Classifieds
Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
CHECK OUT OUR COOL
www.michigandaily.com
WEBSITE.
ACROSS
1 Woman who
turns up in Rick’s
gin joint
5 41st or 43rd
president
9 National park in
the Canadian
Rockies
14 __-chef
15 One of Pittsburgh’s
three rivers
16 Like a loud crowd
17 Just swell
19 Itsy-__
20 Generous __ fault
21 Serious romantic
outing
23 Hot beverage
server
26 Personal ad abbr.
27 Sawmill input
28 Pursue and catch
31 South Seas wrap
33 Freshman and sr.
34 Aussie hoppers
36 Affected
coyness, with
“the”
37 Stylist’s
appliance
40 Hot under the
collar
43 Button pressed
for silence
44 Pal of Huck
47 Cellphone
reminders
49 Yosemite granite
formation
52 Dues payer:
Abbr.
53 Chocolate pooch
55 Like Huck and
Yosemite,
nounwise
56 Sitcom with
Richie and the
Fonz
60 Hosp. trauma
centers
61 Outwit
62 Lowe’s rival
66 Ionian Sea island
67 Spellbound
68 Mickey and
Mighty
69 Cheez Whiz
company
70 Shakespearean
villain
71 How many TV
shows are shown,
and a hint to the
seven longest
across answers’
common feature
DOWN
1 “More or less”
suffix
2 Gehrig who
usually batted
after Ruth
3 Baskers’
acquisitions
4 Invite to the
movies, say
5 Gym specimen
6 “Oops!”
7 Father
8 Georgetown
team
9 Youthful
countenance
10 Saharan
11 Very few
12 Slick trick that’s
“pulled”
13 Prepare a
sunny-side-up
breakfast
18 Three feet
22 Bugs and
Rabbits, e.g.
23 Your, of yore
24 Where It.’s at
25 More formal “Me
neither!”
29 Wriggly bait
30 “Ya think?”
32 1921 robot play
35 Span. miss
37 “Ben-__”
38 “Well said”
39 Business review
website
40 Pork knuckle
41 Rigby of Beatles
fame
42 Egg-based paint
44 Some English, at
Wimbledon
45 Cockney abode
46 Body of eau
48 Unhappy
50 Mister Rogers
51 Scale starters
54 Religion
founded in
Persia
57 Drag on a cigar
58 Flexibility-
improving
discipline
59 Urban haze
63 Swelled head
64 Scot’s “Oh my!”
65 Actor Knight
By Bruce Haight
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/03/15
11/03/15
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
DEFENSE OF FACULTY
misconduct cases
Nachtlaw.com 734‑663‑7550
BUSSERS NEEDED AT DG Sorority
House from 10am to 2:30pm Mon‑Fri
and 4:30pm to 7pm Mon‑Fri.
Please contact Kathy at 269‑929‑8474.
TIX ‑ WANTED to Buy
Ohio State FB Call Dave (614) 761‑7653
HORSE FARM
Experienced equestrian needed for light
work around the farm, occ housesit and
look after horses and dogs in exchange for
free rent in new 1 bdrm apt.
15 mi west of campus. Must be upper‑
classman and have own transportation.
Email: jchaconas@ccim.net
WWW.CARLSONPROPERTIES.‑
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24 hour noticed required
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DEFENSE OF STUDENT
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FALL 2016 HOUSES
# Beds Location Rent
9 606 Catherine $5500
7 510 Catherine $4400
6 412 N. Thayer $4350
6 415 N. Thayer $4260
6 418 N. State $4350
6 511 Linden $4200
6 605 E. Hoover $4350
6 605 Catherine $4350
6 708 E. Kingsley $4500
6 716 E. Kingsley $4500
6 1207 Church $4650
5 515 S. Fourth $3500
5 910 Greenwood $4000
5 1019 Packard $4350
5 1024 Packard $3500
4 412 E. William $3020
4 507 Sauer Ct $2800
4 509 Sauer Ct $2800
4 809 Sybil $2800
4 812 E. Kingsley $3000
4 827 Brookwood $2800
4 927 S. Division $2800
4 1010 Cedar Bend $2400
4 1117 S. Forest $3000
3 932 Mary $2200
2 935 S. Division $2100
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TICKETS & TRAVEL
6 — Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
TV REVIEW
Welcome but flawed
‘Supergirl’ premiere
Melissa Benoist
highlights a shaky
first effort
By MATT BARNAUSKAS
Daily Arts Writer
Superheroes are more preva-
lent in media today than ever
before. However, despite the
growing num-
ber
of
film
and television
shows
featur-
ing caped cru-
saders,
very
few have had a
woman as the
central
focus.
