Laying a foundation
On July 27, the 101-year-old Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries opened the Cornerstone Bistro, the only sit-down, non-fast food restaurant in urban Highland Park. Hidden away in the basement of an old residential building, it is an oasis, a beautifully appointed restaurant that surprises every guest with its brand-new interior, which belies the age of the…
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Michael Cera might be an unlikely action hero, but he has become the millennial everyman, and here he plays a sweetly goofy Toronto rocker whose already complicated love life becomes chaotic when his new dream girl (Elizabeth Winstead) decrees that he must fight her seven evil exes, and her dating résumé’s filled with unbalanced, ninja-powered…
Food Stuff
Know thy farmer — Slow Food Detroit, the premier local organization promoting alternatives to the fast-food lifestyle, invites you to join a celebration of local agricultural and culinary heritage. The event, SFD’s inaugural Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Fundraiser, will take place at Coach Insignia, at the top of Detroit’s Renaissance Center. Proceeds will…
High-toned pie
Biga is a pizzeria plus — pizza is the only main course, but Del Signore’s menu includes home-fashioned charcuterie and cheeses from Bacco, six attractive salads and a handful of small-plates palate-teasers. Among the salads ($5.50 to $9.50), navel orange is a keeper, with orange sections floating in oil accompanied by olives, onion, and parsley.…
Pokin’ the pooper
Q: My boyfriend and I are straight college students, and he’s always wanting to try new things. Recently, he asked to put a finger in my ass while we were having sex. Someone did that to me before, but it felt uncomfortable and it kinda hurt. I told my boyfriend that he could do it…
Pop ‘n’ sprawl
A collaboration between the Pop Project guitarist and Suburban Sprawl mainman Zach Curd and Johnny Headband leader and Electric Six sideman Keith Thompson? File this under "Sounds Like These Guys Know What the Fuck They’re Doing." In fact, the three jams here are an economical testament to the pop chops of the former and the…
One cheer for Obama
"I believe that the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it." —President Barack Obama, 2009 Last week was a good one for General Motors. Think about that sentence. As recently as December 2008, it seemed very possible that nobody would ever be able to write that sentence again. General Motors and Chrysler…
5 Track EP
Between the two white South African rappers who make up Die Antwoord, there are maybe a dozen words you’ll be able to make out on their debut record. Half of their rhymes are in English, but good luck figuring out what Ninja (who sports a Vanilla Ice haircut) and Yo-Landi Vi$$er (she has a mullet)…
Suit up
It’s a sweaty, summer night in Ferndale — the kind that makes beer taste better in green bottles and superfluous straining from the least physical of movements. But down in the AC-chilled confines of the No Bummer Zone, smartly dressed, mostly skinny music fans push, bop and shake to the breezy sounds of the evening’s…
God Willin’ & the Creek Don’t Rise
Singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne gives his backing band equal billing on his fourth album, God Willin’ & the Creek Don’t Rise, his first without collaborator Ethan Johns. And the Pariah Dogs earn the honor in the extended instrumental introduction of "Repo Man," which they fill with glowing, moody textures. They build a downright sexy head of…
The family guy
It has been 20-plus years since Ice Cube busted straight outta Compton, alongside his notorious "Gangsta Rap" crew N.W.A, and scandalized the media and electrified corners of the burbs far beyond the imagining of South Central L.A. But that was then. Dude has long since found star power in film and TV, beginning with gritty…
Catching a Tiger
It’s tough to figure out where Lissie Maurus’ heart and sound lie. Is this singer-songwriter an Illinois-bred Midwesterner or a transplanted Californian? Is the DIY folk-pop on last year’s debut EP her thing, or is it the grandiose pop on her first full-length? Unlike the sultry folk stance Lissie displayed on her Why You Runnin’…
Krishna rocks
Unless you’re Elizabeth Gilbert, a free trip to India is hard to come by. So when the Wonder Twins heard about India Day 2010, an event celebrating India’s 63rd Independence Day, they decided to try to do in a day what Gilbert did in a year. After attending the event, they completed their 24-hour Eat,…
Libraries
Stuart McLamb recorded the Love Language’s self-titled 2009 debut low-fi style out of necessity. Its follow-up sinks in sonic hugeness. The opener "Pedals" sets the tone — a grand, sweeping track that struggles under the weight of its wall of sound. Such bigness can serve McLamb’s songs — "This Blood Is Our Own," would topple…
DPD soap opera
This stuff is stranger than fiction. Detroit’s newest text-message scandal, involving interim Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee, takes things even further off the charts for Detroit’s beleaguered police force. I say beleaguered not because I have any particular sympathy for a department whose leaders have proven themselves to be a bunch of immature, egoistic back-biting…
King of the Beach
After Wavves’ second album became one of 2009’s breakouts, frontman Nathan Williams claimed he was going to explore more grown-up directions. Dude’s barely old enough to drink, so why would he want to age his band? It would’ve been a better decision to release another album of noisy sunshine-ridden garage-surf, because King of the Beach…
What’s the frequency?
