6 — Thursday, February 6, 2020
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

WHISPER

SUBMIT A 
WHISPER

By Robert Wemischner
©2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/06/20

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

02/06/20

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Thursday, February 6, 2020

ACROSS
1 Diamond problem
5 Plush carpet
9 Test versions
14 Feminist poet 
Adrienne
15 It’s partially 
submerged
16 Valuable violin
17 Italian wine 
region
18 Founder of Edom
19 R2-D2 or BB-8, 
e.g.
20 Parvenu’s 
business 
venture?
23 Beantown NHL 
nickname
24 “__ whiz!”
25 Quarterback’s 
nonchalant 
move?
32 Vague time period
33 Spots for AirPods
34 One may be 
decorated for the 
holidays
35 Sprightly
36 Marmalade bits
38 __ Ren, “Star 
Wars” villain
39 Trig. function
40 Aloha State bird
41 Plumlike fruit
42 Down Under 
withdrawal?
46 Disney doe
47 It’s just over a foot
48 TSA agent’s 
perfected search 
technique?
55 Tropical porch
56 Murdoch who 
received the 1978 
Booker Prize for 
“The Sea, the 
Sea”
57 “What’s the 
big __?”
58 Habituate
59 Retail outlet
60 Mattress option
61 Zaps
62 Neverland pirate
63 What this puzzle 
does here

DOWN
1 German spouse
2 Speech therapy 
target

3 Tries to look
4 Plant leaf pest
5 Himalayan guide
6 “Prizzi’s Honor” 
director or 
actress
7 Word of regret
8 Excess
9 Scrubby 
wastelands
10 Chewed the 
scenery
11 Perfume that 
sounds forbidden
12 Surmounting
13 “Pull up a chair”
21 Arthur in the 
International 
Tennis Hall of 
Fame
22 Seaweed-based 
thickeners
25 Buckeye State 
sch.
26 Leading
27 Brightest star in 
Cygnus
28 Taken in
29 “All Because __”: 
2005 U2 song
30 Steakhouse 
order
31 Picked dos

32 Dr Pepper 
Museum city
36 Postgame 
postmortem
37 Skin pics
38 Yukon gold rush 
region
40 Au pairs
41 Burlesque bit
43 “’__ the 
Jabberwock, my 
son!’”: Carroll
44 Have great plans

45 Pure
48 Mike’s “Wayne’s 
World” co-star
49 Obligation
50 Gets in the 
crosshairs, with 
“at”
51 Disneyland 
transport
52 Norse god
53 Make (one’s way)
54 Old horses
55 Put a match to

CLASSIFIEDS

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SUDOKU

COMMUNITY CULTURE COLUMN

Movies, musicals 
and ‘Mean Girls’

SAMMY SUSSMAN
Community Culture Columnist

“What could Tina Fey possibly 
hope to achieve in this next version 
of ‘Mean Girls?,’ I asked myself. I had 
just read the news of Fey’s newest 
venture: a movie, based on her 
musical, based on her earlier movie. 
Fey’s original “Mean Girls,” from 
2004, is a classic. Her quick, snappy 
dialogue and archetypical high 
school plotline is both easily relatable 
and surprisingly unmatched when it 
comes to high school based movies. 
It easily captured a generation of 
teenage popular culture.
With respect to cinematography, 
too, Fey traverses wide spans of 
chronology without losing focus. 
The movie begins with the main 
character Cady’s first day of school 
and ends with her last. It allows 
the viewer very little time to simply 
absorb a scene, to simply take stock.
I remember spending one of 
my summers at sleepaway camp 
obsessed with the film. We watched 
it on the bus and on movie nights. 
I remember a few of my friends 
repeating the dialogue from a few 
of the scenes over and over again, 
eventually learning it by heart.
We were in middle school at the 
time, and this exemplified what high 
school life would be like. It perfectly 
encapsulated the clique-based social 
groupings of high school, those 
based on (perceived) popularity and 
those on shared interest.
When Fey announced that she 
would be turning the movie into a 
musical, I was thus eager to see this 
new iteration of “Mean Girls.” I was 
able to get tickets to a show in June, 
2018, shortly after the show had 
opened in April of that year.
Before seeing the show, I decided 
to watch the movie again. And in 
doing so, I was surprised to learn 
how quickly much of the magic of 
it had aged. While some of the jokes 
were still incredibly funny, many 
were clearly past their prime.
The pace of the movie, too, 
had lost much of its appeal. We 
as viewers, after all, have become 

