ACROSS
1 Stick (out)
4 Chocolate syrup
choice
9 Call to mind
14 Self-image
15 Chipmunk’s
morsel
16 “America by
Heart” author
Sarah
17 Good name for a
tree-lined street
18 Controversial
coal-extraction
process
20 Long gun
22 Really mad
23 __-Loompa:
fictional
chocolate factory
worker
26 Bagpiper, often
27 Buy lots of
presents for
33 “2001” computer
34 Cinematic
shootout time
35 Monica of tennis
36 Allowed to ripen,
as cheddar
38 Kind of card or
drive
41 Senate slot
42 Rose (up) on
hind legs, to a
cowhand
44 Beat to a froth
46 Doctor’s org.
47 Wry wit
51 “¿Qué __?”
52 Jazz singer Krall
53 Curse-inflicting
stare
56 Some Balkanites
59 Opera house
section
62 Kit __: candy bar
63 Everglades
wader
64 Pro basketball
player, briefly
65 H-like letter
66 “Think again!”
67 Decent chaps
68 “Give __
thoughts no
tongue”: “Hamlet”
DOWN
1 Bit of heckling
2 Aptly named fruit
3 Horseplay
4 Infielders
5 Autumn mo.
6 Fraternity
counterpart:
Abbr.
7 Nursery bed
8 Like some
military housing
9 Literary
postscripts
10 Makeup tables
11 “Chocolat”
actress Lena
12 Royal flush card
13 Second lang., for
some
19 Wisc. neighbor
21 Stuck-in-the-mud
gear
24 University VIP
25 AFB truant
27 Broken pottery
piece
28 Helga’s Viking
husband, in
comics
29 Extremely
impressed
30 Bargain hunter’s
mecca
31 Spanish “I love
you”
32 Astronomical red
giant
37 More than
dislikes
39 Not barefoot
40 Old audio system
43 Includes in the
poker game
45 Sci-fi weapons
48 Tiny fraction of a
min.
49 Adage
50 One in Paris
53 Therefore
54 Opposite of hor.
55 Kathryn of “Law
& Order: C.I.”
57 Appropriate room
for the sequence
comprised of the
starts of 18-, 27-,
47- and 59-
Across
58 Legal suspension
59 Family room
60 Soda container
61 Do-over on the
court
By John Lampkin
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
04/21/15
04/21/15
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
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6 — Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Powerful Shakes
By MELINA GLUSAC
Daily Arts Writer
Alabama Shakes is intriguing.
The name alone is an enigma,
begging the question: What
exactly
is
Alabama
shaking?
Or,
even
weirder, does
Alabama have
the
shakes?
Does any of
this relate to
milkshakes?
(In the case
of the latter,
Kelis must be
brought
into
the picture.) There are endless
possibilities.
But
what’s
definitively
alluring about these southern
charmers is, you guessed it,
the music. It remains just as
mystifying as their name, rife
with
gritty
guitars,
soulful
vocals and a bluesy-throwback
aura. Lead singer and guitarist
Brittany Howard formed the
group back in 2009, and its first
album, Boys & Girls, produced
the likes of “Hang Loose” and
“Hold On,” two of the band’s
biggest hits to date. Its sophomore
release, Sound & Color, takes the
band a step further — a fitting,
slightly modern departure from
nostalgia-driven
songwriting.
Slow, experimental rock grooves
permeate almost every tune, and
it’s a mighty beautiful thing.
The
title
track,
“Sound
&
Color,”
is
no
exception.
It
combines
the
eerie
irresistibleness of alt-J with
the inherent R&B of Howard’s
vocals — unexpected peanut
butter and jelly. “Gemini” is
perhaps the most avant-garde,
with its minimalistic guitar and
dark, otherworldly vocals. Both
songs lend to an oddly techno
deviation for the band, but
Howard’s gruff timbre eases the
transition, bringing the listener
right back to the roots of the
band and of good ol’ rock ‘n’
roll. We’ll call it southern-fried
unconventionality.
“Don’t Wanna Fight” is a
clear standout; it’s the musical
interpretation of getting in a
fight with the love of your life
— angry, raw and repetitive, but
still so sexy. Howard’s yawp is
perfect for songs like this, ones
that summon the singer to splash
her soul onto the recording like
an angry girlfriend splashes
vodka on a much-too-dry, foul-
mouthin’ boyfriend. Do your
thing, Britt.
In the vein of girl power and
the like, “The Greatest” brings out
refreshingly revved-up energy —
a Ramones-esque, driving punk
beat supports the hardest rock
song on the album. This style
shockingly suits Alabama Shakes.
