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Arts
Monday, April 13, 2015 — 5A
ACROSS
1 Software
versions that
probably have
bugs
6 Deer sir?
10 Long-running TV
forensic series
13 Reason for some
food recalls
14 Tractor brand
15 Gavel sound
16 King of ragtime
18 California’s Santa
__ Mountains
19 2,000 pounds
20 Lee in the frozen
foods section
21 Gives off
23 Presley film set in
Sin City
26 Noisy insect
29 Seuss’ “Horton
__ a Who!”
30 In any way
31 Artist Francisco
33 Right-angled
pipes
36 Penalty flag
thrower
37 Sincere
40 Promise to repay,
for short
41 The “E” in FEMA:
Abbr.
43 Fez and fedora
44 Speaks scratchily
46 “Sour grapes”
storyteller
48 Multi-room
accommodations
49 One chasing
outlaws for money
53 Domed home
54 Zip, as a Ziploc
55 Static jolt
58 Bikini top
59 Counter wipers,
or what the starts
of 16-, 23- and
49-Across are
63 Lanai wreath
64 Preface, briefly
65 Yeas and nays
66 Mass. clock
setting
67 Mix, as a salad
68 Make into a
statute
DOWN
1 Unsurpassed, or
surpass
2 Danish shoe
company
3 Animated
character
4 Mountain hgt.
5 Isn’t used, as
machinery
6 Leaf under a
petal
7 Phone book no.
8 Tycoon Onassis
9 Swiss convention
city
10 Site for online
bargain hunters
11 Legendary sleigh
rider
12 “Not interested”
14 Animated kid
explorer
17 Morning cup
22 For a __
pittance
23 Actor Kilmer
24 “Now I
remember”
25 Caspian and
Black
26 Handle with __
27 Gossip column
couple
28 17-Down with hot
milk
31 Boardroom
diagram
32 Toronto’s prov.
34 More than trot
35 Figure (out),
slangily
38 Shout between
ships
39 Soul mate
42 Nevada city
45 Word before
base or ball
47 “Cut that out!”
48 Fantasy baseball
datum
49 Holy Scriptures
50 Fairy tale baddies
51 Password
creators
52 Fictional sleuth
Wolfe
55 Second of four
rhyming Greek
letters
56 Actor Baldwin
57 Hissed “Hey!”
60 “Is that __?”: “Are
you declining?”
61 Pair in a qt.
62 Took first place
By Ray Hedrick and C.C. Burnikel
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
04/13/15
04/13/15
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Monday, April 13, 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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Harriet is made for
your summer playlist
By DANIEL SAFFRON
For The Daily
As the weather here in Ann
Arbor changes from rosy-nosed
cold and gonadally harsh to sweat-
er shedding, sunglass prompting
and frisbee conducive, we all begin
to get frantic over what tunes
are going to usher in that oh-so
cherished oh-so missed summer
lovin’. There’s nowhere better to
look than perpetually summer-
suspended Los Angeles, where
up-and-coming
band
Harriet
promises us some of those syrupy
sweet summer feels with a recent
EP that makes us crave beaches,
sun and aloe vera.
Harriet’s members are young
– Alex Casnoff, the singer and for-
mer member of bands Dawes and
PAPA, is 27 and Henry Kwapis, the
drummer, is only 21. However their
sound is on the verge of maturity.
The band has rock band set up, but
is leaps and bounds from your tra-
ditional rock sound. Distant from
your typical anything, Harriet EP
is a cattle prod to the backside of
palatable pop and radio-approved
anthems. The band’s aura isn’t
immediately placeable; Kwapis
told me that the band was never a
“genre project,” and Casnoff told
me that he “(doesn’t) like when you
can immediately place your finger
on what (a song) is.” What is spe-
cial about Harriet is that they’ve
managed to earnestly represent
their unique tastes, sounds and
self-concept in an industry that
emphasizes variations on hack-
neyed cookie-cutter archetypes.
