ART-DAMAGED
Untitled Adam Goldberg, Marley Shelton, Vinnie Jones. Directed; by Johnathan Parker Rated: R Run Time: 96 Grade B+ Untitled is a diamond-sharp and unsparing satire of pompous, New York gallery culture, so sharp in fact, it’s in constant danger of slicing clean through itself, and exposing the crude wire frame beneath its own artful patina.…
PROTESTERS BLAST COUNTY, SCHOOLS ON CUTS
Outside the Guardian Building in downtown Detroit on Thursday, a charged-up crowd of at least 150 pickets had no shortage of targets for its ire: Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano and Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb. “Hey hey, ho ho, _____ [fill in one of the above] has…
Metro Retro
22 years ago in Metro Times: Almost the entire week’s paper was devoted to talking about "Detroit’s Strategic Plan." City council members, professors from three different Michigan colleges, a pastor and several journalists are all asked for their take on the city’s $750,000 plan to rejuvenate Detroit, all discussing problems that continue to plague the…
A Town Called Panic
To recount the plot would be a waste of time since there really isn’t one. Suffice to say it concerns the endless (and increasingly outlandish) this-then-that mishaps of three housemates: Cowboy, Indian and Horse. They live in the countryside and are neighbors with a hot-tempered farmer, his long-suffering wife and a menagerie of animals. There’s…
Sonic!
The word "duende," often used by flamenco musicians, describes that soulful time when, after hours of jamming, the music becomes less together — more instinctive and loose. It’s the joy to be found in formlessness. A duende is also a Latin-American goblin or elf. When considering these two definitions, Duende!, Detroit’s own experimental Americana band,…
When in Rome
The pride of Huntington Woods, Kristen Bell, stars as Beth, an uppity movie New York gal so focused on her career that she’s doomed to be a klutzy social loser unable to keep a man for long. After getting dumped, Beth jets off to magical Rome for her kid sister’s wedding, though she thinks it’s…
Written on the mind and the body
Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men by John A. Rich Johns Hopkins University Press, $24.95, 232 pp. Tayvon pulls his shirt back down after showing me the scar that extends below his waistband to his groin and up to his sternum. About an inch wide, raised, milky…
Modern Chinese secret
Gim Ling has served dine-in and carryout at the same St. Clair Shores strip mall location for decades. Only relatively recently has it been transformed into a “Modern Asian restaurant.” In this case, the term “modern” mostly serves as a stand-in for “better.” New diners, as well as those with memories of a Gim Ling…
The Chase comes to an end
Two weeks ago we looked at four metro-Detroit organizations competing for a cool million, thanks to an innovative, Facebook-fueled grant giveaway ("Chasing the buck," Jan. 13). Facebook votes propelled Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit, Friendship Circle and Sikhcess, both from West Bloomfield, and the Canton-based charity Hand by Hand into the top 100. Each won…
Phantom Vibrations
First time Filmmaker Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman shows promise, but also stumbles into obvious traps they teach you to avoid in film school, including the dreaded alarm clock and toothbrush sequence, the inability to frame a two-shot, a repetitive synthesizer score and stilted line readings. The story follows a fuzzy, drugged-out day in the life of a…
Poems, prayers and promises
Her grandfather was a slave. So was her grandmother, who had white features she inherited from the man who’d raped her mother. When Bettie Birch was growing up in Jim Crow Mississippi, these were the kinds of stories the family would tell the children. For her, as it was for many others, black history wasn’t…
Woo, doggie …
Trying to blend French class warfare issues with John Woo-style kinetics, both Ultimatum and its predecessor feature a pair of humorless leads and some truly incredible action sequences. Parkour founder David Belle and martial arts stuntman Cyril Raffaelli team up again to fight evil French bureaucrats with a secret plan to level the dystopian, multi-ethnic…
Jesus, it’s cold
When faced with Michigan’s bitter winter nights, you basically have two choices — down a bottle of Wild Turkey and clutch its empty husk to your chest while curled up in a snow drift, or head somewhere warm where you can rock with good bands and good beer. On a recent Thursday, the Wonder Twins…
Rip this joint
While they’ve been critically lauded and adored by their cult-ish fan base for the majority of the last decade, the Deadstring Brothers had been treading water for some time now. An early spell with the ill-fated Times Beach Records didn’t help, and while their 2003 self-titled debut album on that label made some waves on…
Food Stuff
