One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich
One
Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich (1999) is a somewhat conventional documentary about the late Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. The original footage consists of the director shooting the final and very complicated scene of his last film The Sacrifice (1985) and then his viewing of the completed film while lying in his sickbed,…
Law-abiding
Question: When is a controversial law no problem whatsoever? Answer: When no one is enforcing it. Although oversimplified, that essentially sums up much of the government’s defense in a case involving the so-called USA PATRIOT Act. The U.S. government is hoping for a first-round knockout in a court fight over the constitutionality of a key…
Bad Santa
I laughed like a retarded-drunk-senile grandma through the whole 93 minutes. This film, with the help of Ethan and Joel Coen, has absolutely no redeeming artistic values except to shock, paralyze, and to take pubescent, criminal glee that Billy Bob Thornton’s safe-cracking, con-man Santa is one of the vilest creatures to ever grace a screen.
’Tis the season
A couple choirs and a percussion group entertained the 50 or so folks who waited in the freezing cold for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to light the downtown Christmas tree in Hart Plaza last week. Donning a tan wool coat and fedora, Kilpatrick stood poised to flip the switch, so to speak, and set the tree…
Taking Sides
As in his subsequent screenplay, The Pianist (2002), screenwriter Ronald Harwood distills a tragedy from the life of an actual classical musician who survives Nazi Germany in Taking Sides (2001). Here, Harwood features not a Jew, but a German, Dr. Wilhelm Furtwängler (Stellan Skarsgåard), an eminent 20th century conductor. Despite some dialogue that betrays its…
Sore point
Redford Township has always been a nice place to live. People buy their first homes here, raise their children and generally want to keep their properties aesthetically pleasing. Which makes 14133 Crosley the proverbial sore thumb. The house has been vacant since a fire in September 2002. Township officials say they want to deal with…
‘Poems of my classical age’
Detroit was the first American city Andrei Codrescu came to after he and his mother emigrated from Romania. The New Orleans-based poet, professor, NPR commentator and writer-at-large still recalls the mystifying desolation he first experienced standing on an overpass one gray Detroit afternoon in 1966. “We were in transit in Rome, and everything was in…
Fallin’ together
There are dark clouds on the horizon. The trees are stripped bare and it’s clear that a long winter is curling its fingers around the neck of autumn. But at the moment, in the front parlor of a quiet house in Oak Park, dusky oldies are whispering out of the radio, streams of dust-dappled sunlight…
Girls Will Be Girls
The lure of Hollywood stardom is just too much for a girl to resist. Evie, Coco and Varla are fame-seduced pawns in a scary West Coast fairytale; it’s a claw-your-way-to-the-top struggle you’ve seen before, but never enacted with such volcanic wit, not to mention broad shoulders — because these girls are actually guys. Girls Will…
Fallen friends & Catholic girls
RIP Well, the last few weeks at “Hit Singles” have been rather melancholic, and two recent deaths of local musicians put a sad, gray hue on an already darkening autumn. First, Diegrinder guitarist Steve Kapo died suddenly on Nov. 19 from a heart attack. The young guitarist (he was 30) had a heart condition; he…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): British performance artist Mark McGowan was offended by the widespread international mockery of his country’s cuisine. He decided to express his pride by turning himself into an English breakfast. A store near London let him live in the front window for 12 days, while he sat in a vat of baked…
Bragging rights
It’s not everyone who lands a career doing something they truly love, something that’s perfectly suited to who they are and how they relate to the world. Few who have followed Rick Bragg’s reporter-to-author career would argue that the man wasn’t born to write. But Pulitzer Prize-winning articles and best-selling books (including Bragg’s most recent…
Tips, screws & the minimum wage
Dear State Rep. Leon Drolet, I’ve been a waitress for nine years, first to help pay my way through college, and now to survive in a downsized job market. I am writing you about a bill that is sitting with the Employment Relations, Training and Safety Committee which you chair. House Bill 5068 would raise…
Letters to the Editor
A bad rap Brian Smith, I read your article about Eminem (“The Em-word,” Metro Times, Nov. 26-Dec. 2) and I was very impressed. As an African-American woman, I was totally upset when I heard the comment that Eminem had made. How can you disrespect the black woman when part of your sales come from the…
Yuletide’s cool side
Let’s just admit it, shall we? Every rockabilly chick in the world adores him. Every well-inked gearhead and guitar geek envies him on some level. And yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it a million times, during the last 25 years he’s been personally responsible for resurrecting both rockabilly and big band swing and making them cool…