No worries, though, because
Sound & Color has plenty of cool-
down melodies like “Dunes”
and “Shoegaze” to mellow you
out
without
sacrificing
that
signature rock aesthetic. Both
sound like cruising around in the
summer, windows rolled down,
hair blowing every kind of way.
And you can actually hear
the breeze in the background of
“This Feeling,” a wispy, acoustic
number that draws much from
Van Morrison, king of chill.
It’s a beautiful and intimately
emotional love song, weaving a
delicate story with patience and
soul. This is the virginal twin to
its lusty predecessor, “Gimme All
Your Love,” an intensely sultry
recording that explodes after a
falsetto intro and never really
calms down (lucky for us). Once
again, Alabama Shakes proves
they can try on any pair of jeans
and look good. Yep, they’re those
people.
“Guess Who” and “Future
People”
toy
around
with
interesting harmonies and jazzy
chords, while “Miss You” is
perhaps the epilogue to one of
the album’s alluded themes: one
grand romance. Howard sings:
“I’m gonna miss you and your
Mickey Mouse tattoo.” (Poor
bastard.) The song’s got amazing
crescendos, drunken bar piano,
lagging, traditional blues beats
with modern touches and smoky
guitars. It’s all too much but it’s
all too great. And then “Over My
Head” ends the journey with a
surprisingly soft, slow groove.
Howard’s mantra, “Loving so
deeply, I’m in over my head,”
echoes as it’s layered in different
keys, brought up at different
times.
Alabama Shakes seems as
though it’s of a different time. As
for Sound & Color? It’s a radical,
prodigious beast of the rock/
soul/et cetera crossover breed.
Most importantly, though, it’s
a modern beast, and therefore
a fearless one. Rock musicians
ought to take note: Be bold, move
forward. Maybe someday you’ll
make people shake like Alabama.
A
Sound &
Color
Alabama
Shakes
Rough Trade
Records
ALBUM REVIEW
COURTESY OF JOHN SHORE
Are you even from Alabama? (Editor’s note: Yes.)
FILM NOTEBOOK
A denouement to
FilmSquad & Arts
By ANDREW MCCLURE
Daily Arts Writer
“Unless
subtitle
reading
makes you purple in the face,
sprint to the box office for this
Iranian goodness.”
That sentence is how I
bookended my first full film
review
after
joining
this
publication in January 2012. I
thought I was funny, I wasn’t.
I thought I saw the movie
differently, I didn’t. I thought
“sprint” was reason enough
to ignore the rest of my shitty
prose. I probably also thought
getting assigned a foreign film
signaled good things to come,
and I’d be right but not how I
imagined. The Michigan Daily,
to me, actually didn’t make
me like movies more, or like
writing that much more, or
like the eschewal of the serial
comma more — it made me
want to be a more interesting
person.
My relationship with the
newspaper almost invariably
walked the tangent: skipping
elections, skipping parties, not
talking to the cute and cultured
female staffers, “missing” the
karaoke nights, the list goes on.
I was the nine-to-five staffer:
doing
my
part
and
never
missing dinner. I had other
obligations,
other
interests,
other friends, I told myself,
without any real conviction.
And here I am, days before
commencement, days before
not seeing my byline anymore,
days before when people won’t
care one iota what I recently
“wrote about” — and I regret
only walking the tangent, too
afraid, I suppose, to run into
something I might like too
much. It took me three years
to realize that. Three years to
see that my friends outside the
Daily, for numerous reasons,
shared less in common with me
than I convinced myself. Three
years to conclude that I could
have done more. That I should
have.
I should have, because I
looked up to the people here. I
didn’t look up their carriage or
poise or sartorial profiles, but
rather the impassioned way they
spoke about movies. They gave a
shit and every nerdy cinephilic
mannerism proved it — a sniffle,
a tremble, a not-comfortable
pause
when
hammering
a
point. They were weird, and I
wanted to join the ranks of this
rarefied intelligentsia. (And by
“rarefied,” I mean I understood
only 25 people would read my
“Life of Pi” review, and half of
those would be me on various
University computers.) Until
then it seemed that the other
organizations I had joined, and
even immersed myself in, left
me tepid, wanting, hungry for
stimuli. And that’s what these
Sunday afternoon meetings did
for me: They woke me up in a
way international trade theory
couldn’t.
There’s
a
good
moment
in
HBO’s
Susan
Sontag
documentary when her son,
paraphrasing
his
mother,
said, “A writer is someone
interested
in
everything.”
That hit hard and it hit deep.
It mostly made me sad, though.
Here was a woman who made a
living writing about thinking
about whatever she deemed
interesting.
