6 — Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

By Frank Virzi
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
01/29/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

01/29/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Tuesday, January 29, 2019

ACROSS
1 Tricky road 
curves
6 Too hasty
10 “Boy, am I dumb!”
13 Bowl over
14 Valpolicella wine 
brand
15 Suffix with 
project or 
percent
16 *Killjoy
18 Metro stop: Abbr.
19 State south of 
Wash.
20 *Face 
consequences 
for poor 
decisions
22 Like Lincoln 
in the Lincoln 
Memorial
24 Yom Kippur 
observers
25 Italian wine hub
26 South African 
golfer Ernie
28 Make a wool cap, 
say
29 MLB exec 
Joe who was 
the Yankees’ 
manager for 12 
seasons
32 Wrangler’s ropes
34 *Furniture 
restorer’s 
chemical
37 Wild cards, 
maybe
38 Arrive at
39 “At Last” singer 
James
40 Charged particle
41 Recipe amts.
45 Polar expedition 
vehicles
48 ’70s-’80s FBI 
sting
50 *Airborne unit 
member
53 Tijuana gold
54 “__ little teapot ... ”
55 Stationery supply 
with a blade ... 
and a hint to 
the answers to 
starred clues
57 Min. part
58 Companionless
59 Quai d’Orsay’s 
river
60 WNW opposite

61 Swiss watch 
brand
62 Trial rounds

DOWN
1 Señor’s wife
2 Stock market 
purchases
3 Furious with
4 Outer: Pref.
5 Video 
conferencing 
choice
6 Carrot or turnip
7 Dominant dogs
8 Wintry pellets
9 Marx brother with 
a horn
10 Mete out, as 
PEZ candy
11 Hidden, as 
motives
12 Publishing family
14 __ Wonder: 
Robin
17 Note-taking aid
21 Classic ’30s-’50s 
vocal quartet, 
with “the”
23 Lake on the 
border of Bolivia 
and Peru
26 Critical-care ctrs.
27 Release

30 Queen’s “Another 
__ Bites the Dust”
31 Shares again on 
Twitter, briefly
32 Set a match to
33 Befitting
34 Love handles?
35 Grand Prix, e.g.
36 Han and Leia’s 
son Kylo __
37 Loathe
40 14-legged 
crustacean

42 Nova __
43 Mother or father
44 Gooey campfire 
treats
46 For face value
47 Song syllables
48 NRC forerunner
49 Hair salon staple
51 Winery prefix
52 Opposite of 
post-
56 Shirt with a 
V-neck, perhaps

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SUBLETS

Maggie Rogers thrives in a space 
where elements oppose each other. Pair 
that with an ability to not only feel the 
world vehemently, but to recalibrate 
when life rapidly transfigures, and you 
get Heard it in a Past Life.
Life 
changed 
dramatically 
for 
Rogers in July of 2016, when Pharrell 
Williams held a surprise master class 
at NYU, where Rogers was completing 
her senior year as a music student. 
Although Williams listened to multiple 
examples of student work, he quickly 
lionized Rogers within the classroom 
setting, heaping praise on her song 
“Alaska.” Williams noticed a match 
between Rogers’s description of her 
lived experience and the music. She 
described her sound as rooted in the 
folk from her youth (having grown up 
playing harp and banjo), but also as 
taking on a new life when she studied 
abroad and discovered the world of 
electronic dance music. Unknowingly 
to Rogers, Pharrell’s praises were 
recorded on video and uploaded to 
YouTube. Two million views later, and 
Rogers has achieved eminence in the 
music industry.
Following the viral video, Rogers 
launched a world tour, starred as a 
musical guest on “SNL” and opened 

for Mumford and Sons, all after 
only releasing a five-song EP and a 
couple of singles. In her documentary 
published in March of 2018, she relayed 
the daunting notion of life spinning 
out of control, and the importance 
of creating a thoughtful, reflective 
space to artistically create on her own 
time. Heard it In a Past Life is Rogers’s 
proclamation of recapturing herself 

and her story.
The album explores contradictions, 
particularly those that have emerged 
since Rogers’s rise to fame. Rogers 
creates a space that explores humanity 
with a lens that is both macroscopic 
and microscopic, a freedom that is 
exhilarating yet messy and a sense of 
self that is rapidly changing while also 
continuous. These opposing ideas fit 
perfectly into the contradiction that 
is Rogers: folk with slight southern 
twang, paired smoothly with electronic 
production.

