By Kurt Krauss
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/12/19
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
11/12/19
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2019
ACROSS
1 Sports agent,
briefly
4 Lavish meal
9 Behold, to Brutus
13 “Another Green
World” musician
Brian
14 Foamy coffee
drinks
16 Bar measure
17 *Big top
19 “The
Handmaid’s __”:
Atwood novel
20 This, in Spain
21 Acapulco aunt
22 Final Olds
produced
24 Injured-arm
support
26 *School
keepsake
29 “Under Siege”
star Steven
31 Prof.’s degree
32 See 38-Down
33 Restaurant Arlo
Guthrie sang
about
36 Early 2000s
Apple product
37 *“The Daily
Show” network
41 Hard to find
42 Cosa __
43 Trident-shaped
Greek letter
44 Angry
46 Pick up the pace
50 *2012 Channing
Tatum film
54 Around, in dates
55 Try to bite,
puppy-style
56 Triage ctrs.
58 Broadway
brightener
59 Hawaiian coffee
region
60 Show starter
... and a hint to
the answers to
starred clues
63 Nobelist Pavlov
64 Cantankerous
65 __ Bo: fitness
system
66 “The Lion King”
lioness
67 Davis of “Do the
Right Thing”
68 Cal. spans
DOWN
1 School day
interlude
2 Maroon, at sea
3 “The Merchant of
Venice” heiress
4 Winter bug
5 Down __: Maine
nickname
6 Room at the top?
7 Pilfer
8 Olympic diver’s
goal
9 Aromatic
compound
10 Personal
magnetism
11 Pre-
Revolutionary
furniture style
12 French summer
15 Secret supply
18 Scam
23 “Dropped” ’60s
drug
25 Battering wind
27 Cathedral areas
28 Nutritional
supplements co.
30 Pot top
34 Pop singer
Lauper
35 Novelist Umberto
36 Blackboard chore
37 Legendary lover
38 With 32-Across,
Adam and Eve’s
transgression
39 To the __ degree
40 Gillette’s __ II
razor
41 Turntable speed,
for short
44 Longtime Tom
Petty label
45 Defensive retort
47 The “T” in NATO
48 Toyota Prius, e.g.
49 Loire Valley city
51 Bucky Beaver’s
toothpaste
52 Wails with grief
53 Shore birds
57 Apple Watch
assistant
59 Family reunion
attendees
61 Ace
62 “Science Guy”
Bill
“Let It Snow,” the latest John Green novel-
to-film adaptation (originally a collaboration
with authors Lauren Myracle and Maureen
Johnson), is great in the way that cold pizza
is great. It may not look good, taste good or go
down very well, but the idea of it is casually
spectacular. “Snow” leans so clumsily into
its own clichés that the result is a charming
holiday romance-fest that hides nothing about
its eventual destination, but still manages to
savor the journey along the beaten path.
Like the original source material, “Snow”
is a euphoric display of adolescent hormones,
an emulation and a caricature of teen years
that
resonates
not
despite
its
exaggeration,
but
because
of
it.
When
a
particularly
robust snowstorm
hits
a
small,
unnamed
suburban
town,
the
lives
of
several
high
schoolers become
entangled
with
awkward
sexual
tension.
The
writers
hold nothing back,
offering characters that fit precisely into every
trope a viewer can imagine. Among a tapestry
of main players, there’s Tobin (Mitchell Hope,
“Descendants”), a shy dork who has been on
the verge of admitting his love for his best
friend for his entire life; Addie, (Odeya Rush,
“Lady Bird”), a committed friend paranoid
her boyfriend is cheating on her; Keon, (Jacob
Batalon, “Spider-Man: Far From Home”), an
aspiring DJ who will do anything to throw one
great party for his friends; Stuart, (Shameik
Moore, “Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse”), a
popstar on tour who might just be ready to find
love; and (most quizzically) Oscar-nominated
Joan Cusack (“Toy Story 4”) as an unnamed,
tin-foil-donning snow plower.
Once these pieces of the story are set, it’s
hard not to enjoy the way they unfold, cross
paths and explode against each other. In that
way, “Snow” is like a rollercoaster whose entire
trajectory is visible, but that doesn’t mute its
angsty and harmless thrills. Conversations
are stilted emotional gushes, often ending in
sweeping declarations or stinging rebukes. As
the blizzard picks up, emotions only run hotter.
