Neither/Nordic
Contrary to popular belief, Swedish pop outfit the Cardigans’ music isn’t exactly like it’s always been….
A mind for dance
As we sit before a bonfire or a waterfall, our eyes follow the changing shapes of flame or foam, so unique every second, yet so hypnotically familiar. This is a pleasure which continues as long as we let it, as long as we pay attention. Somehow the violence of burning wood or flowing water is…
Mortgaged to the hilt
This is a story about the American Dream gone awry. It’s a story of unbridled greed, and the harm it can do. It’s the story of a dirty little secret about how one American business can operate. Let’s begin the story with Kirk and Yalanda Young. The Youngs are in their mid-30s, have been married…
Bomb the bossa nova
The unbelievable — but absolutely true! — story of Brazil’s unsung rock revolutionaries Os Mutantes….
Leaving Las Vegas
One day in Las Vegas is enough to explain why Hunter S. Thompson couldn’t face it without a belly full of pills. Having watched the tacky light and water “volcano” at the Mirage, Disney-style pirates sinking the Brits at Treasure Island, and a gaudy replica of the New York skyline, there was only one way…
Learnin’ and Laughin’
“We gonna have a good time, good time we gonna have.” These are the lyrics to the opening number of OyamO’s In Living Colors, presented by Plowshares Theatre Company through February 28 at the Museum of African American History. And truer words were never spoken. From beginning to end, a good time is had by…
Public angst
“The premise is odd,” says actor Jason Schwartzman, summing up director Wes Anderson’s philosophy behind the relentlessly quirky comedy, Rushmore. “Now make it real, and it’ll be funny.” In so many comedies with teenage protagonists — like Schwartzman’s Max Fischer — the broad humor comes from poking fun at characters who are already grotesques. But…
High caliber and low farce
“I’m not exactly sure where I’m living right now.” — Monica Samille Lewinsky, testifying under oath, Feb. 1, 1999 Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it goes on still. Long ago forgotten by humans who have jobs and relationships and responsibilities, or at least remote controls with batteries, the trial of the century drones on in the…
Sunken past
When Michael H. Cottman embarked on an expedition to the site of the only confirmed wreck of a slave ship, the Henrietta Marie, he began a historical and spiritual quest. Originally motivated by a passion for African-American history and scuba diving, Cottman soon found himself on an odyssey that uncovered not only the wide history…
Food Stuff
FOOD SERVICE FEEDBACK After breaking bread with restaurant consultants Colette Tremblay and Angela Stewart, I can’t go out to eat without noting how the busboy carries my glass of water and whether the meal has been paced correctly. I used to be grateful if the waitstaff wasn’t surly. Now I expect to be greeted when…
Laugh, you wierdos!
Rushmore is really the Max Fischer Experience. That is, director Wes Anderson — who co-wrote the script with Bottle Rocket-collaborator Owen Wilson — has created one of the most distinctive characters in recent cinema with Max (Jason Schwartzman), a precocious, ambitious and maddeningly confident sophomore at Rushmore Academy, a boy’s prep school. But Max isn’t…
Polka-dot remover
Tears fell last week as onlookers watched City of Detroit workers remove dolls, worn tennis shoes, and an assortment of odds and ends hung from trees along Heidelberg Street. “Cruel!” shouted Anthony Hollis, who watched as polka-dotted pieces were hauled away. “This is the only thing that brings people down here,” he said. Hollis has…
The General
Filmed in vivid black and white, writer-director John Boorman’s The General tells the real-life story of infamous Dublin crime boss Martin Cahill. Beginning at the end, the film opens with the murder of Cahill by the IRA in 1994, then rewinds, literally, to his youthful years as a petty thief and family provider. We see…
Casino redux
The Detroit City Council ignored both the Planning Commission’s recommendation and protests from residents last week when it approved a revised casino plan that doubles the city bond issue to help finance the project and includes construction of a controversial new road. The decision to increase the city-backed bonds for the project from $250 million…
Six-String Samurai
