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Showings Scheduled M‑F 10‑3 24 hour noticed required DEINCO PROPERTIES 734‑996‑1991 FOR RENT ACROSS 1 Free 6 Crusty formation 10 One in a farm array 14 Truism 15 Kappa preceder 16 Entry 17 Saint toppers 18 Equine footwork 19 Glitz 20 Renewed one’s energy, in a way 21 Counseling for boomers’ kids? 24 Santa __: Sonoma County seat 25 Complimentary writers 26 Sign on a film studio employee’s door? 31 Words of desire 32 Room at the hacienda 33 Fast hit 36 Gave for a while 37 Some rank indicators 39 Corona product 40 Disturbance 41 “Write once, run anywhere” software 42 One with many mouths to feed? 43 Altered clone of actor Richard? 46 French gambling game 49 Zero 50 Molecular manipulation technique ... and a hint to the starts of the three other longest puzzle answers 53 Sudden turn 56 Advantage 57 Bunches 58 Immune system component 60 Food preservative 61 Cithara relative 62 Clear, in a way 63 “__ bien!” 64 Word appearing twice in a Woody Guthrie title 65 Synthetic polymer DOWN 1 Turner of “The Bad and the Beautiful” 2 It’s a turnoff 3 What’s up at the deadline? 4 Mushy lump 5 “Yikes!” 6 Traffic or turn follower 7 Influence with flattery 8 Studying like crazy, say 9 Tub soothers 10 Interstate rumbler 11 Condemned Titan 12 Jumped 13 “Game of Thrones” accumulation 22 Zener cards presumably tested for it 23 “Show Boat” author Ferber 24 Take a load off 26 __ monster 27 Was required to pay 28 Yucatán youngster 29 Sunni’s religion 30 Indoor __ 33 Force user 34 NASA prefix 35 Muffin option 37 Left nothing out 38 Big event lead-in 39 Data measure 41 Ballet jump 42 Do a surfing maneuver 43 Shakes hands with, say 44 Bonded 45 Weigh station unit 46 Get rid of 47 Wood for grilling planks 48 What “x” may be in trigonometry 51 Former NHL winger Kovalchuk 52 Uncertain 53 Gusto 54 “Just one more thing ... ” 55 Narrow valley 59 Sound of woe By Daniel Nierenberg ©2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 11/03/17 11/03/17 ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: RELEASE DATE– Friday, November 3, 2017 Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis xwordeditor@aol.com Classifieds Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com 6A — Friday, November 3, 2017 Arts The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com SHOWTIME ‘White Noise’ premiered on Showtime this past Sunday ‘White Famous’ could be funny, if it wasn’t just lazy Jay Pharaoh’s new show offers little humor with bad, sexist writing “Saturday Night Live” has become known as a machine for cranking out comedy stars. Input a famished improv actor who does a decent George W. Bush impression, and out pops a shiny new celebrity with two book deals and a TV show already signed on for three seasons. With his new Showtime comedy, Jay Pharaoh is the most recent and former “SNL” cast member trying to take advantage of that seemingly flawless formula. Unfortunately for him, the machine is still working out some kinks. “White Famous” has a great idea delivered through a bad TV show. Floyd Mooney (Jay Pharoah) is a young comedian trying not to betray his hometown roots as he works toward becoming “white famous.” He’s got everything you’d expect a bright-eyed, up-and-coming comedian to have: An overzealous agent (Utkarsh Ambudkar, “The Mindy Project”), an on-again / off-again relationship with the mother of his child (Cleopatra Coleman, “The Last Man on Earth” ), an implicitly racist boss (Stephen Tobolowsky, “One Day at a Time”) and even an encouraging yet slightly crazed mentor Jamie Foxx (“Baby Driver”) who plays himself. But even with a talented cast and a solid concept, the show struggles to feel like something substantive and worthy of more than just a single episode. You know when the ticket person at the movie theater says “enjoy the movie” and you respond with “thanks, you too?” That is what it feels like to watch “White Famous.” It’s not completely wrong, but it does leave everyone involved feeling just a little bit off. Pharoah’s character seems to be stuck in a single, ongoing comedy sketch, and the joke wears down about 10 minutes into the half- hour-long episode. By the time you’re done watching, there’s nothing left to look forward to. Mooney gets a job on a big movie set, him and his ex-girlfriend are on relatively friendly terms and the agent he fired at the beginning of the episode is already back working for him. Every conflict that arises as a possible storyline is resolved by the episode’s end, leaving