6A — Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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By Gary Larson
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/23/19
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
10/23/19
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Wednesday, October 23, 2019
ACROSS
1 Victoria’s Secret
purchase
4 US Open stadium
named for a US
Open winner
8 Calm
14 Couple’s word
15 Ostrich relative
16 Swaps
17 Treats for a
comedian?
19 Scold harshly
20 Blacken on the
outside
21 Name in the
makeup aisle
23 Mars rover org.
24 Young newt
26 Treats for a
teacher?
28 Headboard pole
32 “I’m down with
that”
33 More likely to
cause skidding
34 Santa’s reindeer,
e.g.
36 Family game
room
39 Semicircle, e.g.
40 Treats for an oil
tycoon?
42 Wild way to go
43 Lawyer’s advice
44 Prefix with
personal
45 Blender maker
47 “True Detective”
rating
48 Browned in butter
50 Treats for a
submarine pilot?
54 Pontiac muscle
car
55 Way out there
56 Bel __: creamy
cheese
58 Miranda __ of
“Homeland”
62 Destroyed, as
documents
64 Treats for a
fisher?
66 Clothes line
67 Snakelike fish
68 Feel crummy
69 Drove on the trail
70 Some stay at
home
71 Pooh pal
DOWN
1 Supervisor
2 Old character
3 Bizet’s
“Habanera,” e.g.
4 Genesis vessel
5 Units in a ream
6 “His,” to Bierce
7 Bridge seats
8 Runner in the
raw
9 Victorian __
10 Like porcelain
teacups
11 Estes’ ticket-
mate
12 Give body to, as
hair
13 “¿Cómo __?”
18 __ de chine: light
fabric
22 Actors, often
25 Let bygones be
bygones
27 Informs on
28 Media critic’s
concern
29 Linen hue
30 They’re spotted
in casinos
31 Taqueria order
35 Michael of “SNL”
36 “It’s a __!”
37 Weapon with two
accents
38 Unlikely
candidate for
prom king
41 Not charted
46 Brownstone
porch
47 Fine line
49 Antediluvian
50 Item on a wrist
51 Earlier than, to
poets
52 Not as common
53 Put in stitches
57 Miracle Mets’
stadium
59 Drop from an
eye
60 Jazz __
61 Sonja Henie’s
birthplace
63 Play for a sap
65 Message
afterthoughts:
Abbr.
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Human hair is not often found in stockings.
Neither are rings, cotton balls, jewelry,
glitter or nail polish. But hanging ominously
in the Irving Stenn Jr. Family Gallery of the
University of Michigan Museum of Art, several
pairs of stockings are stuffed with these items
and synch the waists of white pillows cradled
in a twine hammock. The sculpture hangs
across most of the room, eerily displaying
fractured parts of body-image culture.
To the left of this sculpture are three large
photographs of a hunched woman, whose
naked back is to the camera. The viewer
can’t tell if over the course of the images she
is turning toward the viewer or away from
them. The woman appears again on hauntingly
beautiful photographs on the back wall. She
poses in various settings, draped in a peculiar
sculpture
that
strings
together
multiple
fabricated limbs into one garment for her to
wear. She looks at the viewer with a complex
certainty, a striking invitation for the viewer
to look closer.
Mari Katayama, an up-and-coming Japanese
artist, is both model and artist in much of her
work. Born in 1987 with tibial hemimelia (a
rare developmental condition), she has two
fingers on one hand and had to have her legs
amputated at nine years old. She has worn
prosthetics ever since. The young artist’s
work feels incredibly intimate. She showcases
her disabled body along with hand-sewn
sculptures (usually of limbs or body parts she
is missing), which makes her body seem like a
material she is also sculpting.
