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3 & 4 Bedroom Apartments
$2100‑$2800 plus utilities.
Tenants pay electric to DTE
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w/ 24 hour notice required.
1015 Packard
734‑996‑1991
5 & 6 Bedroom Apartments
1014 Vaughn
$3250 ‑ $3900 plus utilities
Showings scheduled M‑F 10‑3
w/ 24 hour notice required
734‑996‑1991
ARBOR PROPERTIES
Award‑Winning Rentals in
Kerrytown
Central Campus, Old West
Side, Burns Park.
Now Renting for 2018.
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CENTRAL CAMPUS
7 BD furnished house, LR, DR, 2
baths,kitchen fully equipped, w/d,
int.cable, parking 4 ‑ 5.
MAY to MAY.
Contact: 706‑284‑3807 or
meadika@gmail.com.
FALL 2018 HOUSES
# Beds Location Rent
6 1016 S. Forest $4900
4 827 Brookwood $3000
4 852 Brookwood $3000
4 1210 Cambridge $3400
Tenants pay all utilities.
Showings scheduled M‑F 10‑3
w/ 24 hr notice required
734‑996‑1991
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Classifieds
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ACROSS
1 __ Lake, village
near Lake Placid
8 Skedaddles
15 Somewhat off
16 “Choose!”
17 Come through
18 Poker holding
19 A or O
20 Easy pace
22 Clipper trio
23 “Ninja Scroll”
genre
25 Domain
introduced in
2001
26 Rod Stewart’s
“__ May”
29 Shuttle site
31 Affirmative act
34 Outlying
community
35 Tesla, e.g.
36 “Not a chance”
37 “Zorba the
Greek” Oscar
winner Kedrova
38 Bottom of a food
chain?
39 Abruzzi bell town
40 Fertile soil
41 Picasso output
42 Mar. honoree
43 “r u kidding?!”
44 Team that pulls
for you
45 Like an earworm
46 Peugeot’s 208 or
308, e.g.
47 Tony winner
Menzel of
“Wicked”
49 Feature of many
a Hawaiian
restaurant
52 Cast off
53 Olympian queen
57 Lock-picking tool
59 Bar exhortation ...
and a hint to how
to answer five
puzzle clues
61 Highest
62 Consoles
63 Bun seeds
64 Request at a bar
DOWN
1 Actress
Thompson
2 Doomed
shepherd
3 Irk
4 Tequila, triple sec
and lime juice
5 Sweet Potato
Awareness Mo.
6 Emperor relative
7 Jewel box item
8 Eight bits
9 “Ick!”
10 Champagne and
orange juice
11 Utah’s state gem
12 Mmes. across
the Pyrenees
13 Down but not out
14 Rocky hills
21 Bourbon, water,
sugar and
garnish
24 Bird’s bill
25 Bonehead
26 __ Yello
27 Assumed truth
28 Soviet labor
camp
30 Oklahoma tribe
31 Sometimes
offensive, briefly
32 Dr. Phil was her
frequent guest
before getting his
own show
33 Eros or Eos
35 Real estate parcel
36 Whiskey, sweet
vermouth and
bitters
38 Dress style
42 __ Salvador
44 White rum,
sugar, lime juice,
soda water and
garnish
45 Pomelo relative
46 Beta follower
48 Playground
comeback
49 Amphibious
assault
transports, for
short
50 Botanical balm
51 Bites playfully
52 911 response
gp.
54 Kitchen gadget
brand
55 One with second
thoughts
56 Abbey area
58 British author’s
conclusion?
60 Terre dans la
mer
By Stu Ockman
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/02/18
02/02/18
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Friday, February 2, 2018
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
6 — Friday, February 2, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
FILM
“Three Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri” is the latest in
the recent trend of movies that
bathe themselves in nihilism
to the point of becoming a joke.
“Three Billboards” is one of
those movies. It is so depressing,
so filled with anger and hate
and death and destruction that
one wonders what the point of
it all is, or perhaps what the
point of watching the movie is.
It’s well-produced, well-acted
and competently directed, but
the picture tries too hard to
be important and forgets to
actually tell a compelling story.
To be sure, there is an
interesting premise at the heart
of “Three Billboards,” but it
is one that is stretched thinly
over the film’s tediously long
running time. The main story
runs out of steam somewhere
around the 70-minute mark and
never recovers. There’s only so
much you can do with a premise
in which the answers to the
film’s central questions are
known to not exist almost from
the first frame of the film.
Much has been made about
how the movie deals with issues
of class and race. Your opinion
may vary but many may find it
hard to root for the racist cop
we hear has tortured people and
whom we watch throw a man
through a second story window
of a building. The film attempts
to turn this character into an
antihero or at least someone we
should root for later on, but for
many audience members, it may
be a difficult reach. The movie
already asks us to continue
rooting for Mildred even after
she blows up an entire police
station, something that is barely
addressed in the rest of the film.