conditioned to jump cuts that 
relieve our attention. Few of us 
watch movies without glancing at 
our phones and then back at the 
screen. A plot that relies on this sort 
of chronological and geographical 
jumping is nowhere near as novel 
as it might have been in the pre-
smartphone era.
I also began to wonder if popular 
culture 
might 
have 
become 
oversaturated with “Mean Girls” 
references. The movie’s influence 
on popular culture had begun to 
overshadow its own content. 
Or perhaps popular culture 
had iconicized the movie as the 
height 
of 
early-2000’s 
teenage 
culture. Perhaps our ever-evolving, 
collective sense of humor had moved 
past the movie, idealizing it even as 
we continued to perfect upon it.
With all these things in mind, I 
was excited to see how Fey might 
have updated the story. She would 
be forced to change certain lines to 
fit the medium of a multi-act stage 
musical, I knew. But perhaps she 
could also take this opportunity to 
inject the story with new life and 
new humor.
At the show that I attended, the 
group of friends sitting beside me 
knew every movie-based joke by 
heart. Much to my initial annoyance, 
they repeated every line from the 
movie with the actors on stage — 
by the end of the show, I began to 
realize what a good barometer of 
new vs. old material this was.
A few of the new jokes were 
unexpected and timely. A reference 
to President Trump and his (then 
recently-discovered) dealings with 
Russians, for example, was a new 
moment of comic relief. So were 
the 
references 
to 
hypocritical, 
post-Trumpian “feminist” culture. 
(“This is modern feminism talking. 
I expect to run the world in shoes 
I cannot walk in,” one character 
sings.) 
Most of the show, however, felt 
predictable.

Read more online at 
michigandaily.com

FILM REVIEWS: SUNDANCE
Activism hinders ‘The Dissident’

Who 
was 
Jamal 
Khashoggi, 
the 
Washington Post journalist whose Oct. 2, 
2018 disappearance at the Saudi Consulate in 
Turkey dominated headlines for weeks on end?
“The Dissident,” a documentary premiere 
at Sundance 2020, shows that Khashoggi was 
more than just a writer. He was a reformer, 
activist, friend, future husband and in the 
months leading to his death, a Saudi dissident. 
Interviews with several sources make for 
an engaging and all-encompassing image of 
Khashoggi from all angles. His fiancé Hatice 
Cengiz introduces Khashoggi the kind-
hearted man. His co-activist Omar Abdulaziz 
introduces Khashoggi the dissident. Cengiz, 
Abdulaziz and others close to Khashoggi reveal 
his loving, devoted nature and dedication to 
the human rights of the people of Saudi Arabia.
Following Khashoggi’s story from his time 
as a journalist in Saudi Arabia to his short-lived 
self-exile to the United States, it’s amazing 
that he lived as long as he did. For decades, 
Khashoggi thrived in a grey area in which 
he criticized the government yet remained 
a close friend of the royal family. He knew 
what red lines not to cross, but he pushed his 
journalism to the very edge of those lines. 
When the government began to crack down on 
the voice of any Saudi figure with an audience, 

Khashoggi fled to the United States.
The film demonstrates how Khashoggi 
came to be targeted by the Saudi government. 
He continued to criticize Saudi Arabia from 
the safety of the United States while writing for 
The Washington Post, fighting for free speech 
through the power of his words. Abdulaziz 
reveals the depth to which 
Khashoggi became involved in 
Saudi insurgency, even wiring 
thousands of dollars to fund 
Abdulaziz’s Twitter warfare 
against the Saudi government. 
It is through affiliation with 
his activism that Abdulaziz 
believes Khashoggi sealed his 
fate.
Khashoggi is not the only 
person 
whose 
portrait 
is 
painted in “The Dissident.” The 
filmmakers’ access to Turkish 
evidence and interviews with 
Turkish officials reveal the character of Saudi 
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also 
known as MBS. Turkish officials in charge 
of the case reveal the heartbreaking manner 
in which Khashoggi was murdered, and his 
corpse was disposed of. Incriminating evidence 
shows how strongly MBS is implicated in the 
murder. The documentary highlights the unity 
of American intelligence in the belief that MBS 
ordered the killing, something that speaks to 

