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Arts
Monday, September 28, 2015 — 5A
Classifieds
Call: #734-418-4115
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ACROSS
1 Borscht veggies
6 Garden
neighbors of
glads, perhaps
10 “Looking at it
differently,” in
texts
14 Play the coquette
15 Part of MIT: Abbr.
16 Make all better
17 *Last leg of a
journey
19 Cleveland’s lake
20 Protruding-lip
expression
21 Made minor
adjustments to
23 Enjoy snowy
trails
26 Constellation
bear
28 Discussion
groups
29 Stephen King’s
harassed high
schooler
31 Shiny photo
33 Great Plains
natives
34 Largest Greek
island
35 Roll of cash
38 Comes out on
top
39 Broadway
productions
40 Actress Sorvino
41 “Just a __!”
42 How not to talk in
libraries
43 Piquant
44 Stereotypically
wealthy city area
46 Clavell novel of
feudal Japan
47 Take out a loan
49 Ice hockey feint
51 Observe
52 Intermittently
54 Perfume
container
56 Fava or soya
57 *Matching
breakfast nook
furniture
62 Spy novelist
Ambler
63 Japanese noodle
64 Midterms, e.g.
65 “The __ Ranger”
66 Chapel seating
67 Assemble, as
equipment
DOWN
1 Texter’s soul
mate
2 Yalie
3 A, in Austria
4 Mouse catcher
5 Arch city
6 Catchers’ gloves
7 __ vez: Spanish
“once”
8 High-ranking
NCO
9 Gumbo cookers
10 Pacific and
Atlantic
11 *Thanksgiving
night snacks
12 Bay window
13 Pays attention to
18 “Be glad to”
22 Effortlessness
23 Garbage haulers
24 News anchor
Couric
25 *Cold War
barrier
27 Bad way to run a
yacht?
30 Legal thing
32 Indecent
34 Vittles
36 Take issue (with)
37 “Tell It to My
Heart” singer
Taylor __
39 Decelerated
40 Chinese
chairman
42 Molecule part
43 Broadway
building, and
where to find the
ends of the
answers to
starred clues
45 Royal son
46 “SNL” segment
47 Biblical tower site
48 Alamogordo’s
county
50 Odds alternative
53 Either team on
the field
55 LPGA golfer
Thompson
58 Without delay
59 Droop in the
middle
60 Down Under
bird
61 Baker’s meas.
By Lila Cherry
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/28/15
09/28/15
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Monday, September 28, 2015
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
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TV COLUMN
Who’s a TV author?
L
ast spring, I enrolled in a
class called “Hitchcock and
Modernity.” I’m a certified
Hitchcock fanatic and freely spend
my time writing unassigned essays
about “Ver-
tigo” and the
male gaze, so
the opportu-
nity to learn
about some
of my favorite
movies in a
class setting
was impos-
sible to pass
up. Still, as I
clicked the
“register” button, something about
the course’s title made my skin
crawl. Hitchcock and Modernity.
Like countless other English classes
at the University, this course would
be focused on a single author and
his body of texts, noting repeated
themes and language and analyzing
their significance — but authorship
in film is not as simplistic as this
method implies.
Critics and academics have
been looking at movies this way for
over 50 years. Writers for a French
film journal called Cahiers du
Cinema coined the term auteur to
describe a superior group of direc-
tors. Their movies would always
be more interesting and deserv-
ing of analysis than those written
by their second-rung (metteur en
scène) counterparts, because these
authors possessed more talent than
just technical competence and the
ability to tell actors to move around
a room. An auteur imbued his
films with his own personal touch,
and each stroke of genius could be
traced back to his other movies and
the patterns analyzed for mean-
ing. The theory was later adopted
by American critics, who added a
whole mess of qualifications to be
an auteur: An auteur’s movies must
get better and better for his whole
career, he had to have a godlike
command of how his story was
told and surpass all the financial
and creative difficulties that the
other hacks working on his movie
presented him with. At the end, the
auteur’s movie would stand as a
singular representation of his vision
and innovation.
This theory began to lose steam
in the years following the 1960s as
other critics pointed out the flaws
in the auteur logic. Choice directors
like Orson Welles and Hitchcock
didn’t make amazing movies for
their whole lives, and any of the
second-tier filmmakers probably
could have made a film less bloated
than Welles’s “F for Fake.” And
what about the other authors of
movies — screenwriters, who have
just as much a hand in creating a
film’s symbolism and meaning?