no reason to tune in next week or any week after that. It’s disappointing given the show’s potential to address real problems present in Hollywood. At one point, Mooney complains to Foxx that everytime a Black man tries to climb the ladder in Hollywood, directors try to emasculate him by putting him in a dress. It’s a fascinating point, and one that can be seen in Dwayne Johnson’s “Tooth Fairy” and Tyler Perry’s “Madea” series, among numerous other examples. Yet instead of exploring this topic, Foxx brushes off the comment, and it’s never really addressed again. The show’s capacity to humorously address the societal pressure of being a Black man in Hollywood is also ruined by its blatant sexism. You can’t pick and choose what minority group you aren’t going to offend and which one you are — it’s kind of an all- in, all-out deal. If you can’t be funny without uncomfortable Bill Cosby jokes and an old White dude that’s racist and sexist (but we’re supposed to understand that’s wrong, so it’s a joke), than you aren’t really funny, you’re just lazy. There’s no doubt that Jay Pharaoh is a talented young comedian whose talents extend beyond the impressions that defined his run on “SNL,” but “White Famous” is not the show to demonstrate that. If, like his character, Pharaoh wants to become the next Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock, he may have to put on that hypothetical dress and take some more daring steps to stardom. SAMANTHA DELLA FERA For the Daily TV REVIEW CINEFLEX We’re not a fan YouTube film critique’s swift and plaguing rise Vloggers surge in popularity threatens cinephile community Tony Zhou struck internet gold in 2014. His YouTube channel Every Frame a Painting, with over a million subscribers, produces video essays analyzing nuances in filmmaking, like the Coen Brothers’ reverse shots or the use of silence in “Raging Bull.” Along with other popular channels — CineFix, Nerdwriter, Closer Look and Karsten Runquist — Every Frame a Painting is a major player in a booming market for video essays. That market, however, is very one-dimensional: A man, presumably in his mid-20s, talks about why a director, often David Fincher, is just so damn great after pointing out a somewhat obvious filmmaking technique. People watch these videos without having seen the movies he’s critiquing and close their laptops feeling smart. Worse yet, they feel like they never have to see the movie at all. CineFix’s content in particular irks me and is the epitome of why these essays produce a new level of pretentiousness. This channel creates listicle videos ranking the “best” of something, like the most beautiful shots in cinema. One video discusses the most beautiful movies of all time: Stanley Kubrick’s (“Eyes Wide Shut”) “Barry Lyndon” is listed for its shots that replicate paintings. Truth be told, at least 95 percent of the video’s viewers haven’t seen the movie. And a high percentage of that group probably never will. If those who never saw the movie accepted their ignorance and didn’t act knowledgeable, all would be well. Sadly, this is rarely true. I’ve had conversations with devoted CineFix viewers where I’ll be bombarded with information about how beautiful “Barry Lyndon” is. But when I ask them their favorite scene, they daftly reply, “Oh, I’ve never seen it.” Watching a video essay does not give you the right to talk about a movie as if it’s your favorite, especially when you couldn’t be bothered to spend 187 minutes sitting through “Barry Lyndon.” The origins of the rising popularity of video essays likely dates back to Anthony Fantano’s popular music channel, The Needle Drop. Although he’s not producing video essays, per se, his content involves in-depth music critique reflecting his wide, developed taste for just about every genre of music. He paved the way for future video essayists to make their own statements. Fantano, however, doesn’t take himself too seriously, unlike many of his essayist successors. In many ways, the film criticism community loosening its barriers to entry is a feat. But we’ll always need a decent amount of tweed-wearing academics writing lengthy film critiques. The truth is, a lot of the video essayists’ content is not entirely original and comes from the work of PhD-holding professors. Everyone should be able to express their opinions about films. But not everyone can be a film critic, at least not in the scholarly sense of the word. Obviously, not all video essays are bad. Kogonada, prominent