ACROSS
1 Rosie of “The
Jetsons,” for one
6 Recede
9 Downloadable
programs
13 Golden Gloves
venue
14 Chimney
substance
16 Toondom’s __ E.
Coyote
17 Camp shelters
18 Single proprietor
20 The Old
Spaghetti Factory
alternative
22 Big D hoopster
23 West Coast sch.
with more than
100 NCAA
championships
24 Martini order
25 Gloomy
27 Golf hole starting
points
29 On the topic of
32 Fed. power dept.
33 “__ Legend”: Will
Smith movie
35 Nook and Kindle
38 Self-defense
option
40 Emphatic military
reply
42 Actor McKellen
43 Japanese soup
noodle
44 Formula for salt
46 Brewpub lineup
50 Mr. Fixit’s forte
53 Singer Orbison
55 Aflame
56 Chinese
chairman
57 Fragrant bloomer
with typically pink
flowers
61 Comment after a
feast ... or what
the first word of
18-, 20-, 38- and
57-Across would
sometimes say—
if it could talk
63 Christmas
celebrity
64 Future plant
65 Nonstick
cookware brand
66 __ salts
67 Grinds to a halt
68 Seek damages
from
69 Poker-faced

DOWN
1 Squeal on
2 Parental warning
words
3 “No fighting,
kids!”
4 “As seen __”: ad
phrase
5 Used a stun gun
on
6 College
application
pieces
7 Mannerless
fellow
8 Like headline
typefaces
9 “So-o adorable!”
10 Cash for fun
11 Crowd __:
popular
performer
12 Order takers
15 Overflow (with)
19 Artist with the
website
imaginepeace.com
21 Pa’s pa
26 Hill-building biter
28 “Burnt” crayon
color
30 __ firma
31 Surg. sites
34 Mil. mail 
address

36 Literary 
wrap-up
37 Football’s
Parseghian
38 Popped the
question
39 Bavarian article
40 Conjecture
41 Think tank guys
45 Baby rocker
47 King in
Shakespeare’s
“The Tempest”

48 Moving engine
part
49 Hot and humid
51 Post-surg. area
52 Rapids 
transport
54 Go-aheads
58 Inseparable pals,
to texters
59 Brummell or
Bridges
60 Captivated
62 NFL scores

By C.C. Burnikel
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/24/15

02/24/15

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

Classifieds

Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com

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6 — Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Kid Rock disappoints

In latest album, Kid 
Rock sings his way 

to irrelevance

By MELINA GLUSAC

Daily Arts Writer

There’s this clip on YouTube 

from Jimmy Kimmel’s show called 
Celebrities Read Mean Tweets #4. 
It’s self-explan-
atory what goes 
down in this seg-
ment — celebri-
ties read tweets 
from their hat-
ers. 
At 
about 

the two-minute 
mark, right when 
it’s starting to get uninteresting, 
Kid Rock pops up, clad in a camo 
vest, black fedora and those sig-
nature aviator shades. His hate-
tweet says, “Kid Rock looks like 
he would smell like stale farts and 
cigarettes.” 

He jokes, saying it ought to be 

“fresh farts and cigars.” Indeed, 
that would be a blessing. But if 
we’re talking in terms of Kid 
Rock’s music, and using the gassy 
tobacco metaphor, it tends to 
sound like stale farts and ciga-
rettes. “Stale” in that it’s a bit tired, 
reliant on past heartland rock 
musician’s inventiveness and lyri-
cally fixated on nostalgia. “Ciga-
rettes” in that it deals with many 
vice-y substances, like booze and 
smokes and women, oh my. And 
“farts” in that sometimes — well, 
most of the time — it stinks.

Rock’s latest endeavor, First 

Kiss, is no exception to any of the 
aforementioned, putrid quirks. 
Rooted more in country than rock, 
though marketed as a fusion of the 
two genres, the album is repeti-

tive, melodically static and unin-
ventive. Rock was going for Bob 
Seger but instead got scratchy, 
probably-got-lost-on-his-way-
home 
John 
Mellencamp; 
it’s 

heartland with heart, sans talent. 

