ACROSS
1 “Stopping By
Woods on a
Snowy Evening”
rhyme scheme
5 Govt. org. with a
“Safety
Compass” blog
9 Under-the-tree
pile
14 Silly smile,
maybe
15 Snack with a
white center
16 Garnish
17 “Gotcha!”
19 Brawl
20 Menlo Park
initials
21 Those, in Oaxaca
22 __ mater
23 Gear on a tour
bus
24 “Gotcha!”
28 They blow off
steam
30 Bugged by a bug
31 Like a twisted
remark
32 Within: Pref.
33 Hive-dwelling
35 “Gotcha!”
41 College
declaration
42 Feminizing finish
44 Icarus, to
Daedalus
47 Snooze
48 Add to a
scrapbook, say
51 Significance of
this puzzle’s
circled letters
(gotcha again!)
54 Map rtes.
55 Drop-off point
56 Charlie’s fourth
wife
57 201, on a
monument
58 Carillon sounds
60 Today’s
“Gotcha!”
62 Cookout spot
63 Willing
64 “A __ for Emily”:
Faulkner short
story
65 Not in a slump?
66 “Iliad” deity
67 Stops
equivocating
DOWN
1 Stir up
2 Military
equipment
3 Designated park
trail
4 DiFranco of folk
rock
5 Greets
wordlessly
6 Three-note chords
7 Have a feeling
8 Peat source
9 Leg, to a film noir
detective
10 Model of
perfection
11 Trail
12 Seismometer
detection
13 Duplicitous
18 Self-produced
recording,
perhaps
25 Slangy golf term
for nervousness
while putting,
with “the”
26 Everything-in-
the-pot stew
27 __ Bator
29 Mary Oliver
output
33 __ Lingus
34 Babushka’s
denial
36 Actress
Kaczmarek with
seven Emmy
nominations
37 Ventura
County resort
city
38 Keystone force
39 Kid-sized ice
cream order
40 Price per can,
e.g.
43 Stores in a farm
tower
44 Vast grassland
45 “Goodness
gracious”
46 Cancel out
48 “I have the worst
luck!”
49 John Denver’s
“__ Song”
50 Corporate
emblem
52 Dig find
53 Wall Street
phrase
59 Pink-elephant
spotter,
stereotypically
60 Ottoman bigwig
61 To and __
By Daniel Nierenberg
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
04/01/15
04/01/15
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
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CROSSWORD
ON THIS
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6A — Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
PC MUSIC
A photo of the lovely Academy Award-winning actress Helen Mirren ... April Fools!
PC Music is colorful,
bizarre, kawaii pop
By DANIEL SAFFRON
For The Daily
PC Music, a mysterious, Lon-
don-based label founded by A.G.
Cook in 2013, deviates from all
recognizable paths. The label has
received its fair share of encomia
and vituperation. Easily pass-offa-
ble as innocuous consumer pop,
the label’s self-aware, sarcastic
affectation hints at quite the oppo-
site. Many critics have approached
the goings-on over at PC Music
with a high level of scrutiny, but
it’s not a label that should be taken
too seriously; it does better with a
grain of salt and some chaser.
The music itself is hyper-digital,
Kawaii-influenced synthpop with
a heavily treble-skewed auditory
range, high-pass filters aplenty and
amphetaminic rhythms. The lyrics
are peculiar, awkward and obtuse.
Hannah Diamond’s “Every Night”
awkwardly relates the familiar
first moments in a romance: “I
know you like the way that I look /
And it looks like I like you too / You
know I do / I like the way you like
/ That I like how you look / And
you like me too.” The rhythmic
phrasing is choppy and noticeably
quantized, but behind the heavy
digital influence is a seductive
candor. The vocals resembling
Alvin and the Chipmunks are
perhaps
the
most
distinctive
aspect of the genre. They are high-
pitched, digitally manipulated and
Britishly accented. You either love
it or hate it.
While the music is immedi-
ately unsettling, exposure uncov-
ers an insidious infectiousness. It
can be likened to Crystal Palace.
