ENJOY
YOUR
BREAK!
FREE TIME
Classifieds
Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
ACROSS
1 Temporary
shelter
5 Boeing product
8 Blue hue
13 Decor finish?
14 Mediocre
15 Stuffy-sounding
16 Comparatively
frugal
18 Apple products
19 Prepares to sail,
maybe
20 Common fall
hiree
22 Extinct emu-like
bird
23 Campus military
org.
25 Member of the
flock
29 Word with light or
shade
31 Idle
33 Tavern offering
34 For example
36 Baldwin of
“Beetlejuice”
37 Go beyond
fudging
38 Same old same
old
39 Tussaud’s title:
Abbr.
40 Tried to outrun
42 Poetic
contraction
43 NFL sportscaster
Collinsworth
45 Sticks for drum
majors
46 Mo. or Miss.
47 Rwanda native
48 Desktop graphic
49 “Word Freak”
author Fatsis
51 President
between Tyler
and Taylor
53 To boot
56 More than
annoys
58 Name of 14
popes
60 Mimicry
63 Sign, as a
contract
65 Actress
Zellweger
66 Looked at
67 Store in a hold
68 Finishing nails
69 Poll fig.
70 “Around the
Horn” channel
DOWN
1 Jazz pianist Art
2 Prefix with
musicology
3 Bell-shaped
graphic
4 Charlie’s Angels,
e.g.
5 Support beam
6 L.A.-to-Tucson
dir.
7 Legal wrong
8 Treat in a box
with a circus
wagon design
9 Speedy
10 “Force Behind
the Forces” tour
gp.
11 “Totally cool,
dude!”
12 Raised railroads
14 Barbershop
bands?
17 District attorney’s
filing
21 Couture
magazine
24 Figuratively,
stops talking ...
or, literally, what
are hidden in this
puzzle’s four
longest answers
26 Dissatisfied sorts
27 Not of this world
28 Prerequisites
30 “Caught you!”
32 Spanish cheer
34 Plaintiffs
35 Start of a fitness
motto
39 Cambridge univ.
41 Words on Volume
One, maybe
44 Mystic character
45 Handed the
check, say
50 Cited, in a way
52 4-Down plus five
54 In first place
55 “All or Nothing”
boy band
57 Leak slowly
59 __-en-scène:
stage setting
60 Wall St. trader
61 Pricing word
62 __ nutshell
64 Home of LGA
and JFK
By Lonnie Burton and Nadine Anderton
©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/23/16
11/23/16
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, November 23, 2016
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
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6A — Wednesday, November 23, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
The
year
is
2100.
After
discovering
the
root
of
intelligence,
humans
have
created
not
just
artificially
intelligent
androids,
but
truly
intelligent
androids.
Not only that, but
these androids, like
ourselves in the current day, have
begun to struggle with cell-phone
addiction and an obsession with
social media. A small subset of
these anthropomorphic, sentient
robots have begun making music
as a way of both embracing and
denouncing the reliance of the
general populace on technology.
This is the music that London-
based
label
PC
Music
has
produced since its founding in
2013. The formerly independent
label, now “partnered” — the
nature of this partnership hasn’t
been clarified to the public — with
Columbia Records, is fueled by
absurdity. It is the manifestation
of pop taken to its logical
extreme, making it, in some ways,
more social experiment than
sonic experiment, if the two can
be separated.
Sonically,
the
PC
Music
mindset
is
one
that
aims
for
instant
gratification
and
more-or-less
unprecedented
experimentation
in
equal
measure.
The
immediately
melodic, dance-floor-ready beats
of A.G. Cook and label-member
Danny L. Harle juxtapose the
abrasive
electro-grunge
of
Felicita,
whose
most
recent
EP feels more like a discarded
Oneohtrix Point Never release
than anything else the label has
released to date.
