Classifieds
Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
ACROSS
1 Parking lot fillers
5 “Me too!”
10 Cutlass
automaker
14 Nike competitor
15 Valuable violin,
for short
16 Genesis or
Exodus, e.g.
17 Like the 1920s-
’30s,
economically
19 Wild revelry
20 Audition
hopefuls
21 Enjoyed a sail,
say
23 Indian melodies
24 Excellent work
27 Dean’s email
suffix
28 Japanese sash
30 Back of a flipped
coin
31 2,000 pounds
32 Uncooked
34 Greek
messenger of the
gods
35 Dramatic
weight-loss
program
38 Geek Squad
member
41 Fireworks
reaction
42 EPA-banned
pesticide
45 Roger who broke
Babe Ruth’s
record
46 Refusals
48 Prior to, in
poems
49 Deadeye with a
rifle
53 “A Doll’s House”
playwright
55 Decorative inlaid
work
56 Watchful
Japanese
canines
57 Comet Hale-__
59 Hectic pre-
deadline period
61 Thought from la
tête
62 Hayes or Hunt
63 Slaughter in the
Baseball Hall of
Fame
64 Surrender, as
territory
65 Grab
66 Emailed
DOWN
1 Musical set at the
Kit Kat Club
2 Guacamole fruit
3 Tear gas weapon
4 Margaret Mead
subject
5 Georgia and
Latvia, once:
Abbr.
6 Horseplayer’s
haunt, for short
7 Island near
Curaçao
8 Perry in court
9 Convention pin-
on
10 Section of a
woodwind quintet
score
11 Conrad classic
12 Guard that barks
13 Big __ Country:
Montana
18 Approximately
22 One-to-one
student
24 Prejudice
25 Corrida cry
26 Undergraduate
degrees in biol.,
e.g.
29 Scottish hillside
33 Detective’s
question
34 Sunshine
cracker
35 Massachusetts
city crossed by
four Interstates
36 Insurance covers
them
37 “Please stop that”
38 Film lover’s TV
choice
39 Corn serving
40 Hardly roomy, as
much airline
seating
42 Preordain
43 “It’ll never happen!”
44 Most uptight
47 Many a Punjabi
50 Goldman __:
investment
banking giant
51 New employee
52 Eyelike openings
54 Tugs at a fishing
line
56 Clearasil target
57 Clic Stic pen
maker
58 Poem that extols
60 Pince-__ glasses
By Clement McKay
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
01/26/15
01/26/15
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Monday, January 26, 2015
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
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847‑7196.
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WRITE AN ESSAY on happiness. Win
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keting and research. Great way to learn
the music business, get free entry into
shows. Email zachary.tocco@gmail.com
with the subject “INTERN” for more info.
DOMINICK’S HIRING FOR spring
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THE
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PARKING 2015‑16 at “Prime” locations
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2,3,4 BEDROOM APARTMENTS
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Call 734‑996‑1991 to sched a viewing
2015‑2016 LEASING
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2 BED. A
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SERVICES
FOR RENT
HELP WANTED
ANNOUNCEMENT
PARKING
SUMMER EMPLOYMENT
5A — Monday, January 26, 2015
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Björk’s strange,
dark ‘Vulnicura’
ONE LITTLE INDIAN
Don’t push her in, she’ll short circuit.
Björk’s new album
is a challenging
avant-garde work
By AMELIA ZAK
Daily Music Editor
There’s an episode of Friends
where Ross reawakens a per-
sonal piano “sound” he acquired
in college. He
wants
each
song
to
be
understood as
a
“wordless
sound
poem,”
made complete
by
helicopter
sounds,
door-
bells, jackham-
mer
noises
and dog barks.
The rest of the
“Friends” cast neglects to inform
him of these floundering artis-
tic attempts. When listening to
Björk’s newest album, Vulnicura,
I felt like Ross. Any attempt I
would make at recreating the
sounds of Vulnicura would be
equally as awkward and ridicu-
lous. I could never reproduce
these sounds — I couldn’t even
sing them in the shower — and
I can barely apprehend the Ice-
landic depth or enjoyment that
some could find in Vulnicura.