up-and-comer responsible for “Columbus,” began his career making video essays on Vimeo, that other video sharing website that never fails to disappoint the two times a year I use it. His videos are always expressive and original, making him an important voice in film criticism today. Video essays’ rising popularity is an equalizer of sorts, giving voices to those who deserve more attention but lack the Hollywood connections. For people looking to blow off steam and watch intellectually stimulating content, there’s nothing wrong with video essays. YouTube becoming plagued with video essayists, however, is off- putting, especially considering the lack of gender diversity within the community. Watching a movie and having an opinion is essential. Sharing these opinions is always welcome. Watching video essays instead and pretending to be an expert on film is nothing but obnoxious. WILL STEWART Daily Arts Writer BOOK REVIEW ‘A Good Cry’ is a comfort “A Good Cry” is Nikki Giovanni’s 21st collection of poems to be published, and the experience shows. As one of America’s most prolific and recognizable living poets, this new collection proves that Giovanni is settling into her role as senior poet with grace, elegance and a continued immediacy that makes her work as relevant today as it was in the 1960s and ’70s. The poems in “A Good Cry” are written in Giovanni’s signature style, combining the lyrical with the endearingly colloquial. At her best, she revels in simplicity: Simple language and images thoughtfully bundled together to express great complexity and intensity of feeling. Poems like “Bread,” “Thirst” and “Morning Breakfast Routines” elevate the mundane pleasures of food and drink to a dream-like state of poetry, and “On a Snowy Day” is an ode to the impact of small acts of kindness from strangers. The emotional backbone of this collection, in both its lightest and darkest moments, is Giovanni’s complete sincerity, and this makes each poem, no matter how simple, vibrate with honesty. At times, the poems might falter in the direction of being too simple. For example, the acrostic “A Poem for Morris” and the prose poem “A Poem for Joanne” say nothing that hasn’t been said before by other writers in more nuanced ways. These poems are saved, however, by Giovanni’s enduring earnestness, her affection for the subjects shining through in every word. It would be a mistake to confuse her preference for simple, everyday subjects with an inability to cope with complexity and ambiguity; Giovanni is able to sit comfortably at the midline between light and dark, hope and hopelessness. If anything, her choice to write about seemingly quotidien subjects reveals an admirable lack of self- consciousness that comes from her wealth of experience. The poems in this collection reveal Giovanni’s thematic obsessions, many of which revolve around time, memory and age. In poems like “Heritage” and “If I Have to Hospital,” she considers old age with refreshing equanimity. In “Surveillance,” “Baby West” and “I Married My Mother,” she looks back on her childhood, and particularly her troubled family relationships, with a refusal to either idealize or condemn; and in “Rita Dove” she looks forward to the next generation with enduring hope. Giovanni also writes about friendship, particularly her friendship with fellow writer Maya Angelou, with an intensity that many poets ascribe only to romantic relationships, insisting on solidarity and connection as the most important human experiences. Many of the poems in this collection correspond with Giovanni’s lifetime of work as a civil rights activist; she views the Civil Rights movement as both a triumph and an ongoing struggle, making this collection an essential read in the current political climate. The common thread running through this collection, and perhaps the greatest virtue of Giovanni’s work, is her ability to confront joy and tragedy in a single swoop. She demands connection in a world where we are bound to be isolated, and honorable intentions even under the worst of circumstances. Her message, both a comfort and a call-to-arms, is best expressed in “Introduction to Tim O’Brien”: “You cannot make the tragedy go whole / You cannot make the hurt heal / You can do nothing but embrace / The best within yourself.” JULIA MOSS For the Daily White Famous Series premiere Sundays at 10 p.m. Showtime A Good Cry Nikki Giovanni HarperCollins October 24, 2017 FILM NOTEBOOK Giovanni’s latest is is both a call to safety and a call to arms