Harriet EP, only four tracks in
length, goes many different plac-
es and capitalizes on an eclectic
soundscape. “Irish Margaritas,”
the first track, is fun and dance-
able, but under the ebullient
synths, excited drums, chirpy
guitar licks and pinball bass lines
hides the tale of the narrator’s
Gaelic-Mexican-beverage-influ-
enced struggle with lost romance;
“One more drink and I might show
up at your doorstep knowing fully
well the probability that he’s inside
/ One more drink and I might tap
you on the shoulder tell you ‘baby
though it’s over and I know that
that’s a lie,” Casnoff sings. It’s the
kind of song that starts in-car aux
cord arguments with me and my
mother – not for everyone – but
its concurrent sarcastic and heart
wrenching qualities are something
that everyone can appreciate.
“Up Against It” and “Burbank,”
the second and third tracks, are
different from “Irish Margaritas,”
but are similar to each other. Both
are reverberant, ruminative and
emotionally viscous. These two
songs cast the band’s songwriting
prowess in a felicitous spotlight.
At once sad and romantic, the
album’s middle tracks hypnotize
with a rose-pedals-and-red-wine
seduction – tracks suited both for
make outs and introspection on an
open highway. The last track “Ten
Steps” is somewhere between
“Irish Margaritas” and “Burbank.”
It’s exciting and diligently senti-
mental, with some of the EP’s most
powerful lyrics.
As a whole, the lyrics on the
EP are artful and resplendent, but
evocatively casual, pupil-dilating
and shocking at times. In “Ten
Steps,” Casnoff sings, “If you’ve
been killed again / My body is still
physical when I’m asleep / I hear
you breathe it in / I am detective
you are my crime scene,” which
has the conflicting sentimental-
ity of a teddy bear wearing latex
gloves. In “Burbank,” he sings “We
were in love / The cigarette / That
held her lips / The pussy wet,” in
a way that isn’t the slightest bit
naïve or derogatory – your grand-
ma would ask for a Kleenex if she
heard it. Casnoff described his
songs as “first person monologues
from characters that aren’t always
(him) … all who deal with similar
kinds of things, maybe in different
ways … (like) anxiety and not being
able to figure shit out.” While being
a monologue, each track feels like
an
intimate
beer-and-barstool
conversation with Alex.
The last vital component to
the Harriet admixture is the
eyebrow skewing music videos.
“Irish Margaritas” ’s video cen-
ters around a weird plastic lime
literally placed on a pedestal and
surrounded by TIKI torches and
sparklers. In “Burbank,” a porn-
star-moustached, Kenny-G-haired
man assumes Casnoff’s role as the
band’s singer, while Casnoff mar-
ries a stripper in front of a vending
machine. The videos, which Cas-
noff likens to short movies, provide
further insight into each track’s
elusive soliloquist.
I’ve followed Harriet since its
inception three years ago. Now
signed with Harvest Records,
owned by Capitol, the band has
seen some radical changes over
the years with a generally positive
trend. Harriet EP is a precursor to
the band’s full album, which the
members and I both hope to see out
this summer. If you’re a fan of well-
written, inventive music or you sim-
ply like to be that person who knows
a chill band that your friends don’t,
Harriet deserves a listen. I look for-
ward to their full album release and
will be keeping Harriet on my radar;
I suggest you do this same.
HARVEST RECORDS
It’s hip to be square.
Obioma to read
debut at Literati
Nigerian novelist
will present first
novel Tuesday
By COSMO PAPPAS
Daily Arts Writers
Sitting at the corner of Division
St. and Washington St., Literati
Bookstore has taken great effort
to provide the
infrastructure
for a thriving
literary culture
in Ann Arbor.
