Ode to regret
Athol Fugard’s Sorrows and Rejoicings takes a dry look at apartheid….
Hero, yes; perfect, no
Dead people make the best heroes. Why is that? Because dead people don’t talk back. Dead people don’t ask troubling questions. Dead people don’t possess the audacity to correct misconceptions and misperceptions about who they really were as opposed to who we need them to be. Dead people are very cooperative. This year marks the…
Bulletproof Monk
Geezer: HH 1/2 / Weezer: H 1/2
Chow Yun-Fat plays a Tibetan monk charged by his former master with guarding an ancient scroll from anyone who might want to use its unlimited powers. But this movie’s East-meets-West formula has been overdone and is wrong to begin with.
The White Stripes
Saturday, April 12, Brixton Academy, London…
The stuff of art
‘Materiality’ is the name of the game at Elaine L. Jacob Gallery….
Friday Night
On its surface, French writer-director Claire Denis’ latest film — a familiar erotic fantasy, this time told from a woman’s point of view — seems so slight as to be on the verge of evaporation. But it soon becomes apparent that Denis is more interested in mood than drama.
F-stop shooting now!
With camera in hand, Marc Byrn strolled Detroit taking photos of downtown last week. Unfortunately for him, his camera lens landed on the federal courthouse. When it did, a man exited a car near Shelby and Lafayette streets and flashed a U.S. marshal’s badge. He asked to see the shutterbug’s ID. Byrn obliged. The marshal,…
‘A chill wind is blowing in this nation … ’
This is an edited transcript of a speech given April 15 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., by Tim Robbins, the actor, director, writer and activist. Robbins was invited to speak after the president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame summarily canceled the appearances of Robbins and his wife, Susan Sarandon, at…
Malibu’s Most Wanted
Making a successful, funny, black-white comedy based on popularly held stereotypes these days is akin to wringing blood from a stone. How many times does Hollywood have to shove a hitch-stepped, gat-toting, white-boy wannabe down our throats before the town figures out that it’s a dish more done than Michael Jackson’s nose?
Divestment revisited
Wayne State University’s Student Council last week voted 9-7 to adopt a resolution demanding the college divest from Israel because of that country’s treatment of Palestinians. Basically, the resolution asks the school’s Board of Governors to stop investing in companies doing business with Israel, including Coca-Cola Co., UPS and AOL. The move’s not likely to…
Accusers accused
Prosecution tactics controversial, Ashcroft violates gag order..…
Jihad: What’s ahead?
Say what you will about the French in all this, they know a thing or two about terrorism. Squatting on a large chunk of Muslim North Africa will teach you a few things, and France has paid dearly for its lessons, from its tumultuous rule of Algeria to the bombings that struck Parisian Metro stations…
Blood suckers
A group of Detroit phlebotomists are crying foul after an Austrian pharmaceutical company laid them off one week before a vote on unionizing their downtown clinic. During a conference call the evening of April 3, ZLB Plasma Center notified its 32 employees phoning in from home that they were fired and that their Grand River…
April 23-29, 2003
24 THU • FILM Shortwave — We all know that Detroit has been in the limelight for music lately, but did you know that we are making movies to boot? The latest example is a new short film, written, directed and produced by locals Chris McElroy and Terry Young. Their Shortwave is a drama about…
Jihad: What’s ahead?
Anne Frank’s literary executors can rest easy: Those seeking an insider’s view on despotic regimes will be unmoved by Nuha al-Radi’s Baghdad Diaries, which chronicle the travails of an Oxford-educated, upper-class artist living under Saddam Hussein. This is not to say the book does not have its moments. Taking us from the eve of the…
Condoning condoms
Drivers can expect to see a new AIDS awareness campaign plastered on billboards, newspapers and posters across the area. The new ads, set to go up in May, will feature a bright pink condom with the words “Stop AIDS” in black letters, accompanied with sayings like, “Your place or mine?” AIDS activists are concerned because…
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
Sure, it needs a little work. The roof leaks and a few of those holes in the walls are actually places where windows should be. On the upside, however, this nifty little bungalow at 2573 Lemay in Detroit can be had for a song because the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, for reasons unexplained, came to…
Jihad: What’s ahead?