“Three
Billboards”
was
advertised
as
a
Cohen
brothers-y
or
Tarintino-like
action comedy, yet the movie
is nothing like that at all. The
film has some of the most
unlikeable
protagonists
that
were put on screen this year,
and we’re not really given a
good enough reason to care
about them. The initial violence
at the heart of the story is offset
by more violent actions across
the board to the point where
the film is so awash in horrible
things happening to various
people that the viewer begins
to become detached from the
actual story, and eventually
ceases to care.
Some
people
might
like
movies that offer no hope
throughout
their
entire
runtime. Others will not. The
world we are in is dark enough as
it is without our movies needing
to also be dark and depressing
Missourian
wastelands
in
crisis. The film never tries to
get into the deeper complexities
of why the town itself barely
cares
about
the
atrocities
committed, or why a new Black
sheriff doesn’t seem concerned
by the horrible crimes the
police force perpetrated before
he got there. It’s a shock-and-
awe film, smaller in scale than
the superhero blockbusters that
fill multiplexes in the summer,
but no more intelligent.
— Ian Harris,
Managing Video Editor
“Three
Billboards
Outside
Ebbing, Missouri” is a raw,
emotional tidal wave of a film
that offers one of the most
brutally honest depictions of
grief to ever reach the big screen.
Frances
McDormand
(“Hail,
Caesar!”) gives the performance
of a lifetime as Mildred Hayes, a
woman tormented by a mixture
of guilt and seething rage at
the world that has taken her
daughter from her. McDormand
communicates Mildred’s pain
so effectively that it seems
to permeate her every word
and action, from her sarcastic
remarks to her biting vulgarity.
In Mildred, we see a woman who
has coped with the indescribable
pain of loss by becoming tough
and callous, a veneer that falls
away only a few times throughout
the film to reveal just how much
she longs to have her daughter
back.
One of the film’s hallmarks
is its focus on dichotomy. At
times devastatingly tragic and
at others laugh-out-loud funny,
occasionally at the same time, the
film’s performances serve as the
cornerstone to bring audiences
on the same emotional journey as
the characters. Each character in
the film is granted an extensive
emotional range to explore, and
it’s that same extensive array
that makes the film so impactful;
the tone shifts from serious to
hilarious to tragic in a matter of
minutes, but this juxtaposition
never feels unnatural. In fact,
it’s that very oscillation between
emotional extremes that allows
the film to depict the volatility
of grief with such keen accuracy.
“Three Billboards” knows that
emotions are never cleanly tied
with a bow; Mildred’s loss shows
us that sadness is seldom just
sadness, and Willoughby’s idyllic
final day with his family shows
us that joy is seldom just joy. It’s
these conflicts that arise from
the characters’ own emotions
– coupled with the cast’s adept
ability to portray them – that
make the film so intensely human.
“Three Billboards” seems like
a film that would deliver a brutal,
pessimistic view of humanity.
The film is steeped in tragedy and
shows people at their absolute
worst,
desperately
clawing
after love or power or control in
whatever way they can. In spite
of that, however, it never fails to
come through to show people at
their best, with their incredible
capacity for kindness, empathy
and ultimately, redemption. It’s
a film that shows human nature
for all that it is, and is one of the
greatest films to come out in this
decade.
— Max Michalsky,
Daily Arts Writer
“Three
Billboards”
is
entertaining
because
it
is
ridiculous, which, I’m certain,
is not what the filmmakers
intended. If the objective is to
convince an unassuming audience
in less than two hours that
people are selfish and evil, then
the movie is indeed a smashing
success. But if humanity is meant
to be portrayed with any sense
of subtlety or subtext, “Three
Billboards” fails tragically on all
accounts.
Perhaps “tragic” is the key
word here, since the film is so
preoccupied with shoving every
imaginable tragedy down the
throat of its audience. It collects
just about all the Oscar-worthy
buzzwords: rape, murder, suicide,
homophobia,
racism,
police
brutality,
domestic
violence,
arson, depression, alcoholism,
disability and misogyny, just
to name a few. And if that isn’t
enough, the script throws in a
half-baked
monologue
about
the Catholic Church for good
measure. Surely, you must be
feeling something now, right?
And then there’s the flashback
scene, which is, in one word,
infuriating. Just before the film
goes
into
completely
insane
territory, from where there is no
return, a standalone flashback is
tucked into the otherwise linear
story for the singular purpose of
throwing another punch. And
even though it’s supposed to hurt,
it doesn’t even break the skin. In
the only scene where we see her
raped and murdered teenage
daughter,
Mildred
(Frances
McDormand,
“Hail,
Caesar!”)
passionately yells, “I hope you
get raped!” as she watches her
daughter barge out the door in a
way all strong-headed teenage
girls supposedly do. Frankly,
the flashback is insulting. Not
only is the writing inorganic and
reduces
the
mother-daughter
relationship to a stereotypical
caricature of petty drama, it
presents a source of guilt for
Mildred
that
is
completely
unnecessary and unrelated to the
rest of the narrative. Isn’t losing
a child enough? Clearly, “Three
Billboards” follows the “more the
merrier” approach to suffocating
its audience.