This
Tuesday,
they will wel-
come debut nov-
elist
Chigozie
Obioma through
their “Fiction at
Literati” series,
the
comple-
ment to their
“Poetry at Literati” series. A Helen
Zell Fellow of Creative Writing,
Obioma was born in Nigeria, stud-
ied in Cyprus and lived in Tur-
key. Obioma will give a reading
to commemorate his first novel,
“The Fishermen,” to be released
through Little, Brown and Com-
pany the same day.
“I wanted to write this story,
I was inspired to write this story
about a close-knit family,” Obio-
ma said in an interview with
The Michigan Daily. “What is
it that can come between them
and
bring
destruction
and
destroy the unity of the family?
And not just a family, but any
entity at all.”
Obioma’s novel is, as Helon
Habila of The Guardian describes
in his review of the book, “a Bil-
dungsroman,” a coming-of-age
story. The four brothers in the
novel must navigate their lives
after their father departs for a job
transfer. They pick up fishing as
they lose their sense of routine in
the absence of their father’s dis-
ciplinary guidance. But shortly
after being “discovered by their
neighbor who tells their moth-
er,” “they meet the local oddball,
Abulu, who has the power of
prophecy, and who predicts that
Ikenna, the oldest, will be killed
by one of his brothers: a fisher-
man,” Habila says. “It is from this
simple, almost mythological con-
ceit that Chigozie Obioma’s debut
novel grows, gaining complexity
and power as it rises to its heart-
breaking climax.”
“The Fishermen” has been
received positively for the ways
that it balances many different
projects. Describing the book as
one that works with elements of
“the traditional English novel form
with the oral storytelling tradi-
tion” against an Aristotelian tragic
arc, Habila celebrates the parallel
dramas of Obioma’s book.
Obioma described his inter-
est in “parallel universes” and the
way that “human beings (exist) at
the same time as spirits and these
ethereal creatures.”
Habila reads Obioma’s novel
both as a Bildungsroman and
as a sort of allegory of the post-
independence history of Nigeria.
Obioma seeks out this “both-and”
play of narrative in both form
and content, citing influences as
diverse as Greek myth and epic,
Arundhati Roy, Thomas Hardy,
William
Shakespeare,
Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, Günter Grass
and Chinua Achebe. Obioma looks
to Achebe (1930-2013), the late
preeminent Nigerian writer and
one of the most significant and
widely read writers from Africa,
as a writer from whom he learns
about Igbo (a major ethnic group
of Nigeria) traditions, philoso-
phies and history.
“What I have always been
afraid of is people reading this
book because they feel it is exotic
to them, and content trumping
form, you know, the beauty of
writing,” Obioma said. “Largely,
even in the translated form, in
German, one thing everyone has
unanimously agreed on is the
beauty of the prose, and that is
the aesthetics, the art of the book,
which gives me joy because now
somebody cannot say, ‘Oh, I am
reading this one to understand
Africa because I want to.’ You
know, this is not why we read, that
is not why I read.”
Join Obioma this Tuesday in the
Espresso Bar on the second floor of
Literati to hear selections from his
novel and his thoughts on his well-
received, successful debut.
‘Daredevil’ dark, edgy
By MATT BARNAUSKAS
Daily Arts Wrtier
The success Marvel has had
in recent years is almost unprec-
edented. With several blockbuster
franchises,
a
flourishing cin-
ematic universe
and a couple TV
shows under its
belt, the com-
pany has proven
itself to be a
dominant force.
Now it enters
the streaming game with Netflix’s
newest series, “Daredevil.”
The show stars Charlie Cox
(“Boardwalk Empire”) as Matt
Murdock, a blind lawyer turned
titular vigilante. “Daredevil” is
probably the darkest product
Marvel has produced to date. In
its first four episodes, “Daredevil”
questions the limits Murdock can
go to as a vigilante and where the
line is drawn between justice and
vengeance.
