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By Paul Coulter
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
04/15/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

04/15/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Monday, April 15, 2019

ACROSS
1 Cuts off
5 Member of a 
strict Jewish sect
10 Artistic Chinese 
dynasty
14 Ohio’s Great Lake
15 Justice Kagan
16 Egg-shaped
17 Ancient mariner’s 
fear
19 Flexible mineral 
sheet
20 Persuade with 
flattery
21 Fossil resins
23 “Beowulf,” 
poem-wise
24 Rubs the wrong 
way?
25 Chain reaction 
requirement
29 Stagecoach puller
30 Allied gp. since 
1948
31 Dangerous 
snakes
35 Antipollution org.
36 Hit, as a fly
40 Alphabetically 
first of two 
Hawaiian 
maunas
41 Like some coll. 
courses
43 Gp. getting many 
returns in April
44 Regular’s bar 
order, with “the”
46 Nation that 
promotes 
its people’s 
economic and 
social prosperity
50 Malicious rumors
53 “Do __ others ... ”
54 Judge, e.g.
55 Like faces at a 
fireworks display
59 “Dream on!”
60 Meditation goal 
hinted at by this 
puzzle’s circles
62 Wander
63 Close-knit group
64 Fairway club
65 Didn’t dillydally
66 Act with excessive 
passion
67 The Big Apple, in 
addresses

DOWN
1 Make-do 
amount?
2 Two-tone cookie
3 Chanteuse 
Edith
4 Six-line stanzas
5 Brave
6 Llama relative
7 Ooze
8 Quaint stopover
9 Sortable 
information 
source
10 Kenya’s major 
port
11 Like Wrigley 
Field’s walls
12 Mother-of-pearl
13 Water or wine 
vessel
18 Catches sight of
22 Dash in a spice 
rack?
24 Amo, amas, __
25 “Moonstruck” 
star
26 Weapon in Clue
27 Baghdad’s land
28 Gobs of
32 Arctic seabird
33 __ moss
34 Markdown event

37 Whole-grain 
food
38 Pound sounds
39 Quarrel
42 Towered over
45 Preserve using 
barrels, as wine
47 Bard’s “before”
48 Buffy the 
Vampire Slayer’s 
“Watcher” __ 
Giles
49 Main course

50 Burns a bit
51 Legendary 
fabulist
52 Easily deceived
55 “Go back” PC 
command
56 __ a one: none
57 Supply-and-
demand subj.
58 Reject as false
61 “The Deer 
Hunter” war 
zone, for short

SERVICES

HELP WANTED

FOR RENT

Some 
real-life 
stories 
are, 
simply put, too banal to be 
told on the screen. But in the 
utterly perplexing case of “The 
Hummingbird Project,” writer-
director Kim Nguyen 
(“War 
Witch”) 
delivers a completely 
fictional 
story 
that is more banal 
than reality itself. 
Everything 
about 
this mess of a nano-
financial engineering 
thriller 
begs 
the 
words “Based on real 
events” to appear on 
the screen at some 
point to justify its 
existence. 
(They 
don’t.) Not only is 
the film’s premise 
ludicrous in the way 
that many nonfiction 
film adaptations are, but the idea 
is so uncinematic and dry that I’m 
kind of impressed the movie was 
made in the first place.
“The Hummingbird Project” 
follows the story of two Wall Street 
schemers who hatch a ridiculous 
plan to shake up the entire system 
in the wake of the financial crisis. 
Vincent, 
a 
conniving 
hustler 
played by a typically neurotic Jesse 
Eisenberg (“Batman v Superman: 
Dawn of Justice”), teams up with 
his balding and blundering cousin, 
Anton (Alexander Skarsgård, “The 
Aftermath”) to make millions 
through a fiber-optic cable that 
connects from Kansas to New York 
City, allowing the pair to make 
financial trades a millisecond 
before other buyers.
This dense premise would 