The 
album 
intimately 
inspects 
a human’s ability to be a tiny speck 
among 
the 
immensity 
of 
Earth. 
However, humans are simultaneously 
large-scale, inherently introspective, 
ever-changing while holding the ability 
to influence the world grandly. The 
track “Alaska” touches on the austere 
grandeur of Earth, as Rogers’s trip 
to Alaska after her freshman year of 
college illuminated the colossal size 
of the state’s mountain scenery. Such 
landscape makes one feel so small, like 
a gear in the bigger machine. Heard it 
In a Past Life weaves this macro feeling 
that the scenery of Alaska provides 
through each track. For example, the 
song “Overnight” uses samples from 
glacier and frog sounds. Moreover, 
when reflecting on the song “Alaska,” 
Rogers posted the following comment 
on Instagram about the process of 
naming the album: “There are so many 
aspects of this song that feel like they 
don’t belong to me, like it’s so much 
bigger than me. Like I heard it in a past 
life…”
But the album doesn’t just explore 
the human life as one piece among a 
much bigger puzzle. It also runs micro, 
touching on introspectively watching 
oneself change.

‘Heard it in a Past Life’ rings 
in a space between opposites

SAMANTHA CANTIE
Daily Arts Writer

CAPITOL

ALBUM REVIEW

It is the second semester 
of my junior year in college 
and 
everyone 
has 
left 
Ann Arbor. Maybe they 
were smart to leave, as 
temperatures 
become 
negative and the possibility 
that 
the 
administration 
might actually cancel classes 
for the first time in five years 
looms. Whatever the reason, 
the second semester of junior 
year is a time where a lot of us 
choose to study abroad. For 
foodies, this means endless 
gastronomically 
diverse 
culinary experiences around 
the globe — spicy, fresh 
paella served in a sizzling 
carbon steel pan in Spain, 
all the textbook cacio e pepe 
in Rome, round crackling 
Napoli pizzas with fresh 
basil leaves and gobs of warm 
mozzarella 
swimming 
in 
the perfect smear of grassy 
tomato sauce, paper thin 
crepes exploding with swirls 
of nutella and sliced banana 
on the streets of Paris, glasses 
of chilled French white wine 
and dark moody Italian reds, 
cappuccinos and espressos 
and nutty biscottis.
The knowledge of the 
culinary world outstretched 
before me for thousands 
of miles in every direction 
has put me in a food lover’s 
rut. I am sick with envy 
knowing 
what 
culinary 
experiences 
lie 
waiting 
overseas, experiences that 
my classmates and friends 
who traveled this semester 

are currently discovering. 
The Instagram photos of 
their sensational meals in 
Europe, South America, Asia 
and Israel just don’t satisfy 
the craving I have to travel 
in pursuit of discoveries 
through the diverse culture 
of food.
In all my envy — filling 
notebook pages with wishes 
and woes of meals in the 
Italian 
countryside 
and 
cafes with views of the Eiffel 
Tower, staring at Snapchat 
stories and photographs of 
every towering hazelnut ice 
cream in Prague and pool 
of hummus accented with a 
swirl of olive oil, imagining 
myself sipping the perfect 
midday aperol spritz over a 
copy of an old Faulkner I’ve 
read twice already — I lost 
what the city that I call home 
means to me.
Ann Arbor, despite being 
a classic university town, 
houses 
more 
than 
your 
typical college food spots. It 
has a grown-up, culturally 
diverse, spirited food scene — 
one that has been curated by a 
forward thinking community 
of intellects who constantly 
push the boundaries of the 
expected in all realms of life. 
The culinary spirit of our city 
spans miles and countries, 
time and space, all within 
walking distance and for far 
less than the cost of a plane 
ticket to leave Michigan.
Though 
I’m 
one 
to 
argue the Midwest doesn’t 
know a thing about pizza, 
there are certainly some 
Italian restaurants pushing 

themselves 
toward 
the 
wood 
fire, 
doughy-yet-
crispy heart of an authentic 
Italian pizza, something I 
could devour in moments 
while burning the roof of my 
mouth on stringy cheese and 
tangy sauce. Bigalora Wood 
Fired Cucina is definitely 
challenging themselves to 
incorporate more authentic 
Italian flavors in their trendy 
upscale pizza joint, which 
features tons of hip finger 
foods and a too-good-to-be-
true gluten free crust. When 
I am pining after the pizza of 
my childhood, or the pizza of 
any cafe in Naples, I am quick 
to order Bigalora — a place I 
know I can trust to deliver 
flavors that put me on a plane 
to Italy within a matter of 
moments.
Ann Arbor has created a 
diverse flavor personality, 
not pigeonholing itself to be 
one specific flavor or cuisine. 
It ignores the conventional 
wisdom behind Midwestern 
cities and food, pushing 
itself to find an idiosyncratic 
culinary persona. Ann Arbor 
is breakfast food. It is really 
good burgers and the perfect 
menu that combines some of 
the sunny West Coast with 
a New York state of mind. 
Fleetwood Diner and Blimpy 
Burger 
are 
Ann 
Arbor 
classics that are perfectly 
suited for a city with such 
quirks and non-conventional 
taste. 

