Samson and Delilah
Samson and Delilah GRADE: B In the high-tech, pixel-perfect world of today’s cinema, there’s been an interesting return to neorealism in both indie and international scene. From English films like Fish Tank and This Is England to U.S. indies such as Wendy and Lucy to Rwanda’s Munyurangabo (just to name a few), there seems to…
Hall Pass
Hall Pass GRADE: C+ The battle of the sexes is over, and the results are in: Men lost. This is not exactly breaking news, as the oafishness, horniness and general incompetence of adult men has been firmly chiseled into the granite face of the pop culture monument. Sure, male-pattern idiocy has been at the root…
Dig this: Blue Black Hours promo vid for Blowout
The Blue Black Hours, one of many awesome local bands about to invade Hamtramck next week, shot us over a promo for Blowout 2011. Blue Black Hours will be performing at Baker’s Streetcar, Hamtramck, MI on March 3. Check ’em out. Blue Black Hours for Blowout
Dub you very much: Movement lines up first 20 artists
While perpetual enfant terrible trance-tech crossover clown Sven Väth and the equally hilarious Visionquest (made up of homies Seth Troxler, Ryan Crosson, Shaun Reeves and Lee Curtiss) may get top billing in the first round of lineup announcements for Movement 2011, we beg to go even deeper, darker and further outside the box in making…
2011 Oscar Preview and Picks
Best Picture 127 Hours Black Swan The Fighter Inception The Kids Are All Right The King’s Speech The Social Network Toy Story 3 True Grit Winter’s Bone Who should win? The Social Network. While Toy Story 3, Inception, and The King’s Speech are all phenomenal films deserving of praise, none of them will still be…
Drive Angry 3D
Drive Angry 3D Directed by Patrick Lussier Grade: D+ Nicolas Cage is a one-man stimulus package, working feverishly to pay off his mammoth financial debt to the U.S Treasury by churning out one epic crapfest after another, which he’ll later spend an eternity paying off in the cosmic court of artistic regret. Each new boon…
Concert Gallery : Motörhead @ ROMT
Rock icons Motörhead brought their signature prototype metal thrash to the Royal Oak Music Theater last night. Just as they promise, it was everything louder than everything else. The roughly hour and half set punched through early Motörhead classics and a few new tunes like “Get Back in Line” from the band’s 20th release The…
Radiohead – The King of Limbs
Radiohead – The King of Limbs TBD Records Confronted with the waves of analysis, speculation and skepticism that must accompany every Radiohead release, all Thom Yorke can do is dance. His skittering moves in Garth Jennings’ video for "Lotus Flower" are an apt representation of the band’s layered, sensual eighth album, The King of Limbs:…
The Dears – Degeneration Street
The Dears – Degeneration Street Danger Bird The Britpop and Smiths comparisons long addling Canada’s Dears may relax with their fifth album, on which the charismatic Murray Lightburn and his moody cohorts change it up — with middling results. Band harmony helps; Degeneration Street marks the return of three members who left during fraught sessions…
Billions can’t be wrong
Akasaka 37152 6 Mile Rd., Livonia; 734-462-2630; $$$: The sushi bar is the heart of Tomiko DeMeere’s serene restaurant. The full array of Japanese dishes includes teriyakis, tempuras, noodles in broth and yakitori, with a gourmet dinner for two ($46) offering a chance to sample many dishes economically. B.D.’s Mongolian Barbeque 200 S. Main St.,…
Odd habits
Sharky and the Habit is not your average Motor City rock ‘n’ roll band. Far from it. In fact, this four-piece is more like some sort of vagrant, boho Monkees. Sorta like if the patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest formed a band. See, the three gents and one woman who equal Sharky…
Destroy This Place
Puckish indie-rock workhorse Ryan Allen has played enough Blowout fests to have created at least a few lasting, sorta-sober memories. See, the bespectacled dude likes to rock. With Sean Sommer, John Nelson and Monday Busque, Allen’s latest rockest combo is Destroy This Place, a band purporting to do the very thing its name implies. Here…
It’s justified
Elmore Leonard is notepads deep into writing a new novel — his 362nd, or something like that — tentatively titled Raylan. It will chronicle the further adventures of his character, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, masterfully portrayed by Timothy Olyphant on the hit FX series Justified. On its face, this would appear to be one…
Where there’s smoke
For the past several years this rag has been trying to keep a close eye on the Greater Detroit Resource Recovery Authority, which oversees disposal of the city’s municipal waste. Our initial impetus involved questions about the waste-to-energy incinerator, where GDRRA sends Detroit’s garbage to be burned. Along with health and environmental issues, activists seeking…
Might Rail?
