The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, November 9, 2018 — 5A
ANU SOFTWARE
CONSULTANTS, INC.
(Ann Arbor, MI) is recruiting: Sys
tems analysts to perform systems
require
ments, integration testing,
technical and risk analysis; Sr. Sys
tems Analysts to pro
vide technologi
cal support, gather require
ments, and
convert to functional specifica
tions,
and must have experience, educa
tion or training in at least two of the
follow
ing: Selenium, ClearCase,
QTP,TCM; Software Engineers to
design, develop and test software
solutions AC/DC Topologies, EMI/
EMC; Project Manager
s/Leaders to
manage multiple projects, in
cluding
Medicalproduct Design, CAD Tools,
PLM, EnoviaV6, SAS Tools, and
provide process consulting to stream
line project mgmt and estimation
processes. All applicants except Sr.
System Analyst must have experi
ence, education or train
ing in at least
two of the following: Embed
ded, C/
C++, RS232, CAN, OOAD, Unix,
MatLab, Matchcad, Matlar, SQL,
Life Cycle, SAP/BO/ABAP, Java,
JavaScript, J2EE, Hibernate, VB.Net,
ASP. net and AWS. Travel/relocation
re
quired as jobs will be performed
at vari
ous locations throughout the
US. Fax re
sume, position, and salary
requirements to: ASC, Inc., Attn: HR
Department, at (734) 6610722.
CLEANER NEEDED
$550/WEEKLY
Working Days: Monday and Friday
Time Schedule: 8AM 2PM
Email: johnlegend876@outlook.com
HELP WANTED
By Bonnie L. Gentry and Victor Fleming
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/09/18
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
11/09/18
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Friday, November 9, 2018
ACROSS
1 Bad cut
5 And
9 __ Ababa
14 Natural skin
soother
15 Good earth
16 Datum in a
forensic database
17 Impediment
19 Neighborhood
gathering
20 Outcasts
21 Boiling point?
22 “No seats” sign
23 Score after deuce
25 Beach application
28 Billion-dollar
pharmaceuticals
34 More than
suspect
36 Early
20th-century
touring cars
37 Part of a joke
38 Lingering effect
39 Not as dotty
41 Colorado tributary
42 Massey of old
films
44 Thoroughbred’s
dad
45 “Git!”
46 One with a lot to
learn, perhaps
49 Obstruction
50 Pushed the
doorbell
51 Night school subj.
53 Scandinavian bar
exchange
57 Corrode
61 Local anesthesia
effect
62 Device with
pulleys
64 Words in some
English resort
town names
65 Major fit
66 First name in
homespun humor
67 Word aptly
represented
by four black
squares in this
puzzle
68 Watched carefully
69 Exchange jabs
DOWN
1 [You can’t mean
that!]
2 Wasatch
Mountains resort
3 __ grapes
4 Some Chrysler
engines
5 Around-the-clock
6 Half a Daily
Planet byline
7 __ Antonio
8 Texting
interjection
9 Tacks on
10 “Phooey!”
11 __-cheap
12 Like some JFK
flights
13 Lid issue
18 Verbal jab
21 Cassis apéritif
23 Penitent
24 Mirage site
25 Knitter’s coil
26 Family reunion
attendee
27 At all
29 A pass may
cover one
30 Brief rules?
31 City in New
York’s Mohawk
Valley
32 Stalin-era prison
33 Dramatic
outpouring
35 Policy __
40 Readied, as
leftovers
43 Puncture
consequence
47 Court figures, for
short
48 Ensenada
pronoun
52 Velcro
alternative
53 Nose-in-the-air
sort
54 __ Ration
55 Guesstimate
phrase
56 With, on le menu
57 Do landscaping
work
58 Dr. Johnny
Fever’s fictional
station
59 Soprano Gluck
60 Sommelier’s
concern
62 “__ you out of
your mind?”
63 “All opposed”
reply
Classifieds
Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
The holiday movie season
is here, and Netflix hasn’t
forgetten.
