Classifieds
Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
ACROSS
1 Rodent
Templeton in
“Charlotte’s
Web,” for one
4 Provide with more
than enough
11 Miner’s target
14 Flightless bird
15 Memorable
Greek shipping
magnate
16 Aggravate
17 Bake sale
confections
made with root
veggies
19 Finish off
20 Chance for a hit
21 Asia’s __ Darya
river
22 Cornstarch brand
in a yellow-and-
blue container
23 Chair or bench
24 Shine-minimizing
makeup layer
27 Harmonious
29 Scare
30 Soon-to-be grads.
31 Vanity cases?
33 Plagues
34 Wireless
networking
protocol
36 Degenerate, like
Agnew’s snobs
39 Apt name for a
Dalmatian
40 Mil. academy
43 Black, in
Bordeaux
44 Like the flame at
Arlington
National
Cemetery
46 Pop’s pop
50 Vacation site you
might sail to
51 Painter Magritte
52 Managed care
gp.
53 Follow, as advice
54 “Fear the
Walking Dead”
network
55 Driver’s alert
about an infant,
and a hint to
what can
precede both
words of 17-,
24-, 34- and
46-Across
58 Peace symbol
59 Central Texas city
60 Bestow, to Burns
61 Chemical suffix
with benz-
62 Cut at an angle
63 Always, to Poe
DOWN
1 Finds new
players for
2 One who plays
without pay
3 Wrapped
headdresses
4 Chimney residue
5 Colony insect
6 Tic-toe filler
7 Father of Jacob
and Esau
8 Words on a
volunteer’s badge
9 Highway
headache
10 Half a figure eight
11 Late in arriving
12 Substance used
for chemical
analysis
13 Obtains via
coercion, as
money
18 Part of APR
22 Knee-deep (in)
24 Bach work
25 Therapeutic plant
26 Prince Siegfried’s
beloved, in
“Swan Lake”
28 Like pool tables
32 Ave. crossers
33 Swag
34 Suisse capital
35 Newspaper page
with views
36 Personalize at
the jeweler’s
37 Work site
supervisors
38 Bride-to-be
40 Performing in a
theater
41 Dieter’s unit
42 Thin
45 Man who “wore a
diamond,” in
“Copacabana”
47 Abu __
48 Realm of
influence
49 Holmes’
creator
53 Still sleeping
55 “Kapow!”
56 “__ the land of
the free ... ”
57 SSW’s opposite
By Katherine Stears
©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
12/06/16
12/06/16
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
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Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
I
walked into “Loving” con-
fident I was about to see a
film that would blow me
away. The trailer may or may not
have made me cry, and I knew
that it would add to
discussions
about
the
inequalities
still faced by people
of
color,
women,
and especially the
LGBTQ
commu-
nity, in terms of civil
rights
surrounding
the right to love who-
ever one does.
About
thirty
minutes in, I was
sitting very still in
my seat, restraining myself from
craning around to see if anyone
else was wearing a bewildered
expression on their face.
“Loving” is based on the true
story of Mildred Jeter, a Black
woman, and Richard Loving, a
white man, married in D.C. in
1958; their interracial marriage
is not legal in Virginia at the
time. When the Lovings return
to Virginia and live as a married
couple, their home is invaded
by local police who have been
tipped off that they are living as
husband and wife. Their sentence
of a year in jail is suspended on
the provision that they leave
Virginia and don’t return for 25
years.
Eventually,
after
years
of
moving and raising children in
less than ideal circumstances,
Mildred is inspired to write a
letter to Bobby Kennedy. She
is contacted by the ACLU, who
want to use the Lovings’ story to
launch a case that would change
the Constitution and alter the
course of American history —
fighting the bans on interracial
marriage. Spoiler alert: They are
successful.
There were parts of “Loving”
that
I
did
appreciate.
The
moments with the photographer
from Life magazine are lovely; the
delicacy required in capturing
the beauty of intimate moments
to sway national public opinion
is quietly beautiful. The actors’
performances themselves were
organic and nuanced, especially
Ruth Negga (“Warcraft”) as
Mildred
and
Joel
Edgerton
(“Midnight Special”) as Richard.