A vehicle for intoxication, it is to
be stomached with a grimace, but
the more you consume, the more
powerful the effects become.
The label’s bizarre, refined aes-
thetic sets it and its artists apart
and makes it worth the atten-
tion it receives. To start, the art-
ists under the label bear Hello
Kitty names like easyFun, Prin-
cess Bambi, GFOTY (Girlfriend
of the Year) and Lipgloss Twins.
SOPHIE, while not on the label,
is an act often associated with it.
The SOPHIE himself is male, but
often has female DJs perform as
him at his shows. Strange fashion
taste features heavily in the per-
sona of the artists. In an interview
with VICE, Hannah Diamond says
she likes “all white and … veer(s)
towards pink and black print and
trainers,” while GFOTY likens her
style to “a pink onesie covered in
Swarovski crystals with loads of
money coming out the pockets and
Ugg boots.” It is uncertain how
much of what GFOTY says is gen-
uine and how much she says with
a wink. Her grandiose persona
seems to be a loud commentary on
female sexuality and club-culture
customs. Listen to “Friday Night”
and you’ll get the idea – it’s hard to
take at face value.
The artists behind the PC label
are easily cast off as preternaturally
enigmatic, but attractive, human
qualities come to light in some of
the artists’ interviews. In a video
on her YouTube channel, Hannah
Diamond tells us about her music’s
focus on failed romance. I have
to admit, I developed something
of a crush for Hannah Diamond
after watching the video. Her cute,
innocent personality is somehow
both in keeping and incongruous
with her focused artistic presence.
Diamond
studied
fashion
communication and styling and
is the Diamond behind image-
making duo Diamond Wright,
who are responsible for creating
promotional images for many of
the label’s artists.
The label most recently released
a music video for effervescent “art-
ist” QT. QT, also referred to as
drinkQT, is not a person, but rath-
er an “energy elixir,” which the
website describes as a “5-calorie
… drink manufactured to contrib-
ute to upward shine, vertical con-
nectivity and personal growth.”
The music video for QT’s “Hey
QT,” made with collaborators
A.G. Cook and SOPHIE, dropped
last Wednesday and is part of the
mass-marketing ad campaign for
the “sparkling future pop sensa-
tion.” Confused yet? You’re not the
only one.
The video capitalizes on every-
thing that makes PC PC; its visual
aspects are in no way an exception.
The video takes place in a drinkQT
“testing facility” and features
a
copper-haired,
short-banged
woman – the spokesperson/face
behind QT. She is initially clad
in hygienic hospital whites and
maintains an uninvolved, laconic
disposition as she gets ready to
experience drinkQT. When the
chorus drops and the elixir takes
over, the whites are traded for a
tight, reflectively pink dress and
her slow movements fall to the
wayside of digitally sped-up dance
moves. Boy oh boy, if she doesn’t
look like she’s having a ball, I don’t
know who is. It must be QT’s doing,
as we are incessantly reminded,
she can feel QT’s “hands on (her)
body.” The visuals do well to cap-
ture the music’s exuding pinkness
and the artificial dance moves
complement the pitched up vocals.
Everything about QT hints at
its being a mockery of the heav-
ily ad-influenced pop industry.
The whole label, which frequently
refers to its music as pop, seems a
sardonic caricature of the indus-
try. The “Hey QT” music video
reminds us that pop artists them-
selves aren’t treated all too much
differently than the latest energy
drink and vice versa. PC Music
is absurd and nightmarish in a
bubble gum and candy canes type
of way, but the label’s approach to
music production and its heavy
emphasis on image is not any
stranger than the traditional pop
approach; it only takes PC’s jarring
music to bring it to light.
I’ve come to develop a taste
for PC Music. It’s not musi-
cally groundbreaking, but it is
definitely the first synth pop
that I get down without dry
heaves. Much has been written
about the happenings over at
PC Music, and it seems pretty
universal that no one is entirely
certain what exactly to think
about it. I sure don’t. The two-
year-old label has yet to receive
widespread notoriety, but as the
fan base grows and the artists
develop, it should be interesting
to see what comes of this motley
crew of London artists.