Tuscan son — At 6:30 p.m. Feb. 11, winemaker Michele Scienza, from the Podere Guado al Melo estate in Italy, will host a winemaker’s dinner at Modern Food & Spirits. The small, 42-acre vineyard is in a hilly, stream-crossed part of Tuscany, under grape cultivation for centuries. Have a taste at 1535 Cass Lake Rd.,…
Local Boys
Back in the ’80s, the Uptown Horns — which included former Michigander Crispin Cioe — first became a sensation in New York City. Primarily a rock ‘n’ roll brass section, the group, over the years, went on to play with everyone from James Brown, Ray Charles and B.B. King to Tom Waits, Lou Reed, R.E.M.…
Two cheers for Granholm
Last week Gov. Jennifer Granholm actually did blow me away for the first time since she took office more than seven years ago. What’s more, she did so in a positive way — twice. First, she came out strongly in favor of holding a convention to rewrite Michigan’s now-broken Constitution. More than a year ago,…
No Boundaries
As much as popular music and various music scenes seem to be so genre-specific in modern times — so do the many genres often blend, bleed and blur. Detroit’s Fifth Way, a hard rockin’ quintet featuring Michiganders from locales as distant and exotic as Essexville and Port Huron, is a classic case in point. Self-described…
Let us speak prankly
You know how you can tell the Age of Reagan has ended? Because at his State of the Union address, Barack Obama didn’t do any of those ordinary-folks-who-make-a-difference shout-outs to the gallery, as every POTUS (that is, Populist of the United States) has since the Gipper’s first SOTU in 1982. But if Obama had called…
Letters to the Editor
Strike a pose I appalud Mr. Gabriel for wishing to practice his tai chi in public spaces. This gentle and useful art is practiced around the globe by countless millions of people and has health benefits too numerous to mention here. Whatever the reasons the security guards had for stopping him, it’s a sad statement…
Motor City Cribs
It seems fitting that the roar from the Hounds Below should be a stone’s throw from Ferndale’s Alcoholics for Christ meetings. The band is, you’ll note, Von Bondies’ frontman Jason Stollsteimer’s new band, and they rehearse in the attic of the bungalow he just moved into a couple of months ago. Still, it’s far enough…
Smashing ACORN
You haven’t seen Carrie Guzman on the television shows hosted by archconservatives Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck. Her name hasn’t appeared on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal. And she hasn’t shown up in any surreptitiously videotaped sting operations conducted by youthful right-wing zealots. In fact, Guzman represents a face of the group…
Elder abuse alert
Whether they’re suffering as relatives pilfer money from their Social Security checks or experiencing outright physical beatings, Mary Cay Sengstock knows the state could do more to protect its elderly citizens from abuse and neglect. The state even said so, says Sengstock, a Wayne State University sociology professor, when it produced the 2006 report by…
Night and Day
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 4 Earl Lloyd Reception BASKETBALL JONES In 1950, the four-year-old National Basketball League saw the first of its teams drop the bar on African American players. Of the season’s three integrating pioneers, Earl Lloyd of the Washington Capitols gets a special place in history as the first baller to actually go into action.…
Cheat Code
Tony Hawk: Ride Activision Xbox 360, PS3, Wii For much of the late ’90s into the early ’00s, the Tony Hawk: Pro Skater series was pretty much the only skateboard videogame ticket in town. Soon EA’s Skate series gained ground and the Hawk franchise needed a jump start. Tony Hawk: Ride gets you off the…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Wheeeed!
Seeing as how the hale and hearty crew here at News Hits hasn’t yet found a way to qualify for a state-issued medical marijuana card, we made a beeline for the Marriott Hotel bar in Ypsilanti and ordered ourselves two or three (or was that four?) white Russians in honor of Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski…
West of Wyoming
Al-Ajami 14633 W. Warren, Dearborn; 313-846-9330; $: Al-Ajami is comparable to a slew of other Middle Eastern restaurants in the area, but is much less expensive than most of them. Chef and co-owner Stephan Ajami offers 15 seafood dishes. Also good are the chicken lemon, which combines grilled chicken and pilaf with vegetables doused in…
Mel-adjusted
Gibson plays Tommy Craven, a vet Boston detective, which, by implication, makes him a badass you don’t want to mess with. He’s also a doting dad who morphs into a remorseless avenging angel when his scientist daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) is gunned down beside him on his front porch. His fellow cops think the bullets…
’80S REUNION FEVER…
Two bands that made quite a splash on the local scene in the ’80s are planning reunion shows over the next two weekends. First, the Hysteric Narcotics — a band at the forefront of the first Detroit garage rock revival (with some pyschedelia thrown in for good measure) — will be presenting a reunion show…
