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(906) 847‑7196. www.theislandhouse.com Classifieds Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com ACROSS 1 Medicare section for doctors’ services 6 Number of sides on most game cubes 9 Fit of __: irritated state 14 Western neighbor of Wyoming 15 Omelet meat 16 Finnish hot spot 17 Deck 18 Some Little League eligibility rules 20 *Samsung Galaxy, e.g. 22 Aberdeen native 23 Salty waters 24 Eastern neighbor of Wyoming: Abbr. 26 Sewn loosely 29 Put together, as IKEA furniture 33 Pale 34 Urge forward 35 Curtain holder 36 Reggae relative 37 *Trick that’s “pulled” 39 Bit of energy 40 Capek sci-fi play 41 Jerk 42 Taxi meter amount 43 Tickle the fancy of 45 Puts up with 47 Big name in banking 48 “So that’s it!” cries 49 Heavy hammer 51 *Optimist’s perspective 57 Barbra with Oscars 59 Ballet skirts 60 Donates 61 NHL surface 62 Layered cookies 63 With 21-Down, dictation taker’s need 64 Bobbsey girl 65 Group described by the starts of the answers to starred clues DOWN 1 Apple seeds 2 “The Voice” judge Levine 3 Pro __: in proportion 4 Needing a drink 5 Crocheted baby shoe 6 Persian monarchs 7 “Othello” villain 8 Marvel Comics mutants 9 Pitchfork-shaped Greek letter 10 Sean Penn film with a Seussian title 11 *Yeast-free bakery product 12 “Do __ others ... ” 13 Dawn direction 19 Reduce 21 See 63-Across 25 What a stet cancels 26 Iraqi port 27 Invite to one’s penthouse 28 *Hairpin turn, e.g. 29 “Are not!” response 30 Dalmatian mark 31 Sitcom producer Chuck 32 Boundaries 34 “__ just me ... ?” 37 Royal decree 38 Goes off script 42 Narrow crack 44 Astronaut Collins 45 “That feels good!” 46 Inning half 48 Poet Nash 49 Inbox list: Abbr. 50 Going __: fighting 52 Reason to roll out the tarp 53 Peruvian native 54 Cal.-to-Fla. highway 55 Couples 56 She, in Sicily 58 Prefix with -bar or -tope By Craig Stowe ©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 03/12/18 03/12/18 ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: RELEASE DATE– Monday, March 12, 2018 Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis Mick Jagger called her his “ideal woman.” Carly Simon always “tried to dress like her.” Alexa Chung and Rei Kawakubo cite her as inspirations. Françoise Hardy’s long and prolific career has transcended the French music world, transforming her into a global icon of music and fashion. Her breezy ode to youth “Le temps de l’amour” is featured in “Moonrise Kingdom,” and for the most part, represents what most people — including me at one point — recognize from her vast discography. Yet her first departure from her trademark catchy, but disposable, style of pop remains my favorite and her musical peak. The increased musical maturity in Hardy’s 1971 album La question is a result of her collaboration with a Brazilian guitarist named Tuca. While it is not exactly a bossa nova album per se, the somewhat subdued and melancholic nature of the Brazilian genre permeates the album. Tuca’s orchestral compositions in songs like “La question” and “Mer” avoid being overtly sappy and sentimental, and subtly complement the sparse, minimalist instrumental arrangements. Compared with her poppier previous output, the melodies on La question are noticeably richer and more complex. While Hardy does not showcase much vocal range, her incredibly soothing, rather restrained voice is given a wider variety of tones and textures to explore. At its core, much of the album deals with the idea of longing, and that idea is never more apparent than when Hardy simply extends a word or phrase, such as “viens” (“Come”) or “mer” (“Sea”) in her trademark, breathy manner. Hardy’s lyrics on La question range from sensual to wistful, but never overwrought. The title track is a beautiful meditation on what could be interpreted as a dying relationship, with Hardy singing: “Je ne sais pas pourquoi je reste dans une mer où je me noie” (“I don’t know why I’m staying in a sea which I’ll drown in”), but also confessing to her lover: “Tu es ma question sans réponse, mon cri muet et mon silence” (“You are my question without an answer, my mute cry and my silence”). On “Mer,” another lyrical standout, Hardy paints a poetic picture of the sea, ultimately saying: “Mon amour est si lourd à porter, je voudrais doucement me coucher dans le mer” (“My love is too heavy to bear, I want to softly sleep in the sea”). However, she can be equally