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

