The unkindest cut of all
Last week a breathless world learned from the New York Times that Cindy Crawford has agreed to become the marketing symbol for Kellogg’s Special K. The nation’s newspaper of record seemed to think this a good thing. Cindy is not as into the heroin chic / anorexia look as other supermodels; she even has a…
All About My Mother
Well, another Pedro Almodovar film and another round of reviews remarking on how serious the director has become, how his early outrageousness has been supplanted by a budding maturity. But maturity is less the issue than a gradual fruition of Almodovar’s long-term project to reinvigorate his chosen genre of soap operaish melodrama. Almodovar’s most obvious…
Attention Span
NERD’S EYE VIEW Like something that just flew in from an old episode of "Star Trek," Eye-Trek video glasses offer a full-screen video view from – you guessed it – a pair of specs. The manufacturer, Olympus, says it’s equivalent to watching a 52-inch screen with high-quality integrated audio. The wireless specs offer private cinema…
Next Friday
Audiences could have waited another five years for a goofy, crap-smeared sequel to Friday (1995). Who knows, maybe by then Ice Cube could have persuaded Chris Tucker to make a return appearance to give Steve Carr’s Next Friday a much-needed dose of clever comedy. Because there sure ain’t a heck of a lot going on…
News Hits
Squaring off The Midland-based American Family Association of Michigan wants to stop Royal Oak officials from passing an ordinance protecting gays and lesbians from workplace and housing discrimination. This follows the City Commission’s unanimous decision to have a committee study whether Royal Oak needs such an ordinance. In a letter last month, AFA of Michigan…
The Hurricane
Denzel Washington certainly makes his bid for an Oscar with his winning portrayal of champion boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter in Norman Jewison’s The Hurricane. Washington is stunning and convincing in the ring, behind bars and, finally, in the courtroom. The Hurricane is one of those personal triumph movies that makes people stand up and cheer.…
Y2Krystal ball
Welcome to the year 2000. We’re not flying around in bubble cars or getting seven-course dinners from a pill, but at least our computers still work. And the Internet is still humming, too. With Y2K fears fading like old newsprint, 2000 is primed to be a major Web growth year. The only question: What on…
The Source
One suspects that the appeal of The Source, Chuck Workman’s entertaining if somewhat sketchy new documentary about the Beat Generation writers, will increase inversely with one’s familiarity with the subject matter. If you know this stuff, it plays like a greatest hits package. There’s Kerouac looking painfully uncomfortable on TV with Steve Allen, the cadaverous…
Pitch’d
THE HEIGHTS OF ’99 FROM THE INSIDE Shake – Frictional – Seventh City 1. Shake – "Tracks for my Father"/"Slipping In" – Seventh City ("Nothing like shameless self-promotion to make me feel special.") The rest, in no particular order: Moodymann – "Shades of Jae pt. II" – KDJ Kerry Chandler – "The World is Yours"…
Country girl blues
In case you weren’t paying attention, country rock is alive and well and living in Vancouver. That’s where Neko Case & Her Boyfriends reside. Our girl from Up North has been touring bars and roadsides all over the continent for several years now and her brand of high-lonesome corn pone is invigorated by a bracing,…
Food Stuff
FRESH READING In the summer of 1971, I worked for the United Farm Workers Detroit boycott office. One of my jobs was to go to Eastern Market every day at 5 a.m. and scout for scab grapes. If there were none, I could go home and sleep. Otherwise, we would organize picket lines. Saturday morning…
Easy listening, really
It’s a sad indication of our cultural sophistication that we’re on the cusp of the 21st century, yet we view much of the music of the 20th with alarm, if not downright fright. Sure, some of the music is difficult and unsettling, but then, so was the society in which it was composed. Still, much…
Fast fun
If you’re the type who leaves the Auto Show with a head full of unfulfilled driving fantasies, a bagful of promotional pamphlets and trinkets, and a fairly empty wallet, perhaps you should check out the latest in car-related video games. Forget about loans and insurance. These games bring open roads and luxury vehicles right into…
Hard-luck stories
Call it "rockabilly" or "honky-tonk," just don’t call it "alt-country." Social Distortion’s Mike Ness has been digging into his working-class musical heritage since SD’s punk days. Yet, it was on his solo debut last year, Cheating at Solitaire, that he came out of the roots-rock closet, paying homage to both Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash…
Predictably vague