While
not
excluded in the
genre,
female
characters are
usually relegated to the sup-
porting cast or serving as mem-
bers of a larger ensemble. Sure,
Scarlett Johansson’s (“Lucy”)
Black Widow is a major member
of the Avengers, but her preva-
lence is overshadowed by the
likes of the franchise-anchor-
ing Iron Man, Thor and Captain
America.
However, with its premiere
on CBS, “Supergirl” puts women
front and center, not just in
the lead but also in several key
roles. While its lack of subtlety
can be jarring, “Supergirl” has a
personable lead in Melissa Ben-
oist (“Whiplash”), in spite of the
show’s early struggles.
As Kara Zor-El, Superman’s
cousin who landed on Earth
several years after her famous
relative,
Benoist
brings
an
infectious energy to the pilot.
Kara wants to make a difference
in the world, yet initially tries to
do it without her powers. Find-
ing herself the assistant to media
mogul Cat Graham (Calista
Flockhart, “Ally McBeal”), Kara
works hard but knows she can
do more.
Once Kara embraces her pow-
ers — after saving a crashing
plane carrying her adoptive sis-
ter, Alex (Chyler Leigh, “Grey’s
Anatomy”) — she finds new-
found purpose. With a beaming
smile and ceaseless enthusiasm,
Benoist displays this transfor-
mation of Kara with a satisfy-
ing charisma comparable to
the optimism of Grant Gustin’s
(“Glee”) portrayal of Barry
Allen on “The Flash.” As Kara
develops her suit with the help
of her friend Winn (Jeremy Jor-
dan, “The Last Five Years”), her
confidence grows as she devel-
ops the powers she has long
repressed.
Benoist’s performance helps
carry “Supergirl” even when
the show begins to drag. It’s
important
to
have
women
anchoring superhero franchis-
es today; addressing this fact
in the pilot isn’t a misstep, but
“Supergirl” doesn’t exactly soar
with the execution. Written
by Ali Adler (“The New Nor-
mal”), the premiere overstuffs
itself with ham-fisted dialogue
meant to emphasize girl-pow-
er. Some attempts work fine
like a woman in the background
expressing her happiness about
a new role model for her daugh-
ter. Also, a speech by Flockhart
about the term “girl” itself has
the subtlety of a jackhammer,
but its point isn’t lost.
However, these moments are
diluted by less than effective
instances of female foreground-
ing. A bland alien villain yell-
ing, “On my planet, females bow
before males,” is groan-worthy.
Winn’s statement to Kara that
“You look really pretty without
your glasses,” is ripped straight
out of cheesy high school movie.
“Supergirl” ’s focus on Kara’s
role as a female superhero stems
from a lack of representation
of comic book heroines on the
screen. However, the show
puts too much of a burden on
itself to illustrate this relation
in its plot, which weighs its
message down. Kara’s female
identity will probably remain
a
central
focus
throughout
the series’ run, as it should,
but “Supergirl” can definitely
find more effective and defter
ways to get its message across.
“Agent Carter,” showed that
comic book settings could look
at issues of sexism and female-
empowerment with a relatively
mature lens, and hopefully
“Supergirl” can continue this
tradition.
“Supergirl” also struggles
in other aspects of its initial
development. A brief sisterly
rivalry between Kara and Alex,
who happens to be a secret
agent, is never fully explained.
Other characters like Cat and
Winn lack defining dimensions,
becoming relatively flat in
their portrayals. Meanwhile,
the whimsy of the pilot, while
enjoyable, can detract from
more dramatic scenes, sparking
a laugh where one shouldn’t be
and preventing any seriousness
from coming across.
However, by bringing Kara
to the forefront and making
Superman a faceless, distant
influence, “Supergirl” is able
to define its heroine’s role.
Kara isn’t just a female ver-
sion to Superman as her name
suggests, but rather, she is a
continuation of a legacy. She’s
a powerful being and a force
to be reckoned with no matter
what gender she is.
“Supergirl” still has some
growing pains to work through
before its full potential and
message are realized. But, with
Benoist anchoring the show in
bright optimism, “Supergirl”
can potentially establish roots
and carve out a place for itself
among the growing retinue of
television superheroes.
B-
Supergirl
Series Pre-
miere
Mondays at 8 p.m.
CBS
‘Supergirl’ puts
women front
and center, in
several key roles.