Though tracks vary widely in
terms of melodic accessibility
and the particular organization
of sound, the sound itself has
remained constant through PC
Music’s brief lifetime. Every song
has a distinctly plastic finish, and
synths reign supreme, with songs
generally featuring pitch-shifted,
heavily auto-tuned, and usually
female voices; however, PC Music
has become less
insistent on these
features
with
the singles on PC
Music, Vol. 2.
If
PC
Music,
Vol. 1 was a work
of
introduction
and self-discovery,
then
PC
Music,
Vol. 2 is label-founder Cook (and
company) in full stride. With
features by Noonie Bao and Carly
Rae Jepsen — neither aggressively
auto-tuned — it feels now more
than ever as though PC Music is
on the cusp of breaking into the
pop mainstream.
The irony of this, of course,
is
that
PC
Music
serves
fundamentally as a criticism
of pop music, the genre it
simultaneously and unashamedly
channels.
From
the
self-
indulgent, overtly sexual work of
GFOTY (Girlfriend of the Year)
to
Hannah
Diamond’s
more
introspective singles, it’s clear
that PC Music is aiming to craft
some sort of cultural and social
criticism. Like the initials “PC” in
the label’s name, however, we the
listeners are left more or less in
the dark as to “what it all means.”
While the mystery surrounding
the label’s name itself seems
more or less purely aesthetic,
PC Music is truly enigmatic in
nature. Early in the collective’s
lifetime, there was significant
media speculation about whether
Hannah Diamond was and is
a real person, rather than just
a
hyper-polished
computer-
generated avatar. Many of the
label’s
contributors’
identities
— such as Felicita, easyFun, and
Life Sim, just to name those on
this particular compilation — are
left ambiguously up in the air
and, especially early in the label’s
existence, Cook was notoriously
stingy about giving interviews.
Perhaps
this
reluctance
to engage and interact with
the media was just one more
contributor
to
some
yet-
unclarified statement. Perhaps
Cook simply wanted to be sure
the project had secured itself
before exporting anything other
than music. Whatever the case
may have been, on Vol. 2 this label
seems either more self-assured
or more aware of its goals. With
the
respective
successes
of
Harle’s “Broken Flowers” and
Cook’s “Beautiful,” PC Music was
forced to open itself up, and its
recent collaboration with Charli
XCX and current partnership
with
Columbia
Records
are
strong indications that they are
ready to do just that. Now, PC
Music is balancing accessibility
— “Supernatural,” “Monopoly,”
“Broken Flowers” — with more
pointed commentary such as
“Fade Away,” “Poison,” “Hi.”
On “Fade Away” and “Hi,” the
most lyrically valuable tracks
of PC Music, Vol. 2, Hannah
Diamond reflects on relationships
in the modern day and age. On
“Fade
Away,”
she
questions
whether “it’s me you like / Or the
way I make you feel / Alive / But
so dead inside,” while “Hi” finds
Diamond playing one half of a
relationship conducted purely
over the internet. Here, in some
of the most poignant lyrics in
a PC Music song to date, she
questions how people choose to
portray themselves in a certain
way online: “Feels like I miss you
/ But is it really the real you? / You
say you’re as real as it gets / What
do you mean?”
PC Music is still young, and it’s
difficult to say with any degree
of certainty who the producers
behind the music — Harle, Cook,
GFOTY and Diamond — really
are, but with the release of PC
Music, Vol. 2, one thing is certain:
these young Londoners either
embody the future of pop music
or are the earliest heralds of its
demise as we know it. Whichever
turns out to be the case, it’s hard
not to be excited.
‘PC Music’ is the sound of
futuristic, pure pop power
SEAN LANG
Daily Arts Writer
The London-based label aims for both satire and pleasure
ALBUM REVIEW
FILM REVIEW
Sometimes it can feel like
moviegoers
are
divided
into
two camps: the
casual viewer and
the
enlightened
critic.
Popular
knowledge tells us
viewers hate the
pretentiousness
of the critics and
critics turn their
noses down at the
crass sensibilities of the audiences.
