How the media choose a president
Were you startled that after two small states had “voted” — one in a primary, one via a more restrictive caucus system — that the politicians and the media were declaring the Democratic nomination all but sewn up? Did you resent the fact that the race might be over before Michigan, and the rest of…
Boy in Da Corner
Buck Rogers is spoiling it for Dizzee Rascal’s debut album, Boy in Da Corner. You would have to remember one of television’s worst (or best) shows to understand the point being made here. See, when Gil Gerard had that TV show, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, there was one episode where he went to…
Ron Asheton: "I have so much fun doing it."
The year 2003 was a mighty fine one for Ron Asheton. The international success of the Stooges’ reunion shows — including the chin-dropping DTE homecoming show last August — has lifted the guitarist to a level of celebrity he hasn’t known in decades. The recent success has even allowed Asheton to purchase a home on…
French perfection
Triplettes is a perfectly executed animated feature that will leave viewers awestruck. Though made in France, there is no need for subtitles, just like the great silent films of old. Except that it’s not “silent” at all. Sound propels this story of a grandmother who trains her grandson to be a bicycle racer. He is…
History by bus
On this frosty day, Stewart McMillin stands animated and oblivious to the cold, apparently warmed by his own unbridled enthusiasm. He’s the subject of a photo shoot at Elmwood Cemetery, but he’s the one with suggestions: This angle would capture old Bloody Run Creek; that angle would get Martin Luther King Jr. High School. You’d…
La Commune (Paris, 1871) Part One
This compelling docudrama about the Paris Commune was shot on digital video for French television. La Commune keeps the viewer hooked with an engrossing sense of immediacy. Shot entirely in an abandoned factory using more than 200 mostly non-professional actors, the film’s depiction of the rise and fall of the Commune includes risky directorial conceits,…
Super sluts
It gets worse every year. I’m talking about the Super Bowl in general, and the vaunted halftime show in particular. Each year, the Super Bowl makes me more embarrassed for American culture. It’s humiliating. It stands for nothing I can be proud of, nothing I find appealing about my country. It makes me wonder why…
The Big Bounce
Any Hollywood director with a modicum of skill should be able to make a decent movie from an Elmore Leonard novel, so don’t blame Mr. Leonard for The Big Bounce, a dull travel film. Assign 95 percent of the blame to director George Armitage, screenwriter Sebastian Gutierrez. Let’s get this straight: Elmore Leonard’s intricate plots…
Jericho now!
The revolution was already an hour behind schedule by the time Harry Belafonte took to the stage Saturday at Detroit’s Martin Luther King Jr. High School. The peripatetic fund-raiser and activist (and entertainer of note) made a direct, biblical appeal to the citizens before him: “Joshua has been called. Jericho lies before us. The trumpets…
The Butterfly Effect
The Butterfly Effect is an untiring, unrelenting 113 minutes of bombastic, mind-numbing crapola. The film wantonly and irresponsibly exploits such serious material as the murder and sexual molestation of children, animal cruelty, sadism, lung cancer, crack addiction, prostitution, mental illness, prison rape, single motherhood, etc. Not one of the horrors on display in The Butterfly…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Writing in The Week magazine, Editor in Chief Bill Falk reminisced about how he once churned out three opinion columns a week for newspapers. "The truth is," he said, "there were many weeks in which I didn’t have three fresh opinions of any value." These days, he added, he couldn’t handle…
Last Dems standing
Will there be any viable Democratic presidential candidates other than Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry remaining by the time Michigan Dems caucus this Saturday? We ask this question just prior to going to press Monday evening, not knowing how the seven-state showdown on Tuesday has panned out. News Hits’ own highly unscientific survey at a Saturday…
You Got Served
From 1984’s Breakin’ and Beat Street to 1985’s Krush Groove and 1989’s Do the Right Thing, hip-hop culture’s symbolism and defiant themes clearly resonate with audiences. Twenty years after the inception of the hip-hop movie, we get the wholly unoriginal concept of You Got Served, a movie with a plot so thin it’s anorexic, following…
Cracked wheat
When faced with the choice of whether to graduate from the school of indie rock, it didn’t take Taunton, Mass.’ Wheat much thought. In fact, according to guitarist Ricky Brennan, signing to a major label was “the best and really the only opportunity that presented itself.” Typically these swim-ups can be sticky affairs and, despite…
Leni Sinclair: Rock photography’s overlooked grand matriarch
Let’s call it like it lies: There are few images in rock ’n’ roll as iconic as Leni Sinclair’s seminal MC5 photographs. And, as they say, half of life is just showing up. During the revolutionary-unto-legendary ’60s music and culture explosion in Detroit, Leni Sinclair showed up. And she brought her camera with her. In…
N&D Center
6-7 FRI-SAT • THEATER Seussical, the Musical — It bombed on Broadway, but it’s been revamped and resuscitated into a tour-circuit success for the Cat in the Hat, Horton the Elephant, Mayzie LaBird, Gertrude McFuzz and a whole bunch of Whos. Created by the Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, the lyricist-composer team behind Once on…