The shoreline of Lake Michigan did not collapse in an earthquake. The Great Lakes State did not team up with its northern neighbors to secede from the union. Marijuana did not replace petroleum as the nation’s chief source of energy, and a terrorist blast did not obliterate the Statute of Liberty’s arms. The psychics were…
New-new romantics
New-new romantics British labels such as Jeepster (Belle and Sebastian) and Jetset (Mogwai) are a quintessential part of the international pop underground’s questioning of post-Nirvana musical intentions – though the consistency of their output is still a matter of debate. Two new bands, Tram and Sister Sonny, offer two arguments as to the strengths and…
I’m Y2OK, you’re Y2OK
Now that the time of reckoning has come and gone, we can all get on with our lives—much like we were doing before. But wasn’t it peculiar, when you think back on it, how much a non-problem the Y2K bug actually turned out to be? You could see that as early as the morning of…
Under the underground
Sometimes it really pays to read the footnotes. Hand drummer, poet, calligrapher, visionary and the original drummer of the Velvet Underground: Angus MacLise, the most mythic footnote in the VU story, has long deserved to have his own story told and heard. It was MacLise, after all, who had the deepest roots in the avant-garde…
Big business as usual
Chris Jaszczak says that he couldn’t be more pleased with the new development in downtown Detroit. He only wishes that the powers that be would include him in their plans rather than trying to buy him out and send him on his way. In 1987, Jaszczak founded 1515 Broadway, a small award-winning theater between John…
Vienna calling
Falco (Johann Hoelzel) synthesized the best of the West for the Eastern Bloc and somehow managed to strike a chord all the way back across the Atlantic. Love ‘im or hate ‘im, his greatest near-miss (After The Fire’s English version of) "Der Kommissar," and his #1 hit "Rock Me Amadeus" are, like, totally ‘80s. Yet…
Feeling the heat
When Ford Motor Co. announced last month that it was withdrawing from the Global Climate Coalition, Kevin Sweeney could barely contain his joy. As chairman of the national environmental group Ozone Action, he said the auto company had placed an exclamation point on what critics have been saying for years: The coalition is a group…
Welcome to the Swedish jungle
What is it about the older generation’s belief that because they did it first, they did it better? The late ‘80s brought us the badass, bluesy, now familiar hard rock of Hollywood’s Guns N’ Roses. The late ‘90s return the favor with the badderass sound of Sweden’s Hellacopters. Lots of dirty, screaming guitar, angst-ridden vocals…
Future perfect
We’re all set. We’ve got an old Ouija board, a deck of well-incensed tarot cards, a set of dice that the Lizard of Fun swiped from a casino, and a shiny new Magic 8 Ball. It’s time to make predictions. "Say," says the Lizard, shaking the Magic 8 Ball. "What if we predicted for the…
Funktelligence
It’s all about the fusion: the melding of music flavors, the blending of cultures, the meeting and assimilation of, to paraphrase A Tribe Called Quest, beats, rhymes and lives. What is it? Why, Funktelligence, the Ann Arbor-based septet that’s been causing heads to bob and asses to shake for the past two years with its…
Loose Lips
LUSH LECHERS Not having been to Lush in Hamtramck since the swanky club was in vogue, I stopped by Friday night for some dancin’, drinkin’ and reminiscin’. Packs of gorgeous young ladies in skintight clothing stumbled about everywhere, reminding me of the good ol’ days when puking at the end of the night signified a…
Overlooked and underplayed
CD sleepers of 1999….
Stuffed naan, luscious lassi
Star of India’s small space (14 tables and booths) is attractive and the service is fine. The decor is tasteful, and the Mango Lassie is sublime. However, other than a few key dishes (whole sautéed fish, selections that use green coriander, red-brown tamarind and bright red chutney sauces), the food is fairly average.
Pardon our emissions
The Anti-Auto Show asks, “Are we having any doubts yet?”…
Moods for Moderns
Yup, they pay homage to Mr. Costello in their name and in their music. But Moods For Moderns make excursions into the enitre landscape of that uniquely catchy, oddly-marginalized world known as Power Pop (as practiced by the descendents of the Beatles who trace a not-so-direct lineage from the Fab Four through Badfinger to modern…
Dire strait
Canadian Stan Douglas shows us a city on its last legs….
Outlaw barbecue
Gustatory metaphors abound in the writings of Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha (1938-81). Rocha coined the term "digestive cinema" for "films about rich people with pretty houses riding in luxury automobiles; cheerful, fast-paced, empty films with purely industrial objectives." Then there are the films which "grind everything down to its basic ingredients, blend in the ideology…
