ACROSS
1 Type of hippo
6 59-Down product
9 Color guard
accessory
14 Child on TV for
decades
15 Virgo preceder
16 “I’m here”
17 Hummingbird
feature?
19 Enjoyed Vegas
20 Valley
21 Place to live in
Spain
23 Sore feeling
24 Purported
ancestor of
Ragnar Lothbrok
on TV’s “Vikings”
26 Foothills?
29 Crazy scene
30 Call-day link
31 Value
32 Did a cobbler’s
job
34 Stain
37 Hot Wheels
Volkswagen?
41 Hoedown move
42 Taking place
44 Is in store for
47 Pine product
49 Maker of the
GreenSaver
Produce Keeper
50 Potty-training
tool?
53 Absolut rival
54 Explosive letters
55 Collector’s __
56 Reveals in an
unwelcome way
58 Naming
60 Mouthpiece for a
Lilliputian horse?
64 Nursery supply
65 Psyche
component
66 Hiding __
67 No longer an
item
68 Oversaw
69 Teamed (with)

DOWN
1 Jams
2 Good remark?
3 Plants with
sword-shaped
leaves

4 Lombardy’s
capital
5 Everyone in
Mississippi?
6 Big ring name
7 AT&T, for short
8 Grinder
9 1969 hit with the
line “You are my
candy girl”
10 Botanist Gray
11 Candy heart
words
12 Show one’s face
13 Make amends for
18 Outdo
22 Volume
measure
24 Abbr. on some
cans
25 Hardly a happy
ending
27 Where the Santa
Maria sank,
nowadays
28 Dined on,
biblically
30 Dash warning
33 “I suggest you
move on”
35 Pie makeup?
36 Stock
38 Plus

39 Doesn’t exactly
help one’s
reputation
40 Stunning or
cunning
43 One under a tree,
maybe
44 Nissan sedan
45 Start of a pitch
46 Fifth-century
Roman Empire
enemy
48 In a little while

51 1996 A.L. Rookie
of the Year
52 Psi follower
53 Needles
57 Org. whose logo
features an eagle
head
59 6-Across maker
61 Awfully long time
62 Rocks in a bucket
63 “Ideas worth
spreading”
acronym

By Mark Bickham
(c)2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/16/15

10/16/15

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Friday, October 16, 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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FOR RENT

PARKING

TV REVIEW

Easy-going, quirky 
premiere for ‘Casual’

By DANIELLE YACOBSON

For The Daily

In an easy-going and quirky 

premiere, 
Hulu’s 
new 
origi-

nal comedy, “Casual,” strikes a 
unique balance between unfil-

tered social commentary and a 
mellow, indie mood. As divorcee 
Valerie (Michaela Watkins “New 
Girl”) 
and 

her daughter 
Lauren (Tara 
Lynne Barr, 
“God 
Bless 

America”) 
move in with 
Valerie’s 
directionless 
brother Alex 
(Tommy 
Dewey “The 
Mindy Proj-
ect”), the trio half-heartedly 
takes on dating with warm 
humor and genuine acting. The 
pilot successfully sets up a prem-
ise with the potential to lead 
the characters in a multitude of 
directions as they tackle their 
personal lives in an unconven-
tional setting.

During a nasty divorce, Valeria 

and her daughter move in with 
Alex, who takes it upon himself 
to push Valerie back into the dat-
ing scene. The two singles tackle 
casual dating while Lauren, a ram-
bunctious teen, explores her own 
romantic life under the same roof.

Particularly refreshing is the 

pilot’s ability to bring comedy into 
serious and often taboo issues. 
The episode opens with a funeral 
scene, with the three leads passing 
unfiltered judgment on mourn-
ing family members. Commenting 
that the body in the casket looks 
low on embalming fluid, the char-
acters reveal that the ceremony is 
held for none other than Valerie 
and Alex’s father. Turns out, the 
funeral was all a dream, but even 
in reality, this family has serious 
problems. The witty and mildly 
inappropriate remarks continue 
as themes of divorce and depres-
sion take form in the first episode, 
setting up darker tones to echo 
throughout the season. While 
the pilot wasn’t driven by plot or 
storylines, the characters’ candid 
honesty on life and love will be the 
reason “Casual” is worth sticking 
around for.

