The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Thursday, April 14, 2016 — 6
ACROSS
1 Tousle
5 F and G, e.g.
10 Soaks (up)
14 Bad thing to be
caught in
15 Spells
16 Virginie, par
exemple
17 “Need You
Tonight” band
18 Start of an old
news
announcement
20 Frequent
Lemmon co-star
22 Chimney
23 Dublin-born poet
24 AWOL trackers
26 Tiny
27 Shine, in
Cambridge
29 Ammunition
dumps
31 Request to Sajak
32 Stipulation on le
menu
34 Numerical prefix
36 Progressive
pitcher?
37 When there’s no
turning back
41 Where gas and
lodging may be
found
46 Tulsa sch.
47 Brings to light
50 Pitcher, for one
52 Cambodia’s
Lon __
53 Enzyme suffix
54 Moisten, in a way
55 Northeastern
octet
57 Old but coveted
60 Nachos, e.g.
64 Peach __
65 Landed
66 Ken Jenkins’
“Scrubs” role
67 CVI halved
68 Old map divs.
69 “Dallas” Miss
70 North-of-the-
border gas
DOWN
1 Injure badly
2 Radius neighbor
3 Historic Chicago-
to-Santa Monica
route
4 Largish combo
5 Proctor’s concern
6 Infiniti competitor
7 No. after a phone
no.
8 Not agin
9 Fed. benefits
agency
10 Stimulating
message
11 Senators’ home
12 Part of UPS
13 Betting
specifications
19 County bordering
Suffolk
21 Dwell annoyingly
(on)
24 “Fantastic” Dahl
character
25 Initials on a radial
27 “Well, __-di-dah!”
28 Lyon article
29 Weigh station
counts
30 Composer Rorem
33 “__ shoe fits ... ”
35 Literary
assortment
38 When translated
to English, beer
brand that hints
at the common
feature of the five
other longest
puzzle answers
39 “We __
Marshall”: 2006
film
40 Brynner of
filmdom
42 Wipe off
43 Some Cadillacs
44 Scott classic
45 Try
47 Hall of Fame
Colts
quarterback
48 Grisham output
49 Potion
51 Suppress
54 Low voices
56 First responders,
initially
58 Israeli arms
59 Opera star
Pinza
61 Classic Jag
62 “Small Wonder”
state: Abbr.
63 In need of
treatment
By Mike Peluso
©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
04/14/16
04/14/16
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Thursday, April 14, 2016
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
HAPPY THURSDAY!
Enjoy the Sudoku
on page 2
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The best lessons of a
Screen Arts degree
By LAUREN WOOD
Daily Arts Writer
This could be the last time I
write about film.
After four years of film studies,
I’m left feeling a bit lost. Looking
out into the real world, I see a wide
range of careers that are exciting
and bright and possible — I see
many less that match up with the
knowledge base I’ve spent my col-
lege career building. So I’m left
wondering, where is the value in
what I’ve spent my time in Ann
Arbor learning? When will I find
the purpose in watching every
single movie with a (maybe too)
Freudian lens? Is it worth four
years of tuition to be able to detect
the Truffaut reference in a Child-
ish Gambino lyric? Do I sound pre-
tentious when I refer to movies as
“films?”
Boiling down all of the test-
cramming,
paper-writing,
big-book-reading and class-dis-
cussion-navigating, I can really
only come up with two main ideas.
One: Film is everything around us,
all-encompassing and reflective.
Two: Our opinions are the most
and least important part.
It’s an upside-down and inside-
out and very non-deductively valid
argument. But I’m going to try.
Premise one: Everything we are
is reflected in film. Give people a
camera, a projector and time, and
they have the tools to explain to
anyone watching what makes up
the important stuff of their lives.
We tend to think of the world from
our classic, Hollywood-centric
bubble, but there is a national
cinema to represent nearly every
country and an identifiable impor-
tance in doing so. In the 1960s, the
French government initiated a
program that paid screenwriters
big money just to write a script and
potentially shoot it. Documenting
their young people’s voices and
exporting them to the world as an
image of what it was to be French
was a national priority. In Nazi
Germany, Soviet Russia and early
Communist China, propaganda
film schools sprung up with gov-
ernment funding. The power of
moving images was recognized
as an invincibly strong force in
regimes known most for their
extreme violence. Writing with
your camera, referred to in some
theory as the caméra-stylo, gives
a somewhat invisible strength to
those filming, wielded both posi-
tively and negatively.