The
streaming
service’s recent release “The
Holiday
Calendar”
follows
Abby Sutton (Kat Graham,
“The Vampire Diaries”), an
aspiring photographer whose
grandfather
(Ron
Cephas
Jones, “This is Us”) gives
her an advent calendar that,
instead of chocolate, seems
to give clues to whatever will
happen in Abby’s love life that
day.
Magical
intervention,
indirect or direct, is typical
of any holiday movie and
“The Holiday Calendar” is
no different. Abby’s calendar
influences her decisions and
is the source of her major
revelations, both about her life
and her relationships. While
the movie relies heavily on
the reveal of what’s behind
each little door, “The Holiday
Calendar” makes good use of
upbeat Christmas music and
montages to establish Abby’s
newfound relationship and the
decline of her older friendship.
The movie’s two eligible
bachelors allow “The Holiday
Calendar”
to
explore
the
tried-and-true problems that
come when a main character
is ignorant to the fact that
their best friend is in love with
them. The first half of the
movie is spent flitting between
shots of Abby enjoying herself
with
her
childhood
friend
Josh (Quincy Brown, “Street”)
and being swept off her feet
by the too-perfect doctor Ty
(Ethan Peck, “The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice”). Other than the
inner turmoil of forcing the
audience to choose between
two great guys, there isn’t a lot
to “The Holiday Calendar.” But
this lack of depth is the reason
why people gravitate towards
holiday movies in a time when
family drama is high, and
temperatures are low.
Double the love interests,
though,
means
double
the
drama,
and
when
Abby’s
relationship
with
Ty
gets
in the way of her friendship
with Josh, she’s forced to
evaluate her life. The movie
comes to a climax when Abby
loses her job, her best friend
and her new relationship all
in the span of two days. The
predictable nature of the way
the movie ends, with Abby
holing up in her room and
ending up with her best friend,
feels like leaving the Macy’s
gift-wrapping
station
with
everything neatly tied up.
One
of
the
shining
characteristics of this movie,
though, is the cast. Typically,
holiday
movies
follow
a
predominantly
white
cast
with the occasional person
of color thrown in to achieve
“diversity”
and
please
a
network representative. But
“The
Holiday
Calendar,”
instead, has a mixed-race main
character with a focus on her
relationship with her African-
American
grandfather.
Her
best friend, and one of the key
love interests, is also African-
American,
along
with
the
comedic relief in the form of
a Latinx third wheel in their
relationship. The film even
goes so far as to include a
Latinx mayor — talk about
diversity and gender equality.
Though
the
plot,
the
acting
and
the
cast
were
leagues better than any of
the Hallmark movies, “The
Holiday Calendar” was still
lacking in that one, unknown
quantity that makes a movie
a holiday classic, like “Love
Actually” or “Home Alone.”
Instead, it’s the kind of movie
watched while baking holiday
cookies, wrapping presents or
decorating the tree.
“The Holiday
Calendar”
Netflix
FILM REVIEW
TV REVIEW
NETFLIX
‘The Holiday Calendar’ is
a perfectly fine romcom
EMMA CHANG
Daily Arts Writer
The first time I heard the name
Andrew Norman was the day I
met him. It was the summer of
2014, and I was spending six weeks
in rural New England studying
composition at a music festival by
the name of Walden. Sometime in
the middle of the program, those of
us students able to find the time in
our schedules took a field trip away
from our quaint Dublin campus
to the MacDowell Colony, an
artists’ retreat located just outside
of Peterborough, N. H. In a lovely,
wooded
location,
MacDowell
supports a range of artists — from
writers to composers to architects
— with a space for them to live
in creative isolation, materially
provided for and removed from the
quotidian troubles that can distract
from creative work. As part of our
visit, the composers in residence at
the time gave short presentations
about their work and ideas, playing
excerpts from pieces of theirs and
answering questions.