In particular, the comedy’s 

no-filter approach to sex offers 
a fresh perspective on today’s 
increasingly popular online dat-
ing scene. Alex creates a Tinder-
esque platform called Snooger, 
even though he openly despis-
es the superficiality of online 
dating. 
Unmerciful 
judgment 

ensues, making it easy to identify 

with the characters and their all-
too-common dating mishaps.

While the pilot didn’t have a 

clear direction in narrative, the 
story hinged upon the genuine 
relationships of the three leads. 
Undeniably close, brother-sister 
duo Alex and Valerie are what 
every sibling pair secretly wishes 
they could be. Blind dates at the 
same restaurant might be cross-
ing the line for some, but these 
two need their best friend hid-
ing out in the bathroom to gossip 
about the dates from hell. Alex’s 
unapologetically cynical view on 
love complements Valerie’s deli-
cate confidence after her divorce, 
setting up a relatable and come-
dic outlet for the two to take 
on their single lives one casual 
hookup at a time.

Now, add a sexually active teen-

ager to the mix. Sporting a Pola-
roid logo T-shirt and lounging in 
a bedroom strung with Christmas 
lights and clothes-pinned pic-
tures, Lauren’s version of casual 
is somewhat unexpected. On 
the pill since age 12, she clearly 
doesn’t shy away from public dis-
plays of affection and, without 
any parental backlash, the teen 
does whatever she pleases. The 
mother-daughter relationship is 
somewhat à la “Freaky Friday,” 
as therapist mother struggles to 
reign in her free-spirited daugh-
ter. Lauren adds an exciting 
energy to the otherwise subdued 
humor of the pilot, propelling the 
storyline to move forward with a 
connection to older and younger 
audiences alike.

All living under the same roof, 

Valerie, Alex and Lauren have a 
natural chemistry that is beauti-
fully captured by the cinematog-
raphy. The muted tones and tilted 
angles give the episode an indie 
vibe, scored with mellow string 
music in the background. Close-
up shots that highlight the subtle 
nuances in facial expressions and 
body language add an intimate 
feel to the comedy and make it 
easy to connect to the characters 
from the opening scene. 

While it won’t keep you on the 

edge of your seat, “Casual” has an 
easiness to it that is often under-
valued in TV. It’s witty, with dark-
er underlying themes that make it 
more personal than a raunchy sit-
com. In a modern and offbeat fam-
ily setting, this light comedy will 
remind the audience to not take 
themselves or life too seriously. 

FILM REVIEW
‘Pan’ is beautiful 
cinema sans soul

By NOAH COHEN

Daily Arts Writer

“Pan” commits no cardinal 

sins. It never breaks its contract 
with the audience. It does some-
thing 
worse 

than betray us: 
it fails to make 
us feel stuff.

 One night 

during 
World 

War II, inex-
plicably 
evil 

English 
nuns 

sell 
orphans 

to magic pirates who take said 
orphans to Neverland where Black-
beard (Hugh Jackman, “X-Men”) 
forces them to mine pixie dust to 
help him maintain his eternal life. 
Hook (Garrett Hedlund, “Friday 
Night Lights”) is a fellow miner 
here, and Peter (Levi Miller, in 
his first feature film), revealing 
that he can fly and is therefore the 
“Chosen One,” escapes the mines 
with Hook’s help. Peter seeks his 
mother and the lost Fairy City in a 
bumbling quest to simultaneously 
protect the fairies, discover who 
he is, believe in himself and find 
his long-lost mother. The party 
soon finds one more member, 
Princess Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara, 
“The Girl with the Dragon Tat-
too”) among the natives of Never-
land. She, our ass-kicking beauty, 
exposits on Peter’s plot armor and 
tops off the movie’s ambient sense 
of urgency, but it’s too little too 
late. We don’t care for this Never-
land, we don’t care for Peter and, 
as Mr. Smee (Adeel Akhtar, “Four 
Lions”) exclaims in an ironic 
moment of clarity, “nobody cares 
about (Peter’s) mother!”

