A / ENTERTAINMENT / FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
HOROSCOPES
10 is the easiest day, 0 the most challenging.
ARIES (March 21-April 19)
Today is a 7
Creative ideas abound today. You get new concepts from everyone you meet. Challenge yourself to move some of these ideas into action now.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20)
Today is a 9
Stick to your schedule today.
Draw the threads together and approach completion on a project. Wrap this one up, and save creative ideas for later.
GEMINI (May 21-June 21)
Today is a 6
New possibilities for creative thoughts and action abound. Luck is with you as you make decisions, even though you can't explain how you did it.
CANCER (June 22-July 22)
Today is a 6
You attract change like a magnet. To handle the ramifications, keep an open, creative mind, and allow others to control their own destiny.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)
Today is an 6
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)
Today is a 7
Your talents suggest different ways to solve problems. Think it through logically, and develop options before you begin. Then share the plan with the team.
Think up fun ways to grow relationships. A few chores may sneak onto the list, but not too many. Devote time to simply enjoy time together.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)
Today is a 8
You're learning with great enthusiasm. Intelligent activity revolves around your ability to recreate what you've learned in words others can use.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)
Today is an 8
Someone in the house could use some tender loving care. As you provide it, create optimism and pass out single-player games. Time for rest is essential.
Today is a 9
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec.
21)
Someone outside the family arrives on the doorstep, needing assistance. Although unexpected, you can dance with the circumstance. Give them what they need.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)
Today is a 7
Pay extra attention to physical activities today. To avoid injury, pay attention to the terrain. That said, today can be wildly fun and even creative.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
Today is a 6
Your mind goes in several directions to implement fanciful ideas for group activities. Enthusiasm draws everyone into the design process. Have fun with it!
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20)
Today is an 7
Mary Poppins said,"a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down." You see her wisdom, as you try to handle difficult news. Express compassion in private.
Conceptis SudoKu
By Dave Green
2 9 4 3
8 3 7 5
6 5 9 4
4 8 2 7
©2010 Consents Puzzles. Dist. by King Features Syndicate Inc.
Difficulty Level ★★★★
12/03
6 2 1 8 7 3 4 9 5
8 4 3 5 2 9 6 1 7
9 7 5 6 1 4 3 8 2
5 9 4 7 6 2 1 3 8
7 6 8 3 9 1 5 2 4
1 3 2 4 8 5 9 7 6
2 5 6 9 3 8 7 4 1
3 8 7 1 4 6 2 5 9
4 1 9 2 5 7 8 6 3
THE NEXT PANEL
Difficulty Level ★★★
Answer to previous puzzle
Nicholas Sambaluk
Aronofsky's 'Black Swan' over the top ballet drama
MOVIES
The director here is the earnest Darren Aronofsky, and his trademark sledgehammer style makes any kind of enjoyment difficult. As he showed in "The Wrestler" and earlier, this is someone who believes in bludgeoning audiences into submission. When you experience ballet the Aronofsky way, you count yourself lucky that the dancers don't have easy access to staple guns.
LOS ANGELES — You won't be having a lot of fun at "Black Swan," but the less seriously you take this wildly melodramatic, unashamedly pulpy look at the blood sport that is New York City ballet, the better your chances are of enjoying yourself even a little.
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
In fact, the only problem with calling "Black Swan" sensationalistic and over the top is that it makes this shameless shotgun marriage of "The Red Shoes" and Roger Corman sound like more fun than it is.
This tale of feathered ambition starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as dueling ballerinas is not just any kind of trash, it's high-art trash, a kind of "When Tuo Goes Psycho" that so prizes hysteria over sanity that it's worth your life to tell when its characters are hallucinating and when they're not.
Not that ballerina Nina Sayers (Portman) would know what to do with a staple gun even if she had one. As presented in the screenplay by Mark Heyman, Andrew Heinz and John McLaughlin, Nina is supposed to be a Goody Two Shoes, a virginal drone who devoted her life to dance and labored for years in the corps de ballet without a peep of protest.
Nina is such doesn't seem to mind living with her hovering, possessive, over-solicitous mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), a former ballerina herself who worries that her deserving
Nina is such a timid soul she
But wait, there's a catch. Actually, two catches, the first being a flesh-and-blood rival named Lily (Kunis), a hot new dancer who shows up at rehearsal literally "straight off the plane" from where else but California.
Not to worry, Mom, Thomas Leroy (French star Vincent Cassel), the ballet's imperious artistic director (is there any other kind?), has his mind on change. With a big production of "Swan Lake" coming up, he deep-sixes aging prima ballerina Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder at her most psychotic) and tells Nisa she just might be in line for the starring role and the chance to play the ballet's white and black swans.
Not for nothing does Lily hail from San Francisco and not Sheboygan. Geography is destiny here, and we are meant to understand that Lily is a sensual free
daughter's chances for stardom are dribbling away.
When you experience ballet the Aronofsky way,you count yourself lucky that the dancers don't have easy access to staple guns.
paint, someone who gleefully breaks any rule she can get her hands on. She even has a tattoo!
The idea behind "Black Swan," in as much as it has an idea beyond
the presentation of sensation, is that the quest for perfection can unhinge the unwary. It's a plausible notion, but the problem is that Aronofsky in his deterministic zeal can't help but stack that deck.
What that means is that Nina is a walking nervous breakdown from the moment we see her. This lack of subtlety in Nina's predicament means that there is nowhere of sustained interest for her character to go.
Key Ozzy Osbourne facts
MUSIC
out and say it — the greatest heavy rock riff of all time. Ozzy told us: "Black Sabbath didn't write so much songs as rock passages. What we would do is get a good riff going. ... Whereas a lot of my solo stuff, it's kind of formulated — a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle 8, solo."