Friendships fracture and plans collapse. But
the piercing, irresistible power of “Snow” is a
viewer’s knowledge that everything will work
itself out in the end.
“Snow” is the kind of movie that elicits
laughter more frequently at its schlock than at
the jokes in its dialogue. But laughter is laughter,
and
intentions
aside,
the
film
was substantially
humorous.
Needless
to
say, “Snow” will
not
change
the
course of modern
cinema. But then
again, who cares?
What
the
film
achieves is pure
and concentrated
joy, a lazy removal
from
life’s
problems.
The
characters
deal
with issues that
are, for the vast majority, miniscule versions
of actual obstacles, and to see them persevere
is a simple and careless kind of pleasure. It is
an experience that calls for some hot cocoa,
a snowflake-patterned blanket, a couch that
sinks down further than it should and curtains
that block all afternoon sunlight from the
windows.
Above all, “Snow” is a warm welcome to the
holiday season. With a recent blanket of snow
spread upon Ann Arbor’s streets and nose-
diving temperatures that won’t recover until
late spring, it might be exactly what you need
now.
‘Snow’ is a wonderfully
timely guilty pleasure
ANISH TAMHANEY
Daily Arts Writer
NETFLIX
FILM REVIEW
TV REVIEW
Without a single member of the original “High
School Musical” trilogy, Disney waved its magic
wand once again to give us a program we never
knew we wanted. If you get past the layered
and convoluted title as well as the promotional
hashtag; #HSMTMTS, you will most certainly
enjoy the program that was absolutely made to
lure my generation to Disney’s new streaming
platform, Disney+. Let me lay this out for you,
because the concept is really not that confusing
once it is explained, but you may need to re-read
the sentence a few times before it clicks. “High
School Musical: The Musical: The Series” is
about what would happen to the lives of teens
currently attending the real East High, where
Disney Channel’s “High School Musical” movies
were filmed, if they were to put on a production
of the movie “High School Musical” as a musical.
Got it?
I am reluctant to judge programs by their pilot
episode because
what
happens
in
that
first
episode is so
different
than
what a show
may
actually
be
about
—
pilots primarily
function as an
establishing
episode, where
you get a taste
of each of the
characters.
The plot of this
episode creates
the
storylines
that will drive
the rest of the season. It is not until the audience
sees how the plots established in this episode are
carried out over the remaining episodes of the
season that they can reach a verdict on whether
or not “High School Musical: The Musical: The
Series” is worth trying to understand.
This show is set in the real world in which
“High School Musical” remains a cultural
phenomenon of successful television movies
starring Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, where
real kids are putting on a stage production of those
real movies. Comically, these fictional students
happen to fictionally go to the real school used as
the set, which has everyone talking about “High
School Musical” on the set of “High School
Musical.” When I put it like that, it sounds like
a recipe for another disastrously-made program
in an age in which good television is increasingly
hard to find, despite more television than ever
before being produced. This is far from the case.
The pilot extremely self-aware and comic. The
tone, which is established by the ridiculousness
of the title, drives home the point of the series
and why it works — moments range from silly,
sarcastic and serious in the same way when you
are a teenager that everything feels like life or
death.
The show stars a group of exceptionally
talented teenagers, most of whom I have
never heard of, and might be more talented
than the original cast. Nini (Olivia Rodrigo,
“Bizaardvark”) and Gina (Sofia Wylie, “Andi
Mack”) are just two of the standout performances
from Disney alums. Could this be their
breakout
role,
introducing
them
to
an
older television
audience?
Also, Seb (Joe
Serafini)
is
a
University
of
Michigan alum.
So, go blue.
The
show
simultaneously
pokes
fun
at
the
absurdity
of high school,
theater people,
Disney
and
show business.
You name it, the
show has it. The parallels to the original plot of
“High School Musical” are prevalent, which
kind of makes this “High School Musical,” but
reimagined through the lens of “The Office.”
And as crazy as it sounds, somehow … it works.
There is no other program with multiple colons
in its title that I would recommend watching.