The album floats around the
marriage of three musical ele-
ments: Björk’s specific throaty
and moaning voice, a recurring
string section and the impos-
sibly cool additions of revered
electronic artists like Matthew
Herbert and Haxan Cloak. In
the past, Björk’s albums fol-
lowed
outlandish
themes
(her last revolved around her
thoughts and opinions of the
growing universe), but here
Björk has never been more vul-
nerable. It’s as if she opened up
her diary and began to sing its
contents aloud. Her voice cries
over every track, explaining her
marriage’s decline and the disin-
tegration of her once whole fam-
ily. The album is a dam breaking
that held back waters of Björk’s
nervous depression.
Fogged by a high school
obsession with Björk’s 1993
single, “Big Time Sensuality,” I
imagined I was qualified enough
to conquer the album.
I was deeply mistaken.
This type of experimental
music surpasses other modern
bands of the same genre, like St.
Vincent and tUnE-yArDs, in its
depth and ability to be under-
stood by the everyday listener.
Unqualified to properly review
this kind of avant-garde art, I
received the album as a fasci-
nated third party. So here’s my
song-by-song,
minute-by-min-
ute transcribed listening session
of the album. If you have the
album, or are skilled in the fine
art of “finding free shit on the
Internet,” jump in with me:
The
album
begins
with
“Stonemilker.” With a strong
cello and string section begin-
ning, I am surprised from the
start. Her emotional, hiccup-
ing voice enters in slowly, drag-
ging you into a series of pleads
to a lover she’s losing. “Show
me
emotional
respect,”
she
whispers. Deep bass vibrations
emerge and the speakers in my
room start to shake. I imagine
Björk shaking as much as my
bedside table as she coughs the
question “What is it that I have
that makes me feel your pain?”
Lying on the ground, listening
along, I’m starting to become
more and more aware of my
emotional and musical short-
comings that do not permit my
critical analysis of this album.
Next song, “Lionsong” — a
personal favorite of mine. With
absolutely
no
consistencies
other than the string section
that follows along, it feels like
your buckled into a rollercoaster
of Björk’s crippling heart. That
sounds dramatic, but just go take
a listen. “Maybe he will come
out of this loving me?” — ouch.
“History of Touches” digs
deeper into an electronic sound.
A synthesized piano and heavy
electronic base guides the song
with each sound vibrating off
her voice. The song drags itself
out of the emotional and into
the physical, recalling “every
single fuck we had together in
a wondrous time lapse.” At only
three minutes long, this is pos-
sibly the most digestable song
on the album.
“Black Lake” is a 10-min-
ute adventure of the mind that
made me wish I had cannabis
on hand. The album is starting
to become sonically repetitive:
here’s
another
string-based
song layered over by a string of
electronic creations. With each
new verse the song builds with
pounds and rolls of strings. If
you can’t survive the entire
track, just try and make it to the
song’s apex, lasting from the
fourth to the fifth minute. From
there until the completion of the
song you are trudging through
the emotional sludge of the
Black Lake with Björk. Bring
some weed, and good luck.
Following “Black Lake,” I
went to “Family” looking for an
emotional and musical respite.
Instead I found another out-
landish and dark creation with
(surprise!) strings, electronics
and Björk’s depictions of her
newly created vat of human sad-
ness that could easily be slipped
into the film score of “Alien.”
The largest distinction to be
found in “Family” is Björk’s
malleable vocals as it occupies
an almost witch-like persona.
Minute three arrived, a strong
cello appears, and any ebb and
flow I thought I had begun to
understand disappears imme-
diately.
“Notget” follows the theme
of the album. More strings,
more cries of sadness, more
really cool electronics. “Our
love could not keep us safe
from death”, “Without love I
feel the abyss and understand
your fear of death” are some
of the throaty proclamations.
This repetition has my sympa-
thies dissipating quickly.
A respite! Finally! “Atom
Dance” is the waltz of this
album. I was surprised (but
with all this weird nothing
really surprised me at this
point) by this unique dance
number; it is the closest the
album
comes
to
the
hap-
pier songs — and apparently
times — that Bjork once gave
in ’90s albums like Post and
Debut. It was here that I played
“Big Time Sensuality” just to
remind myself that Björk has
known happier times. And
maybe she’ll find happiness
again soon? You poor woman.
