Paint globally
The visual impact of Julie Mehretu’s paintings is undeniable. Like an explosion in a confetti factory, rainbow-colored circles, triangles, boomerangs, French curves, trapezoids and ribbons burst and scatter across the canvas. Thanks to a bold, prescient move by contemporary art curator Becky Hart and former curator Kinsey Katcha, a dozen large-scale works by Mehretu celebrate…
The 100 greatest Detroit songs ever!
Our original thought was just to compile a list of the best lists that have appeared in Blender, Rolling Stone, Q, MOJO, etc. over the past five years. Seriously, though, no one’s yet done a “Best of Detroit,” as far as we can tell, so, hell, why not? There really was no science to our…
Fowl talk
Up a gravel dirt road, past two rusting tractors, we can hear turkeys talking. And John Harnois knows what they’re saying — they gobble, and he gobbles back.See, the 52-year-old Harnois raises free-range fowl here on his farm in Whitmore Lake. They’re spread out in small metal and wooden coops on 5.1 acres, on what…
Behind the grooves
On “Baby I Need Your Loving” Eddie Holland: It was a situation where [staff producer-songwriter] Mickey Stevenson opened the door and asked if we had anything for the Four Tops. I didn’t realize at the time that the Four Tops had been signed to Motown for over a year! For some reason, that song popped…
Reinstalling the DIA — rethinking the museum’s role
On Nov. 23, the Detroit Institute of Arts reopens its galleries after more than six years of renovations. Visitors will see a complete reinstallation of its world-renowned collections that involves an extensive use of labeling and other educational aids throughout the museum. Already there are hints of controversy among art world aficionados and museum professionals…
Beseeched to impeach
Will John Conyers change his mind?
Going to pot
She’s let herself go, and I’m bummed; what to do?
Night and Day
Wednesday • 21 Detroit Cobras CRACKLE, SNAP-SNAP Carrying the tattered, oil-soiled flag of Motor City R&B-soul-garage, the Cobras are rock ‘n’ rollers of the highest order — just check their bar tab. Beyond that, Rachel Nagy’s I’ve-ridden-shotgun-through-life vocals can send chills up the spine and butterflies to the groin — a true sign of a…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Motor City Cribs
Glenn Barr’s Corktown studio has room to really paint.
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Walking the Corridor
Feet on the street bring cities back to life.
Out of the fire
Jack talks about getting our eyes back on the prize.
Signs of the time
I can’t remember every detail of what the museum looked like before this grand transformation, but I remember how it made me feel, both as a kid and as an adult. From my childhood, I think of Kresge Court with its gothic overcast and the warmth that enveloped me while sitting at that one wooden…
Patient as the Graves
Michael Graves is a patient architect. The DIA’s board of directors retained the internationally renowned postmodernist and Princeton University emeritus professor 19 years ago to develop a master plan for expansion. His 1991 master plan was never realized, and this design has been in process since 2001. Last week, he and about 2,000 elite guests…
Got a thing?
I got a thing, you got a thing, everybody’s got a thing. That’s the way it’s been in Detroit’s famously decentralized dance scene, where on any given weekend parties pile up on top of each other and spread out all over town — or at least all over Corktown. Oops, scratch that, now that the…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Alright, pull over buddy! Where’s the Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #146? Testa Rosa — Testa Rosa (Latest Flame) :: If I could crank out thunder crunge like this FMM trio does on the way-too-brief "Hollow Arm," I’d lay off the wispy Melanie melodies and record an album full of similar sonic enlargers. Melanie & the…
Black days
Funnyman Lewis Black to hit the stage at the Fox Theatre.
Benched
Judge Mary Beth Kelly won’t seek another term.
