DFT Winter ’11: Franco does Ginsberg, dolls rob banks, French gangsters, revolution music & more!
If you’ve yet to ponder the Academy Award-nominated short films of the season or the special relationship between baseball and American Jews. Or if you’d enjoy letting your mind wander in wonder with Brazilian garbage pickers working in the world’s largest trash heap, or a barfly curmudgeon who grows a pair of angelic wings, or a Corsican…
DJ Kadhafi’s Top Reggae Tunes of 2010
A few evenings ago, I stopped by Strictly Roots Music, the long-time reggae shop on 7 Mile near Greenfield to check in with the store owner, DJ Kadhafi. He’s a staple of Detroit’s reggae community and one of the few people that consistently works to keep the disparate Caribbean community here from splintering apart. Folks…
Black Milk’s Okayplayer TV Interview. Great.
Okayplayer TV: Black Milk – The Man, The Music, The City from Cam Be on Vimeo. Here’s a video that came out a few days ago of local producer Black Milk talking about his music and the way it connects with the city of Detroit. This is a darn good look for Detroit considering how…
Late Notice: Wasted Youth Reunites for New Years Eve Fête at Oslo
I just got word from Detroit veteran emcee, 87, that Wasted Youth is reuniting for one evening only for a New Years Eve performance at Oslo. This isn’t the ’80s L.A. punk band Wasted Youth but rather the influential Detroit hip-hop group that we put on the MT cover in 2005. According to 87, they…
‘Einstein on the Beach’ revival set to begin in A2
Followers of the minimalist movement in music can point to the 1976 staging of the Philip Glass-Robert Wilson opera Einstein at the Beach, as the moment the movement went big time. With performances in a half-dozen or so European cities and New York, it was a seminal piece — five hours, no intermission — that…
New Year, flash
Recall your life on past Dec. 29s or 30s. It’s a time when the memory gaps may be as telling as the memories … when hearts are opened or broken … tangles of strangers, friends, relatives, lovers or monologues in their absence … harmonies in drunken keys, bloodshot eyes staring back from the mirror, bummer-sober…
Food Stuff
Mix it up — The good people at Hard Luck Lounge (15410 Mack Ave., Grosse Pointe Park; 313-884-5825) don’t just mix drinks; they make drinks. They’re the masterminds behind Hard Luck Candy Vodka, which markets two unusual flavors of local vodka: Red Fish, which tastes like gummy fish, and Root Beer Barrel, a surprisingly true…
Top 10s of ’10
Brian Smith 1. Lloyd Cole, Broken Record (Tapete): Record of the year, man. Rock ‘n’ roll pop-folk that’s full-band perfect; there’s sadness, joy, pure wretched heartbreak, self-loathing, drinking and, of course, the glorious piss-takes; from "Writer’s Retreat!": "When you head out to the shack in the woods, I won’t be there." 2. Band of Horses,…
Screening the best
Corey Hall Best supporting actor After about 45 minutes Danny Boyle’s audacious 127 Hours is pretty much a one-man affair, with James Franco brilliantly capturing the fear, desperation and courage of trapped hiker Aaron Ralston. But he does have something to work against: that damn boulder, which, by pinning him against the cave wall, literally…
Worth watching
From where I sit with my remote, it’s hard to judge whether the state of television is better or worse as 2010 tumbles to a close. The Jay Leno-Conan O’Brien late-night turf war dominated the early part of the year and shook the foundation of NBC’s 30 Rock headquarters. After the Sturm und Drang, Leno…
The 48217
At a recent open house in Mexicantown, Tyrone Carter examined colorful maps and renderings of what a redevelopment of that area’s 20 blocks could look like. It’s a plan envisioned by nonprofit groups, schools and foundations to continue the revitalization of the area a few miles southwest of downtown. Carter saw a greenway link to…
Pouring it on
Kitchen Sync at Wine Sync 122 W. Main St., Northville 248-374-9463 Alan Verstraete’s Wine Sync retail store in tony Northville was always about synching wine with food. After a few years of recommending to customers what goes with what, last year he began serving small plates himself, creating Kitchen Sync. He cleared away some of…
Made in Dagenham
Made in Dagenham GRADE: B Heavy on period pieces in the best of times, there seems to be a strong backward-looking impulse in recent British film culture, a nostalgia for a time when they were merely an empire in decline. The new cool Britannia has complex problems that make the pre-Maggie Thatcher days of decent,…
Letters to the Editor
No praise for Kwame Let me say up front I was an appointee of former Detroit Mayor Dennis W. Archer. I read with interest the article, "The tragedy of Kwame" (Dec. 22), and must say Kwame was truly a tragedy for the city of Detroit. The article states, "The tragedy is that so many other…
On smoking and driving
It should have been easy to see that driving under the influence was going to come up when voters gave the thumbs up to medical marijuana in Michigan. Marijuana is an intoxicant that has some effects similar to alcohol and opiates. It would seem to be a good thing for medical marijuana patients to not…
Just the two of us?
Q: I really need some help and comfort. I am a straight 25-year-old woman, and I’ve been dating my boyfriend for four years. I have never been the romantic type, until I met him. At the beginning, we were purely sexual. We love role-playing, and we always came up with erotic fantasies of me being…
I Love You Phillip Morris
I Love You Phillip Morris GRADE: B+ Progress can be slow even in Hollywood, and the road from invisible to prestigious for gay screen characters stretched for roughly 30 years, though, in some ways, our actors have yet to reach the final destination. Many big names remain in the closet, others are relegated to supporting…
Manic in Detroit
New Year’s Eve, 2010: Two exceptional Detroit dance parties clash like fringed leather and gold lamé for a demure (yeah right) dance party. The Hydra’s comprised of veteran Detroit dance makers Macho City and its night-stalking newbie counterpart, Haute to Death. Both are monthly dance parties where everyone’s welcome, sweat pours and memories are made.…
Our human assets
They’ll swear in our next governor this weekend, and everyone from corporate executives to newspaper editorial writers is brimming with excitement and hope. Can Rick Snyder, computer business nerd turned venture capitalist, turn Michigan’s economy around? Will he attract new dynamic businesses? Balance the budget without new taxes? Leap tall buildings with a single bound?…
Crystal balling
We have seen the future, and it is grim. Unless, of course, you are a billionaire. In that case the coming year is going to be particularly peachy. We can say this with a high degree of certainty because the ersatz soothsayers here at News Hits have just emerged from a weeklong coma-like trance induced…
Best local hip-hop videos of 2010, more lists coming
(MT’s Dec. 29 issue will have lists galore looking back at the musical highs of 2010. Here’s an advance sample from Jonathan Cunningham. -Eds.) 1) Black Milk, “Welcome (Gotta Go)” (tinyurl.com/2375e3v): Even though the staggered, stop-motion graphics attached to Black Milk’s “Welcome (Gotta Go)” video could make some dizzy, director Anthony Garth created enough kaleidoscopic…