Despite all the hype and hope for light rail along Detroit’s Woodward corridor, there are major questions of funding. And there is also the daunting legacy of decades of mass transit hopes that haven’t left the station. The current plans are moving forward for a light rail train, the first leg to be constructed largely…
Wal-Mart wins a round
Well the first shoe has dropped on a high-profile medical marijuana case and it made a big, ugly clunk to the ears of activists. U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker ruled in favor of Wal-Mart and threw out the reinstatement suit brought by Joseph Casias. Casias, a brain cancer patient who lives in Battle Creek, was…
Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde
Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde Fat Possum Thinking how contemporary indie pop is now mostly as dull and unremarkable as the millions of square miles of tract housing and fading mini-malls that gave it its rise, the second album from Chicago’s Smith Westerns is a full-on teen riot structure. It’s pure joy, as if…
Dr. Mashup
Last Nov. 15, Girl Talk — not so well known as 29-year-old Pittsburgh native and former Case Western Reserve University student Gregg Gillis — released All Day, his fifth album of mashup mixes, as a free download. Later that day, several websites reported that Girl Talk broke the Internet. That may not be totally true,…
Fat Chances
Since the dawn of cinema, fat has equaled funny, and a long line of rotund stars have thrown their weight around Hollywood, from Fatty Arbuckle, W.C Fields, Jackie Gleason, Dom DeLuise and John Candy, right through to today’s comedic chubsters, such as Kevin James and Jonah Hill, all using girth to generate giggles. Yet, in…
Spun
FRIGHT FROM THE BINS Sonny and Cher Live! (1971) Most people say Shoot Out the Lights! is the definitive disintegration-of-a-marriage album, but even Richard and Linda Thompson had enough decorum to keep "your mother is so fat" jokes out of it. "We throw a sheet over your mother and show movies," Cher snickers to the…
Sea change
Detroit Seafood Market 1435 Randolph St., Detroit 313-962-4180 The Detroit Seafood Market is formerly Frank Taylor’s Detroit Fish Market (and before that Intermezzo, and before that a warehouse), a lovely space with a menu of hits and misses. Live music on weekends and the Paradise Valley Lounge, with its "imperial bar" — where scores of…
One for the ladies
Q: I am 50 and a lesbian. I have had a pretty active sex life for the last 30 years, including a couple of long-term relationships. For the last three years, I’ve been with a woman I love very much. We have amazing sexual chemistry — by far the best I have experienced. For the…
Colin Stetson – New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges
Colin Stetson – New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges Constellation Maybe you think you know the language of the jazz solo saxophone that begins with Coleman Hawkins’ unaccompanied 3-minute "Picasso" from 1948, leaps quantum-style with Anthony Braxton’s double LP For Alto 20 years later, then explodes with the likes of Roscoe Mitchell, Steve Lacy, etc.…
Down by law
It’s not the same anymore for Ron Kosloff. Not since they came after him, ruined his livelihood, broke his spirit. "They don’t like me," he says, ominously. They are the Food and Drug Administration. And several years back, they paid him a series of unpleasant visits from which Kosloff still hasn’t recovered, financially or emotionally.…
The Snyder budget
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it, good and hard." —H.L. Mencken "Everybody likes change until it affects them." —Gov. Rick Snyder Our new governor presented his new budget to the Legislature last week, and it really was a bombshell. Bye-bye, film industry tax credits!…
Revolutions
On Sunday afternoon, as a winter storm began dumping snow on Detroit, about 25 people sat in chairs gathered in a circle on the second floor of a home on Detroit’s east side. The home also serves as the base of operations for the Boggs Center to Nurture Community, a nonprofit founded in 1995 to…
Trailer Trash
Super 8 Paramount, Opens 6-10-11 Fast-paced and secretive, the Super 8 trailer proffers intriguing questions, reveals nothing. So thank you, J.J. Abrams. All signs point to a sweet government alien cover-up, no doubt whetting appetites of Kennedy assassination theorists, History channel geeks, LOST heads, and a few others. Back in ’79 something went wrong at…
Food Stuff
Plan your plot — The Greening of Detroit’s Urban Garden Education Series is hosting a two-hour course in garden planning and design. Learn how to make your garden a year-round rainbow of colors, with a mix of shapes and textures making it an enjoyable place to spend time. Landscape designer Jeff Klein will teach such…
Letters to the Editor
Of Bobb and Bing I’m an educator with the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) and I read with interest the article, "Saving DPS" (Feb. 16), and must say, with all due respect to Robert Bobb, DPS’ emergency financial manager (EFM), it’s time for him to go. DPS was more than he could handle. He was cited…
Come together
There’s this massive party store on the corner of Conant and Caniff streets in Hamtramck. My friends and I call it the "rock ‘n’ roll party store" because they blare classic rock all day long, not just inside the store, but out in the parking lot through outdoor speakers. I guess the guys who own…
