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

