Non-English Uncle / FRI 8-4-23 / Children's writer Greenfield / Hit Broadway musical with an exclamation point in its name / Feature of open-world video games / Flashy hoops highlight for short / Chi-town fixture since 1847 / Eponym for U.S. track and field's highest award

Constructor: Brandon Koppy

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Barry LYNDON (50A: "Barry ___" (1975 Kubrick drama)) —

Barry Lyndon is a 1975 period drama film written, directed, and produced by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray. Starring Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Leonard Rossiter, and Hardy Krüger, the film recounts the early exploits and later unravelling of an 18th-century Anglo-Irish rogue and golddigger who marries a rich widow to climb the social ladder and assume her late husband's aristocratic position. [...] The film's cinematography has been described as ground-breaking. Especially notable are the long double shots, usually ended with a slow backwards zoom, the scenes shot entirely in candlelight, and the settings based on William Hogarth paintings. The exteriors were filmed on location in England, Ireland, and West Germany, with the interiors shot mainly in London. The production had problems related to logistics, weather, and politics (Kubrick feared that he might be an IRA hostage target). // Barry Lyndon received seven nominations at the 48th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning four for Best Scoring: Original Song Score and Adaptation or Scoring: Adaptation, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design. Although some critics took issue with the film's slow pace and restrained emotion, its reputation, like that of many of Kubrick's works, has grown over time. In the 2022 Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll, Barry Lyndon placed 12th in the directors' poll and 45th in the critics' poll.

• • •

The grid is mostly fine but the cluing on this one, oof, oh, dear, NO, DEAR. I just have "what?" and "!?" and [frowny face] written alllllll over my printed-out grid. The grid is also positively groaning under the weight of proper nouns, making it much more trivia test-y than the breeziest, most appealing Friday puzzles. Nevermind that I knew much of the trivia, and think very highly of many of the proper nouns (PET SOUNDS, ALAN MOORE, Barry LYNDON). Whether I, specifically, knew the trivia or not isn't the point. The point is that (often) a puzzle heavy on names is gonna mess people up in ways they find unenjoyable. There's joy (maybe) in discovering why an initially confusing clue actually makes sense (see, say, the clue on WEEK today) (23D: In shorthand, it's written with two S's and two T's). There's not gonna be much joy in finally piecing together yet another Disney princess's name. Or MOS, for that matter. So, proper nouns add nice spice, but spice should be used sparingly, with discretion. It's not the meal. But back to the cluing, which was off-putting over and over, starting with 1A: Junior mint? (PLAY MONEY). You want "mint" to = MONEY??? Only if there's a lot of it. If you "make a mint" you make a lot of money; Merriam-Webster has "mint" as "a vast sum" (my emph.); but the mere fact of money's moneyness doesn't make it a "mint." Ugh, this clue has me mad at Junior Mints, and they're my favorite movie candy! The only thing besides popcorn I ever order at the movies. (Speaking of: headed out to see Shortcomings today, a movie based on the work of Adrian Tomine, one of my very favorite cartoonists ("graphic novelists," if you must); I teach his work alongside ALAN MOORE's on a regular basis). 

The painful overreach for punniness comes back again with the clue on PATERNITY TESTS (44A: Things that can really make someone pop?). Obviously the "pop" here is reoriented toward the "father" meaning of the word, but I think at its surface level the clue wants to evoke fashion, somehow. And yet the "Things" part really ruins that. As does the "someone"–it's all so vague that the fashion specificity of the idea is horribly diluted. What is that clue on PHEW! even doing? (1D: Cry that accompanies relief ... or a reek). "A reek"? Who ... speaks/writes like that? Also, it's just wrong. "P-U" ("pee-yoo"???) is the phrase for when something reeks (or when something ... is a reek (?) ... you see how awkward that phrasing is). The addition of the ellipsis and "or a reek" takes a perfectly ordinary clue and absolutely drives it into the ground nose first. It's both off *and* unnecessary. No idea what the thought process was there. Not sure what "open-world video games" even are or whyyyy we had to go there for a simple word like MAP (5D: Feature of open-world video games). I liked the WEEK clue, but the use of "shorthand" there is dishonest; the MTWTFSS (more likely M T W Th F Sa Su) at the top of a calendar WEEK are abbreviations; "shorthand" is a very specific thing that stenos use to take dictation, as I understand it ... so boo). When something is "unbelievable" (55D: "Ugh, this is unbelievable!"), you tend to draw out the "come" in "come on!" (often adding an "oh" to the front); you don't shorten it to C'MON, which is only ever an encouragement to hurry up, or to come along. "?" clues work when the word play is dead on. [Big sister?] — dead on. The MOTHER SUPERIOR is indeed a big (important) sister (nun), and the phrase "big sister" is a solid stand-alone phrase; perfectly in-the-language, and thus a perfect misdirect. [Space scrap?] is less great, since the phrase itself is wonky—I think they want you to think of "the scrap (metal), i.e. junk, that floats around in space," but I'd call that "space junk" or "space debris" or I don't know what, but not "space scrap." Obviously, the "?" reorients the meaning of "scrap" (to "abort"), but you can see, hopefully, how [Big sister?] really hits the mark, while many of these other "?" clues ... don't.

My favorite part of the puzzle was the Ebert review of HOME ALONE, LOL, awesome (15A: 1990 film that Roger Ebert called "so implausible that it makes it hard for us to really care about the plight of the kid"). I still haven't seen that damn movie. Something about McCulkin Mania put me off it, hard, back in the '90s, and I haven't (yet) felt compelled to fill in that particular gap in my cinematic education. Oh, wait, isn't Joe Pesci in that? [...checks internet...] Oof, yes, so ... nevermind. Not interested. Did that *&$% ever apologize for what he did to Sinéad O'Connor? I've hated him since that SNL appearance in 1992, and hate him even more now (you can see him "joke" about hitting her, and hear the audience laugh and cheer, here). I have taken Sinéad's death harder than most celebrity deaths, for sure. Her first three albums were fixtures of my Gen-X youth. Courageous, fierce, original, beautiful. R.I.P. to one of the most daring musical artists of my generation.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. "NO MÁS" is a [Non-English "Uncle"] Because "uncle!" here means "I give up" (and "NO MÁS" means "no more!")

P.P.S it seems some people have never heard of EL CAPITAN (17A: High point of a trip to California?). I grew up in the Central Valley, so this Yosemite rock formation is very familiar to me, but in case it's not familiar to you, here you go:

El Capitan (Spanish: El Capitán; "the Captain" or "the Chief") is a vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park, on the north side of Yosemite Valley, near its western end. The granite monolith is about 3,000 feet (914 m) from base to summit along its tallest face and is a world-famous location for big wall climbing, including the disciplines of  aid climbing, free climbing, and more recently for free solo climbing. wikipedia

P.P.P.S. yes, I also think OOP is clued terribly, but am willing to defer to the more hoop-headed among us on this question (26A: Flashy hoops highlight, for short) (it's a shortened form of 'alley-oop,' but not a shortened form I've ever heard)

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