Spreading santorum
Q: I was listening to the radio today and Rick Santorum was mentioned. The first thought that popped into my head was, “Santorum? That frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex?” and not, “Santorum? That conservative prick?” Your column has worked the new meaning so far into…
Season’s big bang
Satirist David Sedaris was the first person whose observations about the Christmas herd experience really made sense to me. In his story “Christmas and Commerce,” Sedaris remarks, “Christmas is a day when we are all handed the same stage props. The same tree, the presents, the meal, the relatives … and all the same expectations,…
The Max rocks
Looking for parking near the brand-new Max M. Fisher Center is an experience in Detroit’s ever-present state of contradiction. Driving slowly around the lower section of the Cass Corridor, near the last of the low-income buildings in that area, one can easily get nervous about parking along a too-dark street. But pull behind the new…
December 3-9, 2003
4 THU • MUSIC Kathleen Battle — Need a little holiday cheer? Why not make your way to Orchestra Hall at the beautiful Max M. Fisher Music Center? Five-time Grammy Award-winning soprano Kathleen Battle will be gracing the D with her high-pitched chops. She’s appeared on stages from the Metropolitan Opera to Vienna and Paris;…
The West Is Best
If you enjoyed rock mastermind-cum-roué queen Kim Fowley’s droll scene-stealing stint in Mayor Of The Sunset Strip and want to keep those fond memories intact, then do yourself a big favor and give this pointless puerile pap a pass. Fowley, the self-proclaimed Frankenstein monster of rock ’n’ roll, has teamed up with middling multi-instrumentalist “Egor”…
This son also rises
It’s funny how life really can come full-circle. A week ago, my wife and I attended the Rev. Tony Washington’s 70th birthday celebration at a small Pentecostal church on the east side. The Rev. Washington is the father of one of my closest friends. His son Salim and I go back about 30 years, to…
Kid Rock
What an utterly abysmal abomination. I was given a limit of 500 words to review this appalling piece of shit — but that’s 423 too many. There aren’t enough heartbeats in anyone’s life to devote even a second of their valuable time to this talentless, ego-tripping schlock. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going…
Mission in action
Riding in a cold rainstorm on I-94 at 8 in the morning is about as far away as one can be from the exotic locales, the ingenious gadgetry and the sumptuous vixens that are part and parcel of James Bond’s imaginary world. We are heading toward “The Henry Ford” for the Bond, James Bond exhibit…
21st Century Toy
The first hint that Electronicat’s 21st Century Toy exists on some seriously strange outré plane comes screaming at you from the cover. It’s the face of the artist, the unfortunately named Fred Bigot, fused onto the body of a guitar. The colors — vivid greens and reds pasted on a bright yellow background — wrap…
The odd couplet
The absurdity of the rap game in Detroit has reached a fever pitch. Fans and struggling artists will search for any reason to knock a rising star from his or her pedestal. And where an MC resides is one of the most ludicrous causes of shit-talk. If you’re going to be representing or rhyming about…
Want
It’s hard to define the exact moment when fame starts to make a person ugly. It sneaks up. Maybe it’s that we, the masses of no-talent, fatty, artless plebeians, are just too busy plunging toilets, making car payments and changing diapers to see it coming. We only pay attention when it becomes so assaulting that…
On Broadway
Chris and Jim Burnett sit at the bar at the Detroit Beer Co. on Broadway Street in downtown Detroit. The Mount Clemens couple has been to the microbrewery a handful of times since it opened in September. They discovered it during baseball season when looking for a place to grab a bite and a beer…
French somnambulence
This documentary about a one-room schoolhouse in rural France and its dedicated teacher didn’t meet its praise. Part of the problem is director Nicolas Philibert’s somnambulistic pacing. And unfortunately, teacher Georges Lopez’s generally placid demeanor doesn’t make him any less of a martinet. A favorite moment is when one of the younger children says, “When we…
St. George and St. Michael
You had to love the President’s “Thanksgiving surprise” trip to Iraq, which is being billed by the nation’s lapdog media as the most brilliant success since The Phantom of the Opera, the Bill of Rights, and possibly the evolution of the opposable thumb. What it really added up to was, of course, a tacit admission…
Remembrance of Things to Come
French documentary filmmaker Chris Marker’s documentaries are distinct from other nonfiction film due to their essayist qualities. The title refers to the mood in France between World Wars I and II, and the film looks at creative greats like Picasso, Henry Miller, Marcel Duchamps and surrealist kingpin André Breton. It’s a brilliant evocation of a…
Music Menu’s fading notes
They say that all good things must end someday. Autumn leaves must fall. But don’t you know that it hurts me so to say goodbye to you. Wish you didn’t have to go … —“A Summer Song,” Chad & Jeremy We know that wistful lyric from the ’60s ballad is beyond syrupy, but it sums…