the character of Donald Trump, who refuses 
to believe MBS was involved.
While compelling in its portrait of 
Khashoggi, “The Dissident” feels amateurish 
in its artistry. Its filmmaking is full of 
questionable choices. Imposing “glitchy” filters 
over all footage associated with Khashoggi’s 
murder. 
Overused 
footage 
of Omar Abdulaziz walking 
the streets of Montreal in a 
topcoat, looking like a loner. An 
obnoxious computer-generated 
battle between robotic bees and 
flies, meant to depict the cyber 
warfare between Saudi Arabia’s 
Twitter 
army 
and 
Omar 
Abdulaziz’s organized activists. 
It’s disappointing, especially 
considering the seriousness of 
the subject matter.
The narrative is overly reliant 
on Abdulaziz’s own activism, 
which is interesting, but given far too much 
screen time. If it had been traded for more 
discussion of the consequences of Khashoggi’s 
assassination on journalism, Saudi Arabia or 
the world at large, there would be much more 
to glean from the whole documentary.

DYLAN YONO
Daily Arts Writer

“The Dissident”

Dir. Bryan Fogel

January 24, 2020 
Sundance 2020

Read more online at 
michigandaily.com

“Once Upon 
a Time in 

Venezuela”

Dir. Anabel 
Rodriguez Rios

January 27, 2020 
Sundance 2020

‘Venezuela’ is resiliant storytelling

Anabel Rodriguez Ríos — director of 
“Once Upon a Time in Venezuela,” the first 
Venezuelan documentary to ever premiere at 
Sundance — is fairly certain her film will be 
censored by the Venezuelan government. But 
she’s willing to climb through hoops to get it 
the attention it deserves.
“Once Upon a Time in Venezuela” is the 
story of Congo Mirador, a once-thriving 
fishing village nestled on a tributary of lake 
Maracaibo. Lake Maracaibo is the largest 
lake in Venezuela and home to one of the 
largest oil reserves in the world. Ríos spent 
five years following families in Congo 
Mirador and documenting their struggles to 
save the sinking village they’ve inhabited for 
generations. When Ríos started filming, about 
400 people were proud to call Congo Mirador 
home. Today, only six remain.

Congo Mirador is strong and resilient 
in the face of constant neglect by the 
Venezuelan government on a local and 
national level. Residents are constantly 
being displaced because of 
increased 
sedimentation 
spurred by climate change. 
Many live without basic needs 
and 
sanitation, 
and 
some 
are turning to the tourist 
market to sell goods. While 
the film was still in the works, 
representatives 
of 
Congo 
Mirador 
were 
determined 
to make a change. Today, 
that hope seems to have 
disappeared: Congo Mirador 
has fallen into the same cycle 
of neglect as other Venezuelan 
communities.
“[This film] comes from this feeling of 
de-rooting that we have had as a whole 
society, as Venezuelans,” said Ríos as I caught 

up with her after the screening. “If we artists 
don’t tell the story, it’s as if we (Venezuelans) 
don’t exist. It comes to a point where one has 
to tell it or die.”
Ríos 
is 
determined 
to 
tell Congo Mirador’s story 
authentically. She spent years 
convincing the village to let her 
film, waiting as long as three 
years to shoot Tamara, the local 
representative of the village. 
Camera shots are rarely rapid, 
instead lingering on the faces 
of citizens, capturing their 
concern for their families and 
community.
“They 
wanted 
to 
communicate that it was an 
existential, desperate situation. 
They saw the film as a tool,” Ríos said.

TRINA PAL
Daily Arts Writer

Read more online at 
michigandaily.com

