Camp worship
I left Kill Bill Vol. 2 feeling as though I’d taken an acid trip, a barrage of images and sounds from cinema’s campy past running into its savvy, modernistic future, the two worlds colliding in my mind’s eye. Vol. 1 came out last year, and was released last week on DVD; Vol. 2 opened last…
Blast Tyrant
If you love having loud lead guitars surgically shear the top of your head off with precise dual stereo separation, then Clutch is your new best friend. Just imagine if Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner had been in a real heavy metal pop band instead of diddling themselves into sterile senility on Berlin and Welcome…
Newspapers reveal paper-thin skin
It looks like a couple of local sports columnists have had their tender feelings hurt. Which isn’t surprising. After all, everyone knows how sensitive sports columnists are, and how loath they are to ever, ever utter harsh criticisms. So it is only natural that they would start to whine and run to their daddy for…
The America in his head
The influences of Bertold Brecht and Samuel Beckett are apparent in this heavy handed, Bizarro World version of Our Town, where chalk diagrams on the sound-stage floor substitute for houses. Set in a small town in the Rockies in the Depression, this yarn, like others by Danish writer-director Lars von Trier, is poised somewhere between…
Legal tender
One-time terror defendant Ahmed Hannan may be granted a get-out-of-jail-free card. Well, free for him. His attorney, James C. Thomas, and about a half dozen other criminal defense lawyers volunteered to chip in for an electronic tether so the convicted felon can be released on bond. Hannan, found guilty of possessing false immigration I.D. last…
Games People Play: New York
Six attractive, *uninhibited* New Yorkers (three men, three women) perform soap opera-esque skits and take their clothes off, sing in make-shift trios and take their clothes off, seduce delivery boys and take their clothes off, … and, you get the picture. Reality TV for the big screen.
Never mind
The City of Detroit wisely dumped its idea to collect bulk trash every other month instead of monthly. When the Department of Public Works (DPW) floated the plan to city residents, most dissed it (News Hits, April 14). DPW, which has the thankless task of picking up bulk trash (i.e. discarded furniture, appliances and other…
Early Spring
Yasujiro Ozu’s 1956 film is cautionary tale of an office drudge, his faltering marriage and his dangerous affair. It’s a soap opera, a character study and a dead-on indictment of modern corporatism and worth experiencing, even if it is 30 minutes too long. Starring Ryo Ikebe, Chikage Awashima and Keiko Kishi.
Booty call
Ever been escheated on? If so, News Hits is here to help. Escheatment occurs when someone fails to claim money or other property that is theirs. It happens all the time, in numerous ways: uncashed payroll checks, abandoned safe deposit boxes, dormant bank accounts, unclaimed auto rebates. According to Gonzalo Llano, administrator of the Michigan…
Broken Wings
A dysfunctional Israeli family living in Haifa teeters on the edge of falling apart as the subject of writer-director Nir Bergman’s debut feature film. Serious money troubles, teenage alienation, bed-wetting — there’s an abundance of misery here, but also an understanding of the durability of family ties. In Hebrew with English subtitles.
Touring the Middle East
I just ate for the first time at one of metro Detroit’s fine Middle Eastern restaurants, Lebanese Garden, which is on Woodward just north of Square Lake Road in the Kingswood Plaza. I had a fattoush salad with chicken shawarma. At first I thought the service was a bit slow, but when I sampled the…
Mayor of the Sunset Strip
Scenester-for-life Rodney Bingenheimer hung out with and/or boosted the careers of stars from Elvis to the Strokes. And most of them are in this George Hickenlooper documentary on the host of the influential "Rodney on the Roq" show on L.A.’s KROQ. But Hickenlooper also finds his subject to be a sad and lonely figure at…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Don’t try to rob a bank this week, Aries. The astrological omens indicate you’d have a very low chance of succeeding — and besides, it’s wrong. I also discourage you from buying hundreds of lottery tickets, selling your childhood collection of Barbie dolls or baseball cards, or wheedling your aging relatives…
Letters to the Editor
Majority report I just read Jack Lessenberry’s “Potholes in the Campaign Trail” (Metro Times, March 24). Thank you. You write so well, and what you express puts in words as sharp as a knife my own sentiments about the horrible situation we are in. How can anybody approve of what this man — this idiot…
The Punisher
Compared to X-Men, the Hulk and Spiderman, the Punisher is a lesser god in the Marvel Comics pantheon. No powers, no fascinating psychological issues, just an ex-law enforcement type done wrong (real wrong) and out for blood. A stock translation of a skin-deep comic character. With Tom Jane in the title role, John Travolta as…
Lofty intentions
The Abreact Performance Space is not the kind of place you’d expect to find in the bustling, flashy heart of Detroit’s Greektown. Floating above the mousaka and the rice and the slot machines and the strippers, the Abreact is nestled in a second-floor loft with views of the tourists and the beggars and the limos…
The doctor vs. the garbage man
Voodoo psychedelics! Boozy invectives! Domestic violence! And, of course, lots of blow! Here’s an easy, point-by-point guide to distinguishing the musical minds of Dr. John and Ike Turner. Let’s face it; navigating through the confounding history of pop music can be a daunting trip. There are so many names and dates that it can be…