be fascinating if it were even 
the slightest bit believable, but 
the truth is that Nguyen is a 
filmmaker, not an investment 
banking connoisseur, and it shows. 
His tendency to brush over and 
dart around the actual mechanics 
of his idea are detrimental to 
the film even to the most casual 

observer. You don’t need to be a 
financial wizard to know that the 
1000-mile line might not work, but 
you do need to be one to write a 
working screenplay about it. At one 
point, Anton attempts to explain 
the cable to a talkative waitress 
and instead of a concrete answer, 
he instead becomes fixated on — 
and, trust me, I couldn’t believe 
this either — lemon farmers in 
Zimbabwe.
Several of these unintentionally 
hilarious moments, times when 
the 
film’s 
zany 
momentum 
careened it off the tracks, at least 
kept me cracking up, if nothing 
else. Another of one of these I 
absolutely have to mention is 
a 
sweat-drenched 
Eisenberg 
wielding 
a 
chainsaw 
as 
he 
marches up a forest trail muttering 

to himself “I’m gonna fucking tear 
you down” with the intensity of a 
child whose birthday candles were 
blown out by someone else.
In essence, the film is too dull 
to be emotional and too shaky 
in its logic to be intellectual. 
The result is a genre-hopping 
compilation of half-baked scenes 
that don’t even sort 
of work. Sometimes, 
the movie aims for 
straight 
horror, 
with Salma Hayek’s 
(“The 
Hitman’s 
Bodyguard”) 
villain, Eva Torres, 
threatening 
the 
protagonists 
progress in wannabe 
Walter 
White 
fashion. 
At 
other 
times, the film plays 
out as a biopic of a 
nonexistent person, 
throwing 
equally 
nonexistent personal 
maladies at Vincent 
and Anton to thwart their efforts. 
“Hummingbird” even dabbles in 
sloppy social commentary a scene 
in which Amish farmers refuse to 
let the cousins dig their pipeline 
through “God’s land.”
Eisenberg’s 
performance 
is in every way an unbroken 
continuation 
of 
all 
of 
his 
performances thus far, as the 
brainy, detached genius who is 
too invested in his work to feel 
emotions. It’s almost as if Nguyen 
watched the actor’s excellent 
portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg 
in “The Social Network” and 
thought, “Hey, that guy could 
go to Wall Street!” Zuckerberg 
and Vincent are truly the same 
characters, and that makes the 
film entertaining even as it falls 
apart at the seams.

‘Hummingbird’ is a mess

FILM REVIEW

ANISH TAMHANEY
Daily Arts Writer

The Hummingbird 
Project

State Theatre

The Orchard Productions

I remember country music 
most vividly as the twangy 
acoustic stream trickling from 
the speakers of my Papaw’s 
truck. A good ol’ boy from 
Jellico, 
Tennessee, 
Papaw 
let the warmth of fiddles and 
guitars ramble quietly in the 
truck cab. Of course, 
he was doing donuts 
in the street with his 
grandchildren in the 
back, but the music 
was soft and simple. 
Needless to say, the 
days of my Papaw’s 
country music are long 
gone.
This 
truth 
was 
evident 
at 
last 
Sunday’s 54th Annual 
Association of Country 
Music 
Awards, 
hosted by the “Queen 
of 
Country,” 
Reba 
McEntire. 
McEntire 
was not terribly funny 
— as Kacey Musgraves’s 
perpetually 
cringing 
face confirmed — but 
her quip about women 
being frozen out of 
the Entertainer of the 
Year category is worthy 
of a smirk. The show 
got 
moving 
quickly. 
The 
night’s 
biggest 
winners were duo Dan 
+ Shay who won Song of the 
Year for “Tequila,” as well as 
Single of the Year and Duo 
of the Year. Other notable 
wins for the night included 
the brilliant Ashley McBryde 
winning New Female Artist 
of the Year, Musgraves’s well-
deserved win of both Female 
Artist of the Year and Album 
of the Year for Golden Hour, 
and Dierks Bentley’s win of 
Music Event of the Year for 
the Burning Man Tour.
As an awards ceremony that 
is sparse of categories, the 
show was dominated by some 
incredible 
performances. 
The extraordinary violinist, 
Amanda 
Shires, 
dazzled 
on the fiddle during Luke 
Comb’s 
performance 
of 
“Beautiful Crazy.” Likewise, 
the phenomenal alt-country 

