Classifieds
Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
ACROSS
1 Help for Holmes
5 All hands on deck
9 Baby food,
usually
14 “Can you give me
a __?”
15 Bass’ red
triangle, e.g.
16 Dove rival
17 Fraternal meeting
place
19 Sense & Spray
air freshener
maker
20 “Here are the
facts,” briefly
21 Garden outcast
22 Dark suit
23 Central church
area
25 Pacific Northwest
capital
27 “The Cask of
Amontillado”
writer
31 Reduced in
number
32 Track tipsters
33 Train cos.
35 Yankee
nickname since
2004
36 Asparagus,
mostly
37 Nemesis
38 ENE or WSW
39 Set straight
40 Golfer Palmer, to
fans
41 Where to read
candidate
endorsements
44 Much of the time
45 Kitchen add-on?
46 Yemenis’
neighbors
49 “__ been
thinking ...”
50 NASA thumbs-up
53 Acme’s opposite
54 Periphery ... and,
literally, the
periphery of 17-,
27- and 41-
Across
57 Most clubs in a
pro’s bag
58 Scott Turow
memoir
59 Vulcan mind __:
Spock’s skill
60 Principle
61 Superstorm
response org.
62 Functions
DOWN
1 “Cutthroat
Kitchen”
competitor
2 Easter bloom
3 Critical comment
4 Aliens, briefly
5 Prosperous, after
“in”
6 Took the bus
7 Fabergé
creation
8 Reason for hand-
wringing
9 Sloppy farm digs
10 Tanning booth
light, for short
11 Freeway, e.g.
12 Earth, to Hans
13 Windows to the
soul, so they say
18 “Reading
Rainbow” host
Burton
22 Mattress
supports
24 Matured
25 Liqueur in a fizz
26 Barnard grad
27 Like 27-Across’
work
28 Clothes
29 Fruity drinks
30 Bert’s buddy
31 Fleeting fashion
34 “Get it?”
36 Schedule
openings
37 Sassy tyke
39 Initially
40 More fitting
42 Salt additive
43 Low parking
garage floor
46 Bad mood
47 Bern’s river
48 Noodle bar order
49 List component
51 Gawk at
52 Classic sneakers
54 “That knocked
the wind out of
me!”
55 Sorbonne one
56 Aussie runner
By Jeffrey Wechsler
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
01/28/15
01/28/15
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
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ANNOUNCEMENT
6 — Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Swedish film
dissects tense
family drama
By ANDREW MCCLURE
Daily Arts Writer
Sounds seem, and maybe are,
louder in isolation — screech-
ing tires, a baby wailing, an ava-
lanche. Such is
the model with-
in which Swed-
ish
filmmaker
Ruben Östlund
(“Play”)
works
in
his
some-
times
absurd,
funny in a look-
away-kind-of-
way exercise in
family drama set in the quietude
of a tiny Alps ski resort. And it’s
really quiet — from the hissing of
skis down an unpopulated run to
the sun-kissed mountains playing
with sleepy zephyrs. It’s also gor-
geous. The terrain, the Kubrick-
ian ritzy hotel and, of course, the
family of four, in their matching,
tailored baby-blue pajamas and
blemish-free skin, on which the
film centers. Doubtless, Östlund
might have one of the tightest
grips on naturalistic familiality
I’ve seen — like when Mom’s so
mad at Dad, she actually laughs.
The film title’s thematic signifi-
cance becomes apparent within
minutes (“force majeure” means
someone fails to uphold a con-
tract when something unforesee-
able happens): while lunching on
a hillside with a marvelous view,
a distant “controlled” avalanche
suddenly becomes not so dis-
tant or controlled. Diners begin
to freak, screaming and running
for dear life. The father, Tomas
(winsome newcomer Johannes
Bah Kuhnke), on instinct, nabs
his iPhone and shades, then bolts,
ignoring his two young children
and wife Ebba (played by lissome
rookie Lisa Loven Kongsli), who
blankets her children like a moth-
er should. The result is anything
but cataclysmic — no injuries, no
trauma, just a few snow-dusted
butter plates. Tomas returns to
the family table moments later,
but, with deft subtlety, the table is
so far from “family” that we don’t
even know what it is. The emo-
tional maelstrom begins to whirl.
