The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
6 — Wednesday, February 3, 2021
puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com
By Fred Ohles
©2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/03/21
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
02/03/21
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Wednesday, February 3, 2021
ACROSS
1 Playground
game
4 Theatrical
backdrops
10 Academic pds.
14 4-Down may be
added to it
15 Tour
16 Prose-fixing job
17 Expert
18 Settlement for
prisoners
20 Iberian river
22 Countless years
23 One with cinco
dedos
24 Place to display
tchotchkes
29 Die down, as a
storm
30 Type
31 “What was __
think?”
32 High-level H.S.
classes
34 Prefix with cycle
35 Linseed oil
source
36 She voices Elsa
in “Frozen” films
39 PC connections
41 Little rascal
42 “MASH” milieu:
Abbr.
43 Slippery swimmer
44 Pre-1868 Tokyo
45 Like Stout’s Nero
Wolfe
49 Approximately
247 acres
54 Govt. agency
with an Informed
Delivery service
55 Cry from a crib
56 Distant relative of
the emu
57 Pocket money ...
and what’s in the
puzzle’s circles?
61 Supergirl’s
symbol
62 Wheel cover
63 “That’s
unnecessary”
64 GPS indication
65 Soap since 1965,
familiarly
66 Like plans yet to
be finalized
67 Grass in a roll
DOWN
1 Capital east of
Denver
2 Site with many
home pages?
3 Name spelled out
in a Van Morrison
song
4 “The Racer’s
Edge”
5 Golf course
hazard
6 Used as fuel
7 Donald Jr.’s mom
8 Many-voiced
Blanc
9 Capital WNW of
Denver
10 Psalm instruction
11 Three-time
“Modern Family”
Emmy nominee
12 Company that
merged with
Konica
13 Oinker’s digs
19 Siberian city
21 Eightsomes
25 French military
cap
26 French film
27 “Hogan’s Heroes”
colonel
28 Sly critter
33 Derogatory
34 Decision maker
at home
35 “Show Boat”
author
36 Apparent
37 Wild way to run
38 New way for
many to meet
39 __ Moines
40 Giant redwood
44 Scots Gaelic
46 Old anesthetics
47 Makes sure of
48 Took off the board
50 Altar areas
51 Start of a demand
52 Bowling sites
53 “Well, shucks!”
57 Bygone Ford
58 Current events
TV channel
59 “Woo-__!”
60 Savannah
summer hrs.
SUDOKU
2
1
4
9
1
3
8
3
5
8
1
8
3
4
2
6
5
2
9
8
5
1
8
4
7
WHISPER
“Remember
the fact that
you have ribs.”
“Happy
February!”
01/28/21
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
9 Classic fast-food
sandwich since
28 Building artisan
s
‘Ailey’ is a venerable portrait of a titan of American dance and his demons
“Alvin Ailey is black, and he’s
universal,” said the late Cicely Tyson
of the celebrated choreographer
and hero of American dance when
he received the Kennedy Center
Honors in 1988. Jamila Wignot’s
(“Town Hall”) new documentary
“Ailey” chronicles the life of its
namesake with attention to his key
works. Woven into the story of his
life, the documentary shows the
work of the contemporary company,
performing modern dance infused
with Ailey’s spirit.
An only child born to a single
mother in Texas in 1931, Ailey drew
on his experiences in youth to tell a
story of what it means to be Black in
America. Shari Frilot, the curator
of Sundance Film Festival’s New
Frontier program, introduced the
film as a showcase of Black joy.
This joy, interlaced with coexistent
Black pain, is richly layered and
powerfully present in the archival
footage of Alvin Ailey American
Dance Theater performances and
interviews with Ailey. The film,
and much of Ailey’s choreography,
functions as a reverential ode to
Black perseverance through music
and movement.
Ailey
found
dance
after
moving to Los Angeles as a child,
where in the Ballets Russe de
Monte-Carlo he discovered a
“new world.” As a Black man, his
own relationship with dance was
energized by Katherine Dunham,
whose movement, Ailey said,
“touched something Texas in
me.” From his first encounters
with the art, Ailey drew on
memory, personal and collective,
harnessing his own emotion to
stir emotion in his viewer.
His 1960 work, “Revelations,”
which became one of his most
renowned
works,
is
virtuosic
physical poetry about the history
of Black experience in America.
Rennie Harris, a contemporary
choreographer who has worked
with the AAADT, called the
dancer a “physical historian.” By
this account, Ailey was a genius
historiographer.
The film’s most moving and
marvelous storytelling remembers
this genius and the toll it took.
Ailey’s
colleagues
and
friends
reflect on the dissonance between
man and idea; how he was used
as a poster boy for racial progress,
and how the immensity of his
artistic genius overwhelmed his
personal enclosure. His lack of close
relationships, compounded by the
stress of spectacular success, eroded
Ailey’s mental health as he poured
more of himself into his work than
he was able to give.
This powerful feeling and Ailey’s
emotion are resurrected by the
stories of his peers, the footage of
his choreography, his interviews
and mesmerizing found footage.