Wars have raged (okay, not really,
but many angry articles have been
written over this, so the point still
stands) over who movies are truly
made for — the analysts or Joe
Normal.
At their worst, most strawman
form,
casual
viewers
deride
any form of analytic thought
or
non-mainstream
cinema
as
pretentious,
and
critics
dismiss popular movies at the
outset simply because of their
widespread appeal.
This problem comes to a head
with foreign films. Derided as
boring and deeply depressing,
they’re often thought to cater
only to the tastes of the most
pretentious of moviegoers, critics
and that one dude in your English
class who insists on calling movies
“films” and has really strong
opinions about how music died
the day Britney Spears released
her first single. Some aspects of
this perception are fairly earned.
Captial-F
Foreign
Films
can
very easily be dull, meandering,
pretentious and sad. But of course,
so can American films.
No matter where the film
originated, though, the idea that
a movie is somehow more artful
or important just because it’s sad,
slow or subtitled is mostly just
nonsense. Genre is irrelevant. It
can be an action movie, a rom-
com or a character drama — as
long as it’s genuinely empathetic
and engaging to its audience, the
movie is functioning in exactly the
way it’s supposed to.
This being said, the Polish
film “America” is, at first glance,
a
compilation
of
everything
pretentious and grating about
foreign
films.
Directed
by
Aleksandra
Terpinska
(“Czech
Swan”),
“America”
tells
the story of two
teenage girls, Anka
(Marta Mazurek,
“Warsaw
by
Night”) and Justine (Aleksandra
Adamska, “Miasto 44”). They
live in a small Polish town called
America,
where
they
spend
their days making up dances
to American pop songs and
reenacting scenes from “The
Matrix.”
Fed up with their negligent
parents, the girls decide to run
away from home. They hitchhike
and are picked up by a series of
increasingly scummy men, to
the point where Justine is nearly
raped in a truck stop motel called
“The Las Vegas Hotel.”
Make no mistake, this is a heavy
and dark film. Within the first
three minutes, we learn that Anka
and her mother frequently have to
clean her father up after he’s made
a drunken mess of himself, and
that he comes into Anka’s room
every night and sexually abuses
her.
So yes, “America” certainly
fits the notions most apply to
foreign films: painful and sad
against a bleak grey setting.
And yet, “America” is entirely
unpretentious,
lovingly
made
and tells a genuinely engaging —
even haunting — story. Terpinska
clearly understands that heavy
subject matter on its own doesn’t
make a movie meaningful, so
every frame in the film is carefully
considered for creating maximum
emotional effectiveness. In other
words, “America” is not for critics
or average moviegoers — it’s for
everyone.
Movies like “America” (or
at least, movies that deal with
such weighty subjects) are often
voyeuristic and detached, almost
clinical in their portrayal of
horrific events. It’s the idea of
filming a “low” subject matter
in a highfaluting way, making
violence,
pain
and
suffering
appear beautiful and digestible
by virtue of emotional distance
between the audience and what is
happening on screen.
This isn’t necessarily a bad way
to approach a story, and it works
really well in a lot of movies — it’s
essentially the thesis statement
that
drives
David
Fincher’s
filmography. And yet, it’s a breath
of fresh air to find a movie that
places the audience directly in the
minds of the characters so that we
feel what they feel.
The empathy comes through
the details of Anka and Justine’s
friendship.
The
outer
space
posters in Anka’s bedroom, the
galaxy print of Justine’s jacket,
the familiar way they shove each
other around, the gangster rap
they listen to — these details are so
delicate and precise that you can’t
help but hope for the best for Anka
and Justine. We see every nuance
of their jittery excitement when
they’re standing at the bus stop
about to leave America; we feel
every spark of their fear at their
betrayal. There’s no pretension
here and no exploitation. Just the
characters, their feelings and our
feelings.
“America” is a movie about
yearning. Justine and Anka want
more than anything to leave their
world and live better lives, but
their hearts are broken over and
over by all the people they thought
they could trust the most — their
parents, the nice young man who
took them in and even each other.
