Without a snout
Truthfully, I don’t understand the intricacies of the financial scandals that have been as reliably a part of the news lately as weather reports. I’ve said it before: When it comes to finance matters, I’m the dog in the “Far Side” cartoon whose owner is trying to talk to her, and all she hears is…
Manchester memoirs
British director Michael Winterbottom (Welcome to Sarajevo) has concocted a happy-go-volatile mixture of post-punk documentary sprinkled with post-insights and entertaining flashes of "maybe" truths — a very personal chronicle of an exciting place and time in rock ’n’ roll history and a must-see for Joy Division fans.
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): I supplement my astrological analyses with garbageological research. Sifting through someone’s rubbish can provide rich data that enhance the insights gleaned from heavenly meditations. Knowing how crucial it is for you to specialize in purification, I studied your tribe’s debris as I prepared your horoscope. I also got permission to paw…
Follow the leader
12th Street, Paris, Woodstock & other stops on a jazzman’s journey….
Throne of Blood
Akira Kurosawa’s transplantation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth to medieval Japan is perhaps the director’s most stylized film, unreal on several levels, beginning with Toshiro Mifune’s hyper-intense performance as the ambitious warrior rushing to fulfill his foretold fortune. It’s a long yowl of despair, artfully unleashed.
Working out the kinks
Q: I recently married a beautiful woman. We were each the first sexual partners for the other. Maybe this was reinforced by my experiencing sex very late, but I have some kinky fantasies. I fantasize about a dominant woman who teases, controls and punishes me. I’ve enjoyed the sex we have had, but I still…
Who’s on bass?
For jazz fans, the prospect of hearing band members can be every bit as stimulating as the prospect of hearing the leaders. There’s an inherent democracy in a well-functioning band that the term "sideman" obscures. And there’s also a round-robin quality to the jazz scene. Today, it’s the drummer who gets his name listed, hires…
Simone
The kernel of Simone is Frankenstein — as a Hollywood romantic comedy. Director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca) revises and updates the operating system of Mary Shelley’s seminal monster story from the ground up, destroying its mythic resonance.
The royalty shaft
Portrait of the artist as a sharecropper….
Ford Detroit International Jazz Festival schedule
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30 3 p.m.-midnight FORD MOTOR COMPANY AMPHITHEATRE STAGE 3:15 p.m.: Jazz Avengers 4:30 p.m.: Vincent York’s Young New York Force 6 p.m.: Straight Ahead 7:45 p.m.: Mavis Staples 9:30 p.m.: Legends of the Bandstand featuring Curtis Fuller, Louis Hayes, Cedar Walton and David "Fathead" Newman CHARTER ONE BANK PYRAMID STAGE 3:30 p.m.: Burt…
My Wife is an Actress
This French comedy-drama is a light, even fluffy affair, kind of a Gallic Rock Hudson-Doris Day movie, only hipper. And though it raises questions that it doesn’t seem interested in answering, it’s diverting enough to earn our indulgence — with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Terence Stamp.
Banned in Boston
When my wife and I found out that our friends Kurt Weigle and Cait Cain were to be married near Boston this summer, we couldn’t wait to make the trip. The town has so many appealing features: public transportation that takes you anywhere you need to go, great restaurants, a classic ballpark and more historical…
Spanking Ashcroft — and loving it
Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decides whether or not immigration hearings should be secretely conducted.
Undisputed
Boxing and prison shows and Mike Tyson’s 1992 rape conviction are all on this film’s fight card. But this is no Oscar contender. Undisputed enters the box office competition as middleweight entertainment — with Ving Rhames and Wesley Snipes.
More furry fun
Q: I don’t expect you’ll print my letter, since it’s just one more irate letter from a “furry freak.” Besides, you’ve already passed your judgment: Furries are “sick” because … well, apparently because we exist. But we don’t like it when some media wag looks down his nose at us and then invites the public…
Judicial tantrum
Wayne County Circuit Court Judge makes unconstitutional ruling on Ford sexual harassment case.
Mostly Martha
Director Sandra Nettelbeck offers us a lukewarm plot of girl meets boy, girl (briefly) loses boy, girl gets boy back. Those are the major ingredients of a romantic comedy. Ironically it’s both romance and comedy that this beautifully presented "romantic comedy" lacks.
Curveballs ’n’ choruses
There are music fans out there that take any opportunity to gripe that modern American indie rock is bereft of new ideas, wallowing in a sea of “sounds like” and “band X-meets-band Y” comparisons. And 90 percent of the time they’d be right. Let’s face it: Independent rock is, by definition, populated by very young…
Flagrantly ineffective
U.S. District Court Judge Paul Gadola went beyond what’s normally required in ruling.
Serving Sara
Serving Sara
doesn’t serve the very likable talents of Elizabeth Hurley and Matthew Perry who have at least a couple of chemical moments. You’ll wonder why none of their close friends stopped them from thinning their abilities along one drawn-out, painful chase, with a few slugs, love smacks and prostate jokes.
