Festival of Colors celebrant / SUN 7-22-18 / Former QB Tony / Big Ten anthropomorphic nut / Rockettes motions / Bikini blast / Marshal Dillon / City Missouri Council Bluffs / Golden calf Exodus / Frederick Forsyth File / Villagers victimized Grinch

Constructor: Patrick Merrell

Relative difficulty: 16:19 (Note: This week, I'm going to share my times, instead of rating the puzzles, and you can infer from there)

THEME: "Movie 'M*A*S*H' 'Up'" — Two one-word movie titles are stuck together to make a wacky plot description of a third movie.

Word of the Day: GESTALT (27A: The forest, as opposed to the trees) —

Gestalt psychology or gestaltism (/ɡəˈʃtɑːlt, -ˈʃtɔːlt, -ˈstɑːlt, -ˈstɔːlt/; from German: Gestalt [ɡəˈʃtalt] "shape, form") is a philosophy of mind of the Berlin School of experimental psychology. Gestalt psychology is an attempt to understand the laws behind the ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world. The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a global whole with self-organizing tendencies. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Rex is away on a well-deserved vacation; I (Laura) will be here through next Saturday. Think of me as Rex's MALEFICENT PERSONA or GHOST AVATAR or CLUELESS SHARKNADO.

Theme answers:

• 23A: "Anchorman" = ? (1976) + (1980): NETWORK FAME
• 28A: "Rear Window" = ? (2004) + ? (2014): SAW NEIGHBORS
• 44A: "Silence of the Lambs" = ? (1946) + ? (1960): NOTORIOUS PSYCHO
• 68A: "Transformers" = ? (2000) + ? (1992): TRAFFIC TOYS
• 77A: "Jurassic Park" = ? (1997) + ? (1975): TITANIC JAWS
• 98A: "Twister" = ? (2004) + ? (2013): SIDEWAYS GRAVITY
• 115A: "Dumb and Dumber" = ? (2007) + ? (1979): SUPERBAD HAIR
• 125A: "The Poseidon Adventure" = ? (1956) + ? (1984): GIANT SPLASH

I enjoyed this very much, and even though I solved it on my phone during the set break at a concert (Guster with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra; they were awesome!), it flowed pretty quickly, because a) movie names/trivia are my thing; b) I very much like (and like to make) theme-types where you take a category and stick the names of things in that category together to make new, funny things. My primary beef with this set is that the theme entries could apply to many other movies; it's almost arbitrary which movies the constructor or editor(s) decided to clue for each M*A*S*H (1970) Up (2009). Like ... okay, SAW NEIGHBORS is a pretty succinct plot summary for Rear Window, I'll grant you that, but how many movies have a NOTORIOUS PSYCHO in them? Many movies. At the very least, all the Fridays the 13th. (Also, plenty of Hitchcock in this grid, not that I'm complaining). And GIANT SPLASH could summarize pretty much any movie in which something unpleasant happens to a cruise ship. Does a tornado (subject of the 1996 film Twister) really have SIDEWAYS GRAVITY? Because that would be cool (in the sense of interesting; not that I'd want to experience it personally).

2008 + 2015 + 1944 + 1996 = July 22-28, 2018

Fill-wise, not much gave me trouble, though the NE was the last to fall; somehow I wanted [34A: Best in mental competition]: OUTWIT to be an adjective (i.e. ___EST rather than a verb). Funny story about [106A: Frederick Forsyth's "The ___ File"]: ODESSA. I tried to put IPCRESS here -- though The Ipcress File is a spy novel by Len Deighton published ten years earlier; many spy novels are entitled The Something File, or The Whatever Conundrum, or The [insert European city here] Connection. The spy novel is a genre I have tried repeatedly and failed to get into; some years ago I was reading Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (John LeCarre, 1974). I complained to a friend that even though I could absorb fantasy sagas that ran to thousands of pages and took up entire endcap displays at Borders, and remember who all the different dynasties were, and which alien lifeform was feuding with which magic school fraternity, I tried to read one spy novel and got utterly confused trying to remember who all the characters were and whether they were the mole. "So you're saying," responded my friend, "That you'd've liked that book better had it been titled Hobbit Wookiee Direwolf Borg?" Yes. Yes, I would.

Bullets:

• [1A: Festival of Colors celebrant]: HINDU — The Festival of Colors, or Holi, happens every spring (in 2018 it was on March 1 & 2) and celebrates not only the return of spring, but the repair of broken relationships.
• [17D: Silents star whose name is an anagram of 112-Down]: Pola NEGRI began appearing in films in Berlin in the 1920s; she moved to Hollywood and specialized in femme fatale roles. She returned to Germany in the 1930s and starred in a few sound films, and was rumored to be a favorite of a certain dictator. She came back to Hollywood as the Nazis rose to power and had a few cameos, but mostly retired from film after the 1940s.  
• [45D: Without a contract]: ON SPEC — Most crossword puzzles are submitted to editors ON SPEC. There are probably fewer than ten constructors who work full-time, on contract, only making puzzles (and not, say, also as editors of other folks' puzzles).

Thanks folks! I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your server.

Signed, Laura, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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