Throughout the film, we are shown
his surroundings: Texas in the
1930s, Los Angeles in the ’40s and
New York in the ’70s and ’80s.
When the company travels to
Paris, we are transported to Paris.
Editor Annukka Lilja did her own
“choreography,” as Harris described
it in the post-screening Q&A,
beautifully bringing Ailey’s recorded
voice into the visual present through
montage. The effect is the telling of
an untold story, through a novel and
brilliantly artistic choreographic
filmography.
Ailey died from complications of
AIDS in 1989, but his spirit lives on.
Judith Jamison, dancer and second
AAADT artistic director, recalled
that Ailey’s last breath was an
inhale; she sees the continued work
of the company as his collective
and enduring exhale. The splendor
of this idea is representative of the
film as a whole, which is a poetic
biography of a man who fought the
demons of fame to tell the Black
American saga through movement.
Ailey’s “Revelations” became one
of his most iconic works. Drawing on
Black culture and the role of church
therein, the dancers ooze sorrowful
sentimentality and spirited joy. I
found the footage of “Revelations”
to be the most moving of the works
included in the film.
To meditate briefly on the title of
this work, which evokes the book
of Revelation and its prophecy of
apocalypse, I am struck by the
poignancy of this parallel. That
such a seminal work, situated at
the beginning of Ailey’s illustrious
career, should have this association
with “end times” is a sort of sweet
reclamation.
Ailey
transformed
endings
into beginnings, just as he made a
space for Black joy in dance. The
AAADT dancers have done the
same, turning the end of Ailey’s
life into an opportunity to exhale
his creative energy into the world.
Jamila Wignot has meticulously
sculpted a successful portrait of the
amaranthine spirit of an American
hero.
ROSS LONDON
Daily Arts Writer
SUNDANCE 2021
‘In the Earth’ is the first
good COVID-19 movie
Almost a year into the pandemic
and coronavirus-themed shows, flicks
and literature have started to crop up.
The early bird was that soapy soap
opera “Love in the Time of Corona.”
Now we’ve got bigger names but equal
banality in movies like HBO Max’s heist
film “Locked Down,” which featured a
couple using the COVID-19 lockdown
as an excuse to rob banks. These have
largely been on-the-nose, low-hanging
fruit — the media gunning for brownie
points that we, the socially isolated and
under-vaccinated public, are loath to
distribute.
And yet, it’s a little strange when the
new fare we watch features bustling
crowds of happy people, blissfully
unaware that their immune systems
are gloriously, divinely exposed. “In
the Earth” strikes that balance. It’s a
rainbow fish in a vapid viral sea, and
we can only hope it starts to share its
scales real damn quick.
Neither “COVID” nor “coronavirus”
are ever said, but “In the Earth” is
very clearly set during the COVID-19
crisis, or in an otherwise comparable
pandemic. They’ve got their masks,
they’ve got their hand-sanitizing
stations and talks of quarantine
abound. One woman apologizes for
having not talked to anyone in three
months. Another guy lies to his doctor
about how much he’s been exercising
while isolating.
“In the Earth” is completely a
creature of the pandemic. The idea
for the film was conceived on the first
day of the U.K. lockdown. The film
was shot during the summer months
over 15 days, the first new British
production since the crisis started.
But, as writer-director-editor Ben
Wheatley (“Rebecca”) was quick to
point out in the post-premiere Q&A
session, “In the Earth” is not about
the pandemic — it’s a reflection of our
times. Some traces of lockdown living
— natural themes of isolation and its
strain on interpersonal relationships
— are indelibly imprinted on it, but the
film stands on its own two legs.
The stars of this micro-budget
venture are small-time but guileful
actors Joel Fry (“Love, Wedding,
Repeat”)
and
Ellora
Torchia
(“Midsommar”). Fry plays Martin, a
cute-as-a-button mycologist trekking
into the fictional Arboreal Forest to
pair up with fellow fungus scientist
Dr. Wendle (Hayley Squires, “In
Fabric”) and study the mycorrhizal
mat that suffuses the environment.
Torchia
plays
the
cigarette-
smoking, coffee-swilling guide, the
park ranger Alma. Their research
station is a two-day sojourn through
the woods — no bikes, no shuttles,
no nada. “People get a little funny
in the woods,” Martin’s doctor tells
him. It’s easy to get lost in a two-day
cross-country journey, and it doesn’t
help that the locals tell of Parnag Fegg,
some sort of woman of the woods
or pagan monster or chthonic spirit
or what have you that wanders the
forest. You can see where this is going.
And you’re wrong! It’s not going
there. Or it kinda is. It does. But it goes
other places too.
“In the Earth” resists clear-cut
categorization. Establishing shots
feature verdant expanses of ferns
and vine-choked gymnosperms but
are accompanied by an arresting
synth score by Clint Mansell. This
contrast of the natural and electronic
is emblematic of the film as a whole.
While clearly a child of horror and
British science fiction, it’s wont to
blend the supernatural and sci-fi in
a satisfying mélange that drips with
the energy of a precocious pre-teen
playing around in the forest with his
Super 8. The film’s primary vehicle
is that of slashery, “survive-alone-
in-the-woods” type horror — after
an uneventful day in the woods,
the immediate concern for Martin
and Alma is an ax-wielding weirdo
(played with razor-sharp skill by
Reece Shearsmith, “High-Rise”) who
likes photography.