On one point, I will concede:
Across the board, the acting is
superb. Frances McDormand is
nothing short of fantastic and her
supporting cast delivers exquisite
performances that are indeed
worthy of Oscar nominations.
The meat of the film, however,
lacks any sort of nuance, and
therefore the film will meet its
fate as “that sad Oscar film” in the
not too distant future. All show
and no follow-through, “Three
Billboards” fails to say anything
profound at all, even though it
tries really, really hard.
— Danielle Yacobson,
Managing Arts Editor
Irreconcilable Differences:
debating ‘Three Billboards
Outside Ebbing, Missouri’
COMMUNITY CULTURE
Bennett, Hirshfield and
simply stunning writing
One of my favorite events to
attend on campus has always
been the Helen Zell Visiting
Writers Series. So when I made
my way over to the University
of Michigan Museum of Art
to hear Brit Bennett and Jane
Hirshfield read their work, I
had high expectations.
The
writers
did
not
disappoint. Held under the
soothing lights of the Helmut
Stern Auditorium, Brit Bennett
and Jane Hirshfield delivered
readings filled with genuine
emotion and gorgeous writing.
Bennett received her MFA
from the University. The last
time she did a reading at that
podium was when she read an
early draft of “The Mothers.”
On Thursday, she read from
the final draft of the book, now
a New York Times bestselling
novel and set to be adapted
into a film by Warner Brothers,
with Kerry Washington as the
producer.
Her prose was simple but
moving.
Reading
from
the
middle of her novel, Bennett
took us through the lives of her
characters, Luke and Aubrey,
after their friend Nadia leaves
town to attend college. Nadia’s
mother
recently
committed
suicide and Nadia dates Luke,
an ex-football player suffering
from an injury. Nadia’s God-
fearing friend Aubrey meets
Luke
during
his
physical
therapy, while Nadia is at the
University of Michigan. Though
I haven’t read her novel, I was
completely immersed in the
story after two sentences.
Bennett’s success with “The
Mothers,” her debut novel,
served
as
an
inspirational
moment for me and the many
aspiring authors in the audience.
Bennett’s lyrical writing is
impressive yet effortless, and
each sentence is packed with
momentum: “So even though
we hadn’t known where she’d
come from, we’d understood
why Aubrey Evans couldn’t stop
crying when the pastor asked
what gift she’d come forward
to receive and what she’d
whispered, salvation.”
I’m still wondering what
happens to Nadia, Luke and
Aubrey. If you’re looking for
something new to keep you up
at night, then Bennett’s novel
may be the answer.
Jane Hirshfield, author of
eight collections of poetry,
also delivered an eloquent and
uplifting reading. She stopped
and took the time to talk
through some of her concerns,
ranging from politics to the
environment to the everyday
problems we face.
“One
of
the
ways
of
navigating differences is being
permeable to them. Walls don’t
work,” she said.
Hirshfield’s
poetry
is
a
meditation
on
humanity.
Though her poems initially
seemed
simple
to
me,
looking back at them left me
with
questions
and
many
interpretations.
“Let
the
envious gods take back what
they can,” from her poem “Each
Moment a White Bull Steps
Shining into the World,” is
particularly chilling, and I can’t
help but wonder who exactly
Hirshfield is thinking about.
She
talked
about
the
background
of
her
poem
“Washing Doorknobs,” which
appeared in The New Yorker
in Oct. of 2010, explaining
how every New Year’s Eve she
thoroughly cleans her house,
polishing each doorknob before
ringing in the new year.
“Sometimes I go out and
party too,” she said, jokingly.
Throughout her reading, it
became clear that Hirshfield
is an incredibly compassionate
and gentle person, and finds
herself
deeply
affected
by societal issues such as
environmental
disasters.
Many people in the audience
hummed in agreement with her,
appreciative of the opportunity
to hear a discussion on these
problems.
It’s always nice to see the
growth of writers, and pairing
Bennett with Hirshfield showed
how far an author can progress
with their initial passion for
writing.
Both
Bennett
and
Hirshfield kicked off the series
this semester on a high note,
and I’m looking forward to
seeing what comes next.
NITYA GUPTA
Daily Arts Writer
FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES
One of the most
brutally honest
depictions of
grief to ever
reach the big
screen
‘Billboards’ fails
to say anything
profound at all
Brit Bennett
and Jane
Hirshfield
delivered
readings filled
with genuine
emotion and
gorgeous
writing
The Helen Zell Visiting Writers Series continues to inspire
and impress with moving prose and motivating discussion