EVENT PREVIEW
Danish quartet in A2
By DAYTON HARE
For The Daily
The string quartet is one of the
most iconic and enduring genres
in classical music. Its history
stretches back
to the Classical
Period in the
18th
century,
and the quartet
has been ubiq-
uitous
ever
since.
Musi-
cians’ mythos
attribute
the
quartet’s
invention
to
the composer
Joseph Haydn,
but this is not
entirely true — he certainly did
more for it than any of his pre-
decessors, but he wasn’t the first
to write for an ensemble of two
violins, a viola and a cello. Over
the course of his life, however,
Haydn wrote a mystifying quan-
tity of quartets — around 69 — and
when his younger friend Wolf-
gang Mozart took up the pen to
emulate the elder composer, the
genre was permanently affixed to
the tradition of Western Classical
music.
In the centuries following,
nearly every major composer (and
innumerable minor ones) wrote
quartets. Wherever one looks, a
string quartet can be found, often
central in the works of any given
composer; the late quartets of
Beethoven are sometimes ranked
as masterworks on par with the
9th Symphony — the only sur-
viving chamber composition of
Giuseppe Verdi, the great maestro
of Italian opera, is his String Quar-
tet in E minor — when Schoenberg
first revealed his radical theory
of free atonality to the world, he
chose to do it through the medium
of his String Quartet No. 2.
With so many masterworks, it’s
hardly surprising that some of the
best ensembles performing today
are string quartets. For much
the same reason, however, many
ensembles today neglect those
quartets written by contemporary
composers. The quartet that will
be performing in Rackham Audi-
torium on Friday is not one such
negligent ensemble.
The Danish String Quartet is
internationally renowned. Only 75
percent Dane, despite their name
— their cellist is Norwegian — the
four Scandinavians are known for
their superb technical and musical
ability. On Friday, they’ll be pre-
senting a program containing old
favorites of the genre (Haydn and
Beethoven), but also a relatively
new work by respected contem-
porary British composer Thomas
Adès. While one might expect that
string quartets have been writ-
ten for so long now that any new
venture into the genre is bound to
be anachronistic and unoriginal,
Adès’s Arcadiana dispels any such
notion with its enchanting music.
“I had this idea to write this
particular piece about these sort
of imaginary idylls from various
points in art and culture,” Adès
said of Arcadiana in an interview
with The Michigan Daily. “I was
23 or something like that when I
wrote it … It was a period when I
had my first job as composer-in-
residence at the Hallé Orchestra,
in Manchester.”
Adès spent the early part of his
life in London. When he started
his job in Manchester, it was the
furthest he had ever lived from
his home, an experience which
worked its way into Arcadiana.
“I was actually living in the
countryside — again, which was a
first for me, a very remote place —
writing this string quartet,” Adès
said. “I don’t know why I wasn’t
writing orchestral pieces, I think I
just was preferring to write this.”
Conventionally, string quartets
have four movements. However,
for much of the 20th century this
tradition has been regarded by
composers as being more of a sug-
gestion than a rule, and Adès’s
view is no exception.
“There are seven movements (in
Arcadiana), and the second move-
ment is like a kind of electronic
mashup of The Magic Flute (by
Mozart),” Adès said. “The fourth
movement is very much a tango
— I was listening to Pizzola at the
time, as we all were, and I was
enjoying the kind of odd things he
was doing with tango … the sixth
movement has a kind of Elgar
‘ancestry’, I suppose you would say,
to use a very pompous word.”
When talking about the final
movement of the piece, Adès refer-
enced his personal experiences in
Manchester as being a great influ-
ence on it.
“It was a very cold winter … I
remember one morning waking up
and looking out the window, and it
(the cabin where Adès lived) was
surrounded by fields, and it had
snowed during the night — and of
course I had never had that expe-
rience, living in London you don’t
wake up and see a whole white
field of snow. And the last move-
ment was definitely sort of born
that morning.”
In addition to the memory of
that morning, Adès was inspired by
mythology and literature when he
composed the final movement.
“It (the last movement) is called
‘Lethe’ — the river of forgetfulness
in Greek Mythology, where the
departed souls trail their hands
in the water and they forget their
whole life,” Adès said. “And it was
a little from the end of a story by
(James) Joyce, called ‘The Dead,’
which is the last story of ‘Dublin-
ers’, and ends with this beautiful
passage about the snow falling over
all the living and the dead.”
“All the movements have things
like (Adès’s experience with the
snow) associated with them. In that
way … it’s a very personal piece,”
Adès said of Arcadiana.