The implicit tension amid the
family hurts and is hard to watch.
Östlund slices these moments
with a few smart tools: Hyperki-
netic baroque music akin to a Wes
Anderson film and noiseless chair-
lift rides that let us breathe, prep-
ping for the next teeth-clencher. It
doesn’t feel entirely unique, it just
feels right — Östlund has a gut for
this fusion of well-cast art house
and Malick-esque sublimity. The
intrafamily conflict gets exposed
by an anxious Ebba over drinks
with a couple when hiding behind
a faux smile, she says that Tomas
“ran away from the table like a lit-
tle girl.” Her smile just sits there,
eyes tired, while everyone else
looks anywhere but toward her,
as if they can’t even fathom her
bewilderment. Then, not because
we want to, the lens flashes to a
broken Tomas. We almost feel bad
for him. This scene owns an emo-
tional quotient unmatched by any
movie this year, one that makes
you respect Östlund as a talented
filmmaker, as a human being.
“Force Majeure” is not devoid
of flaw. Ebba’s divorced brother-
in-law and his 20-year-old girl-
friend at first provide an effective
soundboard for Ebba’s troubles,
but soon fizzle out, Östlund try-
ing to shoehorn an otherwise
redundant device into an already
compelling yarn. This soon grows
irrelevant, getting lost in the oozy
subtext of marital gender roles,
male conniption fits, the politics
of infidelity, the male gaze and
the hidden imperfections of an
aesthetically perfect family. And,
like, other stuff, too. All of this
framed like a hovering specter
via Fredrik Wenzel’s cam adds a
witty, self-aware mystique, invit-
ing us in without ever allowing us
to feel at home.
And the acting. The parental
performances, by these two no-
names, feel real in an unreal way,
a way that our parents growing
up would seldom reveal, but when
they did, it felt cinematic. Östlund
smothers us in pulchritude — the
modelesque cast, the hotel ame-
nities, the perfectness — without
abandoning the root: Nobody lives
like a J.Crew catalog, all smiles
and riches and no rub, not even
the J-Crew mannequins. It’s a fine
study on Top 0.01 Percent Prob-
lems, but even more, a nuanced
mediation on familial psychology.
Acclaimed cartoonist
headlines Penny
Stamps lecture
By CAROLINE FILIPS
Daily Arts Writer
She came. She spoke. We
laughed.
As soon as cartoonist and writ-
er Alison Bechdel appeared on
stage at the Michigan Theater and
graced the nearly-full crowd with
her presence, she too laughed … at
herself.
“There’s an old saying that car-
tooning is a field for people who
are mediocre artists and medio-
cre writers, and I would say that
in my case, those things are pretty
much true,” Bechdel remarked.
Soon after, Bechdel presented the
audience with her rejection letter
from the School of the Art Insti-
tute of Chicago.
It’s that genuine, self-deprecat-
ing humor and her idiosyncratic
cartoons that captivated the audi-
ence on January 22.
But her accolades, such as her
2014 MacArthur Genius Award
and breakthroughs for the LGBT
community, prove that she’s far
from mediocre in her profession.
Bechdel was selected to speak
about her biographical graphic
novels and the art of cartoon-
ing for part of the Penny Stamps
Speaker Series, which has part-
nered with The Zell Visiting Writ-
er Series and The Institute for
Research on Women & Gender.
Speaker Series Director Chris-
stina Hamilton said Bechdel has
been requested to speak numer-
ous times and is highly regarded
by Stamps students.
Though ultimately delivered
with insightful, witty candor,
Bechdel’s presentation tugged at
the audience’s heartstrings as she
spoke about her unconventional
upbringing, defined by the dra-
matic twists and turns within her
family life. She evinced her signa-
ture ability to find humor in mis-
fortunes rather than succumb to
them, proving her greatest talent
lies beyond her work.
Bechdel’s graphic novels exam-
ine what most are shy to admit
— let alone publish — such as the
poignant tale of her father’s secre-
tive, sexual double life that led to
his eventual suicide. Yet openness
and freedom from inhibition is
the essence of Bechdel’s powerful
storytelling.