Now
Norman’s
name
is
everywhere. But that summer was
the first time I encountered either
him or his music, and it changed
the way that I listened, opened
my ears to musical possibilities I
had never considered before and
still influence me today. A blond
30-something from California who
seemed practically brimming over
with exciting ideas, that summer
Norman was standing on the
threshold of the classical music
stardom he would find himself
thrust into in the intervening years
between then and now. As far as I
can tell, he was first quoted in The
New York Times a few months
later — by now he has been profiled
and reviewed and previewed in
its pages more times than the
vast majority of composers active
today. Before all this, in 2012, his
string trio “The Companion Guide
to Rome” had been a finalist for
the Pulitzer Prize in music, but
that was nothing compared to the
acclaim that would be directed
towards him following the wildly
enthusiastic
reception
of
his
large-scale, rip-roaring orchestral
composition “Play.”
This Friday and Saturday the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra will
take up “Play,” performing it on
a program which also includes
Dvorák’s “Carnival Overture” and
Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No.
1,” played by Emanuel Ax.
When I interviewed Norman
over the phone this week, he talked
about some of the ideas behind
writing “Play,” which — at around
45 minutes — was his longest
composition at the time of its
writing, though by now he has been
commissioned to write numerous
concertos, an opera and a wide
variety of large-scale projects.
“It’s kind of unusual because,
most of the time, when we get a
chance to write for orchestra it’s
usually for a very limited amount
of time, for a short piece,” Norman
said. “10 minutes, you know?
12 minutes. And this was for a
45-minute-long thing.”
Norman
wrote
“Play”
in
2013 while he was composer-in-
residence for the Boston Modern
Orchestra Project, an ensemble
founded and directed by Gil Rose
in order to champion the work of
contemporary composers and to
explore the connections between
their music and modern society.
Having a professional ensemble of
this sort — one dedicated to playing
new music — was immensely
liberating for Norman, as he could
feel free to make use of a variety
of
non-conventional
playing
techniques which would give more
traditional players pause. For his
part, on a more conceptual level
Norman was interested in the new
ways that people think in our fast-
paced, interconnected world, and
about how he could reflect that
through the medium of music.
“I was thinking a lot of the idea
of rupture, and interruption, and
how in my writing I could suggest
that an idea has been cut short, that
it has some future or potential that
was not reached,” Norman said.
Often, this effect was achieved by
Norman borrowing concepts from
other types of media. From video
games he appropriated the notion
that an action can directly cause
a response somewhere else — like
pressing a button on a video game
controller causes your character to
act a certain way, Norman assigned
specific gestures in the percussion
section to certain musical reactions
in the rest of the orchestra.
“I’ve also been thinking about
systems
of
control,
wherein
instruments
control
other
instruments, and instruments turn
each other on and off,” Norman
said. “The idea that a piece can
be a system of rules and control,
that the piece would be about the
exploration of that system, almost
like a game has rules a piece can
have rules.”
More than just that, Norman
lifted non-linear narrative from
film and TV, embracing a kind of
eclecticism of plot that gives the
piece a freewheeling intensity, an
edge-of-your-seat type of feeling.
“It’s a little bit like thinking of
plotlines or narratives or stories
that all have particular goals,
and then chopping them up and
arranging them, sort of collage-
like,” Norman said. “But it only
works in my mind if no one knows
what the goal of each story is or
where it’s headed and where it’s all
trying to go.”
But when it works, it really
works. Part of what makes “Play”
such a fascinating piece is how
it changes character on a dime,
flashing between disparate musical
scenes like the flipping of light
switches to different rooms. At one
moment ferocious chords bombard
you with noise, the next is a tranquil
stillness — a second later scratching
glissandi in the strings run up
and down at a breathtaking rate.
Whole stretches of the piece careen
from idea to idea, tripping over
themselves, spinning head over
heels as each successive moment is
interrupted by the next in a chaotic
display of fireworks. But it’s this
off-kilter enjambment of identities
that gives “Play” its sense of self.
It’s a work that embraces both
this ferocious complexity and, in
later movements, gives voice to
concentrated, passionate emotions,
as long, straining brass lines seem
to reach ever higher, yearning to
break free from the gravity of the
orchestra beneath them during the
climax of the piece.