The piece is also notable for its
technical challenges, employing
several methods of playing not fre-
quently found in older repertoire.
“The quartet who commissioned
it and played the first performance
… the Endellion Quartet … we had
an interesting time in the first
rehearsals,” Adès said. “Because it’s
demanding instrumentally.”
Despite the difficulty of the
piece, it continues to be performed
with some frequency.
“Actually, oddly enough, this
piece is almost one of my most
played
pieces,”
the
composer
remarked. “Many quartets now do
it — like the Danish String Quartet,
who are coming (to the University
of Michigan), and who I just heard
play it in Copenhagen and actu-
ally play it stunningly. And you’ll
see, they make it look easy — and
believe me, it’s not.”
Danish
String
Quartet
Friday, Nov.
6 at 8 p.m.
Rackham
Auditorium
$24-$50
By MELINA GLUSAC
Daily Arts Writer
This week, Daily Music Writers
are looking back on the first albums
they ever loved. Today, Melina
Glusac remembers Regina Spektor’s
Begin to Hope.
The year? 2006. To this fledg-
ling music writer, nothing in the
world housed more promise — more
ecstasy — than the CD section in
Best Buy. I would stroll and stumble,
extending a lanky arm to caress any
shiny plastic jacket that caught my
eye, avoiding the side-eyes of the
half-blue,
half-khaki
employees.
Who was Joni Mitchell? Fifth-grade
Melina didn’t quite know. But she
knew the cover of Blue was cool and
intense and “funky fresh,” as the
incomparable 2006-Ciara would
say, and that was good enough.
So you can imagine my surprise
upon noticing nifty cover art and
an artist’s name I recognized —
that elusive duo — one day in Best
Buy. I remembered Regina Spektor
from VH1’s weekly music count-
downs (yes, I am 85 years old), and I
remembered how much I loved her
song, “Fidelity.” It, of course, was on
the album I had in my hand — but
it was also the only song I knew off
the album. After 10 minutes of con-
templation, Fall Out Boy’s Infinity
on High in one hand, pure doubt in
the other, I decided to purchase this
doubt, this Begin to Hope thing, too.
Hey, maybe all the other songs on
it would be as catchy as “Fidelity.”
Little Mel decided to carpe diem.
I got home, grabbed a book about
Paris and sat down to listen. Cue all
clichéd descriptions of first experi-
encing a piece of art that changes
your life. Tears, joy, sorrow, rejuve-
nation, blah. Good? Okay. Now onto
the more vital (nerdy) stuff:
When we delve further into
Begin to Hope, we find its façade
of semi-pop piano tunes is not at
all evocative of Spektor’s depth.
So we tear that down listen after
listen, and find that she tickles the
ivories like no other, but — unlike
her contemporaries — the tickling
technique differs stunningly with
each song. “Fidelity” (still one of
my favorite music videos) employs a
choppy, kitschy style and juxtapos-
es the fluidity of “20 Years of Snow.”
Spektor’s punk tendencies shine
in “That Time,” which is fun and
sexual and weird (“Hey, remem-
ber that time when you OD’d? Hey,
remember that other time when
you OD’d, for the second time?”).
And no one does slow like ReS-
pekt. “Samson” rips me to shreds
with every listen, as its Biblically-
infused lyrics continue to feed new
meanings, metaphors and bits of
poignant imagery. “Field Below” is
a diamond in the rough, but soulful
— and soul, I’ve come to find, is Spe-
ktor’s forte. Her love of jazz beams
in “Lady,” a wink at Billie Holiday,
complete with a smoky, Sonny
Rollins-esque sax solo. Then there’s
“Summer In The City,” my favorite,
favorite, favorite. No words here
— it’s all in the feeling, the slight
slur in her speech, the desperation.
Someone stop me, please.
Begin to Hope was everything to
me, then and now. I mark it as the
beginning of a “musical awaken-
ing,” an era I’ll probably live in my
whole life: where music reigns and
I am its voyager, venturing to for-
eign lands in search of fiery mix-
tapes and the cure for heartbreak.
Hope also started a lifelong love
affair with Regina Spektor, whom I
regard as one of the best songwrit-
ers of our generation. It exposed me
to her brilliant discography (special
shout outs to Soviet Kitsch and Far).
I cried Kim Kardashian-style at her
Detroit concert my sophomore year
of high school. Her lyrics pop into
my head almost every day, at ran-
dom times. But, most importantly
and existentially, she’s there: The
CD section at Best Buy is almost
gone, but Spektor will be with me
always.
Love and hope
MUSIC NOTEBOOK