What about women and filmmakers
of color, who often aren’t afforded
the same opportunities to rise
above studio restrictions with their
cinematic voices intact? And what
about TV, where directors don’t
hold quite as much esteem, and it’s
anybody’s guess who will end up
getting public credit for creating an
acclaimed TV show? With all these
inconsistencies, the auteur theory
has died and been laid to rest in the
pages of my film theory textbook.
Well, almost.
Since “The Sopranos” kicked off
the “Golden Age” of TV, the small
screen has become the new hot spot
for powerful cinematic authors. It’s
the series’ showrunner who usually
gets the auteur treatment, because
he holds a role similar to the movie
director. In most TV writers’ rooms,
the decisions for plotting the season
and formulating character arcs
rest with the showrunner. Because
many series feature the work of
multiple writers and directors in a
given season, the auteur crown goes
to the person who sits on throne
and makes everything happen. This
logic isn’t without fault.
A few weeks ago, I talked to a
high school friend about “Breaking
Bad,” and she must have name-
dropped Vince Gilligan 60 times.
Among other accomplishments, Gil-
ligan is apparently the man to thank
for Skyler White’s amazing char-
acter development, her becoming
more steely and fearless with every
passing episode. Gilligan may have
set up Skyler’s story trajectory and
maybe written a few of the episodes
himself, but a huge part of the praise
should go to Anna Gunn’s strong
and stunning performance. It’s a
crime not to mention Gunn’s name,
or Michael Slovis’s for cinematog-
raphy or Rian Johnson’s directon
of that awesome scene with the
knife. Vince Gilligan belongs in any
discussion of “Breaking Bad,” but
the show is great because of the col-
laboration of hundreds of talented
people apart from the guy whose
name appears as the closing image
of every episode.
Auteur logic has gotten even
messier in recent years, because
showrunners aren’t the only ones
on a pedestal anymore. Big-name
producers often dominate the
conversations of their respective
shows largely because of advertising
strategies. People are more likely to
watch a show if it has a recogniz-
able pedigree. Shonda Rhimes, the
showrunner of “Grey’s Anatomy”
and “Scandal,” is marketed as the
sole creator of “TGIT” Thursdays
on ABC: “Grey’s,” “Scandal” and
“How to Get Away With Murder”
are all fun primetime soaps cen-
tered around compelling women
in high-powered jobs. However,
ABC does not really care if anybody
knows that Peter Nowalk is the
showrunner of “How to Get Away
With Murder,” and technically has
as much influence in creating the
story arcs of his show as Vince Gil-
ligan has for “Breaking Bad.” ABC
can manipulate viewers’ knowledge
of Rhimes as a proven TV auteur
— “HTGAWM” was one of the
highest-rated network dramas dur-
ing its run last fall, and at least some
of its success is due to fans’ loyalty
to Rhimes’s empire.
The showrunner is also not
as infallible as he may seem, and
his esteem depends upon the
excellence of the team who sup-
ports him. Cary Fukunaga’s adept
directorial work on the first season
of “True Detective” was unlike
almost anything on TV — his iconic
minutes-long tracking shot and the
way he and his supporting cinema-
tography team shot the lush and
dreamlike Louisiana landscape
made the first season appear as
something out of a Southern Gothic
novel. Despite the fact that crit-
ics (including myself) applauded
Pizzolatto for the moody writing
and compelling characters, in
retrospect, he couldn’t have been
the singular auteur of that season.
In isolating Pizzolatto and taking
away the stunningly talented Fuku-
naga, Matthew McConaughey and
Woody Harrelson, the show’s ridic-
ulous writing comes into clearer
view. The first season also had silly
dialogue masquerading as MFA-
smart (never forget that “time is a
flat circle”), but it sounded damn
philosophical coming out of the
mouth of an Academy Award-win-
ning actor. Tell Vince Vaughn to say
those same words, and … somehow,
the effect isn’t the same.
Evidently, issues of authorship
are still very relevant. TV fans and
critics worship the cult of the show-
runner, but not invariably — pro-
ducers, stars, writers and directors
often slip through the cracks and
gain authorial status. Marketing
plays a huge role in who audiences
designate as an author of a show.
