6 — Friday, February 22, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
By Patti Varol
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/22/19
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
02/22/19
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Friday, February 22, 2019
ACROSS
1 Information desk
sign
6 Sits in a cellar,
say
10 Chuckleheads
14 Yuletide name
15 Philanthropist
Wallace
16 Grammy-winning
rapper
17 Totally rad
electric guitar
performance?
19 Short copy?
20 Upper bod
muscle
21 Poor Richard,
really
22 Brusque
23 Emergency
bucket on Dior’s
boat?
27 Nonbeliever
29 Shoreline flood
protection
30 Caper film event
31 Actor Danson
32 Dessert chain
with Cotton
Candy Freeze
36 Travel guide
37 Jib made of
clothing labels?
41 SE state
42 “When all __
fails ... ”
44 “Let ‘er __!”
45 Zac of
“Baywatch”
47 Error
49 Master piece?
51 Where to find
more beach
toys?
55 Expunge
56 Mahershala of
“True Detective”
57 IMAX purchase
59 X-ray, Yankee, __
60 Impressive
New York zoo
peacock display?
64 Phone button
abbr.
65 X-ray units
66 Starbucks size
67 Double __ Oreos
68 “If you don’t
mind?”
69 In other words, in
Caesar’s words
DOWN
1 “Crikey!”
2 Berth place
3 Healthy snack
4 Puts a cover on,
as a bed
5 Jargon suffix
6 Astros’ MLB
division
7 Really big
8 “The House With
a Clock in Its
Walls” director
Roth
9 “On the Road”
narrator
10 Secondary
wager
11 Integra maker
12 “For every
generation” soft
drink
13 1943 penny
metal
18 Hitting stat
22 Paramount
Network, once
24 “Norma Rae”
director
25 Writer’s block
breakthrough
26 German wheels
27 Words of lament
28 Marsh duck
31 Cough syrup
meas.
33 Actress who
plays Kimmy
Schmidt’s
landlady
34 Allied group
35 Jerk
38 “Sunday Night
Baseball”
analyst, familiarly
39 One often taking
a bow
40 Helen of Troy’s
mother
43 Try to find
oneself?
46 Made moth
moves
48 Half and half
49 House speaker
after Ryan
50 Neat as __
51 Amazon founder
52 Blow one’s stack
53 Ivy in Conn.
54 Resistant to cold,
as plants
58 Small songbirds
60 Parka sleeve
61 “Listen, ewe!”
62 Income tax
Amendment
63 Hammered
Some movies have the distinct ability to be
forgotten as soon as the end credits start rolling.
“Isn’t It Romantic?” is one of them. I remember
laughing a couple of times and cringing many
more, but, for the most part, I remember feeling
nothing. I think that’s the best way to describe
this film: nothing, a pit of nothingness. And no
amount of uncomfortable musical sequences
and flashy colors can remedy that. “Isn’t It
Romantic?” desperately tries to be both a satire
and a comedy, but because it fails to effectively
be either, it hardly leaves an impact.
As a lifelong lover of romantic comedies, I
was actually quite excited to see the film. Based
on its marketing, it seemed that the movie was
appealing to people just like me — people who
adore the genre and would surely recognize
its many references to iconic rom-coms of days
gone by. While the movie is certainly aware of its
predecessors and actively references them, the
references are nowhere near as funny or original
as the movie wants them to be. On a strictly
nostalgic level, “Isn’t It Romantic?” disappoints.
The premise of “Isn’t It Romantic?” is
anything but groundbreaking. Other romantic
comedy satires like “Not Another Teen Movie”
and “They Came Together,” while also pretty
bad, do exactly what “Isn’t It Romantic?” tries
to do, but often in much more entertaining and
original ways. On top of that, the movie treats
its audience as if it isn’t already aware of the
countless tropes that plague the genre. The vast
majority of rom-com enthusiasts are already
well aware of the common cliches (the gay best
friend, the mandatory makeover scene, for
example). The movie refuses to acknowledge the
fact that most rom-com lovers don’t watch rom-
coms for their intellectual and artistic merits;
rather, rom-coms serve as a source of escapism
from the mundanity of daily life. A character in
the movie actually makes this exact point early
on, but it’s immediately glossed over. “Isn’t It
Romantic?” condescends its audience by making
the obvious tropes it points out appear newly
discovered.
Nevertheless, the movie isn’t completely
ineffective, mainly due to its surprisingly
wonderful lead performances. This is the most
human, most authentic Rebel Wilson (“How
To Be Single”) I’ve seen yet. She isn’t defined
by her size, as she seems to be in virtually every
other film of comparable popularity. “Isn’t It
Romantic?” presents Wilson as a fully human
being, a woman whose size is a part of her, but
not all of her. She’s funny and relatable and
real. Her primary love interest, Adam DeVine
(“When We First Met”), also does a great job.