My poor confused roommates.
“Mouth Mantra” contains
some of the most impressive
electronic work on the album.
At six minutes long I’m expect-
ing to be bored by the repeti-
tion of sonic themes (strings,
electronics,
Björk’s
vocals)
but here I was pleasantly sur-
prised.
It’s pretty late, and I’m pret-
ty exhausted, but this song has
me envisioning myself ventur-
ing through outer-space with
Björk as she sings to me about
sacrifice. This isn’t entirely
unpleasant.
And finally, the light at the
end of the deep dark tunnel of
this album: “Quicksand” arrives
with electronic spasms. Slow
strings emerge once again, but
at only two minutes long and
with a change of topic — Björk’s
words finally start describe
a hope for rebirth — the song
grips your ears until its finish.
One of the album’s last lines
says, “when she is broken she
is whole and when she is whole
she is broken.” This album
would, and probably should,
end in a confusing, insightful
paradox.
LIONSGATE
Jack Sparrow would kick this guy’s ass.
Depp sinks deeper
in dull ‘Mortdecai’
By VANESSA WONG
Daily Arts Writer
Certain tropes reappear in
cinema so frequently that we
might as well consider them
laws of nature.
Serious actors
+ empowering
real life story
= Oscar. Seth
Rogan + fart
jokes = com-
edy. These are
simplistic and
well-trodden
concepts, but they work.
“Mortdecai” takes a stab at
its own genre specific equation,
picking English Dandy off the
cinematic shelves and tossing it
in the medley with Internation-
al Heist and Frivolous Antics.
And we can’t forget the mus-
taches. Because those are hip
and funny, right?
Not always, kids.
The eponymous protagonist
Charles
Mortdecai
(Johnny
Depp, “Pirates of the Caribbe-
an”), a well-groomed and per-
petually
featherbrained
art
dealer, gets tangled up in a
scheme to recover a lost Goya
painting. Not only is the paint-
ing a masterpiece, it also sup-
posedly
contains
Hermann
Goering’s
lucrative
bank
account details. Clearly, many
people are after this painting,
but Mortdecai must get his
hands on it first. Illegal at times,
this caper takes Mortdecai dan-
gerously close to Russian thugs,
nymphomaniac daughters and
fellow art rivals. All this while
an MI6 agent cozies up to Mort-
decai’s beautiful wife (Gwyn-
eth Paltrow, “Shakespeare in
Love”) and cracks in the mar-
riage emerge.
“Mortdecai”
flounders
because its foundational com-
ponents
are
too
iconic
to
rebrand under another name.
It’s too easy to tease out the
film’s inspirations. It touches on
Wes Anderson kitsch through a
“Pink Panther”-style slapstick
comedy lens. In fact, Mortdecai
seems like a direct synthesis of
Jacques Clousseau and Gustave
H. Its storyline also evokes that
of the “Grand Budapest Hotel,”
which
is
painfully
obvious
considering that “Grand Buda-
pest” was released less than a
year ago. In this film, the equa-
tion that originally arose from
pure receptivity now becomes
a sophomoric crutch to borrow
from already successful prede-
cessors.
Mortdecai himself, the sup-
posed heartbeat of the film,
isn’t as powerful of a char-
acter as he needs to be. His
charm can’t support his arro-
gance, nor does his debonair
background contrast sharply
enough with his clumsiness.
There’s also the added issue
that the audience must stom-
ach Depp and Paltrow’s grat-
ingly awful English accents for
two whole hours. The entire
film revolves around Mortde-
cai’s eccentricities, and though
everything seems to align, he
fails to lock it all together, as it
falls flat in the end. It’s disap-
pointing to see Depp, a power-
house actor, bumbling around
in a role like this.
If the audience can over-
look the film’s many hurdles,
we’re rewarded with at least a
few decently funny gags. After
all, it does stick to the tried-
and-true formula, and maybe
mustaches really can invoke
laughter. But it still can’t can-
cel out the gravity of “Mortde-
cai” ’s biggest sin: it just tried
way, way too hard.
No grade
will be
given
Vulnicura
Björk
One Little
Indian
C+
Mortdecai
Rave and
Quality 16
Lionsgate
ALBUM REVIEW
FILM REVIEW