It’s a bad sign when you start admiring the vistas to the point of losing track of the story, but Six-String Samurai is that kind of movie. It may be pointless, paceless and too self-consciously hip for its own good, but it sure looks nice. The premise is this: Russia has kicked America’s sorry ass…
When the cops go cruising for entrapment
Gay men in Michigan are routinely made the targets of illegal undercover operations that end in their being arrested merely for seeking consensual sex, claims a report released last week issued by the Detroit-based Triangle Foundation. “A clear, ongoing pattern of activity is evident,” says Rudy Serra, a Detroit attorney who wrote the report for…
Payback
He’s tough. He’s mean. He’s a killing machine. He wants one thing: $70,000, his cut from the heist he’s pulled with his buddy, Val (Gregg Henry). He moves in a world of mathematically challenged thugs — 70,000, goddamnit, not 130,000! — and that makes things a tad difficult. He never bluffs. When shot, he bleeds…
Pitch’d
LYRICS OF JURY Proof Detroit hip hop is blowing up: Proof. The flannel-throated Detroit MC, member of 5 Elements (“Searchin’”) and Eminem/Bizarre’s Dirty Dozen collective of rappers, won hip-hop mag The Source’s freestyle battle competition last month in New York teamed up with 12 Tech Mob DJ Len Swann, beating out unsigned MCs from both…
Road to nowhere
The city of Toronto has many nice places to visit. But the Greyhound depot isn’t one of them. Every day, hundreds of people, young and old, arrive from the godforsaken sticks, hoping that the Big Smoke will make all their dreams come true. Or, at the very least, help them forget the nightmare of shiftless…
Pills, shills and thrills
Back in the early 19th century, people were more gullible than they are now. ("It was just because they didn’t have TV to tell them about the world," says the Lizard of Fun). Maybe, maybe not. Either way, they were inclined to believe all sorts of things we now know to be untrue, such as…
Guides and gals
9:30 My friend Ian’s coming over at 10 to talk about this, that and quite a bit of the other. Girls. We always end up talking about his girls. Petite, large, dim-witted or clever, it doesn’t matter as long as they’re red-headed. That’s the only requirement. 9:45 Maybe I should squeeze in some work. I…
Pools of Mercury
If any fanciful identity can be thrust upon an iconic junkie poet, it must be that of the walking dead — the ghost that appears in the frame of the present, but remains psychically cocooned in some opaque dream of the past. On Pools of Mercury, Jim Carroll speaks as if one time could collide…
Good Morning Spider
“My bones wish to escape/ And run along the alien expanse/ To collapse from the heat in a cartoonish heap/ To sleep, oh, to sleep …” Sparklehorse frontman and songwriter Mark Linkous’ voice is as sweet as it is weathered as he sings these lyrics from the 33-second “moment” “Box of Stars I.” Linkous possesses…
Old School vs. New School
Are you new school or old school? That is the question. Partial to classic rap or more aligned with modern electronica? Unsure? Don’t worry, Jive Electro Records has just the thing for those of you straddling the fence. It’s quite simple, really. Jive Electro has taken songs from the early days of rap and allowed…
No Exit
Blondie was never a group with a strong identity — aside from Debbie Harry’s fetchingly inadequate vocals — and so it’s no surprise that on this, its first album of new material in 16 years, the band sounds pretty anonymous. It’s true that in its very, very early days, Blondie’s brand of DIY kitsch exuded…
Tranceport
Paul Oakenfold is the world’s highest-paid and best-known DJ and rightly so, having pretty much invented rave culture a decade ago when he brought back the all-night, spring-break, dance party spirit of Spain’s Ibiza to his native England. Not surprisingly, for his major label-debut mix CD, Oakenfold sticks with what he knows and has championed…
Almost Here
One top-40 UK hit and a series of EPs later, the well-connected trio from Oxford, England, Unbelievable Truth — the band’s singer, Andy Yorke is the brother of Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke — delivers an alluringly moody album with a country-rock underpinning. Almost Here is not the usual bass-guitar-and-drums, Britpop effort. Instead, the album boasts…
Un Toque Latino
Swing may be the thing these days in the United States, but the hottest fad in France is salsa. Anything from Cuba and anything with a Latin beat seems to be the trend in Parisian nightclubs and on Parisian airwaves. For the past decade, Kassav has been France’s most popular Caribbean band. It hails from…