DeVine, like Wilson, is another victim of type-
casting. And while “Isn’t It Romantic?” plays off
of DeVine’s signature brand of comedy, it gives
him much more to work with. Not only is he
funny and a bit eccentric, he’s also introspective,
thoughtful and romantic.
Although Wilson and DeVine are more
widely known as on-screen lovers in the “Pitch
Perfect” franchise, their relationship in “Isn’t
It Romantic?” is significantly improved. While
their characters in “Pitch Perfect” seem to be
coupled together solely because they’re the
oddballs of their respective acapella groups,
their coupling in this movie actually makes
sense. They have palpable chemistry and the
personalities of the characters mesh naturally.
Their time together on-screen is pretty enjoyable
to watch; the problem is that there’s simply not
enough of it. Instead, the movie chooses to focus
on what it deems to be much more important:
endless montages and utterly meaningless
dance sequences.
“Isn’t It Romantic?” fails in nearly all respects.
It’s not original enough to be a worthwhile satire,
and it’s not romantic enough to be on par with
the rom-coms it’s mocking. The performances
of Wilson and DeVine are simply not enough
to save it. I sincerely hope this movie isn’t the
one to usher in a new era of romantic comedies.
However, if it is, the genre will have become yet
another victim to the modern age of nostalgia-
obsessed entertainment. In order to recover
from this before it’s too late, it’s crucial that
filmmakers strive to work against everything
this movie stands for and create movies that
respect the foundations of the genre while still
adding onto the canon in exciting and innovative
ways.
‘Isn’t It Romantic?’ isn’t, actually
FILM REVIEW
ELISE GODFRYD
For the Daily
When
I
babysat
young
children
over
the
summer,
I often gave them connect-
the-dots
workbooks.
These
activities
take
more
forethought and precision than
you might expect. Neglect or
misappropriate
connections
between the dots, and by the
time you’re finished and inspect
the big picture, you have no idea
what you’re looking at. Now, the
two- and five-year-old whom
I babysat often impressed me
with their efforts to connect
the dots and sometimes their
accuracy as well. Unfortunately,
the
endeavor
becomes
less
impressive the older you get, so
I cannot let the trio of adult men
(Gustavo Steinberg, “End of the
Line,” Gabriel Bitar, “Cidade
Cinza” and Andre Catoto, “Say
I am Only Seventeen”) who
directed “Tito and the Birds”
off the hook.
In the opening sequence
of their animated children’s
film “Tito and the Birds,” they
outline an ambitious, disparate
set of dots to connect. First and
most conventionally, given the
genre, they establish the titular
young character Tito’s (Pedro
Henrique) family dynamics: an
inventor father named Rufus
(Matheus Nachtergaele, “City
of God”) who Tito idolizes,
and an overprotective mother
Rosa (Denise Fraga, “Norma”).
Then, of course, come the birds.
The first invention of Rufus’s
we see is a machine intended
to interpret the language of
birds, for, as Rufus impresses
upon his son, birds have been
watching out for mankind from
the beginning. This machine
also sets the story in motion one
night when it malfunctions and
injures Tito, and an indignant
Rosa sends Rufus packing. A
third point raised in “Tito,”
perhaps more compelling than
any other, is that of the role the
media plays in fearmongering,
articulated
through
Alaor
Souza (Matheus Solano, “Amor
á Vida”), a sensationalist TV
personality
who
dominates
characters’ screens throughout
the film that ensues.
Family,
fearmongering,
birds. Birds save family from
fearmongering? Maybe. These
dots are tentatively linked in
the opening sequence, but the
connections become stretched
and overwrought in due time,
as well as undermined when
they drop the ball on other
points that arise along the way
(the most notable example of
which are class distinctions in
the film, which are only ever
addressed haphazardly). Most
disappointing of all, this anti-
fearmongering film scared me,
on several counts.
The
first
count:
they
misrepresent fear. There is a
fine line between exaggerating
the
visual
dimension
of
concepts
to
appeal
to
children and oversimplifying
complexities to make them
more digestible for a particular
audience. “Tito” consistently
teeters on the brink of the latter.
Intending
to
represent
the
debilitating, divisive effects of
paranoia on society, the makers
of “Tito and the Birds” render
fear as an epidemic, highly
contagious and with ghastly
bodily consequences. In the
process, they confound physical
disability
and
psychological
states in a troubling way.
People with disabilities do not
have a choice in the matter;
consumers of media and the
disciples of media pundits who
abuse their platforms, on the
other hand, do. This misleading
message about disabilities may
effectively scare children out of
succumbing to fearmongering,
but it’s at the expense of an oft-
misrepresented population.
