ACROSS
1 “Oopsy”
6 Grand Prix
component
9 In things
13 Adult insect
14 Prefix with data
15 Subject 
preceder
16 Laboratory
scam?
18 Saves, say
19 Challenge
20 Like some
flushes
22 Missed the mark
24 Spike TV, once
25 Nile threats
28 Snubbing a
testimonial?
33 Take for a while
35 B to C, e.g.
36 Call off
37 Something
shared on a
plane
40 Pres. when
Brown v. Board
of Education of
Topeka was
decided
41 “The Social
Contract” author
43 Hindu ascetics
45 John Deere rep?
48 Old Nair rival
49 “You betcha!”
50 Mozart opera
ending
52 Spendthrift
56 Hospital test
60 Large deep-water
fish
61 Ordinary law
office employee?
63 Actor
Auberjonois
64 Relaxed
65 Refresh, as a cup
of coffee
66 Participants in
some awkward
meetings
67 Case breaker,
perhaps
68 Flower holders

DOWN
1 Category for non-
recurring pd. bills

2 1979 disco
classic
3 Payment that’s
posted
4 Eternal
5 Philanthropist, e.g.
6 Common Market
letters
7 Ancient
colonnade
8 Sacred sites
9 Stocking stuff
10 Not backing
11 Party pooper
12 First family
member
14 Poet’s concern
17 Short
21 Being
23 Throw into
turmoil
25 On the ball
26 Monterrey title
27 “The Taming of
the Shrew”
setting
29 Obsessive idea
metaphor
30 Caravan
assembler
31 Common
Sundance entry

32 Notice from
Shakespeare?
34 Time for eggs
38 Worked on, as a
cold case
39 Fold, spindle or
mutilate
42 Crop cutters
44 Buck
46 Gin __
47 Other, in 
Oaxaca

51 Slopes
52 Had on
53 Top
54 Fit to be tried
55 Student’s request
57 Vacation spot
58 Jack-in-the-pulpit
family
59 Gets caught off
guard
62 The ANC’s
country

By Paul Coulter
©2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
03/17/17

03/17/17

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Friday, March 17, 2017

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

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FOR RENT

PALACE FILMS

‘Things to Come’ shines

There are so many films 

that really try to be about 
something. “My movie’s about 
technology” or “My movie’s 
about parenting,” a writer 
or 
director 
or 

producer 
might 

say 
(or 
not-so-

subtly 
display 

on 
the 
screen), 

hoping 
to 
grab 

onto the coattails 
of 
ephemeral 

salience. This isn’t 
to say that these movies are 
bad; on the contrary, they’re 
often critical in shaping our 
cultural, political and societal 
conversations. But these films 
often become polemic, spoiling 
their would-be fascinating life 
tales in favor of a “message.”

Rarer are the movies that 

aren’t really about anything, 
and in the process become 
about 
everything 
— 
about 

life, 
love, 
loss, 
longing, 

leaving. Films that illuminate 
the stories being lived by 
those around us: the lawyer 
handling your tort claim (see 
Kelly 
Reichardt’s 
“Certain 

Women”), your bus driver (see 
Jim Jarmusch’s “Paterson”) or 
your high school philosophy 
teacher.

That last one is the subject 

of “Things to Come,” the latest 
from up-and-coming French 
writer-director Mia Hansen-
Løve (“Eden”). The film stars 
Isabelle Huppert (“Elle”) as 

Nathalie, an aging philosophy 
instructor whose life begins 
to unravel. Her elderly mother 
is losing her marbles (and 
Nathalie temporarily adopts 
her allergy-inducing cat), she’s 
separating from her husband, 
also 
a 
philosophy 
teacher, 

after he meets someone else 

meanwhile, 
protesters, 
calling 
for 

better pensions, 
interrupt 
her 

teaching.

Nathalie, 

briefly a former 
Communist, 
is 

resilient. Her tragedies are met 
with grace; she defends herself 
against a publishing company 
turning their back on her, and 
she advocates for a former 
student 
turned 
intellectual 

and writer, Fabien (Roman 
Kolinka, 
“Eden”). 
As 
the 

travails of her daily life become 
more and more unbearable, she 
decides to visit Fabien to the 
sounds of Woody Guthrie in 
his new home outside of Paris, 
a rustic commune among the 
mountains.

Hansen-Løve and Huppert 

make a brilliant pair. The 
camera is always in motion, 
placing the audience within 
conversations. 
Hansen-Løve 

often opts to film a character’s 
reaction to a line; the effect 
is 
a 
deep 
understanding 

of the film’s relationships. 
When Heinz (André Marcon, 
“Marguerite”) tells Nathalie of 
his affair, we hear his guilt, but 
we see her anguish.