But the film’s second act takes
a turn into the (visually and
conceptually) psychedelic, an almost
literally psilocybin-fueled flip that
amalgamates folklore and science-
gone-wrong. As dazzling as that
sounds, the latter half of the film is the
weaker one. Once the science mumbo
jumbo is introduced, it’s rapid fire.
The relative emptiness of the
characters
becomes
apparent:
Martin is private and panicky, Alma
is cool and capable and that’s that.
But these are forgivable sins — this is
a lean, spartan story that knows not
the meaning of the words dilly nor
dally. And it’s psychedelia — dazzling
and a tad confusing is kind of the
point.
JACOB LUSK
Daily Arts Writer
SUNDANCE 2021
I was wary about “Passing”
when I found out that it was
written and directed by Rebecca
Hall
(“Christine”).
While
I
love her work, I tend to harbor
resentment for white people who
tell Black stories, especially one
so dear to me as a mixed race
Black woman. But after seeing it,
noting how much of the dialogue
was taken directly from Nella
Larsen’s 1929 novella of the same
name and hearing the way Hall
clearly thought carefully about
her work (based on her responses
in the post-screening Q&A), any
fears of co-opted stories were
wiped away.
In the Harlem Renaissance,
Irene (Tessa Thompson, “Dear
White People”), has a chance
encounter
with
Clare
(Ruth
Negga, “Ad Astra”), a childhood
friend who she had known as
Black but now chooses to pass
as white. Clare and Irene are
both light-skinned Black women,
though it’s unclear if either of
them have a white parent or if
their complexions were just up
to chance. Irene has married
a wealthy Black man and lives
in Harlem with her two dark-
skinned sons, while the blonde
Clare married a racist white
man who is unaware of her true
identity. The two women rekindle
their friendship but are at odds
with the other’s choices in life.
It’s a beautiful story, and I highly
recommend reading the source
material.
What’s so great about adapting
text to film is that it adds a
whole new layer to the literary
experience. On the choice to film
in a cramped aspect ratio, Hall
said, “If you take a frame and then
squeeze it down so that there’s no
room for anything but the face, I
think that you sort of signal to the
audience that this film is about
scrutinizing a face.”
Beyond even the moments
where the leading women’s faces
are studied in attempts to decode
their ethnic makeup, there are
so many imperceptible changes,
in Irene’s face in particular,
that seem to reveal just how
repressed the characters are —
just how much they’re holding
back. Irene keeps her head low
so that she can hide under the
brim of her hat as she hands a
white woman something she’d
dropped, so that the woman can
only see this quirk with her lip,
a sort of “survival apparatus,”
smiling just enough so that the
white woman doesn’t find her
threatening
but
not
enough
so that she draws attention to
herself. It’s heartbreaking.
I sometimes feel that the benefit
of bringing historical fiction to
the screen is that we can see these
people who feel so far away in full
color, as opposed to the grainy
photographs in textbooks or our
mothers’ keepsakes.
However, Hall chose to shoot
“Passing” in black and white. As
I was watching, I felt that it was
creating a comfortable distance
between the viewer and the film,
reminding us of our ignorance
about untold stories, asking us to
open our eyes and notice not the
color of the potted plant but the
shape it takes as it falls out of a
window.
Hall explained, “To make a
film about colorism with the
color drained out of it asks you
to look at it as abstraction …
You look at something in black
and white and you accept it, but
you’re
undergoing
a
process
of translation. Film isn’t black
and white, it’s gray. I think that
appealed to me because I feel that
this is a story of nuance and gray
areas and ambiguity.”
There’s this incredible effect
that shows how differently
Thompson’s skin appears in
different lighting, sometimes
making
her
appear
darker
or paler — just like the main
characters’
class
status,
passing as white or Black is all
about the environment around
them. The camera lingers on
mirrors upon mirrors in the
wealthy homes Irene and Clare
live and leisure in; wonderings
about what they look like to
other people and if they’re
black or white or gray loom
over their heads.
When I was in high school,
my
literature
teachers
challenged us to view a story
for what it is, to really, truly
focus on the character rather
than ourselves — to not search
for ways in which we’re the
same or how the story could
relate to modern-day, but listen
to what it has to say about its
specific time. “Passing” is an
important historical record of
the experience of wealthy Black
people in the art scene, as well
as the complexities of colorism
just a few decades removed
from the Civil War.
But honestly, I’m glad that we
can see this story for what it is in
our current world. I hope Tessa
Thompson
thinks
carefully
about the opportunities she’s
been given as a light-skinned
woman,
as
“Hollywood’s
acceptable version of a Black
girl.” I hope movies like this
convince my brother that we’re
actually pretty lucky that our
mom is white and that the
tragic mulatto trope really is
just a myth.
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson confront colorism in ‘Passing’
SUNDANCE 2021
MARY ELIZABETH JOHNSON
Daily Arts Writer