GAYE BIO SHOOTS THIS SPRING
Fans of Law & Order know that characters regularly come and go, sometimes almost as often as the weather changes. After nine seasons as Detective Ed Green, Jesse L. Martin is leaving the long-running cops-and-laywers show. He’ll film just one more episode of the series for this season, in which his character will be written…
SIRIUS TRIXON SUFFERS HEART ATTACK
Just received this via MySpace. Trixon is a great, great guy and one of the biggest champions Detroit rock has ever had. Here’s hoping he recovers soon! On Wednesday February 13th. at 7:30 a.m., Sirius Trixon, legendary Detroit rocker and former leader and lead singer for Sirius Trixon & the Motor City Bad Boys, suffered…
STFU REVISITED…
Damn! I’ve always had a great time at the Fillmore, even when it was going by that other name but this guy has a point. MT received this as a letter to the editor. Looks like it’s not going to make the cut for publication in the paper itself – but we got a kick…
JUNO’S MICHIGAN MUSICAL CONNECTION
It’s Oscars weekend and, as always, I’m looking forward to the show. It’s always been a tradition to watch it with my brother and sister-in-law… at least for the past 15 years. Since they’ve both moved back to Ann Arbor, we’ll be able to continue the tradition this year. It’s going to be very weird,…
MORE WAS (IS BACK)…
HITS Magazine senior editor (which was one of my old jobs!) Roy Trakin blogged this morning about the great Was (Not Was) Los Angeles show on Valentine’s Day that we wrote about earlier this week.. and you can find right below this post. Trakin provided a few tidbits that the L.A. Times review missed (which…
Hip-hop twist
Rap artist takes aim at Kwame.
Second coming
Due to a religious right that was screwing things up even then, a worried Columbia Records cowardly retitled this seminal New Wave classic Pure Pop for Now People upon its 1978 U.S. release. In many ways, however, the American title was the more appropriate one, since this was indeed pure pop music for both the…
We are family
Damon’s Record Center, on Plymouth just west of Evergreen on the city’s west side, has not only weathered the digital age so far, they’ve done so as a specialty store for 35 years, focusing specifically on soul, funk, jazz and blues CDs and cassettes, the old-school classics that the owners refer to as “catalog” music.…
Lobby overdose
Fight continues over state law granting virtual immunity to drug manufacturers.
The Signal
A weird, unexplained psychedelic pulse just starts droning out of TVs and radios, and pretty soon most of the residents of fictional Terminus City turn into erratic, homicidal savages, making this an ostensible zombie movie without any supernatural baggage. It’s also a pretty canny mash-up of dozens of genre movie plots, all reduced to a…
Masterworks
When was the last time you saw an African film shelved at your local Blockbuster or Hollywood Video? Uh, The Gods Must Be Crazy doesn’t count. Fact is, most Western film fans tend to focus their attention on European and Asian cinema (with glimpses into South America and Bollywood). Even adventurous American cineastes have a…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Steep
With jaw-dropping visuals, this documentary is a spectacular introduction to the death-defying extreme sport of big-mountain skiing. The skiers, interviewed by director Mark Obenhaus, describe a spiritual connection to the wild peaks they descend in language that’s echoed in the way surfers talk about riding waves. And when you come down to it, it’s all…
Dead set
George A. Romero is sipping on a pepper-filled Bloody Mary. The drink doesn’t have quite the same consistency as the movie blood his flesh-eating zombies slurp up with intestines, eyes and whatever, but there’s a touch of the ghoulish to it. Must Romero be working on a Bloody Mary? Well, if you’re the most important…
Curve balls
Hey, everybody: Here are the questions I couldn’t answer, followed by the advice offered — lots and lots of it — from readers who could. —Dan Savage •• Q: I’m a guy into she-male porn, and I’ve noticed that almost all the models in said porn have very tight scrotums. Like they’re cold. So I’m…
Royalty up in this bitch
Make no mistake, Alex Melamid’s a Russian rabble-rouser. Here he is on the evening of his own opening, and instead of schmoozing the art elite, he’s out near the stage, drink in hand. This Albert Einstein look-alike is rocking, out-of-rhythm, to the sounds of Detroit hip-hopper Mike-E. No, the internationally renowned painter doesn’t take himself…
Class Act
The Culinary Studies Institute at Oakland Community College is turning out aspiring chefs while offering the lunch-loving public bargain meals that will effectively derail productivity for the rest of the afternoon. If you can adapt your schedule to the Institute’s limited hours of operation and tolerate its plasticware, you can sample both contemporary dishes and…
Master of the universe
Detroit’s greatest MC isn’t white and he isn’t from Detroit. No, he’s from Pontiac, although these days, he calls Cairo, Egypt, home. As do his wife and four kids.Sure, the commute’s a bitch, but for the better part of last December, One Be Lo was in Seattle, setting up the details for the release of…
Jumper
David Rice (Hayden Christensen) — a guy who can teleport anywhere in the world — isn’t really much of a hero at all. In fact, despite the movie’s suggestions that Rice might develop a conscience — he lives a self-serving life of leisure financed by the banks he robs — he never rises up to…
The vicious circle
Techno culture is dark, brutal and unforgiving. But we know that already. Whether the music frightens you away with its extreme volume or bores you with its repetitive rhythmic tedium or, worse, ruins your life by luring you into the dance pit every weekend, making you spend every dime you have on music … well,…
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Mark Water’s film has two things going for it: a laudable degree of craftsmanship and the promise of no sequels. Condensing five short juvenile novels into a single 90-minute film, the screenwriters (including indie director John Sayles) have done a decent job of constructing a tale that will entertain tots without insulting parents’ intelligence. Separated…
After the fire
Photography student Matthew Doyle didn’t know any residents of the historic Forest Arms apartments, but he saw a compelling subject when they were retrieving what belongings they could after the Feb. 6 fire that destroyed the Detroit building. “You just can’t help but race over there with your camera and just capture what’s going on…
In Bruges
A pair of hit men are ordered to cool their heels in the fairytale-like city of Bruges after a job goes terribly wrong. Whatever happened isn’t at first clear, but young Ray (Colin Farrell) is clearly worse for the wear. Twitchy and haunted, he hates the idyllic Belgian town and ends up picking fights with…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Speed guide to the week’s top discs.
