Popular ABC programming block of the '90s / SUN 12-13-20 / Its name is derived from the Greek for I burn / Dock-udrama / World capital with Gangnam district / Palace Indian tourist attraction

Constructor: Dan Margolis

Relative difficulty: Easy (8:43, even with a stupidly slow start)

THEME: "Cinema Vérité" — clues sound like varieties or genres of film, but they are actually extremely literal (punny! wacky!) descriptions of films:

Theme answers:

• "RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK" (26A: Indy film? (1981)) ('cause "Indy" is the nickname of the movie's main character, Indiana Jones)
• "SUNSET BOULEVARD" (36A: Road movie? (1950)) ('cause the title is literally a road)
• "PATRIOT GAMES" (56A: PG movie? (1992)) ('cause the initials of the movie title are "P.G.")
• "THE GODFATHER" (81A: Family film? (1972)) ('cause it's about a mafia "family")
• "ON THE WATERFRONT" (103A: Dock-udrama? (1954)) ('cause it takes place on the "docks")
• "HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS" (114A: Short film? (1989)) ('cause when you shrink kids, they get "short"!?)

Word of the Day: ANNO mundi (6D: ___ mundi) —

Anno Mundi (Latin for "in the year of the world"; Hebrew: לבריאת העולם‎, "to the creation of the world"), abbreviated as AM, or Year After Creation, is a calendar era based on the biblical accounts of the creation of the world and subsequent history. Two such calendar eras have seen notable use historically:

• The Byzantine calendar was used in the Byzantine Empire and many Christian Orthodox countries and Eastern Orthodox Churches and was based on the Septuagint text of the Bible. That calendar is similar to the Julian calendar except that its epoch is equivalent to 1 September 5509 BC on the Julian proleptic calendar.
• Since the Middle Ages, the Hebrew calendar has been based on rabbinic calculations of the year of creation from the Hebrew Masoretic Text of the bible. This calendar is used within Jewish communities for religious and other purposes. On the Hebrew calendar, the day begins at sunset. The calendar's epoch, corresponding to the calculated date of the world's creation, is equivalent to sunset on the Julian proleptic calendar date 6 October 3761 BC. The new year begins at Rosh Hashanah, in Tishrei. Year anno mundi 5781, or AM 5781, began at sunset on 18 September 2020 on the Gregorian calendar. (wikipedia)

• • •

This theme has a dad-joke vibe but I was fond of it anyway. You can get away with this sort of corny humor when the puzzle a. is easy, b. is not filled with garbage, c. has very well-known theme answers. All of these movies are famous to exceedingly famous, so there's little chance you won't have heard of most if not all of them. In fact, the only one I can imagine someone's not having heard of is "PATRIOT GAMES," which was also a novel, which gives you another way to have heard of it before. The oldness of the cinematic frame of reference is part of its dad-joke charm. Who cares about the entire 21st century!? They don't make movies like they used to, etc. The dumbest and therefore best clue is, in fact, the one on "PATRIOT GAMES" (56A: PG movie? (1992)). It's got nothing to do with the content of the movie, nothing to do with the literal meaning of "PATRIOT GAMES," it's just ... initials. The most tenuous connection imaginable. I think I'm laughing mostly at all the ways this kind of cluing could go. [R movie? (1981)] = "REDS." [G movie? (1997)] = "GATTACA." [X movie? (1980)] = "XANADU." [B movie? (1988)] = "BIG." Etc. Etc. Please somebody figure out how to do a whole puzzle using this concept. The only theme clue I sort of halfway object to is the one on "HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS" (114A: Short film? (1989)), since that movie does not star Martin Short, which is really the "Short" I thought they were going for, the ideal Short for this type of punning situation, le Short juste. Anyway, you wouldn't call shrunken people "short." If you are a quarter of an inch tall, no one is going to describe you as "short." You wish you were short. So that clue/answer is a miss, but the others are just fine. 

And the grid as a whole—just fine also. I've written down some ugly stuff here: UPAT OSAY ONOR EES ANNO INE ... but almost all the rest seems at least tolerable, and most of it is acceptably solid. I had real trouble up front. Got DAN and IMAM easily but couldn't work the Downs in the NW, then couldn't do much with the next little over from there, the NNW, where FLAT (4A: Out of tune ... or bubbles) and LONG O (!) (18A: Opening opening?) and FLIRT (4D: Toy (with), as an idea) all stayed hidden. I think I finally got traction at POET RTES CAR PLENTY etc. in the NNE. I continued to have periodic trouble in the upper third of the grid. Both SPOIL (25A: Turn) and BOOKBAG (13D: Kids use it for texts) took some work in the NE, and MEDIA was totally unexpected at 17D: Pastels and charcoal, for two—I had that answer ending "S" and so had 35A: Sound from a flock (BLEAT) as BLESS at first (logic shmogic, something about flock, preacher, religion, blessing, I dunno...). Had YIPE and YELL before YELP (43A: React to a stubbed toe, maybe). But then, once that upper third was settled, wow did I take off. Scorching pace. Made up a ton of time and ended up only about a minute or so off my record. MYSORE was the only thing to give me a moment's pause, and even then, I actually *wanted* MYSORE, I just wasn't at all confident that I wasn't botching the name of the place (110A: ___ Palace, Indian tourist attraction). Wanted STIRRUP for STETSON (99D: Bit of ranch dressing?). But otherwise, no trouble. Just destroyed this thing. Which probably predisposed me to look AMIABLE-y upon the puzzle as a whole, but whatever it takes, man. I was finally not disappointed in a Sunday. Hallelujah.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

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