darling, 
Brandi 
Carlile, 
stole 
the 
show 
during 
Bentley’s 
performance 
of 
“Travellin’ 
Light.” 
Other 
notable 
performances 
included Miranda Lambert’s 
powerhouse 
medley, 
“This 
Is Us” star Chrissy Metz’s 
performance of “I’m Standing 
With You” from her new film 
“Breakthrough,” as well as a 
heartwarming display in “Girl 

Goin’ Nowhere” by McBryde.
For 
all 
the 
striking 
performances 
and 
well-
deserved 
winners, 
there 
were a number of duds. The 
ceremony opened with “Can’t 
Hide 
Red,” 
performed 
by 
Florida 
Georgia 
Line 
and 
Jason Aldean, which could 
have 
simply 
flown 
under 
the radar, only if it was not 
also a shameless plug for Old 
Camp Whiskey, “the official 
whiskey of country music.” 
One can only hope that Old 
Camp doesn’t leave as bitter of 
a taste as the performance did.
The rapid fluctuation in 
tone throughout the night also 
contributed to the lackluster 
feeling. Like Luke Bryant’s 
“Knocking Boots” immediately 
following Miranda Lambert’s 
empowering 
performance 

of a medley of her greatest 
hits. Somehow Keith Urban 
won Entertainer of the Year, 
beating 
out 
compelling 
artists like Chris Stapleton. 
Equally 
confusing, 
Jason 
Aldean won the Dick Clark 
Artist of the Decade award. 
While 
he 
certainly 
has 
talent, few would consider 
Aldean 
more 
impressive 
than the innumerable female 
country 
artists 
who 
were ignored by the 
Academy.
While 
the 
ACM 
awards 
were 
entertaining to a point, 
the 
entire 
ceremony 
was 
tainted 
by 
the 
noticeable 
lack 
of 
female representation. 
Musgraves 
was 
not 
given 
a 
chance 
to 
perform 
and 
Shires 
was 
not 
announced 
when she played during 
Comb’s 
“Beautiful 
Crazy.” 
The 
entire 
show 
felt 
incredibly 
on edge, attempting to 
balance the discomfort 
with 
the 
increasing 
inability to ignore it. 
The fact that McEntire 
was willing to overtly 
call attention to it only 
proves how pressing 
the issue is. In fact, 
women were present 
on stage for awards 
only twice outside of 
female-oriented categories.
The 
ACM 
awards 
did 
have 
some 
outstanding 
performances. The bad ones 
certainly 
did 
not 
blemish 
the stunning talent that did 
manage to get time on stage. 
What 
became 
increasingly 
apparent 
is 
the 
Academy 
of 
Country 
Music’s 
very 
uncertain footing as it — and 
country music as a genre — 
struggle 
between 
tradition 
and the efforts of country’s 
more dynamic artists to break 
free of the Nashville sound. 
Evidently, that sound is not 
country music. Luckily, the 
outspoken 
frustration 
of 
female artists and increasing 
influence 
of 
roots-based 
artists 
at 
the 
ceremony 
demonstrated that there is 
clearly some light over yonder.

ACM Awards didn’t stun

TV NOTEBOOK

MAXWELL SCHWARZ
Daily Arts Writer

54th Annual ACM 
Awards

CBS

You don’t need to be a financial wizard to know that the 
1000-mile line might not work, but you do need to be one 
to write a working screenplay about it.