A franchise with brains
The film begins with a small crew of college film students and their boozy professor, shooting a horror film in the Pennsylvania woods. Their shooting is cut short when they start hearing news stories on the radio about the dead coming back to life. Some of them are skeptical — who the hell believes the…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Definitely, Maybe
Young dad Will (Ryan Reynolds), on the evening of a divorce, recounts for his daughter (Abigail Breslin) the story of how he met her mommy in the first place. It’s framed as a race between three likely suspects from his past, Emily (Elizabeth Banks), April (Isla Fisher) and Summer (Rachel Weisz). Then it’s time for…
Sound passion
At the nexus of inventor, sculptor, musician, composer, technical wonk and garbage picker lies the kind of artist who sees the flotsam and glitches of the world around him and hears the music of the spheres. Such artists are alchemical conjurers, making the everyday sing through the efforts of will mixed with energetic inspiration. One…
Lives of quiet desperation
A lot can happen in five years. Children go from being born to being dropped off for their first day of school. Countries are invaded. Even presidents can come and go. A lot can happen. It’s been that long since American Mars released its last album, No City Fun — and that’s long enough for…
Stirring the pot
Zoup!’s Eric Ersher on serving up soup.
Lucky
After resurrecting their career from the post- “Popular” slag heap by re-imagining their buoyant Weezer-pop into the melancholy, drifting post-collegiate mien of 2002’s Let Go, Nada Surf stood still. Their follow-up, The Weight is a Gift, made the mistake of lingering and allowing the seams to show in their somewhat overintellectualized musings on love and…
The real GOP
State Republicans: Bust unions, outlaw abortion.
Odelay – Deluxe Edition
Nestled between such dour ’90s landmarks as Nevermind and OK Computer, Odelay was that rare happy-go-lucky record that achieved major critical and commercial success during a decade in which angst was prized over playfulness. Twelve years later, Beck’s breakthrough returns dressed up in a two-disc deluxe edition that, if anything, only highlights how unlikely its…
Night and Day
Thursday • 21 Barry Bonds and the History of Blacks in Baseball CONTROVERSY & CONTEXT A Wayne State prof whose area of study is race and the media — sports coverage in particular — goes to bat for beleaguered Barry Bonds. Is the baseball establishment attitude toward Bonds’ achievements a function of his attitude toward…
Power of the Damager
As long as veteran thrash metalists Prong remember all the words their name rhymes with — strong, bong, shlong and, most importantly, song, they can’t do anything to piss off their loyal following ever again. Following a 1996 split, they returned with a premature reunion album, Scorpio Rising, that was short on hooks and long…
Letters to the Editor
Missing leadership In several recent columns about Kwame Kilpatrick, Jack hits the nail on the head. The only question that looms large is whether Detroiters or the Wayne County prosecutor will find the legal and political will to remove this sad joke of a mayor. Detroit has promise but is tragically behind the curve when…
District Line
To think there was once a time when 30 was considered way too “old” for a rock musician! I mean, just imagine Mick Jagger singing “Satisfaction” at 40. Crazy thoughts! Surely, a stable career in finance would beckon. Well, for Mr. Jagger, in a sense it did. He just managed to keep his night job.…
Queer bait
Oscar Wilde classic gets a gender switch.
Brighter Than Creation’s Dark
For a greater part of this decade, these guys have been one of the few American bands that can truly be called great. On their latest effort — a sprawling 19-song disc, nostalgically divided into four sides (and their first without key member Jason Isbell) — the Truckers retrieve the muse that was sadly missing…