Negga imbues her character
with weariness alternating with
hope that makes your heart feel
full. The cinematography was
elegant if restrained, the natural,
understated
color
palette
allowing every scene to flow into
the next.
However, I was put off by
a few things — namely, the
representation
of
Mildred’s
character. The film starts when
the two protagonists are already
in a committed relationship; we
are supposed to know that they
are very much in love. But the
film never really establishes the
intimacy of the relationship.
The two barely talk; they never
make each other laugh; I don’t
think there is a single
instance of Richard
talking to his children;
there are so many
lingering close-ups of
Mildred’s
concerned
face that they begin
to feel almost stale.
Often, the beauty of
a shot seemed to be
held in her reserved
femininity
or
her
motherhood,
rather
than in her constant
strength
through
emotional
labor.
Of course, as this was based on
a true story, it can be argued that
if the real Mildred was a reticent
woman,
then
her
character
shouldn’t have to be changed,
or made larger than life. This
is true; timid or soft-spoken
women can be just as strong as
the loudest woman in the room.
The stories of regular, everyday
people are just as important
to tell as the stories of people
whose names and faces are in
our history textbooks; arguably
even more so, as the Western
education of history has been
studied
and
taught
through
only the lens of the Great White
Man and What He Did for His
Country and thereby ignored the
contributions and importance of
everyone else for so long.
But there are ways to tell the
stories of the everyday woman
without making her seem passive.
There are ways to portray a timid
woman without taking away her
voice almost completely. The
composition of several of film’s
shots were shocking to me. There
are too many shots in which
Mildred is tiny and cramped up
into a corner of the frame. Even
when she is allowed to take up
more space on screen, there are
more shots of her blinking than
talking.
The film ends with a quote from
Mildred that says, “I miss him. He
took care of me.” After that, the
screen fades to black and credits
roll. Of course, she said this in
real life. But when an entire movie
portrays a person who should have
been more of a focal point of the
film from the get-go as so passive,
this cherry-picked quote was the
wrong one to use.
The one time it is pointed out
that Mildred had a lot more at
stake, as the Black woman, than
Richard does as a white man,
it’s a small interaction, never
addressed again. There was
more focus on a racist cop telling
Loving that he was going to get in
trouble for sleeping with a Black
woman than there was on how
the dangers of this relationship
were affecting Mildred.
The film hints at the fact that
the white lawyers are excited
about this case because it’ll
be an important win for their
careers — but it then goes on to
portray them as men who only
wanted to do the right thing.
And even though the scenes in
the courtrooms are much shorter
than in other movies with court
cases surrounding issues of race
— “Amistad,” “Lincoln,” and
“To Kill a Mockingbird” are the
first few to come to mind, all of
which are also framed through
the white male hero lens — the
lawyers are still positioned as
heroic.
The music score picks up
when the two lawyers start
working on the case, and swells
triumphantly when they are
in the courtroom. The private
side conversation between them
about how they know their
plan to get the Lovings arrested
again puts the family in danger
and they’re not completely sure
they’ll be able to get them out
of it unscathed is not framed
as a serious discussion about
the potential benefits of doing
something risky for the greater
good, but rather as a funny aside
from one to the other as they
smile and wave goodbye at the
Lovings’ retreating figures. That
scene was not a moment of comic
relief from the upcoming tension,
as it was probably intended to be,
but jarring.
I think there’s often a tendency,
in coverage of American period
films
that
revolve
around
conflicts
we
like
to
pride
ourselves on having conquered,
to praise them more than we
would otherwise, because no
one wants to have their criticsm
interpreted as a sign that they
aren’t aligned with the messages
of hope and triumph within the
movies. There is a tendency to
exalt them because if we can say
that a movie portrays something
like the battle for civil rights
accurately and beautifully, then
that means we have 360 degrees
of perspective around it.