Ramshackle glories
If you remove the jarring aural sensation of punk rock and are left with, say, John Holmstrom’s Ramones caricatures, Leni Sinclair’s MC5 photographs or Bob Gruen’s shots of Iggy’s bulldozing virility, you can still somehow hear the music, or at least imagine how it would sound. So much about rock ’n’ roll in the ’70s…
Asking about masking
Q: My boyfriend of four years enjoys wearing women’s clothing and acting like a submissive woman when we have sex. Nothing gets him off more. We have only just started exploring his fetish in the past year because he has been ashamed of it all his life. I have encouraged him so far and now…
Letters to the Editor
Sympathy for the bedeviled After reading the article about Antoine Morris and Vidale McDowell (“Confessions & recantations,” Metro Times, Jan. 21) I can’t seem to shake it out of my mind. It’s the same feeling I get when I have a nightmare, and for the entire day pieces of it come back to haunt me.…
Bang the drum
He says it was like a flickering light, except that as he slowly lost his eyesight, eventually the light stopped flickering back on. About three years after he noticed the darkness creeping into his periphery from type-2 diabetes, his sight was gone completely; and the world only existed in shadows. “Things started coming down on…
Fall breaks & winter leaves
Last year, Wilco fans were treated to a fascinating — if sometimes disheartening — documentary called I Am Trying to Break your Heart that follows the band at a critical juncture, recording a make-or-break album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The black-and-white film captures the conflicts between a band surging with ambition and Reprise, a record company…
Blame Canada!
Gone are the days of local electronic music’s blind optimism — that certain feeling that Detroit circa 1994 embodied more than many of us would like to admit to today’s high school kids. It’s a good thing too, because, around this time ten years ago, things looked pretty embarrassing. There’s no shortage of ridiculous “What…
John Holmstrom: Floating in a bottle of formaldehyde
Ever since R. F. Outcault’s irreverent creation, The Yellow Kid, first appeared as an incidental character in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World on Feb. 16, 1896, comic art in America has seen an enriching array of artists whose unique personal visions have transformed popular culture. For over a century, every era has had its own…
Gallery adieux
Love gone wrong, economics and booze each played a role in turning the Detroit arts scene a bit on its head. Last week, Phaedra Robinson announced her departure as director of the detroitcontemporary, while Mitch Cope announced he’s left his spot as Tangent Gallery director. Tangent will continue to operate without a director, while the…
War bop & pop
Twyla Tharp, choreographer of more than 125 dances for stage and screen (including 1981’s collaboration with David Byrne on The Catherine Wheel and director Milos Forman on the film version of Hair in 1978) has brought her Tony-award-winning musical Movin’ Out to Detroit. Her muscular, acrobatic, torso-twirlin’ prances have sent dancers flying through an amazing…
The Unborn Muse of Shadows
The one-page introduction to Ron Allen’s recent collection of poems, The Unborn Muse of Shadows, categorizes his work as “sketches of language, images and Buddhist reflection” and closes with a dedication to love. “Love is the whole/the rudder of the will … the healer … the touch of resolve” and “the filling air.” The ambling…
Ant’s bizarre Oz
Maybe I just didn’t get it. That’s the only conclusion I can come to after watching Planet Ant’s bizarre, stylized production of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. The rest of the audience seemed to understand. They were laughing at the funny parts, I guess. But there I sat, in the last of two…
Zest grand
Specializing in breakfast and lunch for white-collar workers who toil in the office buildings along W. Grand Blvd., this neat little place feels like a trendy little art gallery, despite the disposable silverware. The menu is extensive enough to provide variety even if you’re a regular. Fried chicken wings with waffles, salmon filet on top…
Severed from the mainstream
On a slushy January evening, dirty snow weighs down the empty shell of Detroit’s Eastern Market. Vanished are the wistful-yet-rotten wafts of fruit-gone-bad and the barking of bartering farmers. Beyond an unassuming gray warehouse door, a different kind of life pulses. Inside the new Severance gallery, several people work, eat, create and live — at…
Enchanté
For the past decade or so, Margaret Doll Rod has made a name for herself as one-third of Detroit’s notorious Demolition Doll Rods, a band that’s survived on a rock, roll and blues pedigree that’s equal parts flash and trash, and as pure as the Gories that spawned them. Without shame, the Doll Rods have…
Land bank statement
The Michigan Legislature’s recent passage of six land bank bills has some Detroit community leaders rejoicing. “Hallelujiah, hallelujiah, hallelujiah!” exclaims John George, executive director of the Motor City Blight Busters. The new laws, enacted last month, are expected to vastly improve how Detroit manages its massive inventory of abandoned and vacant property. “We have long…
Momentum
Berliner Robert Henke, who performs under the name Monolake, is one versatile man-machine. As a composer/producer, he has created a niche as perhaps the most idiosyncratic of the German minimalists who came of age after the premature burial of techno in the mid-’90s. An academic geek who’s done sonic-art installations for galleries in Canada and…
