Something’s Gotta Give
Director Nancy Meyers’ date flick for very mature audiences often has the look of a drug commercial: blue skies, strollers holding hands at the beach. Yet, through sheer talent, Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson nearly get this heavier-than-air romance off the ground. Also starring Keanu Reeves and Amanda Peet.
Mama don’t take no mess
Did rappers Outkast violate the publicity rights of civil rights icon Rosa Parks? Did they use her name in the title of a song, not only without permission, but in a defamatory manner? It’s drama of the highest order. Parks vs. LaFace Records, case 03-504. Young vs. old. Newfangled vs. old-fashioned. Parks filed suit in…
Men or machines?
“This advance is poised to destroy the well being of all performing artists and may well signal the beginning of a technological revolution that could well quell the human craft of emotional expression through music.” This prophetic quip may sound familiar to those following headlines about the current digital coup that’s crippling the music…
Revolution unending
I had a musical-theater-induced flashback recently at the Fisher Theatre. It’s been about a decade since I first saw Les Miserables. It was a national touring production, and I was enchanted. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, because since the show’s 1985 debut, at least half the free world has been enchanted by the musical adaptation of…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): What symbolic item might inspire you to take maximum advantage of the cosmic currents in 2004? I decided on the book Marathon Training For Dummies, by Tere Stouffer Drenth. It’s not because I think you should literally gear up to run a 26-mile race during the coming year. Rather, I’d like…
Red blood cells
Isn’t it sad when an artist’s own words can be used as ironic fodder for headline writers? By now you’ve likely heard that White Stripes front man Jack White beat up Von Bondies front man Jason Stollsteimer last Saturday night at Blanche’s sold-out Magic Stick show. According to folks who were there, during pal Brendan…
A blue swan song
I have been informed by some readers that they don’t care to read about anything pertaining to music in my columns. They want the rough stuff, the hard-news stuff, the racially provocative stuff. Fair enough. So in the spirit of trying my best to respect my readers, and because I really do appreciate all those…
Father Christmas & son
Those ascending the Abreact’s steep flight of stairs for the first time may be a bit surprised to find that this do-it-yourself theatrical and performance space doubles as a loft home. It’s nonetheless an inviting atmosphere where patrons are treated as guests and invited to sit on the large couches, drink free beer and take…
Bottle this
When it comes to managing fresh water, the leaders of both major political parties share a rare ideological consensus: Michigan’s 19th century policy of encouraging people to use as much water as they want, whenever they want, needs a 21st century update. This became apparent in 2002, when Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick Posthumus and state…
Fare thee Wellman
Of all the people who have appeared on the pages of this paper over the years, few commanded as much respect as self-described revolutionary Saul Wellman, who died of a stroke last week in Ann Arbor at the age of 90. His was a remarkable life. “I suckled the ideas of socialism at my mother’s…
Pass(ed) out
“I can dig rappin’, I can dig scrappin’/But I can’t dig that backstabbin’” —James Brown, “The Payback” There was a time, back in the ’70s, when people like Jay-Z or 50 Cent wouldn’t have been the only speakers qualified to say, “Let me rap to you for a minute.” In fact, it’s more than likely…
Struck out
News Hits is pleased as punch (inappropriate pun intended) that the Ypsilanti Housing Commission has agreed to stop evicting victims of domestic violence. The policy change is a result of a lawsuit filed by Aaronica Warren (“Insult to Injury,” Metro Times, April 24-30, 2002). Warren was evicted from her Ypsilanti Housing Commission-owned townhouse in 2000…
December 19-25, 2003
18-23 THU-TUE • FUN FOR ALL 12 Nights of Christmas at Greenfield Village — There is just something about an old-fashioned setting that harks back to the true spirit of Christmas. And where better can you visit the days of yore than at Greenfield Village? The entire village is bustling in preparation for an old-timey…
Hamstrung
The Hamtramck School District is bleeding red ink. An audit report, issued at a school board meeting last week, says the district is over this year’s budget by $2.5 million and has nearly extinguished its savings. Hamtramck School Board President Camille Colatosti attributes the financial fiasco to, of all things, overspending. “We grossly overspent in…
Gone classical
“Tits and ass” abounding, most of the 12 curiously hybrid paintings in famed Detroit graphic illustrator and satirical artist Mark Dancey’s current CPOP exhibition are female nudes, some buxom and fleshy, the others trim and athletic (in a twisted way). The nude figures are suspended by or attached to an infinite red trapeze-like rope of…
Troubled Saint
The former Saint Rita Apartments building stands simultaneously as an example of early 20th century architecture and 21st century urban blight. The building, at 35 Owen Ave., east of Woodward, sits within throwing distance of Northern High School. The 26-unit apartment building was constructed in 1916. The commercially zoned property, according to information on the…
Saddam and Dean & beyond
It is far too early to know what effect the capture of a disheveled and dispirited Saddam Hussein will have on the war in Iraq — or on politics in this country. For months, thousands of resistance fighters have been harrying U.S. occupation troops, ambushing and killing nearly every day, but totally unable to mount…