On the topic of scaring
kids away from fear, there
lies the second count: the
visuals themselves. At first
enticing for their novelty (a
likely descendent of “Loving
Vincent,”
comprised
largely
of oil paintings in motion), the
imagery in “Tito and the Birds”
becomes overly saturated with
the fear the protagonists of the
film try to resist. I doubt the
intended audience of children
will have the same resolve as
Tito when confronted with
disturbing graphics, such as the
Jabba the Hutt-esque, reverse
metamorphosis those afflicted
with
the
fear
“outbreak”
undergo.
The third count is all about
the birds, for “Tito and the
Birds”
is
a
well-disguised
but problematic portrayal of
man’s relationship with the
environment.
“Tito”
teems
with modern technology; it
would seem Rufus’s admonition
to once more listen to the
birds would beseech respect
for nature in spite of the
industrialized, digitized world.
Unfortunately, in “Tito,” the
birds get nothing in return for
their wisdom. We might never
get past exploitative model of
our relationship with nature if
we do not even have the gall to
imagine a mutual relationship
in a children’s film.
If I were still babysitting,
we’d skip “Tito.” We would
keep working on connecting
the dots, and maybe we’d form
an image of a bird. But maybe
then we’d add a few dots and
draw ourselves. Imagine what it
would look like to have genuine
respect for the natural world.
‘Tito’ truly frightened me
JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Arts Writer
SHOUT! STUDIOS
FILM REVIEW
‘Tito and
the Birds’
Shout! Studios
State Theatre
The early ’70s are often
romanticized — good vibes,
groovy music and sociopolitical
activism. It can simultaneously
be said that the early ’70s were
a time of heightened anxiety.
These years came in the wake
of
JFK’s
assassination,
the
Vietnam
War,
the
Manson
murders,
the
Civil
Rights
Movement
and
the
beginnings
of
the
Beatles’s
something
like desolate “hippy”
era.
The
UMMA’s
exhibition
“Abstraction,
Color,
and Politics in the
Early 1970s” captures
the unnerving vibe of
the era through four
large-scale
works
by American artists
contemporary
to
the
time:
Helen Frankenthaler, Louise
Nevelson, Sam Gilliam and Al
Loving. The former are Jewish
women, the latter Black men.
The emphasis of the gallery
tour was heavily placed on public
evaluation of art in the ’70s.
Whether art was considered
“good art” to critics and viewers
depended on its ability to help
advance social movements. The
emphasis of social value was
placed on feminism and civil
rights in the case of these artists,
given the politics of the era and
the artists’ identities. Activism
was difficult to navigate in
the context of abstract art on
the premise of its abstraction
— their work didn’t mean the
same thing to any one person. In
turn, these artists received mass
criticism because their art was
“not political enough.”
Al
Loving’s
response
to
this criticism was perhaps the
most jarring part of the talk.
Loving was the first African
American artist to have his own,
one-person exhibition at the
Whitney Museum of American
Art in New York City less than
a year after he moved there. He
was immediately hailed in the
white, upper-class art scene and
became popular among buyers
and patrons. He’d risen to fame.
At a certain point, however,
Loving began to lose touch
with his work. The demand was
so high that he began hiring
assistants to paint for him, and
he consequently slipped away
from self-expression in his art.
Loving was simultaneously
criticized
by
Black
critics
and activists of the time, who
claimed that his art was far
removed from Black activism
and the Civil Rights Movement.
They further criticized Loving
for not using his momentous
career to support and further
the
Movement,
given
his
identity as a Black American
artist. Loving was devastated by
this criticism, so much so that
he destroyed most of his work.
The
women
artists,
Frankenthaler and Nevelson,
had to consider vastly different
political
expectations
in
their art. Women artists were
expected to both avoid and
embody femininity in their
work.
They
were
expected
to
find
a
space
between
feminist and feminine
— they were not to be
too much of one or
the
other.
Delicacy
in
female
art
was
criticized, but so was
violence.
This
was
considered dangerous
in
abstraction,
given its room for
interpretation.
As
a
result,
both
Frankenthaler
and
Nevelson
resisted
politics
altogether
in
their
work. However, Frankenthaler’s
Sunset Corner is reminiscent of
a menstrual painting, but the
viewer can make of that what
they will.
The gallery talk ultimately
distilled
common
narratives
around the ’70s and around
the general politicization of
art, making a statement about
what it means to navigate
being an artist of an oppressed
demographic
in
a
time
of
political strife and upheaval.
The
talk
gave
necessary
background on these artists that
otherwise couldn’t be inferred
from the exhibit alone, making
their work more profound, even
today.
Apolitical art as inherently
political: A trip to UMMA
COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW
JENNA BARLAGE
Daily Arts Writer
GORDON PARKS/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES
The emphasis of the gallery
tour was heavily placed on
public evaluation of art in the
’70s.
‘Isn’t It
Romantic?’
Warner Bros. Pictures
Ann Arbor 20 + IMAX