Soul shine
Larry McCray is big everywhere, it seems, but here….
Looking for Lee-way
Located on the corner of West Grand Boulevard and Lawton, the fabulous neo-Gothic Lee Plaza rises 15 stories into the sky. Currently caught up in bureaucratic HUD and State Preservation Office red tape, the ornate brick building falls further into disrepair each passing day. Once considered a candidate for the wrecking ball, recent media attention…
Tickets, balanced or not
Two weeks after getting whacked in the primary, Jim Blanchard went to lease a car from a Southfield dealership. “I think your campaign is going great!” the saleswoman gushed, adding how much she loved his commercials. Startled, Blanchard didn’t know what to say. “I didn’t have the heart to tell her,” he says. He then…
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
Located on the corner of West Grand Boulevard and Lawton, the fabulous neo-Gothic Lee Plaza rises 15 stories into the sky. Currently caught up in bureaucratic HUD and State Preservation Office red tape, the ornate brick building falls further into disrepair each passing day. Once considered a candidate for the wrecking ball, recent media attention…
This ombud’s for you
John Eddings is not your typical civil servant. He is paid to make waves — and he gets a kick out of it. “It’s fun,” says the City of Detroit’s ombudsman. He sits in his drab office on the first floor of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center and reveals the question citizens ask most:…
Gold from the vaults
The Modern Jazz Quartet The Modern Jazz Quartet Wounded Bird Records The Cry! Prince Lasha Quintet featuring Sonny Simmons Contemporary Records Treasures come to those with patience — like waiting for an hour in the rain to see Sonny Rollins play a sold-out show in Paris or driving all day to Manhattan to hear Andrew…
Seeking asylum
Fate of former mental hospital in limbo….
Up All Night
The band this paper’s own Chris Handyside so deftly described in ’99 as “trash-rock” specialists (the “lo-fi aesthetic and lyrical celebration of the low life”) is back with a second full-length helpin’ of gore. The sound is sleeker and less primitive than on 2001’s Strange Girls — that CD featured a different lineup, with only…
Letters to the Editor
Job well done I want to thank Ann Mullen personally and commend her for her outstanding work on the Environmental Disposal Systems (EDS) commercial hazardous waste injection well project ("Well hell," Metro Times, Aug. 7-13). The extensive time and energy that she dedicated to researching and understanding this complex issue was reflected in this very…
America’s Most Wanton
The story of the Sillies is a long, tangled yarn stretching all the way back to Easter ’77 when the Motor City’s newest entry into punk rock debuted on a bill with the MC5 and the Ron Asheton/Mike Davis incarnation of Destroy All Monsters. The trajectory since then is best followed in an exhaustive history…
Housewives on the edge
In 1963, a former housewife named Betty Friedan royally took the piss out of “The Donna Reed Show” with the release of her controversial and groundbreaking book, The Feminine Mystique. The landmark feminist work shredded the myth of the happy housewife of the 1950s, unrealistically idealized in such classic television shows as “Leave it to…
The Rising
More than any American pop star not named Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen inspires the kind of exhaustive analysis that critics reserve for major cultural icons. No matter what the national mood, his politically charged works document in unsettling detail the corruption of the American Dream — all within the context of anthems so American in…
Aug. 28-Sep. 3, 2002
28 WED–2 MON • FUN FOR ALL State Fair — Ducks in Detroit? Hens in the hood? Goats in the ghetto? There are few annual events that can offer more exciting juxtapositions than the Michigan State Fair. Located at Woodward and 8 Mile, the magic of the State Fair comes from the unlikely fusion of…
Trinity: Past, Present & Future
With Trinity: Past, Present & Future, the group’s third album, Slum Village answers doubts about its viability after the recent departure of producer Jay Dilla (Jay Dee, who still produced three tracks on this disc). Dilla had been considered by many the cornerstone of the group. The new lineup still features T3 and Baatin, and…
Wanton women
I feel sorry for kids today, not in a caring, concerned way, but in a detached, patronizing, figure-of-speech kind of way. Just look at all the cool TV we had when we were kids: “Bewitched,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Brady Bunch,” none of it high art but all of it endearing enough to be integral to…
Mannish boy
Muddy Waters didn’t invent the blues but he certainly defined one of its many tributaries, first nailing down a definitive brand of the Mississippi Delta style before taking it north and into an electric, revolutionary phase. The blues are so settled now and, despite the music’s continual emotional impact, so familiar a ritual that it…
Here goes the neighborhood
Dimitrious Oliver is doing business on the cutting edge of the new Detroit, but his establishment isn’t anywhere near Foxtown or any of the other anointed hotspot development districts. Go figure. Most of the talk about the new Detroit these days is likely to center on Ford Field, Comerica Park or any of the other…
Ripple effect
Haruki Murakami’s 2001 book, Underground, captured the aftermath of the March 1995 sarin gas attacks on Tokyo’s subway system by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult. He was there to interview victims, eyewitnesses and attackers, and add his own insight to the impact the attacks had on Japan’s national psyche. It was a street-level document…