It’s such an intimate, personal
story, but in a way, it’s not unlike
our country’s, still reeling from
the events of the last few weeks.
They wanted the world, and all
they got was America. They’re not
the only ones.
ASIF BECHER
Daily Arts Writer
Polish ‘America’ is artful, crushing
Statistically
speaking,
Joe
Jonas has had a pretty good
year.
After
brainstorming
dance-rock band
DNCE with now-
drummer
Jack
Lawless,
Jonas
has become the
front
man
of
the
four-person
group.
Joined
by guitarists Cole Whittle and
JinJoo Lee, DNCE released its
debut single “Cake by the Ocean”
in September 2015. Since then,
DNCE has performed during
FOX’s television special “Grease:
Live” and opened for Selena
Gomez during her Revival Tour.
DNCE’s
self-titled
debut
album showcases 14 tracks that
range from slow acoustic ballads
to pop-infused dance anthems.
Opening
with
aptly
named
“DNCE,” Jonas chants “D-N-
C-E” a cappella before launching
into a groovy, funky dance
vibe. Making good use of their
branding, the bulk of the song
consists of the lyrics, “Won’t you
come on D-N-C-E with me.”
“Doctor
You”
focuses
on
bass guitar and quick lyrics to
emphasize its sexy club sound.
But the song speeds up as it
progresses and falls into a rut of
sounding extraordinarily similar
to all the others on the album.
The chanting in the background
of the chorus, “Who call the doc?
/ Said you gonna call the doc?” is
the only thing to
distinguish it from
the rest.
“Blown”
featuring
Kent
Jones,
continues
the same musical
themes,
building
up an intensity
until
the
beat
drops to make way for Jonas’s
lyrics: “I’ll never let you go / My
sweet tooth is too strong.” Jones’s
rap verse adds a new dimension
to an otherwise cliché sound, but
it still sounds like a song from the
closing scene of a Disney Channel
original movie.
Segueing into “Good Day,”
the track starts simple and
acoustically with just claps and
the mantra that “Today is going
to be a good day.” The whole song
stays fairly low and monotone
throughout the verses, failing to
progress beyond a happy song to
wake up to in the morning.
“Almost” is the first slow song
of the album, transitioning it to
more introspective and relaxed
lyrics. Jonas showcases both his
emotions and his vocal range as
he sings, “Baby, we were good /
We were almost perfect,” while
light vocalizations harmonize in
the background. “Almost” never
strays too far from the baseline
set early on, but gives the listener
something other than upbeat
dance hymns to enjoy.
“Naked”
opens
with
an
aggressively
electronic
intro
and continues to maintain the
dance-based electric tones. Jonas
speaks the verses’ lyrics and
shows off his impressive falsetto
in the chorus when he sings, “I
wanna be naked with you / At
least I’m telling the truth.”
The second acoustic track,
“Truthfully,”
tugs
at
the
heartstrings and narrates the
ups and downs of falling in love
again. It’s full of cliché metaphors
and simple phrases such as,
“Speaking truthfully, I love you
more than you love me. As DNCE
channels its inner Taylor Swift,
“Truthfully” recounts universal
feelings of love and loss.
Closing
with
“Unsweet,”
DNCE ends the way it began.
With a few flashes of greatness,
DNCE never strays from what it
knows best. As the songs begin
to blend together, the album
starts to sound like one long
dance hymn. With a little more
initiative and experimentation,
DNCE could have set itself
apart from the rest but instead
falls short of groundbreaking
and leaves the listener feeling
slighted.
CATHERINE BAKER
Daily Arts Writer
A-
PC Music, Vol. 2
Various Artists
Columbia Records
C+
DNCE
DNCE
Republic Records
A-
“America”
Michigan Theater
Polish Film Festival
REPUBLIC
Time to get a new watch.
DNCE’s debut can’t fulfill potential
Joe Jonas hates variety in his music almost as much as vowels
ALBUM REVIEW