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 734-418-4115 option 2 dailydisplay@gmail.com FOR RENT - AVAILABLE FALL 2020 2BR close to central. Info at www.tcapts.com FOR RENT “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/ 1 of 1 1/8/10 3:13 PM SUDOKU HARD 9 7 5 3 9 5 2 7 7 2 8 7 3 2 1 7 3 5 8 1 6 4 1 7 9 1 4 8 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