Set in Hell’s Kitchen, New York
City, “Daredevil” casts its city
with little light. Shadows cover
even the open areas in darkness as
neon, harsh yellow and sterile blue
lights evoke a neo-noir stylistic feel
while capturing a comic book aes-
thetic. Trying to bring light to the
city are Murdock and his law part-
ner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson,
“Mockingjay: Part 1”), who have
just started their own practice,
with their first client being the
framed Karen Page (Deborah Ann
Woll, “True Blood”). The three
form a central trio of do-gooders.
Foggy is comic relief but is com-
petent in his own right next to
the quiet Murdock. While Karen
serves as little more than a damsel-
in-distress in the first episode, the
show quickly allows her to develop
beyond her initial trauma as she
starts investigating United Allied
Construction – the company that
tried to frame her after she found
something she shouldn’t have.
Murdock is also given a confi-
dante, Claire (Rosario Dawson,
“Sin City”), a nurse who patches
him up after finding him laying
wounded in a dumpster during the
second episode. The relationship is
the most challenging for Murdock.
Claire has seen the good Murdock
has performed in the form of the
broken criminal victims of Dare-
devil, yet she openly questions the
measures he takes. Simultaneously
a foil and confidante, Claire pro-
vides needed interaction for Mur-
dock in costume, humanizing his
vigilante side, but challenging his
extreme measures.
Murdock is a tortured char-
acter beneath his quiet visage.
Blinded at a young age, Murdock
learns from his boxer dad, Jack
(John Patrick Hayden, “Blue
Bloods”) that, “It ain’t how you
hit the mat, it’s how you get up.”
There’s a pride passed down from
father to son in fighting for who
you are, a strength and fatal flaw
that claims the elder Murdock’s
life when he refuses to take a dive
during a boxing match.
The same goes for Matt Mur-
dock years later. As Daredevil,
Murdock serves as an unstoppa-
ble presence against the criminals
that plague his city. This trans-
lates into bone crushing, kinetic
fight scenes that can be placed
among the best on any TV show.
Punches land hard, knives cut
deep and no one goes down easy
in “Daredevil.” This is no more
apparent than in episode two’s
climactic battle that harkens back
to Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy.”
Shot in nearly one take, a wound-
ed Murdock enters a hallway
occupied by two roomfuls of Rus-
sian mobsters. At the end of the
hallway is a door, and behind that
door is a kidnapped boy. The fight
is an exhausting brawl that tests
the young superhero’s endurance.
He leans against a wall, capturing
a quick breather, before reenter-
ing the fray of stumbling combat-
ants. It’s the standout moment
early in the series that combines
a fantastic physical performance
by Cox, expert direction by Phil
Abraham (“Mad Men”), phenom-
enal stunt work by coordinator
Philip J. Silvera (“A Walk Among
the Tombstones”) and Cox’s dou-
ble Chris Brewster (“Thor: the
Dark World”).
Murdock, though, faces his
greatest foe, Wilson Fisk, a.k.a
Kingpin
(Vincent
D’Onofrio,
“Full Metal Jacket”). The first
three episodes are spent hyp-
ing the character up, with one
character impaling himself on a
spike instead of facing the conse-
quences of just saying his name.
It’s ironic then that the first time
the character is fully explored in
episode four, “In the Blood,” he
is seen at his most uncomfort-
able, on a date with an art dealer
(Ayelet Zurer, “Man of Steel”). In
this setting, he is quiet and awk-
ward, increasing the suspense
about when his true colors will
show. There’s a dread about when
this character will erupt from his
initially quiet disposition, and
when he does D’Onofrio doesn’t
disappoint.
“Daredevil” is a dark medita-
tion on the lengths a superhero
can go before they cross the line
physically and mentally. With
strong performance and direction
in its early episodes, this is defi-
nitely a worthy tonal shift in the
Marvel universe.
A
Daredevil
Series
Premiere
Netflix
EVENT PREVIEW
TV REVIEW
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
Chigozie
Obioma
Readings
April 14,
7 p.m. at
Literati
Bookstore
Free