Letters to the Editor
Grabbing hands Thanks, Jack Lessenberry, for solving the shrouded mystery of Michigan’s primary implosion (“Heroes & scoundrels,” Metro Times, Nov. 14). As a recovering ex-journalist, I was astounded to wake up to WDET radio reports that an Ingham County judge had ditched the whole deal, and even more astounded to realize that the ruling had…
Hyper hits
The story behind What’s Going On’ Top of the pops Renaldo Obie’ Benson had the world dancing, and then he shook it with What’s Going On’ by Don Waller 11/9/2005 Insights into many of our Motown picks Pagliacci in the hood An interview with Herb Jordan, editor of the lyric anthology Motown in Love’ by…
Refined manor
With its 52 rooms, 10 bathrooms and 20 fireplaces, the three-story pink-granite edifice built for a lumber baron in 1894 has been one of Detroit’s most celebrated restaurants since 1986. In 2006, Bud Liebler, a former automotive public-relations executive, bought the place and began making renovations in and around the building and, especially, in the…
Fred Claus
Vince Vaughn stars as the title lout, the long-neglected brother of St. Nick, who’s grown slightly crabby in the shadow of his beloved sib, here played by Paul Giamatti. Smooth-talking Fred gets by as a repo man in Chicago, but he needs a major chunk of change to win back the affections of his long…
Blade Runner: The Final Cut
Grafting a ’40s-style detective story onto a dystopian thriller, Blade Runner’s tale of a cop (Ford) who hunts down renegade replicants (artificial human beings) in the crumbling, rain-soaked techno-hell of 2019 Los Angeles was visionary. Since its release, Scott has continually tinkered with the film, releasing various remastered versions. In 1992, a “Director’s Cut” restored…
No Country for Old Men
Their faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel is bloody, relentless and fatalistic, yet the story’s real focus is morality, not mortality. The ruminations of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who watches over the hardscrabble terrain of Terrell County, Texas, in 1980, are at its heart, and he’s one disheartened man. The influx…
Beowulf
In this animated 3-D adaptation of the Old English epic, a Saxon stud has been summoned to Denmark to slay a horrible, oozing demon named Grendel (Crispin Glover), who has a seriously bad attitude and a nasty skin condition. After a few protracted fight scenes, Beowulf thinks the groovy ghoul problem is handled, only to…
The air out there
Frank Darabont’s The Mist, a perfectly eerie addition to the apocalyptic horror genre, thinks so. Essentially a Lovecraftian take on Hitchcock’s The Birds, this B-movie slitherfest offers two hours of arm-gripping suspense only to conclude with an unnecessarily depressing and pretentious conclusion. When a mysterious storm rolls through a peaceful Maine community, David Drayton (Thomas…
Love in the Time of Cholera
British director Mike Newell sees Love in the Time of Cholera as an epic love story, and he infuses it with vintage Hollywood grandeur. But something essential is absent from Ronald Harwood’s script, which pares García Márquez’s story to its basic plot points, and turns a central character, Fermina’s husband, Dr. Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt),…
Darfur Now
For all its flaws, director Ted Braun’s Darfur Now gets the word out. Darfur, in western Sudan, is a region brimming with weapons, flooded with oil, and starved for food. At the moment, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been slaughtered, raped and terrorized by government-funded Janjaweed militias. The United States and the United Nations…
The Red Balloon
The elusive quality of whimsy permeates Balloon, where 6-year-old Pascal Lamorisse learns that an inanimate object can be a boy’s best friend. After finding a giant red balloon and carting it around Ménilmontant (a hilly neighborhood at the outer reaches of Paris), this schoolboy discovers that his new sidekick has a will of its own,…
The Cave of the Yellow Dog
With elegant simplicity, writer-director Byambasuren Davaa captures both the routine and the divine in her tale of a nomadic Mongolian family dealing with changing times. The film opens as eldest daughter Nansaa (Nansal Batchuluun) arrives home from boarding school. While her father (Urjindorj Batchuluun) admires her workbooks, her mother (Buyandulam Batchuluun) replaces the stiff, black…
I’m Not There
The genius, the poet, the jerk — we get those shades and dozens more in Todd Haynes bold experiment in impressionistic biography. Here he uses six actors of varying ages, shapes, sizes and talent levels, to capture the quicksilver essence of Bob Dylan. The results are understandably scrambled, and will likely infuriate half as many…