frank as poetic, as evident on the following track, “Oui je dis adieu,” in which she tells a former lover: “Avec toi la vie est pleine de saudades tout le temps, ça ne me dit plus rien, cette perte de mon temps” (“With you life is full of saudade, this waste of time means nothing to me anymore”), using the Portuguese word “saudade.” On La question, Hardy’s voice lives up to its full potential with Tuca’s delicate yet emotive arrangements, creating a unique melancholic atmosphere. Four decades after its release, it remains a perfect soundtrack to a reflective rainy day. On Françoise Hardy’s rich and complex ‘La question’ DAILY WORLD MUSIC COLUMN FILM NOTEBOOK Remember the name Michael Stuhlbarg. Since starring as Larry Gopnik in the Coen brothers’ 2009 Best Picture nominee, “A Serious Man,” Stuhlbarg has made more of a face than a name for himself. He is the guy that people can point to as looking vaguely familiar, but that’s the extent of it. Since starring as an intellectual, neurotic Jew in the Coen brothers’ drama, Stuhlbarg has been type-cast as a character actor with a knack for filling the archetype of the intellectual, neurotic Jew. He is great actor who exemplifies what my high school theatre teacher constantly reminded me: There are no small roles, only small actors. Stuhlbarg certainly proves that no role is too small. He moved viewers (including Frank Ocean) as Professor Perlman in the Oscar- winning film “Call Me by Your Name,” with his emotional and expertly delivered monologue. In a way, Michael Stuhlbarg is to Oscar-bait movies as Judy Greer (“13 Going on 30”) is to rom- coms: Essential, familiar and under-utilized. Yet, in the nine short years since Stuhlbarg has entered Hollywood’s pearly white gates, he has been in seven Best Picture nominees. I mean, wow. The actor is the second person to have appeared in three Best Picture nominees of the same year. The first to do so was John C. Reilly (“Kong: Skull Island”) who appeared in three out of the five 2003 Best Picture nominees: “Chicago,” “Gangs of New York” and “The Hours” (all three were produced by Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax). Reilly was nominated for his supporting role in “Chicago,” which won Best Picture in 2003. Stuhlbarg appeared in 2018’s Best Picture winner, “The Shape of Water,” as a Soviet spy, brought audiences to tears in “Call Me by Your Name” and made a minor but crucial appearance in “The Post” as New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal. However, Stuhlbarg is not the only actor this year to make appearances in several Oscar- nominated films. His on-screen son, Timothée Chalamet, starred in two Best Picture nominees (“Lady Bird” and “Call Me by Your Name”), putting his beautiful face on the map. Chalamet’s co-star in “Lady Bird,” Lucas Hedges, played Frances McDormand’s son in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” Hedges’s fellow ginger in “Three Billboards,” Red, played by Caleb Landry Jones, also starred in multiple nominated films. Before he got the shit kicked out of him in Best Picture nominee “Three Billboards” by Sam Rockwell, he got the shit kicked out him in Best Picture nominee “Get Out” by Daniel Kaluuya (not to mention a brief appearance alongside Willem Defoe in the colossal Oscar snub, “The Florida Project”). Bradley Whitford and Tracy Letts both appeared in “The Post” in addition to their fatherly performances in “Get Out” and “Lady Bird,” respectively. Alison Brie and Bob Odenkirk also had starring roles in “The Post,” in addition to their minor roles in Best Adapted Screenplay nominee “The Disaster Artist.” Lily James starred in Best Picture nominee “Darkest Hour,” as well as the fast-paced, action-packed Edgar Wright film “Baby Driver,” which was nominated for Best Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing. Hollywood is not afraid to reduce, reuse and recycle actors when it comes to awards season. Perhaps the good actors in Hollywood today are too few to spread the wealth or maybe these guys just have really good agents. Regardless, Michael Stuhlbarg is but one Kevin Bacon in the massive web of degrees of separation that is Hollywood. Therefore, the art of the cameo is no longer reserved for the Hitchcock’s and the Stan Lee’s of the world, actors can cameo as well. So, keep your eyes peeled for the new star of cinema, the supporting, supporting role: the