A most enjoyable puzzle with a clear theme.
I found this very enjoyable. 25a did help piece together some of the solutions. Many thanks to Chalmie for the fun this morning!
M (male) + ORGAN (member)
[ultimatu]M AS CAR A[ppears] (trapped)
DOE[s] (cheats, endlessly)
American courts refer to anonymous/unidentified male parties as ‘John Doe’
(J (judge) + CASES I)* (*prepared)
Characters in the Merchant of Venice
(ED (journalist)) + (SET UP (position) <to the left
Double definition
The chess piece and the bird
adds GRAM (little weight) to PSYCHO (Hitchcock film)
T[h]I[s] (oddly) + DIED (expired)
([c]UT PRICE)* (*stew, not opening)
(MEN FEAR)* (*bothering)
“IN SIGHT” (visible, “sound”)
(PRESLEY CAN)* (*ruin)
BEST PICTURE(15), ACTOR (6) (MORGAN FREEMAN (1a 19)), ACTRESS (27) (JESSICA TANDY (9 22)), SUPPORTING ACTOR (5 6), SCREENPLAY (23) and possibly MASCARA (4a): OSCARS (21) for DRIVING MISS DAISY (28 26 8d)
The film ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ was nominated for 9 Oscars in 1990, winning 4. The wins were Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Screenplay and Best Makeup.
(CAR SETS)* (*off)
Referring to the phrase “said the actress to the bishop” – another version of “that’s what she said”
[director]R (finally) into DIVING (Olympic sport)
T[o]RY (Conservative, but lose O (nothing))
SPO[t] (notice, timeless, i.e. without T (time)) + USES (exploits)
A (one) + STERN (exhibiting severeness (13d) perhaps)
MAJOR (officer) + IT (sex) + Y (unknown)
PONDER (think); (RE (about + S (Sweden)) first
A (American) + VID (film, short for video)
ME (Chalmie) + ID (unconscious); after ACID< (psychoactive drug, <turns up) in
SPORTING (wearing) outside (U (uniform) with P[lastic] (front))
C (see); ROTA< (schedule, <put up) accommodates
A + SUM (problem) in SE (the Home Counties, South East)
IS (lives) through DAY (24 hours)
Daisy-Daisy was a popular tandem bicycle in the late 50s/early 60s inspired by the song ‘Daisy Bell’ by Harry Dacre (1892), about a ‘bicycle made for two’
(SEES NERVES)* (*shredded)
(IN HENWIRE)* (*tangled)
“WEIGH” (to consider, “said”) + POSTS (blog comments)
PE (exercise) + NT (books, New Testament) + (GO (disappear) in AN)
The Pentagon is the headquarters for the US Department of Defense
O (no) + SCARS (lasting damage)
[plian]T AND Y[ielding] (to some extent)
RATION[n] (helping, to get rid on N (Nitrogen))
M[ars] (first) + ISS (satellite, International Space Station))
Thanks, Chalmie and Oriel!
Liked ASTERN, SUPPORTING and WAYPOSTS.
I couldn’t solve several and had a sizeable “Huh?” list. I won’t elaborate, because probably nobody cares. Perhaps I was just on the wrong wavelength today.
Thanks Chalmie & Oriel.
At 4d the FT app outs Michael as Alchemi in the Indy. Oops
Forgot to mention, I groaned at “see” for “c”. No doubt this has been used before, but I hadn’t seen it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_Miss_Daisy
‘As of 2023, it is the most recent PG-rated film to have won Best Picture…
…On the other hand, the film has been criticized for its handling of the issue of racism. Candice Russell of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel described Freeman’s character as having a “toadying manner” which was “painful to see”, and said that the film was ultimately “one scene after another of a pompous old lady issuing orders and a servant trying to comply by saying ‘yassum.'” The film’s nomination for Best Picture at the Academy Awards over Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing was controversial. Lee later reflected on the controversial decision by saying that Driving Miss Daisy was “not being taught in film schools all across the world like Do the Right Thing is.”
…Oscar “test of time” recount
In 2015, The Hollywood Reporter polled hundreds of Academy members, asking them to re-vote on past close run decisions. Academy members indicated that, given a second chance, they would award the 1990 Oscar for Best Picture to My Left Foot instead.’