Premise two: Our opinions
towards a given film are the most
and least important part. No type
of movie is objectively better than
another, and no matter what you
think, it’s impossible to distill what
we see on screen in terms of what’s
“good” or “bad.” I’m one of the
worst offenders of this. As a film
critic, I spend my movie-watching
time judging what works and what
doesn’t, what you should like or
disown, what letter grade to give a
work that people have spent years
of effort and millions of dollars on.
But in the end, everyone’s a
critic. The reasons you like or dis-
like a movie are entirely personal,
and it’s futile to judge those that
have won awards or had successful
runs at the box office as inherently
better or smarter. I once watched
acclaimed writer Nick Delbanco
be unable to control his loud laugh
through an entire screening of
“Clueless.” I’ve learned my most
valuable lessons from professors
who spend years analyzing big
ideas, like the impact of nations’
underground cinema movements
on colonialism, and then easily
turn around and geek out over the
latest “Transformers” blockbuster.
Films hold the value we impart
on them. They give us a lens into
ourselves, and yes, maybe some
are uncomfortable and scary and
weird. But there’s a reason you
feel this way, so let’s explore it.
Filmmaking is such an exciting
mix of the most basic, traditional
storytelling and the wildest, most
advanced technology, so let’s do
whatever we want with it. There is
no such thing as a guilty pleasure
movie, so let’s watch everything.
Looking at these ideas, I think
I’ve come to the conclusion that,
like many degrees, the value in
studying film lies primarily in the
ability to learn. The film major at
the University of Michigan is not
called a film major; it’s deemed
“Screen Arts and Cultures.” It took
me a while to figure out why this
was. Film teaches us that there is
no sense of normal in the world,
and that our personal backgrounds
each represent only one of a world
of experiences. By watching and
digesting the images on screen,
we learn how to learn from other
cultures, people, lives. We revise
our idea of what it is to see, we dip
through different time periods
and nations on screen, we spin
into trails of thought and connec-
tion we never before thought to try
and understand. And hopefully, all
this watching equips us to handle
an equally unexpected world. I’m
pretty sure I’m ready for that.
FILM NOTEBOOK
‘Shameless’ finale
can’t tie the knot
Sixth season of
Showtime series
ends on down note
By SHIR AVINADAV
Daily Arts Writer
“Shameless” doesn’t shy away
from darkness. In fact, it embrac-
es it. The Gallagher family’s mis-
fortune, and
their
abil-
ity to bear
it in some
of the most
unimagi-
nable ways,
is central to
the
series.
The
season
finale is no
exception to this theme. How-
ever, the execution falls flat.
With each finale comes time
to reflect on the trajectory the
lives of each character have
taken. And this season, their
stories have diverged quite a bit
from one another, furthering
the narrative from what holds
it all together — the family’s
relationship. Lip (Jeremy Allen
White,
“Afterschool”)
works
his way down a self-destructive
path at college. Frank (Wil-
liam H. Macy, “Fargo”) is pre-
occupied with his old flame
Queenie (Sherilyn Fenn, “Twin
Peaks”). Ian pursues a career
as an E.M.T. alongside his new,
surprisingly normal boyfriend
Caleb (Jeff Pierre, “Drumline: A
New Beat”). Debbie (Emma Ken-
ney, “Epic”) veers out on her own
to look after her baby. The fam-
ily has become a decentralized
unit with Fiona (Emmy Rossum,
“The Phantom of the Opera”)
left desperately trying to anchor
it down in time for her wedding.
Every once in a while, Fiona
catches a break — an opportu-
nity to be happy without having
to consider anyone else’s needs
but her own. Sean (Dermot Mul-
roney, “The Grey”) serves as not
only her break, but as a source of
comfort to guide Fiona through
the aftermath of her imprison-
ment, arguably her lowest point
in the series. Though his pres-
ence provides a sense of stability
in the constant flux that is the
lives of the series’s characters,
he brings his own set of prob-
lems to the table. A former drug
addict, Sean must deal with the
consequences of his harrowing
past while building a relation-
ship with Fiona.