The
boundless
vocation, free reign, unchained
liberty. It wasn’t sad because
I necessarily wanted to be a
writer, but it was sad that she
had created for herself the best
job in the world: One in which,
as Socrates would’ve greenlit,
her knowledge and virtue were
one, her interests and desire for
truth married. I wanted that. I
want that. The Daily showed me
that the written word comes in
handy in more places than 4 and
6A; it comes in handy in e-mails,
texts, moleskine musings and,
most of all, in the spoken word.
By submitting over 70 written
articles of some kind, over three
and a half years, I finally learned
how to talk. And for that I am
eternally grateful. Sontag wrote
about whatever she wanted, and
I’d be hard-pressed to say The
Daily didn’t provide me that very
editorial freedom.
Scores
of
great
writers
look
back
on
their
college
newspaper days with disgust
and sardonicism, and I think I
will too, no matter where I end
up. My reviews were often bad,
sometimes
readable,
always
sophomoric,
occasionally
humorous and never perfect.
My editors should have been
tougher on me, kicking my ass
a tad more, telling me in plain
English
that
that
sentence
makes no fucking sense, that
maybe I should start over. What
did happen in this process was I
began to look at words through
a simpler lens. How can I say
this with just enough words,
commas, em dashes and colons
to tell a reader — who likely
doesn’t give a shit and just
wants the assigned letter grade
— that I am smart, not full of
crap, unpretentious and maybe
funny? The Daily didn’t teach
me how to precisely do that.
But the Daily taught me that I
should at the very least try.
Thanks.
FILM REVIEW
Eerie ‘Sisterhood’
By REBECCA LERNER
Daily Arts Writer
Teenagers running through the
wooded night. This idea has long
evoked images of
a woodland back-
drop of drugs,
sex and mischief
that
permeates
the
paranoid
minds of wor-
ried parents. Add
the possibility of
a sex cult of teen
witches, and the
bubbling
caul-
dron of chaos that
erupts is “The
Sisterhood of Night.
Born as a Kickstarter, the
female-driven cast and production
crew frames the story of a modern
day Salem Witch Trials in a subur-
ban New York town in the wake of
a massive media scandal. Started
by the alluring Mary Warren,
(Georgie Henley, “The Chronicles
of Narnia”) whose name is just one
of multiple allusions to the work
of Michigan Daily alum Arthur
Miller’s “The Crucible,” Mary and
her best friends, Catherine (Willa
Cuthrell, “Whatever Works”) and
Lavinia, (Olivia DeJonge, “Eleven
Thirty”) choose its members to join
their secret bonfire-lit rituals in the
woods. While all the girls in school
wish to be selected for The Sister-
hood’s vow of silence, one outsider
with a burning desire for popular-
ity and social media fame, Emily
Parris (Kara Hayward, “Moonrise
Kingdom”) goes to extremes to
join them. Infuriated by the events
of a night in the woods, Emily uses
her blog to start rumors about The
Sisterhood that spiral fatally out of
control.
The film had the potential to be a
banal dismissal of the overwrought
feelings of teenagers, but instead it
dives deep into genuine problems
of today’s youth. The difficult situ-
ations of each girl’s home are made
clear, but the real issue dealt with
is cyberbullying. The power of the
Internet is illustrated by the clout
of Emily’s growing blog and The
Sisterhood’s lack of a social media
presence. The trade for secrecy
over Facebook is one of the most
shocking things to the confused
and incompetent grown ups of the
town as they beg the girls to tell
them everything, an effort they
respond to with closed lips and
shaking heads.
Contributing to the sense of
teenage superiority, the girls in the
film prove to be better actors than
the fumbling adults whose lines
seem awkward and out of place.
Henley gives an especially fantas-
tic performance as the fierce and
beautiful Mary whose undeniable
essence of cool makes it plausible
that she could actually lead a cult.
The montages of perfectly mani-
cured suburbia are reminiscent of
messages in films such as “The Vir-
gin Suicides” and “American Beau-
ty,” where things are not as they
seem. First time director Caryn
Waechter’s shots of Kingston, New
York give an eerie sense of omi-
nous presences behind the preened
lawns and perfect houses. Like
their escape from social media, the
girl’s constant forays into the night
conveys their yearning to break out
of the oppressive structures and
find their real selves.
While the film deals with serious
subject matter, its best moments dis-
play the happiness of female friend-
ship. Unlike most popular culture, it
places equal importance on platonic
and romantic love. Some of the best
scenes are the celebrations and
dances of The Sisterhood, when
the pure joy that emanates from
the girls puts a smile on the face
of everyone in the audience. The
triumphs of girl power frolic with
the actors throughout the movie,
with their secrets following close
behind.
A-
The
Sisterhood
of Night
Cine Mosaic
Quality 16