Nice gridfill.
Typo for 8d.Daisy, Daisy was written in 1892. I remember the song from my childhood and it was an old one then. Presumably a music hall song from the 1850s and 1860s.
Enjoyed the puzzle so thanks to setter and blogger. Much to like.
A thought on ASTERN:
STERN=exhibiting SEVERENESS. No ‘perhaps’ is needed to explain this.
Still ‘perhaps’ seems an essential part of the clue.
Doesn’t the clue read similar to ‘Behind us one exhibiting 13?’
Sorry if I have overthought! 🙂
Typo fixed – thanks SM @7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bell
I’d only ever heard the chorus. Wikipedia gives three verses as well, and lets you listen to a wax cylinder recording from 1894.
Among much other fascinating trivia – a lot of it to do with IT – I knew this:
‘It is the earliest song sung using computer speech synthesis by the IBM 704 in 1961…
Science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke witnessed the IBM 704 demonstration during a trip to Bell Labs in 1962 and referred to it in the 1968 novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the HAL 9000 computer sings “Daisy Bell” during its gradual deactivation.’
“What are you doing, Dave?” – Prescient stuff about AI going rogue and killing everybody. Thanks for the rabbit hole Oriel&SM!
And thanks Alchemi/Chalmie/Michael for the puzzle.
DEPUTES
Forgot to mention this earlier:
‘get journalist in position’=SET UP ED (sounds a bit odd though)
With this parsing the ‘in’ gets a role to play.
Also ‘to the left’ is to be applied just once. There is no hint to apply the reversal separately to ED and SET UP.
I like to spot themes, so felt utterly cheated by my last one in BEST, which gave the whole game away. Just kidding.
Everything else cleverly avoided anything to do with the film.
It’s a good job Dan Aykroyd didn’t win for SUPPORTING ACTOR – He’d have been difficult to clue surreptitiously.
I especially liked MORGAN for making the usual allusion about men who buy sports cars as an extension to their “manhood”.
Parsed (as KVa@11) DEPUTES as (SET UP ED)<
For ASTERN maybe the def is "perhaps behind us"?
FrankieG@12
ASTERN
The def, I feel, is ‘behind us’. One can ask, “What happens if I face towards the back of the ship?”
The assumption here is that we are on a ship. What is behind the ship is behind us.
Sorry for my ignorance, why is ID ‘unconscious’? Don’t think I’ve come across that before.
Thanks for the blog, a good set of clues and a well-worked theme .
Nick @14 , it is the Id our unconscious drives.
Freud proposed the Ego , SuperEgo and Id although the evidence for these is less than zero.
Nick. You should watch the film Forbidden Planet. It’s a classic. The Id is a crucial element.
[Roz@15 Does less than zero evidence imply some evidence to the contrary?] I remember Tandy as responsible for a wide range of electronic kits.
Of course, I had to enter MEDICARE at 4d as my FOI then eventually could only think of WRITERS at 15d ! Fortunately it didn’t have too much effect on the rest which I rather enjoyed. Thanks to Chalmie and Oriel.
We too went for ‘medicare’ at 4dn, but realised our mistake once we got round to deciphering 25ac. We were also held up on 16dn wondering if it was ‘Rhine’ or ‘Rhein’ until we got 20ac. No doubt Chalmie was constrained by the theme, but we thought SEVERENESS and WAYPOSTS a bit unusual – we would never use either word in preference to ‘severity’ and ‘guideposts’ or ‘signposts’. An intriguing theme, and very satisfying once we’d cracked it.
Thanks, Chalmie and Oriel
This puzzle was tremendous fun.
I drew blank lines for each word in the clue for 25a, and filled in the words as I found them. After a few were solved, the rest fell into place nicely. Very enjoyable puzzle! Thanks, Chalmie and Oriel.
Thanks everyone, especially since people liked different bits.
Severeness and Wayposts were, as allan_c said, not in common use today, though wayposts occurs in 18th &| early 19th C novels. But I wouldn’t call either clue particularly difficult – and with a crosser or two you can guess them fairly easily.