N&D Center
23 FRI • MUSIC Detroit Music Awards — Everyone deserves a pat on the back once in a while, and the Detroit Music Awards is the place for local musicians to get their dues. Touting performances from such local worthies as Slum Village, Man, Forge (pictured), the Wrenfields and newbie rockers the Dollfaces, and a…
Photo sites
Detroit’s alter ego is finally coming out of the closet and she’s gorgeous again. Part of the yearly ritual of warm weather time is Metro Times’ photo contest and exhibition. Look for details in early June. In the meantime, here are two entrants from the 2003 contest. . Metro Times photo contest/Brian Brown, Windsor, Ontario…
Window pains
“What must I do to be saved?” asks a window inscription in the historic church. Given the state of the stained glass in the venerable house of worship, it’s not strictly a religious question. A large hand-painted sign has hung on the church’s exterior since August. It reads: “Help! We need $54,000 to save our…
Crepe nuts
If you want it done right, do it yourself. At Josephine, the patés and the wines are all made on the premises, with outstanding results. And co-owners Jeanine Henson and Bob Zagar work the floor themselves, resulting in professional, knowledgeable, caring service. They’re serving a short menu of French or French-inspired dishes that begins and…
Under pain of death
Have I ever been angry enough to wish someone were dead? Sure. Have I ever imagined myself taking a particularly violent revenge on a particular someone? You bet. Doesn’t even make me flinch to say it. I try hard to follow my religious convictions as best I can, but no matter how hard I try…
Men bad, women good
Xan Meo, the fictional famous actor and budding author of Martin Amis’ new novel Yellow Dog, goes out for a drink one night and gets his head bashed in by a man who mutters a cryptic accusation before delivering the life-altering blows. Thus begins a brutal and raw satire on those things that — most…
Vote conservative in ’04 November
For years, we have been told most Americans are conservative — and that is probably true. Nobody calling himself a “liberal” has been elected president in 40 years. The situation now is so desperate that anyone who loves this country and cares about the world has to do everything in their power to see that…
Lost Light
He lives in an abandoned backwoods shack out by a tract of swampland. He sits in a steel-lined room just a-pickin’ and a-twangin’ on his guitar while he patiently waits for the last drops of liquid to drain out of the sluice sink. He grew up listening to “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads and “Garbage…
Gonna have a funky rebirth
Shawn Scaggs, Tony Buccilli, Ken Ferry and Geoff Kinde were there when dancing became cool again. They were some of the very people who helped get everyone off their asses and out on the dance floor. It was a pop culture revival — dance music for cool kids — and when the mid-’90s brought the…
The White Stripes: Sweethearts of the Blues
The White Stripes: Sweethearts of the Blues by Denise Sullivan Backbeat Books, 192 pp. Morphing the Blues: The White Stripes and the Strange Relevance of Detroit by Martin Roach Chrome Dreams, 192 pp. On page 150 of Sweethearts of the Blues, author Denise Sullivan clearly states there is very much that remains unknown about…
An immigrant’s song
Eddie Carbone has a couple of problems. This bellicose dockworker from Red Hook, Brooklyn, is a paranoid latent homosexual in love with his niece. His wife, supportive and loving and forgiving of his “eccentricities,” is not getting what she wants in the bedroom. He’s a small-minded bigot, forever fearful of what his neighbors will say…
Your Country
The best lyricist (with Elvis Costello) to emerge from British new wave, Parker, like Costello, has a special gift for the acerbic line and withering throwaway. But that was more than 20 years ago, and as the ’80s turned to ’90s and beyond, Parker’s career began to resemble Michael Moore’s version of Flint — more historical…
A woman like her
The pop music world that Bettye Lavette has been trying to conquer since her first hit in 1962 (Atlantic Records’ “My Man, He’s a Loving Man”) has been a hardass. The strange creature that freights the sweetness of melody and harmony with the cocked fangs of pure business and cold, hard cash hasn’t given Lavette…
TV on the Radio
Don’t judge TV on the Radio, another precious and overhyped band from Brooklyn’s precious and overhyped Williamsburg rock scene, too quickly. On their debut album, Desperate Lives, Blood Thirsty Babes, this trio (originally a duo, recently expanded to a five-piece) of thickly bespectacled, neo-hippie oddballs delivers more than the post-everything noise-pop made marginally famous by…
Raise the Barr
I wake in the night lying on messed sheets in a dank, dark room. A light shines from a corner lamp. I grab for a martini and a long cigarette holder, located conveniently nearby on a nightstand, and light up. I look down. Wow, my slumber has been good to me. My waist is about…
Crocodiles, Heaven Up Here, Porcupine, Ocean Rain, Echo & the Bunnymen
Last year marked the 25th anniversary of Echo & The Bunnymen’s 1978 performing debut; in commemoration, European Warner Brothers issued remastered/expanded versions of the group’s first five albums. Now available Stateside, those platters of Bunnydom tell quite vividly, in both words (courtesy journalist Max Bell’s outstanding liner notes) and music, the story of the band’s…