Last 
Sunday 
evening 
at 
the University of Michigan 
Museum 
of 
Art, 
I 
was 
transported to another world. 
Runyonland 
Productions, 
headed by School of Music, 
Theatre & Dance senior musical 
theater major Thomas Laub, 
put on a production of Adam 
Guettel’s “Myths and Hymns.”
The show itself is a song 
cycle 
focusing 
on 
various 
Greek myths like the Pegasus, 
Icarus and Hero and Leander. 
In addition to the show, the 
production showcased three 
men of Islamic, Judaic and 
Christian 
faith 
who 
spoke 
on their various experiences. 
The show as a whole focused 
on 
togetherness 
and 
the 
importance of breaking bread 
together. 
Once the show started, the 
audience was thrown into the 
world of fickle gods and insane 
beauty. The UMMA’s exquisite 
Apse, filled with grand columns 
and art from the emergence 
of 
Romanticism, 
furthered 
my suspension of disbelief. 
The performers also had the 
voices 
of 
gods 
themselves. 
Their marvelous voices echoed 
through the museum. During 
solo 
numbers, 
the 
sound 
was tragically beautiful. The 
casting of each solo number was 
brilliantly done. Each singer 
embodied the, at most times, 
tragic myth with simplicity and 
elegance that was only matched 
by the accompaniment of a lone 
piano, effortlessly played by 
SMTD professor Jason Dabord, 
who 
also 
music 
directed. 

Both sounds echoed up to the 
heavens and filled the space 
incredibly well considering no 
microphones were used. 
However, during the group 
numbers with a full band, it 
was difficult to make out the 
meaning and lyrics of the songs 
due to the unusual acoustics 
of the museum and competing 
sounds. “Myths and Hymns” 
was directed by SMTD faculty 
member Geoff Packard. In his 
director’s note, he stated that 
the message of the production 
was “of religious tolerance 
and understanding” through 
the lense of Guettel’s “lush” 
music and the “glorious halls 
of the University of Michigan 
Museum of Art.” Choreography 
by SMTD junior Mason Reeves 
was expertly curated to fill 
the 
unorthodox 
performing 
space. Although the format of 
the show was a song cycle, the 
dancing seemed to further fill 
out the production. At times, 
the movement doubled as a 
substitute for the nonexistent 
set. 
Adam Guettel is known for 
the complexity of his music 
both 
for 
instrumentalists 
and singers, neither of whom 
seemed to be struggling with 
the material. The piece ends 
with SMTD senior Matthew 
Edward Kemp exclaiming that 
he is the “fall of Pegasus, the 
fall of Icarus.” He is all of these 
myths — all things godly and 
mortal.
The end image was of the 
ensemble holding hands in 
solidarity. 
Throughout 
the 
production, there would be 
momentary breaks from the 
music to listen to the men 
representing various religions. 

At first, it was unclear as to 
their purpose in the production. 
Bassel Salka, a senior studying 
Industrial 
and 
Operations 
Engineering 
as 
well 
as 
a 
member of the Muslim Student 
Association Board, was the 
first to speak. He spoke on his 
experience as a Muslim man at 
the University. He was initially 
afraid due to the extensive 
hate speech about Muslims in 
his first years here, but more 
recently 
he 
remembered 
a 
time when students created 
a wall around him as a literal 
protective barrier, making him 
feel safe in the United States for 
one of the first times.
The second was rabbi Josh 
Whinston. In his speech, he 
urged listeners to treat each 
other well. We may never know 
why we were put on this earth, 
but all we can do for now is 
know how we’ve treated those 
around us. The last speaker 
was Episcopal minister and 
University 
alum 
Ian 
Reed 
Twiss. 
He 
spoke 
on 
how 
important it is to be “comfort 
food” for others. Even as it 
seems the world is descending 
into chaos, we must remember 
to eat and to feed each other. 
It is how we show love. It is 
the simplest form of showing 
another 
person 
that 
they 
matter. 
By the end of the production, 
I truly felt like I had been 
elevated by the art and wisdom 
surrounding our sometimes too 
independent and goal-driven 
world. Even the least religious 
of us could agree that the 
spiritual impact of this show 
was inspiring. Maybe we need 
each other much more than we 
realize.

Sunday eve at the UMMA

COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW

NATALIE KASTNER
For The Daily

6A — Monday, April 15, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