As an artist, she has taken complete
ownership of her medium: herself. Nothing
feels candid, but every piece feels deeply
honest. It’s as if by crafting intricate, staged
scenes, the artist reveals a direct line to
herself. By leaning into the fantastical and
strange elements of her art, she tells her
truth more honestly than a candid photo ever
could. Her gaze, in particular, is what caught
me in each photo. Everything else — from her
posture to her props to the color palette — feels
otherworldly and staged. But her gaze cuts
through the artifice, allowing you to view the
captured moment through her eyes; you are
immersed in a fabricated world that is true to
her, however seemingly absurd or strange it
seems.
The effect of this is an inward one; her work
forces the viewer to reconsider how their own
bodies fit into this strange, body-obsessed
culture we’ve found ourselves in. Katayama
owns her body, but it never feels trivial or
glamorous or superficially celebratory. Rather,
her work presents herself as one entity, as one
spirit that fits perfectly into her own body.
It’s blunt and asks important questions: How
do we live honestly when we are cajoled into
cramming our bodies into the latest fashion?
What happens when your body and your spirit
are the same entity?
There are no clear answers for society at
large, but Katayama presents an answer in
every secretive glance she gives the camera:
she lives with power. Despite years of body
image culture and typical notions of femininity
attempting to exert power over her, she lives
well. She lives as herself, as her art, as her
materials and her spirit, and she invites her
viewers to do the same.
STEPHANIE GURALNICK
For The Daily
Katayama at the UMMA
COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW
Mari Katayama
The UMMA
Oct. 12, 2019-Jan. 26, 2020
The first two episodes of “Limetown” want you
to know one thing: This show is weird. In fact, it’s
so weird, it can make producing a podcast seem
interesting.
“Limetown” follows unstable journalist Lia
Haddock (Jessica Biel, “The Illusionist”) as she
documents her search for a secluded town’s
population that mysteriously disappeared. Once a
research facility and private community of expert
neuroscientists, Limetown has stood vacant for
fifteen years following a lengthy investigation into
how and why the three hundred residents vanished
without a trace.
Lia, motivated to find her uncle, (Stanley Tucci,
“Spotlight”) a former resident of Limetown, produces
a podcast documenting her own search for the truth.
Although she faces resistance from her boss on why
a fifteen-year-old story is relevant today, Lia persists
and is ultimately contacted by a former resident who
is ready to share her experience.
Upon meeting this woman, Lia discovers the
research conducted in Limetown may be connected
to the mass disappearance. The woman recounts
her life in the town and her eventual realization
that her new home was not as idyllic as it seemed.
Now armed with more information from the source,
including the location of another survivor, Lia sets
off to uncover the conspiracy. Despite a violent
attempt to intimidate her into dropping the story, Lia
commits to following her leads and finding the rest of
Limetown’s citizens.
Throughout the first episodes of the series, the
plot focuses mainly on setting up Lia as a damaged
and slightly unhinged antihero who has become
obsessed with the town and its residents. In doing so,
the show becomes less about the search for truth and
more about unnerving the viewer through constant
plot reveals and overly dramatic character building.
“Limetown” is begging the audience to be scared.
In fact, it throws every trope it needs to at the wall just
to see what will stick. A cult-like gated community?
Sure. A public execution of a town leader? Okay. A
secret tunnel system of caves underneath the whole
city? Alright. Possible mind control? Sounds good.
“Limetown” has got it all. Despite the twists and
turns, the show is still mostly scenes of Lia holding a
microphone or having an emotional breakdown.
While “Limetown” has radical elements that
would make any story eye-catching, the show doesn’t
need to try so hard. When the main plot involves a
mass conspiracy, no one needs multiple scenes of
Jessica Biel being creepy to really hammer home
the show’s spooky atmosphere. While “Limetown”
wants to make the point that this mystery would
“drive anyone insane,” it all seems a bit excessive.
“Limetown” has a lot of ingredients to be a
pop culture sensation. The star power of Biel and
Tucci, source material from a popular podcast and
captivating story could easily carry the show into
mass popularity. However, if “Limetown” continues
to divert its focus from the beauty of a convoluted,
slightly campy plot, it’s unlikely to reach its potential
as a truly wild, trippy look into a mind-altering
thriller.