cameo. Michael Stuhlbarg and the Oscar-worthy cameo BECKY PORTMAN Senior Arts Editor On La question, Hardy’s voice lives up to its full potential with Tuca’s delicate yet emotive arrangements SAYAN GHOSH Daily World Music Columnist BOOK REVIEW Following the indie success of her first novel, “The Atomic Weight of Love,” Elizabeth Church returns with “All the Beautiful Girls,” a coming-of- age story about the resilience of a 1960s Las Vegas showgirl. There’s a lot to unpack here. After surviving a car crash that kills her parents and sister, Lily Decker moves in with her aunt and uncle. At just eight- years-old, her life is molded by this tragedy, this accident. She befriends “the Aviator,” the man who killed her family. He’s a good man who made a mistake, and he’s pretty much the only person on her team, helping her to navigate what I can only categorize as The Worst Childhood Ever. She grows up with her heart set on leaving her hometown the second she can, and that’s exactly what she does. She gives herself a new name, transforming into Ruby Wilde over the course of a bus ride to Sin City. She’s on her way to be a troupe dancer, and she ends up working as a showgirl. After spending her childhood pining for a version of the American dream, she spends her adult career tripping over the many disillusions of it. Most of Ruby’s story reads like this — a series of missteps on a road paved with imperfections. I had trouble holding her close to my heart, and I think it’s because she’s too beautiful. She’s a manic- pixie-dream showgirl, and in all of her faults and failures, she’s flawless. Church created a character that doesn’t just inhabit the traits she was given — she drips with them. Ruby is soaked in ephemerality, constantly lusted after, and it makes it hard to place her in our own world. Church writes her heroine to be graceful in a blustering town, resilient in a marred home, stunning as she goes through puberty. She isn’t real. That’s my biggest beef with the book: It’s not real. Ruby gets breaks when she needs them, not a moment too soon or a beat too late. She befriends a man on her ride to Vegas who, if he existed in any other story (and especially our own world), would have been creepy with her. But instead of predatory advances and suggestive conversations, Ruby gets an immediate safety net upon her arrival in the city. Church builds her life to be hard, but not too hard. She pads it, making it just horrifying enough for us to sympathize with Ruby but embellished enough for us to realize that we could never be Ruby. The novel’s dialogue is no different. It’s unnaturally eloquent and blasphemously fluid. The conclusions Ruby comes to and her delivery of them are far too astute and smooth to ever emerge from an actual person. When she finally arises healed from a cruel relationship with photographer and all-around lowlife Javier, she pours herself out to the Aviator. She gives him everything — the nights with her uncle, the days with her aunt, the evenings with Javier — only to end by saying, “That’s what I’ve learned lately. Javier. My accident. Everything — it’s just life.” Yeah, it’s life, but people don’t speak like this. Even in her pain and her mistakes, she still comes across as impeccable, figuring out life at an unrealistically fast pace. Ruby is so gorgeous and so striking that it’s hard to read her as anything short of heartbreaking — a version of a character who only slightly resembles pieces of the people we strive to be. And maybe the point is supposed to live somewhere along these lines, somewhere in the moments where Ruby is so damaged by the world around her and punished for her porcelain prowess that she can’t help but shine in her provocative resilience. And maybe I’m just jealous. I have a hunch, though, that Ruby’s perfection is more a product of her maker than a consequence of her misfortunes. That being said, “All the Beautiful Girls” was an entertaining read. It took me to an era I’ve always wanted to see in a city I never dreamed of seeing it in. Church wrote a big world for a girl who was always made to feel small, and she gave her growing room. It was fun — albeit a little too beautiful. ‘All the Beautiful Girls’ is too beautiful to be good ARYA NAIDU Senior Arts Editor “All the Beautiful Girls” Elizabeth Church Mar. 6, 2018 Ballantine Books That’s my biggest beef with the book: It’s not real WIKIMEDIA COMMONS