Absolutely fabulous
A ten-story neon marquee, awe-inspiring Art Deco interior and a schedule featuring national acts of the highest calibre make the Fox a truly regal concert palace. Considering our city’s tendency to abandon or destroy most of its Golden-Age landmarks, it’s amazing that the Fox was rescued and restored to its original 1920s splendor. Hosting mostly…
Blackout
African-American-owned low-power TV station seeks free cable airtime….
Blue movie legend
Joseph von Sternberg’s legendary film, first released in 1930, retains an impressive amount of power for such an aged relic. As for Marlene Dietrich, she’s not yet the svelte and glamorous figure she would become, but once she starts singing, her peculiar charisma is already evident.
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Man will occasionally stumble over the truth,” Winston Churchill once opined, “but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.” In other words, it’s difficult for us to even accidentally be relieved of our delusions. They’re so ingeniously constructed and hypnotically attractive that it’s amazing we ever…
Gramps’ faux pas
Outgoing Wayne County Exec Ed McNamara’s ethnic jokes don’t go over too well….
Black Knight
A California homie in King Leo’s court? Ya’ damn straight. Here’s the nitty-gritty, Cliffs Notes version of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, as Martin Lawrence gets knocked back to the year of our Lord 528, and manages to climb the medieval social ladder by just his wits to become "Sir Boss."
Worn to a nubbin
Q: I am a 22-year-old male in OK shape. For the last four or five years, I used to masturbate almost every day, sometimes up to four times a day. I would do it so much that I would actually tear the skin on my penis. In the last year, I have really made an…
Taking no prisoners
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation questions U.S. handling of Afghan war prisoners….
Texas Rangers
By no means a great film, this sturdy, old-school western about the difference between revenge and justice so perfectly encapsulates our national psyche at this moment that it should have triggered a full-scale patriotic ad campaign.
Hoods and halos
Missizzy and the Angel Tree is not an easy script to tackle, but the Detroit Repertory Theatre jumps right in, short-sheeting the KKK in a heavenly whirlwind.
George Harrison (1943-2001)
The passing of the “quiet Beatle” inspires us to pause and reflect on our own lives.
Out Cold
Teen comedy? Snowboarding flick? Better at putting extreme winter sports on the screen than tickling the funny bone — or telling a story. Novice directors Brendan and Emmett Malloy haven’t figured out the formula; they’re still out in the cold.
Out with the old
A list of things we were thinking about before September 11, with thoughts on what’s worth keeping and what belongs on the garage-sale table of our collective consciousness.
Thayrone plays it his way
His outlandish broadcasts on WEMU lay weekly siege to commercial radio. He’s Thayrone, and some day, he just might get some respect.
A literary feast
Jim Crace has been a fiction writer to be reckoned with since Continent won the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award in 1986. But most American readers only came to know the British author through 2000’s Being Dead, which won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and was short-listed for Whitbread Novel of the…
Metal minus moping
Lacuna Coil finds joy on the dark side….
Bodies in motion
Scott Carrier could have stepped right out of a Beat-generation novel. His public-radio accounts of hitchhiking across the nation, challenging authority figures, and communing with the wilderness have the feel of a true-life Kerouac classic. Running After Antelope, a wonderful collection of some of Carrier’s best radio and magazine work from the past two decades,…
Letters to the Editor
Horsing around Thanks to Curt Guyette for trying to expose the blatant exploitation of the residents of Detroit, the Detroit School Board, the State of Michigan and the communities of metro Detroit by Joe Nederlander ("Down at the fair," Metro Times, Nov. 14-20). If Nederlander’s hand shakes because his $200 million plan for the fairgrounds…
The Love Hotel
It’s said that luck is where preparation meets opportunity. But luck didn’t get local singer Jill Jack this far. Four albums? Nah, that ain’t luck. Somebody loves Jill’s stankin’ draws. Otherwise, she’d be back working as an executive assistant to the VP of some dream-deadening corporation. The Love Hotel is Jack’s latest journey through American…
Xbox Xploitation
Buying Xboxes for fun and profit….