Commercials for USA’s “Mr. Robot”
proclaim that the show was created
by “a producer of ‘True Detective,’ ”
and early ABC publicity sells “The
Catch” as a TGIT Shonda Rhimes
original (then-showrunner Jen-
nifer Schuur’s name is nowhere to
be found). The new TV auteur is
singlehandedly responsible for cre-
ating his shows, improbably flouting
the network standards and restric-
tions to deliver excellent content
that only becomes more excellent
when it’s analyzed and picked apart
for clues of the author’s genius.
The production of TV traces
back to the collective work of
hundreds of craftsmen, network
executives and businesspeople and
the audience itself — as has been
proven in film, the TV showrunner
is not a unilateral creator of mean-
ing. But there are still freshman
boys who toss off-hand comments
about “House of Cards” featuring
the calling cards of David Fincher’s
oeurve. And there are still classes
at the University of Michigan that
operate under the assumption that
one man’s singular genius was
enough to override everyone else’s
working on that movie, enough to
make those films his.
Gilke is VINCE GILLIGAN, VILCE
GILLIGAN, VINCE GILLIGAN,
VINCE GILLIGAN. To praise her,
e-mail chloeliz@umich.edu.
CHLOE
GILKE
More like trap prince
ALBUM REVIEW
By KENNETH SELANDER
Daily Arts Writer
In mid-late Fall 2014, my good
friend
Zach
introduced
the
rap-loving
fac-
tion of my friend
group to Fetty
Wap, who had a
song that’d been
getting airplay in
the tristate area.
Zach
is
from
New
Jersey,
and told us Fetty lived 15 minutes
away from him and had one seri-
ous song at the time, “Trap Queen.”
We listened and were impressed – it
definitely had its own vibe. “Trap
Queen” was something different.
It would go on to blow up a month
later that winter. The sequence of
one seven three and eight has never
been so hype.
First off, Fetty Wap is a super
easy guy to like. The Vines I’ve seen
of him joking about his trademark
missing eye show a friendly per-
sonal side, and he comes across as a
humble and genuine dude.
Another huge positive charac-
teristic many see in Fetty is that he
has a refreshing, unique and new
sound. Moving beyond the general
public’s timeless love affair with
“Trap Queen,” the sum of the parts
that compose Fetty Wap’s vocals
is unique on the whole, even if the
major individual components seem
recycled.
T-Pain was the first time I’d
heard auto-tune seriously used for
singing in hip hop. He had his day
in the spotlight, and nowadays auto-
tune has taken off amongst rappers
who don’t seriously sing (i.e. Young
Thug, Future). Fetty’s sound brings
me back to seventh grade sleepaway
camp where I first heard “Buy You
a Drank,” by T-Pain, but Fetty has
a yodeling vibrato that does set him
apart from other vocalists today. On
occasion, Fetty will also engage in
leaned-out mumblings that a num-
ber of Atlanta rappers use today.
So, after throwing on the head-
phones and giving Fetty Wap several
listens, I’ll summarize: meh.
If you take out the four hit songs
that you and I have heard 100 times
and already love, all of which were
released far in advance of Fetty Wap
dropping, I’d give this album a C.
“Trap Queen” and “679” were on Up
Next, “RGF Island” was on Zoo Style
and “My Way” was on the 1738 Remy
Boyz mixtape and then remixed
with Drake in July.
For me, these releases killed a lot
of the hype. Technically the songs
are on the record, so I include them
in my grading, but I’m sad to say that
none of the other 16 tracks on Fetty
Wap live up to the excitement or
quality these songs already created
for him well ahead of the album.
I give Fetty Wap a disappointed
B-, but damn, Fetty can do a hook
and chorus right. For this reason, I
think Fetty needs to limit Monty’s
(aka Montana Buckz) presence on
his tracks. Yes, they gel on “679,” but
not on “My Way,” or “No Days Off.”
Fetty needs better rappers to match
his energy – like when he teamed up
with Gucci and Quavo on his “Trap
Queen” remix. His music is all about
energy, and Monty’s lyrical callous-
ness and frequently awkward flow
can’t keep up. Even one of Gucci
Mane’s better-than-mediocre vers-
es that got cut and pasted into “Trap
Queen” while he’s locked up flows
well.
I get keeping true to his Remy
Boyz, a theme on a majority of his
songs on Fetty Wap, and trying to
put them on. But if Fetty wants to
further improve his outlook as an
artist, I think he needs to work on
recruiting upper echelon talent for
his own albums going forward, not
just being a feature on other artists’
tracks.