 The joy of the Peter Pan story 

hinges on the wonder of a Never-
land that floats about with child-
ish naiveté. Director Joe Wright’s 
(“Atonement”) Neverland is fan-
tastical only as an excuse to cut 
corners on world-building. The 
wholesomeness of its stunning 
visuals is so overtaxed with unin-
spired dramatic nonsense that 
the audience yearns for an out, for 
something mad or ugly to shake us 
out of our stupor. There’s no out. 

There’s no plot twist. The plot is 
marched forward like an invalid 
in a wheelbarrow by some cosmic 
wind of inevitability. There’s no 
emotional initiative and only the 
barest of sequential logic.

 A magical universe like that of 

“Pan” depends on narrative logic to 
constrain its spontaneity. Without 
a sense of context and limitation, 
the existence of magic is boringly 
storybreaking. Why worry about 
the vicious crocodiles in the river 
if your ship can fly through the air? 
If the fairies are so powerful, why 
do they need the help of a 12-year-
old boy at all? Too many questions 
in “Pan” can be answered only by 
“magic.” Magic quickly becomes a 
narrative beast-of-burden, and for 
every element of heavy-lifting that 
magic does for the story, it robs 
the story’s emotional logic of an 
opportunity to lure the audience 
into its groove.

 Jackman does wonderfully, ful-

filling expectation. A Neverland 
villain must be evil and ridiculous 
in equal measure, and Jackman 
wrangles this formula with car-
toonish intensity. If the whole 
movie had committed to Jack-
man’s silliness, it would have hit a 
higher mark.

 In his opening scene, Jack-

man conducts the orphan slaves 
of Neverland in a roaring rendi-

tion of Nirvana’s “Smells Like 
Teen Spirit”, and the weirdness 
of this directorial choice is imme-
diately smoothed over by the 
deliberate oddity of Jackman’s 
persona. Hedlund uses a more 
devil-may-care formula for (soon-
to-be-Captain) Hook’s swagger. 
Hedlund is less weird and inter-
esting than Jackman, but passably 
successful. The rest of the for-
mulaic cut-outs are questionable 
at best. Blackbeard’s meathead 
minion is a beefy black guy; Smee, 
the take-what-he-can-get traitor, 
is strongly coded as Jewish; Nev-
erland’s native Kung-Fu master 
is a stringy Asian guy, and Mara’s 
native princess, though shiningly 
acted, is as pale as the freshly-
driven snow. Warner Bros casted 
this movie to fit a mold, and we 
would rather have seen that mold 
broken into a million pieces.

 For all the molds “Pan” fills, 

it fails to fill the only hollow that 
really matters, its raison d’être. 
We eschew Aesop Fable movies for 
taking the easy choice, railroad-
ing a fantasy’s moral universe, but 
children’s tales need dense moral 
substance or they drift apart at the 
seams. “Pan” floats on from start 
to finish, unwilling or unable to 
choose a convincing core value, 
and there’s no wind in its sails to 
pull it back to course.

WARNER BROS.

Don’t come near him with a lighter.

ALBUM REVIEW

‘Agent Intellect’ keeps 
Protomartyr rising

By SELENA AGUILERA

For The Daily

Detroit-based band Protomar-

tyr has become the new name in 
the post punk scene. Since starting 
in 2012, they 
have 
become 

wildly appreci-
ated, 
because 

there’s 
just 

something 
about a sad boy 
from a shitty 
neighborhood 
singing 
great 

songs in a shit-
ty bar that’s 
addicting to the ears.