When he was a kid of around 6 or 8 years old, as it’s recalled, Jon Moshier roved around in ways children that age tend to: curiously and without preset destination. Often armed with a portable tape recorder, his preferred pastime was documenting the sounds of the late ’70s world around him. You’d find young…
Life During Wartime
“Life During Wartime,” Solondz’s latest, is a sequel to and self-reflection of his 1998 ode to toxic family dysfunction, Happiness. While the cast has been shuffled (different actors have stepped into every major part) and the landscape has shifted, the misery is the same. Solondz’s message: People may think they’ve changed, but they really haven’t.…
Letters to the Editor
Thomas’ legacy Thanks to Jack Lessenberry for the perspective on Helen Thomas and the Arab American Museum (the item headlined "Enough nonsense about Helen Thomas" within the article, "Bernero vs. Snyder" Aug. 11). As a country we have a very short memory and his reminders about Ty Cobb and Henry Ford are great examples of…
Get Low
Robert Duvall plays Felix Bush, a shotgun-wielding recluse in Depression-era Tennessee. With 40 years of rumors and stories about his past, Felix decides to invite everyone in the surrounding counties to his funeral. With the aide of a droll mortician (Murray) and a woman from his youth (Sissy Spacek), he organizes a one-of-kind event, drawing…
Joint venture
We here at the Hits have been contemplating going to an all-marijuana all-the-time format. When it comes to weed in Michigan, there’s more going on than you can shake a joint at. Since passage of the state’s medical marijuana law in 2008, it has become an issue that’s simply too big to ignore. Just take…
Who’s the dope?
Attention Detroit voters: You must be idiots. Granted, that may be a harsh analysis. But, in the light of recent events, it is a conclusion News Hits has been forced to arrive at. First, the Detroit City Council decides not to place a measure on the ballot that would let the city’s voters decide whether…
Over the line
Remember back in June, when 15,000 or so radical leftists descended on Detroit to raise all sorts of hell, smashing windows and looting stores and setting fires to cars as they attempted to overthrow the capitalist system as we know it? Of course, you don’t remember that, because it never happened. But you wouldn’t know…
Creative commodity
The gallery’s windows were blacked out with garbage bags. It was the last Saturday night in July and the place might’ve appeared closed. But, promptly at 8 p.m., its doors opened to the sounds of crying and howling. Then came the drums, followed by layers of humming, singing and muddled spoken words. Some several dozen…
Christian savages
Set around the time of the destruction of Egypt’s great Library of Alexandria in 391, there is no arguing the film’s political take: Here, the Christians are the savages and the pagans are the enlightened ones. The most enlightened of them all is the brilliant mathematician Hypatia (Rachel Weisz), head mistress of the Alexandria Academy,…
Night and Day
WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY AUGUST 18-21 Wendell Harrison’s Detroit Swings BEYOND THE TRIBE We wrote about Wendell Harrison a bit ago in the context of Detroiters whose stars shine more brightly abroad than here. Indeed, the group Tribe, an outgrowth of the magazine and label that Harrison instigated nearly 40 years ago, played major festivals in New York…
Eat, Pray, Love
Eat, Pray, Love is fairly enjoyable due to actors and settings, but it’s a dummy’s guide to enlightenment, and as cinema it’s How Stella Got Her Groove back sponsored by Expedia. Spiritualism and commercialism rub each other raw as uptight New Yorker Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) ditches both her husband (Billy Crudup) and new boyfriend…
Metro Retro
26 years ago in Metro Times: After Consumers Power abandoned the construction of what would have been the Midland Nuclear Power Plant, with a loss of around $7 billion, MT asks "Is Fermi Next?" Close to completion next to the ill-fated Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generation Station (Fermi 1) in Frenchtown Charter Township that experienced a…
Blowed up
This third installment in his trilogy of Sylvester Stallone’s self-congratulations (Rambo and Rocky Balboa were the first two) pays homage to Stallone’s stupider efforts. Does anyone really care what the plot (as delivered by Bruce Willis in a profanity-laden cameo) entails? Suffice to say that Stallone’s gang of rogues — Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet…