The titular track, “First Kiss,” 

has been getting a lot of airplay 
and rightfully so — it’s the best 
on the album, or if we’re doing 
metaphors again, the best house 
on the crummiest block in the 
neighborhood. Nevertheless, its 
light, country-pop aura is pleasing 
and uncontrollably catchy. Sooner 
than later, the listener is cruising 
along the lake and pining for their 
first love right next to Rock. But 
that bliss doesn’t last long.

Country, exclamation point, is 

spewed at us from all directions. 
In “Good Times, Cheap Wine,” 
Rock stresses his love for the 
simple things in life — hey, let the 
good times roll. “If you’re lookin’ 
for a hot mess, well honey, here 
I am,” he sings. He knows. He’s 
accepting his gassy tobacco status. 
This song, complete with saloon 
keys and gritty guitars, sounds 
like something you would hear in 
some rusty bar. The same goes for 
“Good Time Lookin’ For Me” and 
“The Best of Me” — their twangy 
fiddles and southern drawls solid-
ify their airtime in Applebee’s 
restaurants nationwide. Happy 
listening, folks; enjoy your Bud 
Light.

“Johnny Cash” is interesting 

— it couldn’t be farther from the 
man in black, and is, in fact, an ode 
to Rock’s lady love. He wants to 
be her Johnny Cash. Sweet, huh? 
It’s pure, unadulterated cheese 
on more levels than one — it’s in 
the same key as every other song 
on the album, the lyrics sounds 
the same as all the others on the 
album and Kid Rock’s Detroit-

turned-backwater-Kentucky 
accent is the cherry on top of it 
all. This tune is uniquely marked 
with a few gospel singers in the 
background, though, who serve 
no other purpose than to mimic 
fragments of Kid’s shite lyrics. 
When he sings, “I want to be 
your Johnny Cash,” they answer, 
“JOHNNY CASH WOAH YEAH 
WOAH,” and so on. It’s chilling 
stuff.

It all turns painful when “Ain’t 

Enough Whiskey” comes along, 
with its annoying chorus that 
follows the same melodic and 
rhythmic line as — not kidding 
— the bunny hop. “Drinking Beer 
With Dad” tries to be profound 
but instead sounds like a Face-
book status from an unseasoned 
user who doesn’t really know 
what to say. Take it from us, Kid: 
if you can’t find the words, it’s 
best to just keep quiet. 

The penultimate track, “One 

More Song,” cheekily tells the lis-
tener to hang on for just a bit lon-
ger. Reassurance is quite needed 
at this point in the First Kiss 
journey, but the actual song has 
bizarre techno inflections and 
they, in addition to Rock’s extra-
screechy voice, lend to really 
weird vibes. 

But finally it ends, praise 

the lord — actually, the latter is 
exactly what Rock does in his 
swan song, “Jesus and Boce-
phus.” Yes, these are the album’s 
final words, and yes, he chose to 
fill them with deep, emotional 
thanks to his lords and saviors, 
Jesus Christ and Hank Williams, 
Jr. (a.k.a. Bocephus). It’s all so Kid 
Rock. He is who he is, and that’s 
commendable. 

But who is he? Well, he’s stale 

farts and cigarettes. And most 
people can’t deal with that shit.

FILM NOTEBOOK

‘Mommy’ a 
heartbreaker

By REBECCA LERNER

Daily Arts Writer

The film “Mommy” bears ach-

ing similarities to its protagonist, 
Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon, “Lau-
rence Anyways”), 
a 
15-year-old 

boy with violent 
tendencies, 
an 

attachment 
dis-

order and ADHD. 
Both 
have 
the 

capacity to display 
effusive love, but 
turn on you quickly with coryban-
tic rage. Both are a feverish whirl-
wind of passion that you can’t look 
away from. And both will utterly 
break your heart. 

