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Arts
Monday, February 18, 2019 — 5A
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FOR RENT
By Kurt Krauss
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/18/19
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
02/18/19
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Monday, February 18, 2019
ACROSS
1 Class-conscious
gp.
4 Big name in
underwear
9 Near-sighted Mr.
14 __-de-sac
15 Conical home
16 Do penance
17 Extreme-weather
restriction,
perhaps
19 Dwindled
20 Krispy __
doughnuts
21 Chat room
chuckle
23 Japanese
computer giant
24 18-wheeler
25 Title bear of
’60s TV
28 A flirt may bat
one
31 Mount McKinley,
now
32 ’60s “acid”
33 Like baggy
pants
36 Bewilder
37 Brit’s trash can
39 Paris’ river
43 Boxing’s “Iron
Mike”
44 Yahoo! rival
47 Obtain through
intimidation, as
money
49 Attached, as
hotel rooms
51 Classic French
song whose title
means “It’s so
good”
54 Unexpected thing
to hit
55 Cornfield sound
56 Suffix with iso-
or poly-
57 Footnote abbr.
59 Sci-fi author
Verne
61 Frank holder
64 Leaning
65 Battery post
66 Absorbed, as a
loss
67 Fishing line
holders
68 What a rooster
rules
69 Like seven U.S.
flag stripes
DOWN
1 Cut for an agt.
2 Thanksgiving
birds
3 Fearful
4 Flower part
5 Brazilian soccer
legend
6 Msg. for a cop car
7 “Their Eyes Were
Watching God”
novelist Zora __
Hurston
8 Arc lamp gas
9 Animal’s gullet
10 Finished
11 (Having) spoiled
12 Like amoebas
13 Wordsmith’s ref.
18 Wedding wear
22 Inc., in Toronto
24 French salt
25 White-sheet
wearer, on
Halloween
26 Singer Rimes
and soaps
actress Hunley
27 Never, in Neuss
29 Birch family trees
30 Not worth a __
34 Hog’s home
35 “Barnaby Jones”
star Buddy
38 + or - particle
39 “Just a __!”
40 Carry out, as a
task
41 “Don’t believe
that!”
42 Ailing
44 Hotel room
amenity
45 It’s a law
46 Opposite of
pos.
48 Comic Conway
50 Maritime safety
gp.
52 Joy of “The View”
53 Maine college
town
57 Sports betting
numbers
58 Browning or Burns
59 Pickle container
60 Ave. crossers
62 As well
63 Beatty of
“Deliverance”
Classifieds
Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
It’s
hard
to
see
Chaka
Khan release an album in
2019 without appreciating the
panoramic sweep of her career
— she’s best known for her
defining role in funk and R&B
of the ’70s and ’80s, which
means she lived and worked
through at least one drastic
transition in American musical
history. She made her defining
career
moves
before
the
internet changed everything,
sure, but she also lived in a
time before drum machines
were the norm, before hip hop
coalesced as a genre. She has
collaborated with Ray Charles
and Mary J. Blige, separated by
two decades. There’s a street
in Chicago named after
her.
She
isn’t
a
relic,
though, despite her last
few albums seeming to
signal a career coming
to
a
gliding
stop.
2004’s ClassiKhan was
a collection of velvet-
curtained
standards
that could have been a
fitting culminating statement
— the album feels like a
victory lap of sorts, a record
highlighting the voice of an
artist who has proven that she
can use it in a wide variety of
contexts. 2007’s Funk This did
something similar with ’70s
funk — both albums worked
more as nostalgic tributes by
an acknowledged master than
any new, definitive statement.
The production credits on
the
recently-released
Hello
Happiness signal that this
has changed. The standout is
the British house DJ Switch,
who has production credit
on every song. He is perhaps
best represented in his work
with M.I.A., for whom he
backs with a twitchy digital
pyrotechnics. Given his EDM
roots, it’s a strange choice for
him to be producing Khan’s
record. The combination has
the vague potential to be
interesting, but the result is
an album in which it feels like
every component is at odds
with every other component,
a confused muddle that never
really gets off the ground. It
seems as though Switch tried a
sort of updated 1970s, tossing
in a smorgasbord of vaguely
funky sounds — the Hammond
organ on “Too Hot,” the reedy
guitar on “Ladylike,” the wah
pedal on “Isn’t That Enough.”
Sampling is, at this point, a
canonical practice in dance
music, but this is sampling
at its most facile, its most
Potemkin. Maybe it’s because
we have Khan’s older music
to compare Switch to, but it
seems like the music doesn’t
get anywhere close to the
open-ended, vocal riffs and
delicate
interplay
of
funk
music or the propulsiveness
of disco. Phrases that could
have
been
convincing
are
crammed into four-and-two-
bar loops, a production choice
that sticks out next to Khan’s
musicianship
—
her
voice
hasn’t lost any of its power,
and she readily bends pitch
and crosses barlines as the rest
of the backing track proceeds
in computerized lockstep.
Overall,
the
production
feels like someone who likes
listening to himself talk too
much, like someone fascinated
by his own cleverness even
as he talks over the more
interesting
conversational
partner. There are moments
where I wanted the twitchy
percussion and the irritating
synths to melt away and simply
let Khan’s voice through — the
title track, in particular, has
the most potential to rival
Khan’s work from the 1970s
and 1980s, but it’s just so
overburdened. There are also
more than a few embarrassing
debacles. It’s advisable for
anyone reading this to just
skip “Don’t Cha Know” unless
they
want
an
unpleasant
reminder that dubstep ever
happened,
shortly
followed
by
the
horrifying
thought
that
somewhere,
probably
in Britain, it might still be
happening.
