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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FOR RENT - AVAILABLE
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“Want a
job here?
Listen to
Pink Floyd
and row.”
“You
remind me
of the kid
allergic to
nuts and
ruins class “
“Tara is just
a rat back-
wards,
who likes
cheese
anyways”
puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com
Sudoku Syndication
http://sudokusyndication.com/sudoku/generator/print/
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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