“Mommy” is ultimately a story of 

the fierce love between mother and 
child. Set in a fictionalized Canada 
where parents have the option of 
institutionalizing children with 
behavioral issues, the titular moth-
er, Diane (Anne Dorval, “Laurence 
Anyways”), is a tough and swagger-
ing widow in extreme debt. When 
she gets the call that her son Steve is 
being kicked out of a youth facility 
for setting a fire in which another 
child is gravely injured, they must 
band together as a team to get their 
lives back in order. Steve’s hazard-
ous antics put a dark cloud over 
Diane’s life, portrayed through 
the shadowy lighting she is con-
sistently in, while Steve is almost 
always bathed in sunlight, trying to 
find sensation through any means 
possible. However, Steve’s unpre-
dictable habits have as much pro-
pensity towards gentle love as they 
do towards senseless violence.

In the crossfire of Steve’s highs 

and lows is Kyla (Suzanne Clément, 
“I Killed My Mother”), their neigh-
bor. Kyla is a high-school teacher 
on sabbatical with a terrible stut-
ter. Diane enlists the traumatized 

woman to homeschool Steve while 
she cleans houses to support the 
family. In these hours alone with 
Steve’s mania, Kyla demonstrates 
that she has as much strength as the 
young and muscular teenager. But 
unlike Steve’s irrational and arbi-
trary outbursts of anger, her mad-
ness is restrained and tight-fisted, 
making it even more terrifying to 
witness. 

Kyla inspires a frisson of love 

and happiness in their lives; this 
climaxes in Steve longboarding and 
literally pushing open the edges 
of the screen to create room for 
his joy while “Wonderwall” blasts 
through their suburban streets. 
But the stress of their impending 
life together weighs heavy on the 
relationships, and tensions start to 
build as Steve begins to perilously 
break down.

For most of the movie, the cam-

era work of 25-year-old direc-
tor 
Xavier 
Dolan 
(“Laurence 

Anyways”) composes the frame 
in a claustrophobic square, trap-
ping the characters in a world for 
which their energies are far too 
large. Their relationship is gut-
wrenchingly loving and without 
the boundaries of a typical mater-
nal relationship that keep society’s 
expectations intact. The exuberant 
personalities of Steve and Diane 
are uncomfortably close in the tiny 
screen, illustrating the intensity of 
their bond and the need for space 
in the erratic relationship. 

With narrow framing and a 

small cast, it’s truly incredible how 
much life is packed into the film. 
The film draws in the viewer with 
the allure of the unhealthy but 
passionately-loving relationship of 
the unendingly complex Diane and 
Steve. “Mommy” traps its charac-
ters and audience in a volatile and 
boisterous grasp until someone 
must break free.

‘Boyhood’ overlooked

By CATHERINE SULPIZIO

Senior Arts Editor

For the sake of this argument, 

“Birdman” and “Boyhood” were 
the two contenders, pitted by 
the media against each other, 
partly for dramatic intensity and 
also because they both involved 
impressive technical experiments.

I reviewed “Birdman” and 

“Boyhood” and gave them both an 
A. For all the flack I gave my col-
leagues for preferring “Birdman,” 
I enjoyed it. It was an intellectual 
puzzle I saw twice to pry out its 
minute and meticulously placed 
details. Every minute in “Bird-
man” is a pulsing nerve center of 
soundtrack, writing and, of course, 
cinematography. And the cinema-
tography is riveting — nothing 
Hitchcock hasn’t done, mind you 
— but it barrels the movie through 
its psychological labyrinth of artis-
tic anxiety. “Birdman” is an exam-
ple of form marshaled to function 
with militaristic precision; it’s 
never superfluous or sybaritic, 
except as an intentional represen-
tation of Michael Keaton’s (“Bee-
tlejuice”) own grandiosity. But 
even as “Birdman” ’s form is care-
ful to never overwhelm content, 
form makes “Birdman.” This is a 
paean to the well-oiled machines 
that create art — the story is sec-
ondary. It’s a film’s film.

And so I reveal my very unfash-

ionable hand: “Birdman” didn’t 
stick to me. Yes, audience effect 
should theoretically not be part 
of a movie’s critique, but for all its 
formalistic brilliance, “Birdman” 
is the equivalent of reading a bril-
liant modernist poem, something 
undergirded by a frame of perfect 
logic and organization. “Birdman” 
delights in its difficulty. Even as 
“Birdman” uses its tour-de-force 
camerawork and jarring drum-
beating soundtrack to transform 

the screen into a psychic state, it 
rejects any emotional association 
with its protagonist.