But it was impossible to ignore what was right
in front of me: The charm of “High School
Musical: The Musical: The Series.”
Three titles, one dream:
The new, meta HSM show
JUSTIN POLLACK
Daily Arts Writer
High School Musical:
The Musical:
The Series
Streaming Now
Disney+
COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW
André Aciman’s book tour for “Find Me” was hosted by
Literati bookstore in Rackham Auditorium this past Saturday
and featured a conversation with Zahir Janmohamed, M.F.A.
creative writer in the Helen Zell program. I approached the
event with great admiration for Aciman, being that I am
particularly fond of “Call Me By Your Name,” his 2007 novel
which was made into a film with Timothée Chalamet in 2017.
The novel follows 17-year old American Italian-Jewish boy
named Elio who falls in love with a visiting scholar, a 24-year
old American Jewish man named Oliver, in 1980s Italy.
The
piece
showcases
a
thoughtful
commitment
to
relationships under the circumstances of Elio and Oliver, while
bridging love and naiveté through their coquettish desires for
each other and eventually wonders about loss and connection.
But the sequel surprises us. We’d assume it would center on
the immediate aftermath of the fiery passion between Elio and
Oliver, but instead Aciman takes a more unique route.
“At first I was writing about Elio,” Aciman said when asked
about the new book. “I was writing an Elio that was 18, 19, 20
but then I thought, ‘Okay Elio misses Oliver … Oliver misses
Elio, that’s all. It ends there.’ I knew that I had to go somewhere
else. I needed a conflict.”
Some time later, Aciman was writing a story about a man
on a train going to Rome. At first he wasn’t sure what he was
writing about, but then he realized he was writing about a
father going to visit his son — his son being a now older Elio.
Janmohamed steered the conversation well, shedding light
onto not just “Call Me by Your Name,” but some of Aciman’s
other major works as well. Despite the author’s blunt yet
romantic caveats and tangents, Janmohamed asked poignant,
astute questions that led to some really interesting takeaways.
When asked about his many essay collections and nonfiction
pieces, which center around his family being exiled from
Egypt in the ’60s, Aciman said, “You write about a thing to
understand it. We work around painful moments and look for
the undisclosed humor to survive. That’s the gift of writing, it’s
like going into an old attic to find things there that you haven’t
paid much attention to.” Aciman takes a mature, seasoned
approach to his writing. Throughout the talk, it became clear
that he follows his own impulse over commonly recited wisdom
about writing.
“I don’t use the word ‘love’ at all in my writing. It does not
appear once in ‘Call Me by Your Name,’” he said, when asked
about the role romance plays in his work. “I don’t write ‘I love
you’ because if you use that word ‘love’ in writing, you close the
door to everything else. You want to express the inflections of
desire and wanting. If you mention the word ‘love,’ you don’t
have the courage to examine all the tension that comes with
it.”
In “Call Me by Your Name,” homoerotic love and the fumbles
of falling for someone are explored, and Jewish identity plays
a subtle role, bridging an initial connection between the two
men.
“It’s the first thing they have in common. Being Jewish.
Even if nothing were to happen, they have something binding
them. They cannot undo it, they can only build upon it.”
Despite not being extremely religious himself, Aciman
writes about his Jewish identity often in his writing. In “Call
Me by Your Name,” he specifically states he uses Judaism as
a metaphor for Elio and Oliver’s larger feelings toward one
another. Other than that integral part of their identity, both
men are not overtly described in the novel.
“I give you three sensations in the book. The smell of
rosemary, the sound of the knives being sharpened on
Wednesdays, and when everyone naps, the coffee being made.
I do not care for physical description in my writing because it
does not interest me. I don’t want to know what the people or
places look like, I want to know what goes on in the heads of
two human beings who are sitting, drinking coffee, trying to
find out if there’s anything between them,”
His new book is no exception. Its commitment to the internal
emotions which drive the characters’s impulses and actions is
flowery and articulate.
“Writing is about doing better than what real life has given
you. What writers do, is that we put our work between us and
life. And reality. It’s a filter, and that filter is how some of us
survive,” Aciman said before reading some passages from his
new novel.
Literati presents André Aciman
ELI RALLO
Daily Arts Writer
Snow
Netflix
DISNEY+
6 — Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com