It 
helps 
that 
Huppert, 

undeniably one of the greatest 
living actors, is on screen for 
much of the film. She can 
easily slip into a role, fully 
living the part on film with 
ease. Nathalie is no exception. 
She can be feeble or forceful, 
intellectual or still learning. 
She’s a complex individual 
whose thoughts, actions and 
words are intricately brought 
to life.

Hansen-Løve’s 
screenplay, 

further, 
is 
quick, 
yet 

unburdened 
by 
clunky 

exposition 
in 
dialogue. 

Characters 
reveal 
facts 

through their language, but it 
feels perfectly natural, like a 
French Kenneth Lonergan.

At the risk of ascribing an 

“about” to a movie already 
deemed here to be “about” 
nothing in particular, “Things 
to 
Come” 
vividly 
portrays 

one 
woman’s 
navigation 

through 
compromises. 
Her 

philosophical treatises often 
intertwine with the dueling 
notions of thought and action 
— a debate rendered in real 
time among the protesting 
students, as well as within 
Fabien’s internal struggle over 
how to create a better world. 
But Hansen-Løve did not have 
to compromise: this movie 
sings, from the stunning shots 
of the French countryside to 
the kitchen sink drama set 
against 
bookshelves, 
once 

overloaded but now with some 
of their contents ripped out — 
casualties from separation.

DANIEL HENSEL

Daily Film Editor

“Things to Come”

Les Films du 

Losange

Michigan Theater

PHILLIP NELSON

Will the winner matter?

Nicki Minaj vs. Remy Ma. 

If you haven’t heard about it 
yet, you should probably start 
following at least one trashy 
media service on Twitter.

Long 
story 
short, 
Nicki 

contributed a couple feature 
verses earlier this year that 
may or may not have been 
about Remy, and so a couple 
weeks 
ago 
Remy 
released 

“ShETHER,” a vicious seven-
minute diss track, and followed 
it up a few days later with 
“Another One.” The songs 
harken back to Nas’ 2001 Jay-Z 
diss track “Ether” and Drake’s 
2015 Meek Mill diss track 
“Back to Back,” respectively. 
Nicki responded last week with 
three new tracks, two of which 
— “No Frauds” and “Changed 
It” — take aim at Remy.

This is usually the point 

where we look at the material 
and everyone takes sides on 
who “won.” So, who won? 
Frankly, no one. There can’t be 
a winner when the opponents 
aren’t even playing the same 
game. 

In an era when good quality 

doesn’t necessarily translate 
to high sales figures, these 
two artists have very different 

criteria for what constitutes 
the title “Queen of Rap.” Who 
fought 
harder? 
Definitely 

Remy. “ShETHER” took shots 
from all angles, not to mention 
the dismembered Nicki Minaj 
Barbie that appears on the 
cover art. Who sold more? 
Nicki, for sure. “No Frauds” 
topped the iTunes charts in 
multiple 
countries 
and 
its 

streaming traffic was over 100 
times that of “ShETHER.”

Remy Ma is honoring the 

same set of rules that the Nas 
/ Jay-Z fued operated under: 
long-winded rap verses that 
solely function to harshly insult 
opponents, firing rumors, facts 
and alternative facts alike. She 
drags Minaj with a number 
of scathing accusations like 
having a ghostwriter, sleeping 
her way to the top and funding 
her convicted-felon brother’s 
wedding.

Nicki’s 
game 
is 
very 

different. I think she outlines 
her rules best in her now-
deleted 
Instagram 
post 

announcing the new tracks. In 
a screenshot she writes, “Here 
@ Young Money, we don’t do 
diss records, we drop HIT 
RECORDS & diss u ON them,” 
a line with a flow so good that 
she makes a strong case against 
the ghostwriter accusations.

Minaj is obviously more 

concerned with topping the 
charts than hitting back. Both 
“No Frauds” and “Changed It” 
take swings at Remy, but do so 
in a abbreviated fashion, only 
lending a verse each to feud-
related insults. She doesn’t 
take on Remy with a solo track, 
but with songs featuring rap 
heavyweights Drake and Lil 
Wayne, ensuring that her sales 
and popularity skyrocket.

Given this, we now consider 

a new question: Whose rules 
are we playing by? That’s an 
issue that emcompasses far 
more that the Nicki / Remy 
dispute. In a world dominated 
by social media and the mass 
collection of data, it seems 
that popularity and charts 
take 
precedent. 
I 
imagine 

most people who generate 
an opinion on this feud take 
Nicki’s side, simply because 
they know who she is.

But we can not write off 

Remy merely because she’s 
less popular. When she ignited 
this feud, she thought she was 
starting another Nas / Jay-Z 
debacle. If she had, she would 
take the crown.

But this is 2017, not 2001. 

The content matters and the 
numbers matter. So until these 
women enter the same arena, 
there can be no winner.