The Coast is Never Clear
If Beulah’s third album had been released six months earlier (or if we all lived in California with the band instead of on this frigid peninsula), we could all luxuriate in its summery pop bliss the way it’s meant to be heard. At a bonfire on the beach, most likely, or flying down the street…
Pilot project
Director John Moore admits that Behind Enemy Lines may be the right film for the wrong reason….
Mystic Groove
If Mystic Groove gets into you, you’re gone. Just gone. No choice but to go on ahead and float. My advice? Let it. Trust this record to do its job. It’s up to the task at hand: Transport you to that interior sound world beyond the cliché of such word pairings as “Mystic” and “Groove”…
Ashcroft’s legal terrorism
We need to realize that losing our rights and freedoms is a heck of a lot scarier than Al Qaeda. PLUS: The Citizens for Handgun Control continue to fight against violence here at home.
Milk and Honey (reissue)
’Tis the season for CD reissues and greatest-hits collections, most of which are ploys to get you to shell out $18 for music repackaged from five or more years ago. Some will contain extras such as previously unreleased or rare live versions of songs that were mediocre to begin with, let alone when played too…
Disco nouveau
Ghostly International collects 14 compelling tracks with an international electro sound, on the Disco Nouveau compilation … & a brief interview with “Agent of Change” Derrick May.
Drukqs
Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin, likes to play with knobs. He distorts his compositions to the utmost fringes of musicality. He’s an odd one. Only a madman (or a genius) could title a song, “Kladfvgbung Micshk” and insist that it makes sense, you just need to listen. Hailed as the Mozart of electronic music…
Talking funny
Cyndi Lauper raps a blue streak on punk, womanhood and all that crap….
Drugs, Sex & Discotheques
Donning skintight, U.K. flag print shirts and Simon LeBon hair in their best attempt at ’80s Brit-boy drag, the Prima Donnas don’t live in pop’s New Wave past simply for artistic or aesthetic reasons. No, these three hunka-hunkas are more pragmatic than that: They wanna get it up, get it on and get off. And…
In the name of patriotism
Critics are worried that behind all this flag waving, a police state lurks. Does the American public care enough to protest?
Ten New Songs
Each new thread in the tapestry of Leonard Cohen’s art (songs, poems, novels, etc.) loops back through the same timeless, borderless grid and disappears into the grand design of a single vision. The word “new” in the title of the CD, Ten New Songs, might mean something in a catalog of Cohen’s work, but it…
A nomadic noel
Pub crawling downtown, from the Motor City Brewing Company Tap Room to the Lager House … The triumphant return of Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise … Big bargains at CPOP’s 50/50 show … & more.
John Mayall and Friends: Along for the Ride
This just in from the father of the British blues invasion: Sometimes age and experience can come in handy, especially when the blues are concerned. Well-earned respect doesn’t hurt either. John Mayall is widely acknowledged as the man who ignited the blues fire in England oh so many decades ago. Now, many years later, his…
Out with a wink
Councilman Clyde Cleveland gets up close and personal with a female constituent….
Lenny
You cop Lenny Kravitz’ new joint, self-indulgently titled Lenny. First listen, and you love everything except one song (“Let’s Get High”). It sounds to you like Lenny is experimenting with different musical styles, and displaying his range. “Yesterday Is Gone” reminds you of Oasis. The dopest ’80s throwback you’ve heard in years might be “Dig…
It’s a wrap
Farewell to three of Detroit’s outgoing councilmen: Gil Hill, Clyde Cleveland & Rev. Nicholas Hood III….
Mink Car
“Man, It’s So Loud in Here,” a tune from They Might Be Giants’ first studio album in five years, is the wittiest piece of pop bliss you’ll hear all year. Backed by an arrangement that boasts all the hallmarks of a generic hi-NRG hit (hyperactive sequencers, bludgeoning percussion, electronically treated backing vocals), keyboardist John Linnell…