But for a composer whose work
tends to exhibit such rambunctious
eclecticism, Norman also has a
propensity to form years-long
fixations on musical ideas. One of
the most fascinating things about
listening to “Play” is how you can
hear the evolution of ideas from
his previous work — traces of “The
Companion Guide” or “Music in
Circles” or “Try” (which Norman
called a “beta version” of “Play”) are
all to be found here. Unlike many
contemporary composers, Norman
doesn’t feel the need to reinvent his
voice with each new piece, and is
comfortable revising and recycling
material in order to bring it closer
to what he is really trying to say.
And perhaps this is why he’s one of
the most interesting musical voices
heard today: It would be wrong to
call it a clarity of vision, because
it’s constantly being reassessed
and reformed, but Norman has
a rare dedication to his ideas. He
follows his thoughts as far as they
go, returning again and again until
he has played them out to the end.
Andrew Norman & the
intensity of ‘Play’
DAYTON
HARE
DAILY CLASSICAL MUSIC COLUMN
What’s in a memory? On
television, they’re often distorted,
impressionistic
constructions
of the human brain. But in
“Homecoming,” a superb new
drama from Amazon Prime Video,
it’s the present that is faint and
incomplete, desaturated and boxed
in a squarish aspect ratio, while the
past is rendered wholly and lucidly,
in crisp widescreen.
It’s one of the more inventive
ways director Sam Esmail (“Mr.
Robot”) translates the aural tension
of the show’s source material —
the popular scripted podcast from
Gimlet Media — into the year’s most
visually striking television. He has
also made the very wise decision
to keep “Homecoming” roughly
as long as its podcast predecessor
— at 10 briskly-paced, half-hour
episodes, it’s practically designed to
be consumed in one long watch.
“Homecoming”
and
“Mr.
Robot” share both a director and
similar themes, namely an interest
in the fallibility of memory and the
extent to which corporations have
their claws in all of us. For months,
social worker Heidi Bergman
(Julia Roberts, “Pretty Woman”)
worked for Geist, a pharmaceutical
company turned defense contractor
operating a top-secret civilian
re-entry program for veterans. But
years later, when a Department
of
Defense
investigator
(Shea
Whigham, “Boardwalk Empire”)
tracks Heidi down with questions
about her former job, Heidi can’t
quite make sense of what really
happened in her time there.
It’s a subdued role that doesn’t
give us much of Roberts’s signature
show-stopping smile, but she brings
plenty of warmth to it nonetheless.
And her foray into TV — in line
with the addition of Meryl Streep to
the “Big Little Lies” cast and Amy
Adams’s turn in “Sharp Objects”
— confirms that we’re in an age
where prestige TV is as attractive a
project to Hollywood megastars as
big-budget film. Roberts is joined
by an excellent supporting cast —
Stephan James (“Race”) as Walter
Cruz, a Geist test subject (ahem,
client) who develops a rapport
with Heidi; Sissy Spacek (“Carrie”)
as Heidi’s concerned mother; and
Bobby Cannavale (“Third Watch”)
in the ultimate Cannavalian role,
Heidi’s sleazy, fast-talking boss
Colin, who’s in line for a promotion
at Geist.
The elements that the podcast
format
requires
—
simple,
character-driven
stories
and
meaningful dialogue — already
make
for
excellent
television.
What’s left for Esmail to do is
what he seems to do best: elevate
and
augment
the
storytelling
with stylish details and artful
camerawork. With “Homecoming,”
Esmail solidifies himself as one
of the best directors working in
television. His style here projects
a kind of refined paranoia, evoking
Hitchcock in hypnotic staircase
shots, trippy zooms and spectacular
long takes.
It sounds like a guaranteed
recipe
for
indulgence:
big
streaming service meets noted
TV auteur meets star-studded
cast. But “Homecoming” is some
of the smarter, more disciplined
Amazon fare of late. The half-hour
format keeps it compact and tightly
written, watchable from the first
episode and never a slog. It’s easily
a model for what streaming shows
could (and should) be: television
that makes the most of its creative
freedom but keeps itself grounded.
“Homecoming”
Season 1
Amazon Prime Video
‘Homecoming’ is sublime
MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN
Daily Arts Writer