JESSICA ZEISLOFT

Daily Arts Writer

Famed feud brought to TV

The 
opening 
credits 
of 

“FEUD: Bette and Joan” are 
gorgeous, 
taking 
aesthetic 

inspiration from the cinema 
of the 1960s. The technicolor 
silhouette 
animation 
is 
visually 

reminiscent 
of 

“Mad 
Men,” 

though the theme 
is less nostalgic 
and more urgent; 
instead of a man 
falling through a 
history of trends 
and fads painted 
onto skyscrapers, 
this sequence involves two 
women circling each other in 
ever-shrinking circlets. The 
most chilling shots are those of 
a man who has the marionette 
strings connected to these 
women 
wrapped 
carefully 

around his fingers, making 
them dance and another man 
ashing his cigar, causing little 
Oscars statues to fall from the 
end of it. The pilot episode of 
the show is just as enthralling 
as the credits; it’s the kind 
of show that has you inching 
forward on your seat and 
holding your breath without 
realizing until the screen cuts 
to black.

The episode sets up the 

legendary feud between Bette 
Davis and Joan Crawford, two 
power icons of Hollywood, 
through the story of their 
only film together: “Whatever 
Happened to Baby Jane,” a 
movie about a similar rivalry 
between two women in 1962. 
Fittingly, Bette and Joan are 
played by Susan Sarandon 
(“Thelma and Louise”) and 
Jessica 
Lange 
(“American 

Horror Story”) respectively, 
two women whose careers 
have been full of rich and 

powerful roles. The supporting 
cast, 
full 
of 
recognizable 

faces 
like 
Stanley 
Tucci 

(“The Devil Wears Prada”), 
Alfred Molina (“Spider Man 
2”), Kathy Bates (“American 
Horror Story”), Judy Davis 
(“The 
Dressmaker”), 
and 

up-and-comer Kiernan Shipka 

(“Mad 
Men”) 

is phenomenal, 
but 
Sarandon 

and Lange are 
formidable. 
Both command 
every 
room 

fully; 
each 

scene 
they’re 

in 
together 

is 
thick 
with 

tension. 
They 

move 
through 

magnificent, 
lonely 
halls 

and 
delicately 
constructed 

film 
sets 
with 
alternating 

carelessness and overt self-
awareness, warily eyeing not 
only each other but everyone 
else in the room.

If you’re attuned to the 

eccentricities 
that 
Ryan 

Murphy can’t help but bring to 
his work, you can catch some 
of them in the pilot — perhaps 
most tellingly, a scene in which 
Joan, playing a character who 
is confined to a wheelchair, 
sees 
Bette 
talking 
quietly 

with one of the directors 
and, instead of getting up 
and 
striding 
confidently 

over to them, wheels herself 
angrily towards them. There 
is a perfectly crafted scene 
involving 
the 
two 
women 

angling for a specific chair that 
will give them top billing in the 
next morning’s paper, and it 
could not be more meticulously 
choreographed. 
The 
two 

women never take their eyes 
off each other, metaphorically 
— they are straining, always on 
the edge of propriety, on the 
edge of their seats, on the edge 
of snapping at each other’s 
throats.

The show’s weakest point 

is trying too hard to make a 
feminist point through bits of 
dialogue between the women, 
when the plotlines and even 
the score do it more effectively. 
There are several one-liners 
that are thinly veiled criticisms 
of how we treat older women 
in the media and Hollywood, 
but it is often unclear what 
brand of feminism they are 
truly seeking to represent. At 
times, these lines slip into the 
narrative that women are more 
cruel to each other than they 
are to men, or than men are to 
them, and it feels incongruous 
and wrongfully placed, even in 
a show about a feud between 
two famous women.

The pilot captures what 

happens 
when 
beloved 

ingenues grow into powerful, 
sometimes unlikeable women, 
and what those women must 
do to keep their power at the 
expense of — well, it’s still 
unclear. It captures what it 
feels like to watch your own 
work, an intensely private yet 
also public experience in the 
film industry. The punch that 
this show packs comes not from 
the unfolding of any feud yet 
(incidentally, I have a suspicion 
that once the feud builds, it’ll 
lessen the intensity). Rather, 
the bite of the show comes 
from the remorselessness of 
Hollywood and the media in 
creating a culture in which, 
as multiple people point out, 
there can only be one “It girl.” 
If the rest of the season is this 
clever and well-paced, slinking 
towards a kinetic explosion 
of raw energy, then it has the 
potential to be a phenomenal 
bit of storytelling and one of 
Ryan Murphy’s better pieces. 

SOPHIA KAUFMAN
Daily Book Review Editor

“FEUD: Bette and 

Joan”

Series Premiere

FX

Sundays at 10:00 

p.m.

TV REVIEW

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

FILM REVIEW
MUSIC NOTEBOOK

6 — Friday, March 17, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