Though Sean hired Ian (Cam-
eron Monaghan, “The Giver”)
when no one else would and
helped Carl (Ethan Cutkosky,
“The Unborn”) cut his ties with
a neighborhood gang, Fiona’s
fear that he’ll fall off the wagon
lurks in the part of her mind that
tells her she can’t have a happy,
stable relationship. This anxiety
is understandable, given her pat-
tern of falling into doomed rela-
tionships. When the two hastily
decide to get married, we can’t
help but feel that Fiona is headed
towards yet another letdown.
This feeling pervades the pre-
nuptial bliss that Fiona and Sean
artificially act out — buying wed-
ding bands, taking dance les-
sons and discussing their future
lives together. Her eager wed-
ding preparations seem stilted,
almost too happy — as if we’re
being strung along to believe
their wedding will go as planned
even though (given the show’s
history), we know it likely won’t.
This feeling defines the show’s
appeal. Its ability to draw us into
its story, forge our attachment
to its characters, then snatch it
all out from under us just often
enough to instill a nagging sense
that at any moment anything can
take a turn for the worse.
And then it does.
Frank comes barreling in to
the ceremony with the news that
Sean is still using. Fiona’s devas-
tated, Sean’s relationship with
his son is irreparably strained
and Frank is once again happily
the root of all this. The subtle
poignancy of this tragic moment
for the show’s protagonist con-
trasts with the building tension
leading up to it — as we’re led to
believe Frank is going to kill Sean
when he buys a gun earlier in
the episode. Even the beginning
of the episode conveys a drasti-
cally different tone through its
slow camera movements, which
slowly pan through the Galla-
gher house as Frank urinates
in Sean’s shoes and steals his
money.
Frank’s irrational longing to
destroy Sean after a showdown
between the two in Fiona’s home
is like nothing we’ve ever seen
of his character. His motivation,
usually a greedy, alcohol-fueled
lust for some self-serving out-
come, is unclear. Whether he’s
stung that his family is finally
refusing to put up with his ego-
tistical antics or has his daugh-
ter’s interests at heart is blurry.
Regardless, his actions carry the
impact they always do — a mud-
dled trail of heartbreak and
devastation. And just like that,
a relationship we’ve been root-
ing for all season is curtly put
to an end. The most disappoint-
ing part of it is that Sean doesn’t
even try to explain himself or
win her back. He simply subsides
into the long list of disappoint-
ments that characterize Fiona’s
love life.
The finale ends with one of
the most pivotal questions in the
story: what’s Lip going to do?
His slow decline down Frank’s
alcoholic path culminates in a
meltdown that’s been a long time
coming. In each episode, we only
glimpse a small misstep on Lip’s
way to completely screwing up
his life. The impending feeling
that Lip is going to end up back
where he worked so hard to
get away from creeps up on us
throughout the season. Though
it isn’t surprising that Lip is
the root of his own undoing, it
raises the question: “why now?”
His self destructive behavior
has always been one of his most
salient traits, one that is put to
the test when his professor pays
for him to go to rehab. However,
we are left with him standing
outside — whether he goes in or
not is question to be answered by
the next season.
The season finale is a disap-
pointing end to an even more
disappointing
season.
The
series seems to have run Frank’s
course. The dramatic tension
he provides is arbitrary, and at
times even frustrating. By lead-
ing Frank through the motions
of preparing to kill Sean, then
destroying his relationship with
Fiona in one fell swoop instead,
the show points to its own des-
perate attempt to produce a
compelling ending that leaves
the characters reeling yet again.
Rather than sharply honing in
on a dramatic plot point with the
greatest potential to develop into
the next season, the show lazily
repeats past narratives and kicks
down its protagonist once again
— this time, with seemingly
nowhere to move forward.
SHOWTIME
“It’s okay. You can still watch season one on DVD.”
FILM REVIEW
B-
Shameless
Season 6 Finale
Sundays at 9 p.m.
Showtime