Cover Story
A highway runs through it
Imagine: It’s four in the afternoon and you’re traveling eastbound on the Edsel Ford Freeway, commonly known as Interstate 94, from Dearborn to Mount Clemens after a long day at the office. You’re eager to get home and sit down at the kitchen table for a nice dinner. But, as you approach the Interstate 75…
City Slang: New book celebrates Detroit musicians and more
Detroit native photographer Jenny Risher has a book coming out, Heart Soul Detroit featuring portraits of and interviews with fascinating characters from the area, including many local musicians. Included in the book are Eminem, Martha Reeves, Smokey Robinson, Jack White, Don Was and Berry Gordy. According to the press release, “Through intimate and compelling color…
City Slang: Global Fridays from February
The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn will be hosting Global Fridays from February 8. First up will be the Michigan premier of Italian traditional music and dance band Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino. March 22 will see finger-style acoustic guitarist Glenn Jones’ first area show in five years. They say, “The season lineup features the traditional…
City Slang: Dirty Show opens February 8
The 14th Dirty Show will kick off on February 8, as ever at Bert’s Warehouse in Detroit. The exhibition will feature guest artist Gregory De La Haba, and work from, Olivia De Berardinis, Curator, Lenora Claire and Stage Door Johnnies and hundreds of Provocative Artists. There are usually all sorts of performance artists, musos and…
City Slang: Bill Grogan’s Goat at the Lager House
There probably isn’t such a thing as a bad time to see Bill Grogan’s Goat, but on a freezing January Thursday night in Corktown, at PJ’s Lager House, they’re just about perfect. It’s tough to point out exactly why. Maybe it’s because we know that Ireland and Scotland are far from the warmest of places…
Review: The Last Stand
The Last Stand D+ Having shown himself to be a typical politician and failure as a family man, Arnold Schwarzenegger returns to what made him a box office titan: making noisy, dumb, tongue-in-cheek fascistic shoot-’em-ups that appeal to the monster truck and demolition derby lover inside all of us. Yet even by the low standards…
Review: Mama
Mama C If you kick your cinema spookfest off with a title card that reads “once upon a time,” you’d better deliver the fairy tale goods. Executive producer Guillermo del Toro’s own work (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy) has mixed horror and fable to good effect, providing scares while enriching his fantasies with political subtext. Unfortunately, first-time…
Review: Luv
Luv C+ Heartfelt banality. Though co-writer and director Sheldon Candis and co-writer Justin Wilson’s Luv follows a narrative path well-worn by all the Hollywood ex-cons who have planned to go straight only to get sucked back into their bad ’ol ways, this low-budget crime drama scores a few points for its craft and the sincerity…
Review: Broken City
Broken City C Naming a movie can be a complex act of juggling marketing and artistic concerns in an attempt to stand out, but one thing a title probably shouldn’t do is give eager film critics so much ammunition. Broken City does in fact evoke visions of a shadowy, floundering, morally ruined metropolis, but it…
City Slang: Five years in Detroit
January 17 is a very special day in my year. It is exactly five years ago today that I jumped on a plane in London, nearly all of my belongings packed away in storage, and I flew to the promised land of Detroit. I didn’t have a job secured, I really didn’t know what the…
WSPR’s Circulates a new MichMusic Mindset
Perhaps a traditional approach to public relations, (i.e. one client, one band, one catchy message,) is just too narrow for such an active scene as Detroit. Workspace PR (WSPR), bolstered by a quartet current/former musicians who’ve paid their dues “on the scene” and on tours, hope to cast a wide net of awareness, promoting the…
Magnum OPUS
Magnum OPUS aka Marcus Morgan may yet become the Guinness World Record holder for “Longest Freestyle Rap” – honoring his sustaining for 13 hours, 30 minutes and 23 seconds…late last year. The case workers for Guinness are still reviewing the tapes, but we can expect an official announcement soon. It’s (just about) official now: Michigan’s music…
