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November 30, 2015 - Image 5

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The Michigan Daily

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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, November 30, 2015 — 5A

ACROSS
1 Beatle Paul’s first
wife
6 Second-string
squad
11 Tummy muscles
14 Lunchbox
cookies
15 Hardship
16 “Nope”
17 Started to sneeze
and cough, say
19 Org. promoting
hunter safety
20 Basil or
rosemary
21 IV monitors
22 Honor __ thieves
24 Musical Apple
26 Exposed
28 Really worked
hard
34 Critter that sleeps
floating on its
back
35 National Anthem
starter
36 Kitten cry
37 Gen-__: post-
baby boomers
38 Camera setting
40 Wait
41 Small S.A.
country
42 Red Sox star
Big __
43 Panama divider
44 Paid for
everyone’s
dinner
48 Exhausted
49 Fit for sainthood
50 Catcher’s
position
52 Holiday tree
53 Rock’s Mötley __
57 Continent north
of Afr.
58 Taken away in
handcuffs ... and
a hint to the
starts of 17-, 28-
and 44-Across
62 Aragon aunt
63 Argue the
opposing
viewpoint
64 Hit half of a
record
65 Home of the
Cardinals: Abbr.
66 Small and
glittering, like
eyes
67 Terminate the
mission

DOWN
1 Scot’s swimming
spot
2 “Dies __”: hymn
3 Nerve: Pref.
4 Wounds from an
aggressive pooch
5 Silvery gray
6 Godfather
portrayer
7 Muscle twitches
8 Self-image
9 “You’ve got mail”
company
10 Elizabeth
Bennet’s suitor in
“Pride and
Prejudice”
11 In the year of the
Lord, in dates
12 Farm building
13 Layered haircut
18 Walked
23 “Not so great”
25 According to
26 Kiss from Carlos
27 “Do it yesterday!”
on memos
28 Pack in cartons
29 Wombs
30 Like earthquake
damage
31 Inept waiter’s
comeuppance
32 Foot-operated
lever

33 “Peachy!”
38 Gradually vanish
39 Tater
40 Nursery furniture
with bars
42 Bother
43 Animation frame
45 Seoul-based
Soul maker
46 Minimum age for
a U.S. senator
47 Jewish wedding
dance
50 Tennis divisions

51 Give notice
52 Animosity
spanning
decades
54 Change the
decor of
55 __-friendly
56 State, in France
59 Wedding page
word
60 Corp. alias
letters
61 Pretoria’s land:
Abbr.

By Don Rosenthal
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/30/15

11/30/15

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Monday, November 30, 2015

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

Classifieds

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Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com

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PARKING

Wanting to be
Brian Wilson

I

used to think the Beach
Boys’s story ended after
1967, when Brian Wilson

suffered a mental breakdown
while trying to complete a
follow-up to Pet Sounds. I
thought the
’70s were a
black hole
for the band,
a period of
time when
none of its
members
did much
of anything
until they
somehow
reemerged
on the oldies
circuit in
the ’80s. The ’80s and beyond
being the time when The Beach
Boys were Reagan’s favorite
band, released “Kokomo” and
played ridiculously huge shows
on the National Mall on the
fourth of July — the time when
they nearly destroyed all their
artistic credibility.

So I used to think the

recording sessions of what was
supposed to be Smile were the
last gasp of a great band before
they became symbolic and sad,
and that made the products of
those sessions tantalizingly
exciting. There’s a point in
the piano ballad “Surf’s Up”
where Brian Wilson sings his
impressionistic lyrics faster
and faster, shoving words
together as he goes, “The glass
was raised, the fired-roast /
The fullness of the wine, the
dim last toasting,” in his high-
pitched voice. Then, much
more slowly, Wilson sings, “A
choke of grief heart hardened
I / Beyond belief a broken man
too tough to cry” with all the
weight of this project on his
vocal chords, all the terrifying
pressures and wonderful
ambitions of trying to make
tangible the sounds he hears
in his head, of attempting to
create the greatest album of
all time. That moment was
like sand running through my
fingers — less than 30 seconds
of absolute beautiful perfection
that never really came to full
fruition.

But as it turns out, the

’70s weren’t really the dark
ages for the quintessential
American band. I don’t have
to imagine what it would’ve
been like had Brian Wilson
continued to make music
with the Beach Boys, because
there’s a run of relatively little-
known, commercially not very
successful records that the
band did in the decade after
Pet Sounds. A lot of it is terrible
— like the lazy, drugged-out
covers of old standards on
1976’s 15 Big Ones — some of
it has strong critical standing
— like 1971’s Surf’s Up, which
actually does include a version
of its brilliant title track — but
to me, the most fascinating
Beach Boys recording of this
entire decade is 1977’s Love
You.