B-
Fetty Wap
Fetty Wap
300 Enter-
tainment
CHVRCHES’ ‘Every
Open Eye’ pulsates
ALBUM REVIEW
By MELINA GLUSAC
Daily Arts Writer
I can’t lie — I only got turned on
to the brilliance of CHVRCHES, a
three-piece Scottish electronic
extravaganza,
some
six
months
ago.
After
falling
down
a
YouTube
rabbit hole one
night, I came
across
their
cover of Arctic
Monkeys’
“Do I Wanna Know?” As this
was easily one of the best songs
of 2013, how anyone could do a
cover any justice — I didn’t wanna
know. CHVRCHES had some
seriously misplaced audacity. So
reluctantly, I clicked, and about
five seconds later was proven
so wrong. Sexy, gripping synths
guided by desperate, pint-sized
vocals filled the studio. It was
enticing, exciting and inventive
just like the original, but served
the starkest contrast, too. My
view count to this day probably
ranks in the hundreds.
And so goes the band’s bumping
sophomore release, Every Open
Eye — it’s beautifully defined by
the characteristics rife in the
cover video, and each listen brings
something fresh to the ears. Sad-
yet-happy dance beats permeate
as Scottish pixie lead singer
Lauren Mayberry coos over lost
loves and electronic hope. She’s
apathetic with delicious little
dashes of passion: an appealing,
variety-laden
combination,
persuasive to the listener at best.
Backed up with the magic synth
fingers and occasional vocals of
Iain Cook and Martin Doherty,
Every Open Eye rarely strays from
its predestined greatness.
It’s hard to believe this is a
sophomore release for the Scots,
who’ve been around since 2011.
They brought their sound to the
electronic world with their first
album, The Bones of What You
Believe, and it’s only gotten better
with age. It’s distinct, refined and
akin to only them, avoiding any
forthright genre clichés (i.e., d-d-
drop the bass, Spanglish Pitbull
raps and so on). “Clearest Blue”
off the new album is no exception.
The scene it sets: a steamy, neon
club, pulsating with energy right
from the start. Things get epic
after the meaty, German dance
hall beats drop at 2:15 and stay
raving and jumping and sweaty
until the finish. What’s that on the
bottom of your club heels? Glitter
and infinity.
“Never
Ending
Circles”
is
a strong opener and similar
in
its
unwavering
liveliness.
Interesting, tiny synth quirks
weave their way in and out, as
they do on “Leave a Trace” and
“Empty Threat.” All the songs feel
a bit experimental but never lose
that CHVRCHES listening factor,
and Mayberry’s voice should
take a lot of that credit. It’s hard
not to keep discussing it because
it’s crucial — almost as if Hayley
Williams (Paramore) inhaled a
substantial breath of helium, in
the least annoying way possible.
“Empty Threat” sounds like it
could be an Anime theme song,
or the accompaniment to one of
those shady, low-quality YouTube
videos devoted to Anime ships
and lovers. Yet — always yet
— CHVRCHES music is still
alluring, still prodigious.
Sometimes,
though,
consistently high-octane tempos
and driving synths can get
repetitive. Fast-paced tunes in
a sequence can’t slow down,
content-wise, and, unfortunately,
the album’s vibes glitch a bit on
“Keep You On My Side” and “Make
Them Gold.” It’s not that these are
pitiful songs — they’re actually
quite good. But “good” becomes
a problem when every other
velocity-driven ditty is fantastic
and unique. The weak handful’s
typical synths, lyrics and melodic
lines are boring, especially when
the band has proven — just a song
earlier — that they can do better,
more inventive work.
“Bury It” and “Playing Dead”
turn it around with their hopeful
lyrics, and “High Enough to Carry
You Over” and “Down Side of Me”
do the same. The latter two feature
Cook singing with Mayberry and
taking some lines entirely himself,
which all lends to cool, Human
League-esque
trade-offs
and
juxtaposition.
Mayberry sings us away with
“Afterglow,” the only slow, calm
track on the compilation. The
group was initially reluctant to
include it, as the original cut was
techy like the rest of Every Open
Eye, but on the last day of recording
they stripped and slowed it down.
Mayberry laid down all the vocals
in a single, emotional take. It
sounds raw like that: like the
aftermath of a wild rave, laying
down in the middle of the dance
floor after all is gone but your one
true love, confetti in your hair,
neon lights still flickering with
every bit of hope you felt when
you first got there.
B
Every
Open Eye
CHVRCHES
Virgin
VIRGIN
Can you see their eyes pulsating?