Any other year, that would have 

been OK. I’m outing myself as an 
unapologetic sentimentalist when 
I say “Boyhood” clung to me far 
beyond the hot summer afternoon 
I saw it, and that’s why I champion 
it as the winner between the two.

I was talking to a fellow edi-

tor yesterday who felt that “Boy-
hood” ’s lack of storic importance 
disqualified it from something like 
the Oscars. I don’t love the Oscars 
(didn’t even watch them, oops) 
but I vehemently disagree that 
we need history to be stretched 
out on screen for an Oscar. But 
if that’s the case, “Birdman” still 
isn’t the frontrunner. Both films 
are accounts of trivial, yet taken 
in wildly different directions. If 
“Birdman” tamps its storyline 
about — let’s face it — a run-of-
the-mill midlife crisis with unten-
able drama, “Boyhood” refuses to 
impose its story with artificial nar-
rative. Its ‘gimmick,’ as I said in my 
review of the film, isn’t a gimmick. 
It dissolves into the screen after 
the first few time-jumps, allowing 
life to swell like never before to 
the screen’s surface. Where “Bird-
man” never lets you forget about its 
camera, “Boyhood” creates tempo-
rary amnesia of form.

And for those 165 minutes, I 

felt swallowed up by “Boyhood.” 
There are few similarities between 
Mason Jr. (newcomer Ellar Col-
trane) and I; we consider ourselves 
‘creative-types’ and didn’t love 
high school (who did?), but that’s 
it — he’s an adolescent Texan boy 
with divorced parents. Yet mapped 
on the screen, his moments strung 
together in the constellation of life 
resonated with mine, too. Quiet 
sorrows, like Mason Jr.’s disci-
plinarian stepfather shaving off 
his beautiful head of hair unfold 
against the muted joys, like having 
a great conversation with a girl at a 
party, are folded in along with the 
funny, mundane and ugly. There 
are moments of triumph, but this 
isn’t an epic retelling of life. Every-
thing in “Boyhood” is contained 
within its ordinary bounds.

This could seem effortless, or 

even accidental, but “Boyhood” 

is held together nonetheless by a 
near-perfect 
invisible 
structure 

that rivals “Birdman” ’s. While the 
physical changes in “Boyhood” ’s 
cast are certainly the most appar-
ent, this filming process allowed an 
experimental form of writing. Rich-
ard Linklater completed the script 
as he shot, rewriting the script after 
reviewing the footage from the most 
previous year. The result is a script 
which reflects on and absorbs itself 
as it grows. As Mason Jr. developed, 
the script too underwent its own 
parallel coming of age. 

“Life doesn’t have a plot, and 

neither does ‘Boyhood,’” is what 
I tell people who complain that 
the movie is pointless. That’s 
pithy, but by granting life a 
screen, unfettered by climaxes 
and rising action and foreshad-
owing (notice how Linklater 
denied that college love-inter-
est Nicole (Jessi Mechler, “Mor-
ganville”) was the same Nicole 
who passed Mason Jr. a note in 
middle school), “Boyhood” runs 
headlong into that sensation 
most movies may only graze if 
lucky: seeing life, not just imi-
tated, but created on a screen.

This veers into debates of art: 

is it to reflect or shatter real-
ity? To comfort or to disorient? 
Normally, I gravitate towards 
the disruptive qualities of art, 
work like the Dadaists who 
Walter Benjamin said “turned 
art into a missile.” And “Bird-
man” reminds me of the trans-
formative gears of art, of its 
ability to pummel and reshape 
reality. But “Boyhood” uses its 
quietly brilliant form for other 
uses. Watching “Boyhood” fills 
me with that deep and corny 
feeling of solidarity with the 
human species.

“Boyhood” 

creates 

temporary 

amnesia of form.

ALBUM REVIEW

FILM REVIEW

D+

First Kiss

Kid Rock

Warner Bros.

A

Mommy

State Theater

Les Films Seville