Love You is an alternately

hilarious, horrifying and
thrilling journey through
whatever Brian Wilson was
thinking at the time. From
the very beginning, just five
seconds into “Let Us Go On
This Way,” it already feels like
somebody forgot to add more
to the backing track, with Carl
Wilson seemingly abandoned
by the drums and organ, left
out to dry with just the bass of
a synthesizer. But somehow,
it works — by the time all the

other Beach Boys come in on
vocals, “Let Us Go On This
Way” has transformed into
a stellar lead-off number, an
energizing joy.

I have no idea how Brian

Wilson got the other Beach
Boys to go along with this
record. I almost imagine him
with a devious grin on his
face in the recording studio
as he watches Mike Love —
notorious for resisting many
of Brian’s groundbreaking
ideas in the ’60s — lay down
the vocal track for “Johnny
Carson,” with lines like “he
speaks in such a manly tone.”
Then there’s Brian’s slipshod
“Solar System,” which isn’t
so much a song as it is what
you would get if you took a
six-year-old who liked planets
and plopped him in front of a
piano. But Love You also has
“Love is a Woman,” a touching,
tender, last call song, “Roller
Skating Child,” a throwback
to the early ’60s Beach Boys
singles, and “Good Time,”
this complexly arranged,
deceptively catchy track with
faux horns augmenting its
choppy chorus. Love You is
awesome because it dares you
to hate it while knowing you’re
going to keep coming back for
more.

What’s especially amazing

about Love You, though,
is its prescience. It totally
anticipates new wave
experiments, arty bands like
Talking Heads and synth-pop
in general years before they
hit the mainstream. Love You
is the work of musicians who
just have too much talent
to make anything bad. It’s a
Nobel-Prize winning physicist
drunkenly stumbling out of a
bar at 2 a.m., still able to solve
equations you could never hope
to understand. It’s enthralling
madness, frustrating as
hell because there’s so
much junk and yet so much
transcendence.

And Love You is actually

my second huge, mind-
blowing discovery of Beach
Boys material. The typical
progression of understanding
for most music lovers initially
marks the Beach Boys as the
guys who did “Surfin’ USA”
and “California Girls” — great
bubblegum pop singles — but
then you listen to Pet Sounds
in its entirety or you hear
“Good Vibrations” and realize
they’re truly one of the all-time
greats. And now, their story has
become even more interesting
to me as I try to navigate the
part-trainwreck, part-glorious-
epiphany period that is their ’70s.

But you might be wondering

why the Beach Boys story is
even relevant in 2015, and
that’s fair — songs about
taking pretty girls out on the
California beach might not
mean a lot to a large group
of people. Hell, they don’t
even mean much to me. But,
for myself and many others,
the Beach Boys are the band
that most reflects old-school
America and its culture, and to

get under the surface of their
work and uncover as much
as we can is to discover more
about ourselves and the lives
we live.

The Beach Boys are one of

the best bands for constant re-
listening because what’s going
on beyond the music is always
wild. There’s almost-painful
nostalgia and idealism in the
early work, incomprehensible
genius in the middle period,
a mental breakdown, then an
uncomfortable, uneven burn-
out and now, unfulfilling com-
fort. And as self-absorbed as
this sounds, I see myself in all
of this. No, I have no fucking
clue how Carl Wilson pulled
off that heart-bursting vocal on
“God Only Knows.” I can’t even
begin to explain how some-
thing like “Fun, Fun, Fun” or
“Help Me, Rhonda” works. But
as I’m writing, and even just
as I’m living my everyday life,
I want to be Brian Wilson. I
want to think up impossibly
huge ideas and break my brain
while I’m trying to stretch the
limits of what’s possible to
make them reality.

But I hope I’m not quite

there yet. I’d like to think
that I’m slowly making my
way toward Pet Sounds, some
piece of work that I help cre-
ate that leaves a lasting mark
on people, that does some sort
of positive good for the world.
I’m listening to and studying
the Beach Boys so much right
now because the mystery and
brilliance of what they did
deserves obsessive attention
— needs it, even, if I want to
figure out its secret. And if I do
follow that path, whatever it is
that I do, I just have to hold out
hope that the people I love will
still indulge me enough when I
crash and start to flail around
wildly so that I can somehow
hit upon Love You.