Staying true to her childhood
dreams, Bechdel made a name for
herself and developed a unique
style tinged with honesty.
“I always wanted to be a car-
toonist, even when I was a little
kid,” Bechdel said. “But it was
soon pointed out to me that was
not a very practical career choice.”
No stranger to grit and perse-
verance, Bechdel kept at her craft
even when prospects were bleak.
“It took a lot of work and a lot
of years before it actually became
my job,” Bechdel said. “I had to
keep pursuing it, keep pushing
it, slowly let go of my paying day
jobs. It was a long process com-
mitting to it.”
Bechdel emerged in the car-
tooning field with her marginal
lesbian comic strip, “Dykes to
Watch Out For,” (1983-2008),
which originally was not intend-
ed for publishing. Instead, the
comic was the medium through
which Bechdel extracted humor
from the lifestyles of her and her
friends.
“After I graduated from col-
lege, I had recently come out as
a lesbian and I just started draw-
ing these comics for me and
my friends about women like
us, women who looked like us,”
Bechdel said. “It was very unusu-
al in the early eighties to see any
kind of different looking women
in the media, you would just see
very feminine women and we
were all countering that kind of
image and looking kind of wild,
crazy and androgynous.”
Though well known for her
comic strips and darkly humorous
graphic novels, Bechdel is also the
creator of her surname-titled test,
which assesses the gender bias
in films. The Bechdel test deems
a film as feminist if it satisfies
three requirements: one, if there
is a scene with two women, two,
the women have a conversation
and three, if that dialogue is about
something other than a man.
For fans of Bechdel and those
who missed the presentation, a
comprehensive showcase of her
work will be on display at the
Institute for Humanities through
February 25. The exhibit features
original diaries from Bechdel’s
youth, the infamous rejection
letters, notable comic strips and
clutter from her creative process.
Amanda Krugliak, arts cura-
tor for the Institute for Humani-
ties, modeled the exhibit after
Bechdel’s childhood home with
great attention to detail, even
mimicking its wallpaper.
“Conceptually, the idea of the
room is to place it in the context
of the house she grew up in, which
was this kind of Victorian house,”
Krugliak said. “Her father was
really interested in interiors and
getting something just right from
the Victorian period. I thought it
would be interesting to use that as
a starting point and think about
all these things coexisting in this
room — past, present, her work,
but also bits and pieces of grow-
ing up.”
Bechdel also touched on the
media’s response to the Jan. 7 ter-
rorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, a
satirical French newspaper tar-
geted because of its depiction of
the Prophet Muhammad.
“I think everybody can see the
significance of cartoons and com-
ics especially right now,” Hamil-
ton said. “We’re sort of in a very
fresh and precious moment with
the terrorist acts that happened in
Paris just in the last couple weeks
that were directed specifically at
cartoonists.”
Though intended for comedic
effect, comics are undoubtedly a
powerful tool. As evidenced by
the recent, horrific Parisian trag-
edies, it’s clear that they can have
formidable effects. Yet, the influ-
ence of the medium’s worldly suc-
cinctness is one to admire.
“Obviously the power of the
cartoon is sometimes more pow-
erful than words can solve, that
visual element can take it to
another place,” Hamilton said.
“The ability for comics and car-
toons to juxtapose real-world
issues in a visual and separate
world formant give people the
ability to instantly see things that
otherwise might take a novel to
explain.”
Rather than acting in haste
after the world deals us an unfa-
vorable card, perhaps we can move
forward from adversity by taking
a note from Bechdel and extract-
ing humor from our misfortunes
rather than succumbing to them.
A-
Force
Majeure
Magnolia
Pictures
Michigan
Theater
EVENT REVIEW
Bechdel talks
comics & life
FILM REVIEW
MAGNOLIA PICTURES
Is that Shaun White?
Tour de force ‘Majeure’
A unique style
of the craft, one
tinged with
honesty.
COME TO ONE OF THE MICHIGAN
DAILY’S OPEN HOUSES AT 420
MAYNARD STREET!
Interested in writing, design or
multimedia? Come see it in action.
Wednesday, Jan. 28 at 8:00 p.m.
Monday, Feb. 2 at 8:00 p.m.