But now is not the time to only
bask in the beauty of a period film
that makes us feel good about
how far we’ve come. Rather, we
should be pushing ourselves
and each other further than
ever before in artwork that has
a social message, understanding
that no story like this will ever be
perfectly told. We would only be
doing ourselves a disservice by
not allowing films that deal with
important subject matter to be
analyzed in every way that other
pieces are.
Kaufman is the new Secretary of
Housing and Urban Development.
To schedule a surgery, email
sophkauf@umich.edu
Love may triumph, but Oscar
contender ‘Loving’ doesn’t
This true-story legal drama underserves its female protagonist.
SOPHIA
KAUFMAN
FOCUS FEATURES.
Don’t be the couple that sits like this in your Stats lecture.
GENDER & MEDIA COLUMN
NETFLIX
Mystery, Inc. has not aged well.
There’s something to be said
for the willingness to produce
a
blatant
rip-off.
“Pacific
Heat”
is
not
good, of course,
but I can’t help
but applaud the
sheer brazenness
of an animated
TV
show
that
is,
essentially,
an
Australian
version of “Archer.”
Created
by
and
starring
Australian comedy team Rob
Sitch (“Utopia”), Santo Cilauro
(“Frontline”) and Tom Gleisner
(“Have
You
Been
Paying
Attention?”),
“Pacific
Heat”
looks, feels and plays like a low-
rent version of FX’s animated
series. The show centers around
an undercover intelligence unit,
whose nickname the title bears,
as they infiltrate, operate and
decapitate crime on Australia’s
Gold Coast. There’s a square-
jawed, somewhat incompetent
lead, a domineering boss and
wearily sarcastic female agents.
That
sounds,
of
course,
dispiritingly
familiar.
And
if
there’s
some
Australian
comedic
sensibility
to
be
perceived — like the milieu
that produced hidden gems
“Summer Heights High” and
“Ja’mie: Private School Girl” —
then it’s difficult to distinguish
it from even the jokes the show
explicitly lifts from “Archer,”
like the female
characters
that
always seem to
end up in their
underwear
on
missions.
But
the
underlying issue
is this: what is
the point of diluted satire? If
“Archer” itself is a send-up of
“James Bond” and its tropes,
then
“Pacific
Heat”
needs
something more to add to the
subversion. The critiques of the
form that “Archer” makes are
pointed and deliberate, and so
“Pacific Heat,” by its existence,
must join the conversation.
From all available signs, it
doesn’t.
The
jokes
are
mostly
obvious, as is characteristic of
the average comedy pilot. The
comedic template the show
establishes is not inviting or
warm, but rather too eager
to traffic in uncomfortably
stereotypical Asian jokes and
exaggerated
accents.
The
characters are thinly sketched
(literally) and unconvincing.
Prickly, in-your-face comedy is
possible and necessary, but so is
audience empathy.
Moreover, “Pacific Heat”’s
animation
is
disquietingly
odd. The basic template is,
once again, the stilted and
halting motion of “Archer,” but
there’s
something
different
here, whether it’s the strangely
colored
eyes
or
the
hair
shading that seems a bit off.
And while shows like “BoJack
Horseman” couple this kind
of stiff animation with the
bored, deep-throated delivery
to create deadpan perfection,
“Pacific Heat” seems beset by
the irritating urge to have its
characters talk over each other
instead, a comedic trope that
becomes well-worn before the
pilot is even finished.
Mostly
though,
“Pacific
Heat” reads as inessential.
It’s a copy, but a worse one.
A satire, but weaker. A show
that, by all accounts, isn’t
worth
an
investment.
An
Australian
production
team
and an Australian setting can’t
differentiate the show enough
from its obvious influence, and
in this modern context of TV
as the wellspring of original,
influential
media,
that’s
difficult to reconcile.
Looking for a low-grade
007? Try ‘Pacific Heat’
NABEEL CHOLLAMPAT
Daily Arts Writer
Australian Netflix series is a blatant rip-off of “Archer,” etc.
C-
“Pacific Heat”
Netflix
TV REVIEW
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