Poor performances
and directing mar
historical drama
By REBECCA LERNER
Daily Arts Writer
“Serena,”
starring
Bradley
Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence,
is a film Hollywood wants you
to forget about.
It is, on all pos-
sible levels, an
aching
disap-
pointment. The
failure is the
fault
of
both
the
lackluster
performance
from
two
of
America’s
most buzzed about actors and
Oscar-winning Danish director
Susanne Bier, who has proved
that she can do better. Worst of
all, “Serena” cheaply reproduces
Ron Rash’s 2008 novel full of
vital characters, issues that make
an audience gasp and think and
smash them into flat, trite ver-
sions of themselves.
The movie begins in 1929 with
sweeping views of the North
Carolina timber business. It is a
place that would be lost without
lumber tycoon George Pember-
ton (Bradley Cooper, “American
Sniper”) and his superhero com-
plex. He must routinely save his
men from broken equipment
and an increasingly environ-
mentally
conscious
Congress
that wants to halt his destruc-
tion of the Appalachian forests
to create a National Park. After
casually impregnating Rachel,
(Ana Ularu, “A Very Unsettled
Summer”) a local teenage girl,
he leaves and happens to meet
Serena (Jennifer Lawrence, “The
Hunger Games”). She rides into
the movie in slow motion on a
white horse. Serena’s personal-
ity does not enter her own story
until her future husband chases
her on horseback and allows the
third sentence he says to be, “I
think we should be married.”
According to the jumbled and
awkward sex scenes intended to
illustrate their blossoming love,
Serena
accepts
Pemberton’s
proposal before heading back
to
North
Carolina.
George
introduces her as his equal to
his crew and his right-hand
man Buchanan (David Dencik,
“The Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo”). At first, Serena shows
no qualms about taking charge
in the camp, proving herself as
she insists on training an eagle
to hunt the rattlesnakes that
terrorize the men and directing
them
to
more
efficiently
cut
lumber.
Serena
quickly
proves herself to be “the real
pistol” that George introduced
her as – when people in the
camp threaten to expose the
Pemberton’s
shady
financial
records, she shows no hesitation
about ordering the murders of
anyone in the camp for the good
of the company.
After a miscarriage, however,
Serena learns she will not be
able to bear children and angrily
watches the way George cares
for his and Rachel’s bastard son.
With the help of her clairvoyant
one-handed henchman Galloway
(Rhys Ifans, “The Amazing Spi-
der-Man”) she determines that the
child must be killed to save their
marriage and the rest of the movie
is a tangled race against insanity.
Aside from the stilted dialogue
and the fact that the audience
must constantly guess what quirky
accent Bradley Cooper is going to
try next, the film is unsatisfying
in a far more important way.
The women are given one or two
personality traits without enough
backstory to justify the emphasis
on these traits. Lawrence seems
afraid to play Serena to her full
murderous glory, as the protagonist
of Ron Rash’s novel is the coldest,
baddest bitch around. But through
her shift from a confident capitalist
to a baby-crazy psycho with little
explanation, there is an artificial
softness added to her coldness.
Because of the director’s fear of a
truly inhospitable and aloof female
character, they ruin her.
While there are gorgeous
scenes of Czechoslovakia and
both actors are dazzling in
their Depression-era apparel,
physical beauty is not enough to
save “Serena.” The unjustified
lunacy of the film is made even
more unbearable by the possi-
bility of what could have been.
Rash provided a solid novel
with intriguing characters that
were understandable in their
madness, but they are carica-
tured on screen as condensed
and dull versions of themselves.
“Serena” deserves better.
FILM REVIEW
Dull ‘Serena’ not
worth the wait
D
Serena
Streaming
Online
Magnolia Pictures
MAGNOLIA PICTURES
This is a screenshot from classic American romance ‘Casablanca’ ... April Fools!
MUSIC NOTEBOOK