening psychological horror. Traumatized by an incident with one of her patients, Dr. Rose Cotter starts to witness a stream of horrific incidents all preceded by seeing someone with a rictus grin across their face. As her present becomes more and more bizarre, the doctor is forced to delve into her dark past to try and find a way out of the nightmare.
Starring: Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington
With a cast that also boasts Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldaña, Mike Myers, Robert De Niro, Rami Malek and Taylor Swift, hopes are high for the acclaimed filmmaker’s latest release. It’s set in the Dutch capital in the 1930s and follows a trio of close friends who become the prime suspects in a homicide case which turns out to be part of a shocking secret US plot. “A lot of this actually happened,” the film’s trailer claims.
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, Pierce Brosnan
DC is pinning its hopes on Dwayne Johnson to outperform Marvel at the box-office this fall. Johnson stars as the titular antihero who’s just escaped after almost 5,000 years of incarceration. His (very) old-school approach to justice and punishment sees the Justice Society of America (who include Hawkman, Atom Smasher, Cyclone and Doctor Fate) get involved. They attempt to modernize Adam’s approach and persuade him to join them in their battle against the sinister Sabbac, who is possessed by a powerful demon.
Starring: George Clooney, Julia Roberts
Two of the world’s biggest living movie stars team up in this rom-com about a divorced couple who travel to Bali in an attempt to dissuade their daughter Lily from marrying a local man she has just met. The pair work together to sabotage Lily’s wedding — believing that they are preventing her from making the same mistakes they themselves made by getting married in the first place. Expect top-class snark from the two stars, who are working together for the fifth time.
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Ralph Fiennes
The intriguing trailer for this horror/black comedy had us hooked immediately. Fiennes plays celebrity chef Slowik, who runs an exclusive restaurant called Hawthorne on a remote island where he practices molecular gastronomy to create meals that are acclaimed as conceptual art. When young couple Margot and Tyler visit Hawthorne, however, they quickly begin to realize that something is very wrong with their host and his food.