As
I
was
listening
to
Hello Happiness, I couldn’t
help but think of the now-
infamous interview that one
of Khan’s past collaborators,
Quincy Jones, gave in
2018. Over and over,
he
emphasized
that
the
popular
music
landscape of the US is
missing real, thorough
appreciation
for
the
past;
musicians
are
forgetting
that
all
possibility
for
progression
comes
from taking seriously what has
come before. “Producers now
are ignoring all the musical
principles
of
the
previous
generations . . . You’re supposed
to use everything from the
past. If you know where you
come from, it’s easier to get
where you’re going.” Given
that Khan’s discography is one
possible way to survey almost
a
half-century
of
musical
history, it’s frustrating that
this album feels trapped in the
particularities of the present
moment — a lazy, appropriative
production style and lack of
real substance dressed up with
flashy instrumentals. It feels
like Khan doesn’t deserve this,
this late in her career — I hope
that there is another album
after this one, and that it is
better.
‘Hello Happiness’ is a
missed mark for Khan
EMILY YANG
Daily Arts Writer
ISLAND RECORDS
MUSIC REVIEW
‘Hello Happiness’
Chaka Khan
Island Records
In December of 2017, the first
trailer for “Alita: Battle Angel”
hit the internet. Adapted from
the iconic Japanese manga/
anime
series
“Battle
Angel
Alita,” a live-action
“Alita”
movie
was
the
decades-in-the-
making
dream
of
James
Cameron’s
(“Avatar”),
and
had the hype and
mystique
of
a
legitimate
passion
project
from
the
acclaimed
director.
The
film
would
tell the story of a
discarded
cyborg
named Alita who is
resurrected with no
memories of her past
and must embark on
a journey to discover
who — and what — she is.
Then, the trailers dropped,
and we were introduced to
Alita’s giant CGI eyes that were
met with unanimous distaste
and generally made everyone
uncomfortable,
evoking
the “uncanny valley” effect
describing the uneasy feeling
one gets when something is
almost
human-looking,
but
not quite. At this point, I had
written off the film as an
ambitious if misguided product
of a visionary director with
nobody around to tell him “no.”
Having now seen the film, I
was only sort of right. Make no
mistake, “Alita: Battle Angel”
is flawed, and those infamous
CGI eyes might be a good
explanation as to why. This is
because the film seems to fall
victim to the same plight; it
looks like a bonafide science
fiction blockbuster, but with
something that’s just not quite
right.
James
Cameron
has
worked with director Robert
Rodriguez (“Sin City: A Dame
to Kill For”) to faithfully adapt
a unique and vividly imagined
world
to
the
screen,
but
something
about
the
presentation of
it gives the film
a sort of cheap,
made-for-TV
look. The film
is
absolutely
gorgeous when
it
wants
to
be, and some
of the action
sequences
are
truly
spectacular,
but
it’s
the
expository,
low-action shots that often look
like cheap sci-fi camp. “Alita” as
a series has long marketed itself
as the classic cyberpunk story,
but its flash-in-the-pan visual
theatrics feel one-note when
compared to a film like 2017’s
“Blade Runner: 2049,” a sci-fi
epic with similar themes that
was one of the most visually
enthralling films of the modern
era.
The
most
disappointing
element of the film, however,
is its script. The dialogue
is
often
painfully
cheesy; at one point,
mid-skirmish,
we
hear Alita think to
herself (in voiceover)
“I do not standby in
the presence of evil!”
Then,
Alita
lands
another
punch
and
yells the exact same
sentence, again, not
a second after we
heard it in voiceover.
Beyond the dialogue,
it’s conceptually ill-
conceived
to
boot.
The
film
refuses
to engage with its
cyberpunk
roots
in
any
meaningful
way,
instead
using
the sub-genre as an
aesthetic preference.
This
is
because
Alita’s
cybernetic
nature is never truly
addressed. In media
like “Blade Runner,”
“Westworld”
and
“Ex
Machina,”
the
cerebral core of the
film lies in a struggle
to define humanity.
The
Replicants
of
“Blade
Runner” and the Hosts of
“Westworld” all struggle with
who and what they are, trying
to make sense of their own
existence
as
a
synthesized
intelligence.
Cameron
never
asks Alita to wrestle with these
questions, and the film feels
neutered as a result.
So what, then, makes “Alita”
worth seeing? For lack of a
better word, its heart. What it
lacks in brains, the film makes
up for with pure, unabashed
earnestness.
Watching
the
film, I was often reminded
of
the
heart-on-its-sleeve
sincerity of anime such as
“Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.” For
better or worse, “Alita” is more
concerned with impassioned
declarations of love in the heat
of battle than it is with cerebral
questions regarding
human
nature.
Luckily, this works
most of the time,
and
the
film
is
frequently heartfelt
as a result. Rosa
Salazar (“Birdbox”)
is the best part
of the film as the
titular Alita. She
plays the character
with just the right
blend of intensity
and
wide-eyed
(no pun intended)
enthusiasm
for
the
world
she’s
rediscovering.
Speaking
of
the
giant eyes, despite
all the misguided
decisions that went
into their existence,
they
do
actually
lend the character
an extra layer of
expressiveness that
genuinely
works.
It’s in this way that
those CGI peepers
serve as a solid
analogy for the film
as a whole; rough around the
edges and uncomfortable at
times, but once you get used to
it there’s something undeniably
infectious about its soul.
‘Alita: Battle Angel’ works
despite a few CGI issues
MAX MICHALSKY
Daily Arts Writer
20TH CENTURY FOX
FILM REVIEW
‘Alita: Battle Angel’
20th Century Fox
Goodrich Quality 16
For better or worse, “Alita”
is more concerned with
impassioned declarations of
love in the heat of battle than
it is with cerebral questions
regarding human nature.
Luckily, this works most of the
time, and the film is frequently
heartfelt as a result.