Art for the future
There’s vitality at the grass roots. But Archer’s new cultural plan isn’t enough to cure Detroit’s venue blues….
PUNK RAUNCH
One of the toughest things about assessing music is that your standards can get so high that you want every arrangement to be perfect, every song to be better than the previous one. Pretty soon you’re using words like “ethereal” and “juxtaposition” in every review. Sometimes you just have to sit back, hit the play…
Ristorante Cafe Cortina
Perhaps because of its somewhat off-the-beaten-track location, or maybe because the price structure has been higher than most other comparable restaurants, this place has never gotten much notice beyond its hard-core fans. The fresh pastas and veals, however, are the real thing and the setting — which aims for elegance — does help.
Baloba!
Take a trio of West Africa’s top vocalists, a group of smoking New York-based Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians, some all-star guest African singers, Mali’s legendary producer Boncana Maiga, and you have one of the hottest bands on the planet. That group is Africando, which, translated from the language Wolof (one of the most common…
Country Chicken
This tiny Lebanese storefront serves mammoth portions, so prepare to share. Various shawarmas, meat coriander, baba ghannoush, lamb’s tongue and falafel are enjoyable; skip the hommous. No alcohol.
Dish
Upscale take-out with a varied menu of salads, soups, sandwiches, calzones, quiches, pasta and sweets. Anise is a repeating theme, as in the Shrimp Rockefeller quiche and the duck salad with orange ouzo vinaigrette. Breads are from Avalon Bakery. Call ahead twenty minutes for a hot calzone, i.e. veal and peppers.
Golden Chopsticks
Food quality varies widely, with sizzling rice soup and non-greasy potstickers a definite yes. Familiar Chinese menu includes moo shu pork, hunan chicken, kung pao everything, chop suey and egg foo young. Low sodium or low oil on request and a selection of vegetarian dinners.
Gallery Grille
A calm, lovely setting for lunch or Sunday brunch, but the menu is not especially original–chef, where is your muse? The Gallery Grille does some things very well, so it’s especially disappointing when others don’t hit the mark.
Good Food Company East
Purveyors of organic and natural foods, the cafe serves cafeteria-style and by the pound, so you can tailor the meal to your appetite. The Middle-Eastern-heavy menu includes baba ghanouj, falafel and fattoush, or try a grainburger, baked or sautéed.
NAME APPETIZER
Release the hounds! Livonia’s favorite son, Warren Defever, has put out a six-song EP to satiate his dedicated followers. While not as brilliantly as on HNIA’s last full-length disc, Stars on E.S.P., Defever continues to churn out little quirky rock gems that sound as if they have been disassembled and then put back together with…
Mulan
Ever find yourself confessing to liking a cartoon character? Mulan is that kind of creation, with huge, foxy eyes, jet-black hair and bigger-than-life lips dropping universal truths like a techno-enhanced genie. What a babe! With a nymphet such as this for a lead character, following Disney’s newest offering, the animated feature Mulan, is no problem…
High Art
There’s nothing quite so refreshing as a slacker film with production values fitted to its bent aesthetic: Naturalistic dialogue, loose cinema-vérité staging and a lingering hand-held camera go a long way in chronicling pot heads. Writer-director Lisa Cholodenko delves incisively into the art world’s dark drug scene and other altered states of being with her…
Cousin Bette
When called to the deathbed of her adored, aristocratic cousin, Adeline (Geraldine Chaplin), Bette (Jessica Lange) looks every bit the grim, dowdy spinster. Adeline asks the ever-faithful Bette to look after her family, and Lange makes her reply — “I promise I’ll take care of them all” — with a curl of the lip that…
The Land Girls
One would think that after The English Patient, there would be little point in another “love in a dangerous time” picture about World War II. The road from Rick’s Cafe to a bombed-out Tuscan villa seemed pretty well traveled. Not quite. Here we have that most welcome of diversions, a quiet summer picture, from none…
The X-Files: Fight the Future
When “The X-Files” first appeared in 1993, it was aptly described as a “Twilight Zone” for the millennium. Series creator Chris Carter, cognizant of the legacies from the Cold War (the inherent distrust of governmental authority) and the New Age (the embracing of alternate realities and consciousness), expertly blended paranoia and the paranormal into heady,…
Pen-and-ink representin’
Y’all talkin’ ’bout those l’il hip hop cartoons be steady hangin’ out in Chilltown? Professor G and them? That midget wannabe gangster K-Deuce? That Cousin Itt-lookin, blonde dreadlock-wearin boy Plad? Mad-minded Marv? Lele, with the nails of a million miles? Her best friend Winonie, with the hair of a million styles? They a dope l’il…