With solid record sales and 

growing popularity, the band 
released a third album on Oct. 9, 
The Agent Intellect. If you could 
imagine a cross breed between 
Joy Division and Cloud Nothings, 
that’s what it sounds like.

No Passion All Technique, Pro-

tomartyr’s debut record, sounded 
more rock ‘n’ roll than post punk. 
Released by Urinal Cake Records, 
No Passion’s guitar resembled 
music found in the ’70s rather than 
modern times. The band switched 
record labels and has been under 
Hardly Art ever since releasing 
their album Under Color of Offi-
cial Right. Each song under Urinal 
Cake held a calming-but-positive 
vibe that differs from the mellow-
but-depressing vibe you get from 
other works under Hardly Art.

In The Agent Intellect, singer 

Joe Casey has a voice that resem-
bles moaning dialogues instead of 
actual singing, haunting the listen-
er with each syllable. Casey holds 
a monotone voice throughout the 
album that reflects the feeling of 
giving up. In “Pontiac 87,” Casey 
states, “There’s no use in being sad 
about it/ What’s the point of crying 
about it?” to emphasize his pas-
sive tone in the songs and his most 
likely passive attitude towards life.

Similarly to Protomartyr’s pre-

vious albums, religious and philo-
sophical undertones are present 
in The Agent Intellect. The song 
“Feast of Stephen,” was inspired 
by the celebration of St. Stephen 
who was the first christian martyr 
(or “Protomartyr”). Coincidence? 
I think not. They also have a song 
named “Boyce or Boice,” which is 
the name of a demon that disrupts 
any electronic technology. But 
what is odd about Protomartyr is 
that the references aren’t meta-
phors to anything emotional or 
spiritual; they are quite literal.

In “Boyce and Boice” there are 

lyrics that simply state, “Electron-
ic malfunction/ The strange opin-
ions from foreign lands,” and then 
it continues with words that I can’t 
make out and that don’t make any 
sense. Maybe I just don’t get the 
deep meaning to this song because 
I have never had an encounter with 
demons that mess up my computer, 
or maybe that deep meaning sim-
ply doesn’t exist. I guess it’s up to 

the listener, which is what music is 
supposed to be about. Pure inter-
pretation.

Despite the weird lyrics and 

monotone vocals, guitarist Greg 
Ahee pulls together each song 
to create a gorgeous flow in the 
album. He hits the strings in all of 
the right places to keep the listen-
er’s interest with each song hold-
ing different components.

The first single from the album, 

“Why Does It Shake,” displays the 
disoriented feeling in their songs. 
It starts out as a slow head-banger 
when Casey states “False happi-
ness is on the rise/ See the victims 
pile high,” building up to a hard-
core sounding thrasher when he 
says “I’m never gonna lose it.” 
The build up releases and the song 
ends with this hypnotic sounding 
chant of “Why does it shake/ The 
body the body/ Why does it move/ 
The fear the fear.” The mood of 
this song and others in The Agent 
Intellect have that wonderful con-
trast in sounds making it a perfect 
album to listen to when you’re lay-
ing in your room, staring at the 
ceiling, thinking about life.

Although The Agent Intellect 

lacks the interesting lyrics present 
in Protomartyr’s first two albums, 
it contains dreamy instrumentals 
that still tug on your heart strings. 
Let’s hope the band releases more 
chill jams and doesn’t follow their 
lyrical chant at the end of “Cow-
ards Starve,” by “going out in style” 
with this album.

B

The Agent 
Intellect 

Protomartyr

Hardly Art

B+

Casual

Series Premiere 
New episodes 
released 
Wednesdays

Hulu

D-

Pan

Warner Bros.

Rave & Quality 16

6A — Friday, October 16, 2015
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