A world of flavor

DAILY HEALTH & WELLNESS COLUMN

ELI RALLO
Daily Arts Writer

“IO” is the latest film in 
a series of Netflix misfires. 
The 
low-budget, 
sci-fi
 
drama directed by Jonathan 
Helpert (“House of Time”) 
involves only a duo of 
characters 
and 
limited 
sets to convey profound 
(but 
actually 
unoriginal) 
observations 
about 
humanity, 
and 
crumples 
quickly 
under 
atrocious 
writing and an exhausting 
narrative structure.
The story takes place 
years after a catastrophic 
environmental 
collapse 
on Earth made the planet 
uninhabitable, forcing most 
of the population to relocate 
to a space station on Io, a 
moon of Jupiter. Sam, a 
biologist played by Margaret 
Qualley (“The Nice Guys”), 
searches 
for 
possibilities 
of 
continuing 
human 
life back on Earth, while 
Micah (Anthony Mackie, 
“Avengers: Infinity War”), 
another straggler on the 
planet, implores her to board 
the last shuttle to Io.
Unfortunately, the most 
notable aspect of the movie is 
just how boring the concept 
is. Sam’s research project is 
laden with melodramatic, 
blunt voiceover that sounds 
neither scientific nor moving. 
Her character is so passively 
written that it’s a wonder 
Qualley is able to breath any 

life into the character at all. 
The actress does her best to 
read these lines of voiceover 
and dialogue with nuance, 
but they are still rarely more 
than robotic.
These missteps make up 
the entire first half of the 
film, after which point a 
viewer may find it difficult 
to 
stay 
conscious. 
The 
introduction 
of 
Mackie’s 
character, despite providing 
the 
film 
with 
some 
momentum, 
only 
makes 
the 
conversations 
more 
ridiculous. The two start 
quoting Plato and Homer 

to each other verbatim and 
analyze the human condition 
in laughably heavy-handed 
ways. Without a modicum 
of 
chemistry, 
they 
are 
inexplicably drawn toward 
each other simply to advance 
the story. They both lose 
their agency to the whim of 
the screenwriters, flipping 
on decisions and convictions 
that 
were 
apparently 
central to their actions. It’s 
simultaneously 
perplexing 
and miserable to behold.
After 
what 
feels 
like 
decades 
of 
this 
empty 
philosophical jargon echoing 
around, it becomes clear that 
the filmmakers have no idea 
how to end the trainwreck in 

a climactic way. What ensues 
is, shockingly, a conflict that 
emerges from thin air and 
resolves itself with more 
conjured melodrama. It’s 
akin to 2016’s “Passengers,” 
another contained sci-fi film 
with a halfway-intriguing 
premise 
and 
a 
bungled 
finale.
In the end, “IO” plays out 
as if it were conceived as a 
TV show, with disconnected 
plot 
points 
that 
resolve 
whenever 
convenient 
for 
the writer. The conflicts 
are so disjointedly episodic 
that the film is unsure of 
its own identity, leaping 
from survivalist drama to 
romance to science fiction. 
Even the 96 minute runtime 
drags beyond belief.
There is truthfully little 
reason to put oneself through 
this mess at all. Most casual 
moviegoers 
have 
likely 
already seen the tropes “IO” 
has to offer, whether in the 
abandonment of Earth as a 
viable home in “Interstellar” 
or the esoteric fascination 
of a lone scientist in an 
unfamiliar environment in 
“The Martian.” In fact, it 
might just be easier to believe 
“IO” is the work of aliens 
whose only knowledge of 
humans is sci-fi films from 
the 21st century rather than 
a product of actual humans. 
And with that ludicrous 
theory 
in 
mind, 
maybe 
there’s one legitimate reason 
to watch “IO.”

‘IO’ should remain in 
Jupiter’s moon system

NETFLIX

ANISH TAMHANEY
Daily Arts Writer

‘IO’

Netflix

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

FILM REVIEW

Heard it in 
a Past Life

Maggie Rogers 

Capitol