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
HIS BEST SOLO SONG: "Flying High Again." This melodic 1981 hit has everything — naughty Ozzy ("I've been a bad, bad boy!"), a Randy Rhoads guitar riff that can slice through logs and two Rhoads solos that are almost as good.
Ozzy Osbourne may be the Prince of Darkness and the strangest father figure in TV history, but the British rocker who founded Black Sabbath in the late 1960s is turning into a twisted Renaissance Man. He put out an album and an autobiography this year, he writes an "advice" column in Rolling Stone, and last summer he headlined the annual metal extravaganza Ozzzfest, as usual.
Some key things to know about
Ozzy:
HIS BEST SONG: "Supernaut" by Black Sabbath. We'll just come
ANIMAL APPETITES: Ozzy
Darling, I am afraid you look more worn out than a college boy's drinking wrist on Sunday morning.
truly did bite the head off a bat — and a dove. In the early '80s, Ozzy picked up what he thought was a toy rubber bat that a fan had thrown onstage, and bit into its neck. He also bit the head off a live dove at a CBS Records meeting; we're told grizzled label observers were less shocked than sort of weirded out.
LIBERTY HALL
accessibility info
644 Mills 749-1912 (785) 749-1922
WHAT DID HE SAY? Is Ozzy as incomprehensible as he comes across on TV? We once had an opportunity to interview Ozzy and Sharon, who were articulate and insightful. But the beginning of the transcription looks like this:
Ozzv: "NNNHeeeeah!"
Sharon: "NNNeeah! He's here!"
Ozzy: "Hello. ... You know what, in the past. ... I've gotta nnnnsshhnhhh."
NICE GENES: Ozzy is a bona fide genetic mutant. Nathan Pearson of Knome Inc, recently sequenced Osbourne's genome (which sounds like a euphemism) and discovered gene variants "we've never seen before," according to ABC News.
ACROSS
1 Group character
6 Craze
9 Prescription safety org.
12 Make minor adjustments
13 Honest politician
14 Botanical bristle
15 Hidden store
16 Fastened a seat belt
18 Persian Gulf land
20 Capri or Wight
21 Cowboy's sweetie
23 Resort
24 Undoes deles
25 News-paper page
27 Cove
29 Enact
31 Ms. Franklin
35 Possibly could
37 Apprehen
38 Macho type
41 — glance
43 Book- keeper (Abbr.)
44 "Oh, woe!"
45 Man with all the answers?
47 Drunk
49 Swelling
52 Sch. group
53 Pink-slip
54 Oft- dunked treats
55 Ever- green type
56 Peak (Abbr.)
57 13- Across' in-laws
DOWN
1 List-
ending abbr.
2 Old "Up,
up and
away"
carrier
3 Badgered
a performer
4 Hawaiian
island
5 Distorts
6 "Turn Me
Loose"
singer
7 Touch
8 Calendar
abbr.
9 Untrue
10 Lived
11 Llamas'
range
17 One of a
nursery
rhume trie
Solution time: 25 mins.
Yesterday's answer 12-3
19 Mimicry
21 Sticky stuff
22 Auto financing abbr.
24 Sun. speech
26 Reversible fabric
28 Coffee-house order
30 "There's no team"
32 Took on
33 With it
34 — carte
36 Solidify
38 Glad
39 Upper crust
40 Colorful parrot
42 Monk's superior
45 Libretto
46 Modern-day money
48 Felon's flight
50 Deity
51 Curvy charette
12-3 CRYPTOQUIP
"Q SQNG DH SLD VOSOGU"
OU UBVJ QC QNQKFOCY
LDKE SD KGQI. OS UVQKGI
SJG IOVEGCU DBS DH FG!
Yesterday's Cryptoquip: NAME OF A CLASSIC COMIC ACTOR AFTER OPTING TO BECOME AN ARMY CLERGY MEMBER; CHARLIE CHAPLAIN.
Today's Cryptoquip Clue: L equals W
MOVIES
Sundance slate mixes indie, mainstream films
A day after the Sundance Film Festival revealed its 2011 competition lineup — a slate that deliberately favored unfamiliar filmmakers working with little-known actors — the nation's top showcase for movies made outside the studio system revealed its premiere slate, and a lot of A-listers will be headed to Park City, Utah, come lan. 20.
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
LOS ANGELES — There will be stars after all.
The dramatic premiere roster includes new films starring Greg Kinnear ("The Convincer"),
("The Details"),
Kevin Spacey ("Margin Call"),
Paul Rudd ("My Idiot Brother"),
Ewan McGregor ("Perfect Sense") and Pierce Brosnan ("Salvation Boulevard"). Among the
Holmes and Amy Ryan.
In a surprising twist, only two of the dramatic premieres already have distribution deals.
women in leading and supporting roles: Elizabeth Banks, Laura Linney, Julia Ormond, Zooey Deschanel, Eva Green, Jennifer Connelly, Marisa Tomei, Katie
With Sony Pictures pulling Gus Van Sant's "Restless" out of the festival at the last minute (following the film's release-date change from January to later next year), that means a dozen of the premiere titles will arrive in Utah with no distributor, assuming no deals are
In a surprising twist, only two of the dramatic premiers already have distribution deals. Fox Searchlight will be represented with two new movies: "Cedar Rapids," directed by Miguel Artela and starring Ed Helms, and writer-director Tom McCarthy's "Win Win" starring Paul Giamatti.
struck in the next month and a half.
"A lot of companies aren't making that much," said festival director John Cooper in explaining why so few premiere titles already
have distribution.
1
Cooper also said he was launch-ing a new documentary premiere section, which will feature eight new works from more established nonfiction directors.