Noah Feldman’s After Jihad, a primer for peacefully bringing democracy to the Islamic world, has been rather crudely pre-empted by President George W. Bush’s more aggressive tactics. Nevertheless, Feldman–a professor of law at New York University, scholar of Islam, and Orthodox Jew–still brings valuable insights to the table. In a series of brief lectures–the work…
Yours for the bidding
Sure, it needs a little work. The roof leaks and a few of those holes in the walls are actually places where windows should be. On the upside, however, this nifty little bungalow at 2573 Lemay in Detroit can be had for a song because the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, for reasons unexplained, came to…
Chopsticks amazing
Like many Korean restaurants in the area, Mi Loc also serves Japanese food, including sushi, sashimi, tempura and teriyaki. It’s hard to figure the connection between the robust cooking of Korea and the artful, ethereal cuisine of Japan, but the two don’t make as odd a couple as one might think. One of Mi Loc’s…
Human consequences
“War is at best barbarism. … Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.” —William Tecumseh Sherman “It is well that war is so terrible, or…
Precious Gem
On November 10, 1997, making way for Comerica Park and Ford Field, the Gem/Century building broke the world record for the heaviest building to ever be moved on wheels. It was a short trip, (five blocks or so), but this sojourn managed to preserve both the ambiance and style of a unique D-town fave. The…
Letters to the Editor
A waste of space I find it appalling that Jack Lessenberry’s column is allowed to take up such expensive space in Metro Times (Politics & Prejudices, Metro Times, April 16-22). I would expect nothing less from a city that is plagued with American-born extremists, building pipe bombs in their basements, and laying one sucker punch…
100th Window
Massive Attack pretty much invented trip-hop a decade ago with 1991’s Blue Lines. They then spent the next half-decade shaping their somnambulant rapperless rap from clever Bristolian sound-system fodder into a big-bottomed vision of future soul with 1994’s ethereal Protection, before peaking with 1997’s goth-hop masterpiece Mezzanine. So is it any wonder that now, after…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): You’re at the peak of your ability to explore the mysteries of shape-shifting. If you’re of a mystical or shamanic bent, I encourage you to try out a variety of animal identities in your meditations and lucid dreams. If you’d prefer an earthier approach, you could incorporate the wild intelligence of…
Lion in winter
Does anyone take Norman Mailer seriously anymore? Did anyone ever? When I started reading him in the late 1960s, he already seemed like a relic from a rapidly receding past, one who unreeled his densely argued challenges like a machismo artist in a muscular panic. Picking up Advertisements For Myself, which first appeared in 1959…
Abroad education
With the visitation of terrorism to U.S. soil, the war in Iraq and sharpened security concerns, Americans are thinking long and hard about traveling overseas. But more and more college students are opting to travel, taking advantage of programs that allow them to study abroad. Administrators of these programs say student interest has actually increased…
The Good Thief
Neil Jordan’s take on the 1955 Jean Melville classic, Bob le flambeur, is not so much deeper as it is fleshed out. And as much as Melville’s film was about style, so is Jordan’s. Nick Nolte shines as a down-and-out master thief and gambler in Nice, France trying to pull the heist of a lifetime.
Snowball fighting
Q: My boyfriend doesn’t like snowballing, which doesn’t bother me. But he won’t even kiss me after oral sex — even if I’ve already swallowed. I feel like he sees me as dirty or nasty when he refuses to kiss me after oral sex. He says he wouldn’t ask me to do something I don’t…
How I Learned To Write Backwards
You don’t have to live in San Francisco to fully appreciate the Aislers Set, of course, but you certainly might be inspired to move there after immersing yourself in How I Learned To Write Backwards. For their stellar third album, the Bay Area’s premier garage-pop group has continued recording music that references local neighborhoods, streets,…
Blood at the root
What happens when art and hate crimes collide, when rhinestoned rock ’n’ roll searches for its Judaic wellspring, when compassion turns into self-sacrifice and the need for security turns into a nuclear reactor? From April 27 to May 8, the fifth annual Jewish Community Center Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival explores all of the above…
Roswell Rudd’s MALIcool
Trombonist Roswell Rudd is neither an ugly American nor a quiet one. On a recent trip to Mali, he took along his big brass sound, a wide-open jazz mind and a lovely ability to make his horn sing with joie de vivre. The MALIcool session hooks Rudd up with some unique collaborators, traditional Malian musicians…
Bulb-a-soar
From Clear Channel’s free-speech asphyxiation to the pro-war trumpeting of 3 Doors Down, the face of contemporary rock that the public too often sees is one of archconservativism — so much so that it’s easy to get the idea that linear jingoism is the current sound track for the kids in America. It’s not, of…
Masters of war
War is never something to be proud of, but an unprovoked war of brutal aggression to seize and control the resources of a small, defenseless nation halfway around the world from the United States is particularly shameful. While it was extremely painful to witness the merciless bombing of Afghanistan to drive out of power our…
Death
It’s true, remix albums are often laughable bastardizations of original works designed to squeeze either life or maximum profit from the source material. Thing is, the source material in question here — Bay Area Gang of Four loyalists the Numbers’ full-length Life — offers plenty of room for improvement and reinvention. And the gang of…
Take it sleazy
Disco D pimps ghettotech to new heights (and lows)….
Fat Boy
for Charles Moore There is something about the American mind set on de- struction, re- lent- less, un- penitent, eager to bomb There is the hatred that fuels the A- merican mind, the shriveled-up heart the heartless always ready to kill & maim brutal with the urge to crush & destroy This is where…
Sink or fit in
Written and directed by Caroline Link, Nowhere in Africa won an Academy Award last month for best foreign language film. It tells the story of a Jewish couple and their young daughter who emigrate from Germany to Kenya in 1938, in order to escape the increasing threat of Nazism.
Idle, wild, and lucky
Ever since those tartan terrors who spelled “S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y” came to America overhyped and waving to unmanned police barricades, noteworthy Scottish bands like the Rezillos, Primal Scream, Travis and Del Amitri have all had to tiptoe into this country, almost in apology. It appeared like the same humble fate would hold true for Idlewild, Glasgow’s shining…
The real war is just starting
Consider this scenario: Suppose the United States government made a deal to let Saddam Hussein get away. No, I haven’t been eating funny brownies or reading L. Ron Hubbard. Nor have I developed a taste for weird conspiracy theories. And I don’t have a shred of evidence that this actually happened. But I do know…
Holes
In the half-real, half-make-believe world of Holes, Texan juvenile delinquents skip counseling and community service and go straight to Camp Green Lake where they’re forced to dig until their hands bleed and their consciences grow. It’s a tale so obviously fake that it manages to come across as perfectly plausible.