‘Limetown’ tries too hard
ANYA SOLLER
For The Daily
Limetown
Series Premiere
Facebook Watch
Now Streaming
FACEBOOK WATCH
TV REVIEW
Issa Lopez (“Todo Mal”) opens “Tigers
Are Not Afraid” with statistics on the adult
death toll of drug trade-related violence in
her native Mexico, then follows these with an
anti-statistic of sorts: the unknown number
of child casualties. Calling attention to these
unrecorded numbers and the unwritten stories
of ruined lives behind them, then writing one
herself, is the chief accomplishment of Lopez’s
film. Released in 2017 in Mexico and stateside
in 2019, “Tigers Are Not Afraid” imaginatively
narrates and underlines the toll that the drug
trade in Mexico takes on children.
In Lopez’s depiction, death literally follows
children around. She transitions from the
opening statistics to the middle school
classroom of the film’s female protagonist
Estrella (Paola Lara), who just barely survives
an outbreak of gun violence on her campus,
only to walk home and bypass a dead body on
the sidewalk and arrive to an empty home.
We later learn Estrella’s mother has been
abducted by the Huascas, a gang that runs
the local and seems to have all other local
institutions at their beck and call. On her
walk, though, something abnormal happens:
A stream of blood coming from the corpse
Estrella passed follows her around, and will
for the rest of the film. I’m hesitant to call
this moment in the film simply fantastical or
magical or horrifying — instead, it’s a brilliant,
appropriate merger of genres that represents
the intersection of childhood freedom with
adult terror.
In that way, “Tigers Are Not Afraid”
reminds me of 2018’s “Capernaum” in its
devastating saga and its close attention to and
respect for its child protagonists. Unlike the
latter, however, “Tigers” capitalizes on every
opportunity to celebrate the unique gifts
children have to care extraordinarily for one
another, to express themselves, to cope with
inexplicable evil and boundless loss. Scenes
like an energetic soccer match between the
children in an abandoned mansion where they
hide from the Huasacas, or an umbrella dance
under the water channeled through a gutter,
stand out amid the darkness of the film that
is overwhelming at times. Instead of walking
away disconsolate, as many viewers surely
did after watching the story of young Zain in
“Capernaum,” Lopez includes scenes that let
light in, recoloring the characters’ lives as
well as viewers’ perceptions of them.
As much as “Tigers” is a feat of narrating
childhood traumas, it is also a feat of visual
storytelling. One of the most innovative
manipulations of visuals in the film, and
also the source of critics’ descriptions of
the film as using “magical realism,” takes
the form of the film’s animated graffiti art.
Both Estrella and the male protagonist of the
film, El Shine (Juan Ramón López), take to
the alleys with cans of black spray paint and
render their sorrows and fantasies on the
walls. The English title of the film is drawn
from the illustration Estrella makes of a tiger,
invoked thereafter as a motif of courage and
survival despite impossible conditions. Shine,
leader of the band of orphaned children that
take Estrella in after she loses her mother,
rendered portraits of himself as well as the
other boys in his pack of orphans. And like
the portrait of Dorian Gray, the likenesses
of the young children, as well as the various
tiger illustrations, grow more menacing as
they turn increasingly to violence in order to
survive. I would argue Lopez does more with
this plot device than Oscar Wilde originally
did, using it to depict moral erosion as a result
of young people’s social circumstances and
not the other way around.
“Tigers Are Not Afraid” is horrifying and
magical, mystical and deeply troubling. Lopez
deftly cross-pollinates these genres and in
their product, discovers a new way to tell the
story of young children impacted by grownups’
crimes and self-concern.
JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Arts Writer
‘Tigers’ is deeply magical
FILM REVIEW
Tigers Are Not Afraid
Filmadora Nacional, Peligrosa
Michigan Theater