Theisen is lying in bed just

like Brian Wilson did. To praise

BnL for their very accurate lyrics,

e-mail ajtheis@umich.edu.

ADAM

THEISEN

FILM REVIEW
‘Mockingjay’ offers
satisfying conclusion

By RACHEL RICHARDSON

For The Daily

Though my “Hunger Games”-

crazed friends can spend hours
debating whether Peeta or Gale is
Katniss’s true
soulmate, they
can all agree
that
“Mock-

ingjay” is by
far the most
disappointing
novel of the
series. Despite
the
novel’s

failure
to

deliver
the
con-

clusion
read-

ers
desired,

the film adap-
tation turns this rather subpar
material into a powerful and
impactful ending to the fran-
chise.

Picking up where the first

“Mockingjay”
film
left
off,

“Mockingjay — Part 2” details
Katniss’s (Jennifer Lawrence,
“X-Men: Days of Future Past”)
journey as she transitions from
being a pawn in villain Presi-
dent Snow’s (Donald Sutherland,
“Forsaken”) game to playing by
her own rules, leading a military
revolt against the Capital. This
daunting task is both emotionally
and physically grueling. The root
of her emotional stress is Peeta’s
(Josh Hutcherson, “Red Dawn”)
mental instability, Gale’s (Liam
Hemsworth, “The Dressmaker”)
questionable
motivations
and

actions and, of course, the taunts
of President Snow. Always the
epitome of a strong female pro-
tagonist, Katniss runs, jumps
and roundhouse kicks her way to
the Capital. With her resurgence
of inner strength, determination
and the help of her mostly loyal
friends, the odds, for once, are
strongly in her favor.

Among all the reasons fans

complain about “Mockingjay,”
the one they most passionately
rage about is its predictability.
Collins’s choice of words fails
to deliver the much needed sus-
pense to keep readers intrigued.

While Director Francis Law-
rence (“Water for Elephants”) is
able to hold viewers’ attention
with the rapid succession of shots
taken from a variety of angles,
these quick transitions make it
impossible to think about what
could possibly happen next when
you’re still processing what just
happened two seconds ago. His
use of shadows also effectively
enhances the suspenseful mood
by making it impossible to dis-
cern what is going to attack the
team next, and when.

Authors can write effectively

enough that readers can form
a deep connection with one, or
many characters, but nothing
compares to seeing real people’s
interactions
and
expressions

of emotion. In the novel, Peeta
just seems like a whiny guy with
some mental issues. In his best
“Hunger Games” performance
yet, Hutchinson showcases the
true struggle Peeta goes through
as he slowly transitions from his
drugged delusion and enters
the real world. He is often seen
gripping his head in frustration,
and is obsessed with asking his
comrades whether certain facts
or memories are “real” or “not
real.” Peeta’s audible discom-
fort along with the close-up
shots revealing his pained facial
expressions allow us to feel the
same sense of vexation and con-
fusion he does.

Of course, it’s impossible to

review any “Hunger Games”
film without discussing about
Katniss. With words more sig-
nificant than the threat of a
bullet, she’s able to effectively
change the minds of the brain-
washed opposition, and, even
more impressively, her foil Peeta.
Indeed, Katniss has what many
girls want — two very attractive
men fighting for her love — but
(unlike a certain other popular
young adult franchises) choos-
ing between them is the least
of her worries. By placing her
focus on destroying the notori-
ous President Snow and improv-
ing the overall quality of life for
everyone in Panem, she helps the
film pass the Bechdel test with
flying colors. Further enhancing
this film’s emphasis on the femi-
nist ideology is the fact that the
three most powerful leaders are
all female — Katniss, self pro-
claimed “president” of the reb-
els Coin (Julianne Moore, “Still
Alice”) and Commander Paylor
(Patina Miller, “Madame Secre-
tary”).

While Tributes (an oddly dark

name for the series’ obsessed
fans) are often overjoyed when
their eyes finally glance over the
last word of “Mockingjay,” they
may be heartbroken as the end
credits appear on screen, signify-
ing the conclusion of a woman’s
quest to change the world.

A-

The Hunger
Games:
Mockingjay
Part 2

Rave &
Quality 16

Lionsgate
LIONSGATE

Where’s Bradley Cooper?

I’m trying to
stretch the

limits of what’s

possible.

DAILY ARTS:

“WE’RE LIKE SPORTS,

BUT WITH GAY PEOPLE”

E-mail arts@michigandaily.com for

information on applying.

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