Oh Honey, We’re Ridiculous
Like every kid fueled by sugary cereals and social dysfunction, I sometimes had a hard time sleeping. Occasionally, I could talk my mom into staying up and watching the night dramas with her. It wasn’t just trysts of entangled lovers on “Dallas” and “Falcon Crest” that confused my preadolescent mind; the adult commercials were equally…
Rockette in my pocket
Gams. Thick and juicy and firm up top, pointy and high-heeled at the bottom. Pantyhose smoothing the bumps and ridges and dimples. Forty high-heeled gams kicking skyward to 20 frozen dripping-red smiles. High-heeled gams. The high heel forces the ass to stick out and up just a bit. Just enough. Just a few thousandths of…
Letters to the Editor
Electric friends Robert Gorell wrote an interesting article “Laptopless vs. scantily clad,” Metro Times, Dec. 10-16). I’m confused a bit though. If I wanted to see a performance on stage like someone smashing a guitar, wouldn’t I go to a Kiss concert? Most people go out to hear electronic music so they can dance. I…
Married Alive
Married Alive is only the Mood Elevator’s second album in four years, but the band hasn’t been exactly invisible. While internal logistics dictated that ME go into hiatus mode after successfully touring behind 1999’s Listen Up!, chief instigator Chris Plum assembled a new version of the group a few years later, additionally enlisting his old…
A Larry story
Larry Humphrey died on Thanksgiving morning at age 57. It took several services to commemorate his life. Two of the services occurred at Messiah Lutheran Church in Detroit. Friday night, mementos of Humphrey decked the interior of the church, displaying the scope of his multifaceted life: high school football and wrestling photographs, blown glass beads…
313 Jukebox
3 JUKEBOX” MUSIC TRACKS COMPILED BY MIKE RUBIN BOOGIE CHILLEN: PRE-MOTOWN DETROIT R&B John Lee Hooker: Boogie Chillen’ (3:11) John Lee Hooker: Crawlin’ Kingsnake (3:02) John Lee Hooker: Boom Boom (2:34) Joe Weaver & the Don Juans: Baby I Love You So (3:05) Nolan Strong & the Diablos: The Wind (3:04) Nolan Strong & the…
In This World
I rarely pay attention to record company promo blurbs because, more often than not, their only intent is to shamelessly peddle a product. But even a card-carrying cynic like myself has to admit that Blue Wave head honcho Greg Spencer (who also produced this disc) knows whereof he speaks when he claims that what sets…
Mo’ than most
In Mo-tif, New York painter David Fludd reinvents classic subject matter — still life to landscape to a portrait of a weathered, plain farm couple. Most of these works, created between 2000 and 2003, feature repetition of a black-and-white figure. Possibly the artist’s rendering of himself within the context of each imagined scene, the figure…
Detroit largesse continues
The Dirtbombs, The Killers: 1 December, Highbury Garage The Garage is a low ceiling/high floor wedge of smoke and sweat, since chain smoking appears to be mandatory among the garageratti, along with blunt black bangs and the hippy hippy shake. The Killers have traveled all the way from Las Vegas to breathe this rarefied air,…
In America
The travails of plucky Irish immigrants in a time-warped New York that confusingly mashes up the early ’90s and now. From Jim Sheridan, director of My Left Foot, and starring Paddy Considine, Samantha Morton and Djimon Hounsou.
Hit & myth
“Detroit is the ass lever of Satan,” slurs an ebullient man as he sucks on a cigarette outside the Motor City Bar in lower eastside Manhattan. He’s one of many shivering on the narrow soot-covered street in the night’s bitter winds because indoor smoking is verboten in New York City, leaving the weak and hedonistic…
Porn Theater (La Chatte à deux têtes)
This is a down and dirty portrait of a day in the life of a Parisian pornographic film theater, which is to say that not all the action is on said theater’s screen. If nothing else, your curiosity should be sadly satisfied. Jacques Nolot wrote, directed and plays the lead role.
An Apple’s-eye view of the Motor City
There is a curious comfort in writing about things from an outsider’s point of view. Ridden of expertise, we often have the most to say about what we know of least, and Detroit — itself a cultural metaphor for the outsider in America, with New York City a converse signifier of all that is insider…
Stuck On You
The Farrelly brothers have corralled Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear to play conjoined twins with conflicting life goals. Every conjoined twin joke is here, along with some interesting cameos, an energetic and self-deprecating performance from Cher, and one really, really funny line from Eva Mendes.
Electro shock rock
C. Samual, production chief of the three-headed Detroit electro-beast Tamion 12 Inch, isn’t very impressed with the current state of his hometown’s live music scene. “People have been sticking light bulbs up their asshole and squeezing them for years,” he says from his Detroit home. “People have removed their testicles in front of large audiences.…
End of the line for Middle Earth
Director Peter Jackson’s sheer artistry is a charm and a bit of a curse: after two installments, it’s easy to be a bit blasé about the conclusion to this epic tale of good and evil. Nonetheless, if you surrendered before, you will again. With Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, John Rhys-Davies, Orlando Bloom, Elijah Wood, Liv…
Phantom evidence
Federal prosecutor Richard Convertino stood before a judge last week in a courtroom packed with reporters, lawyers and onlookers. He often referred to his notes and stared down at the podium as he explained why he failed to turn over evidence that defense attorneys say could have exonerated the men convicted in June in the…