City Slang: Jessica Hernandez with the Growlers
The awesome Jessica Hernandez & the Deltas, the former Metro Times cover star, will play the Magic Stick Lounge on Wednesday, January 30, with the Growlers. According to the Majestic website, “The Growlers are a rock and pop group formed in Long Beach, California in 2006 who are yet to became one of the most…
Review: Sister
Sister B+ If the stark neorealism of the Dardenne Brothers (The Kid With a Bike, Lorna’s Silence) is your cup of tea, then you may find French-born director and co-screenwriter Ursula Meier’s foray into the raw and uncomfortable agony of poverty, lost youth and parental abandonment a worthy companion piece. Twelve-year-old Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein)…
Review: Rust and Bone
Rust and Bone B- Intimate and yet patently ludicrous, Rust and Bone is a film about the erosion of the spirit as well as the flesh, though the first thing to go may be the viewer’s patience. Led by a central character with all the emotional flexibility of a brick, this is the story of…
Noble Pig Café
Noble Pig Café 19222 Mack Ave., Grosse Pointe Farms 313-640-4115 noblepigcafe.com Restaurant accessible, restroom under construction Entrées: $12-$16; most sandwiches: $8.75; pizza: $11-$14 Open 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday. I too have often thought of the pig as noble; Brandon and Parinda Kahlich’s well-named new barbecue joint strikes the right note of respect…
Food Stuff
Hearts and Flowers – With Valentine’s Day a month out, we wanted to remind our readers that you don’t need to buy some mass-produced box of chocolates. There are plenty of hardworking chocolatiers in town, all ready to wrap up that big day with a bow, or just to work on your own sweet tooth.…
East meets West
$=$5-$10; $$=$10-$25; $$$=$25-$50; $$$$=$50+ Lotus Pond 28747 Hoover Rd., Warren; 586-751-4020; $$: When it comes to Chinese for our Metro Times readers in Macomb County, they chose Lotus Pond, naming it as an exceptional choice for classic American-friendly fare. What’s more, given the restaurant’s generous portions, you’ll have plenty of leftovers to warm up the…
Detroit’s vision and revision
After the “new vision” for Detroit’s future was unveiled amid much fanfare last week, we gave a call to Dan Pitera, one of the many people involved in the two-year-long effort to create what’s been dubbed the “Detroit Future City” plan. Wait. As the reporters invited to an in-depth briefing about the project before its…
Last chance for Snyder
OK, eternal optimists. Is Gov. Rick Snyder in any way a principled, good-government moderate, or is he just a slightly different and tieless version of a partisan hack GOP politician? Stop laughing. Remember that old rule about being innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, etc. I admit the evidence isn’t encouraging for the…
Seeds of change
Peeling back the layersof cannabis prohibition is like playing a game of three-card Monte. Now you see it, now you don’t. That seems to be the case with decriminalization efforts that won handily in five Michigan cities in November and energized activists. Now local officials are throwing up roadblocks along the route to instituting change.…
Punk N’ Disorderly
There was a time,before the Internet and Auto-Tune, when punk bands had to do everything themselves minus the ability to hide all of their many flaws. Rather than drown under the pressure, they reveled in it. Essentially, that DIY, “wear your shortcomings on your chest” attitude was punk. It didn’t become a Vivienne Westwood-inspired uniform…
Presents for V.D.
Q: My name is Nancy, and I’m 19. My boyfriend’s name is Carl, we have been together for almost a year — our anniversary is actually Feb. 14! — and we have great sex frequently! I want to do something sexy for us on our anniversary. I plan on being with Carl for years to…
Presents for V.D.
Q: My name is Nancy, and I’m 19. My boyfriend’s name is Carl, we have been together for almost a year — our anniversary is actually Feb. 14! — and we have great sex frequently! I want to do something sexy for us on our anniversary. I plan on being with Carl for years to…
City Slang: Weekly music reviews roundup
Remember – if you send it, it will get reviewed. That’s the City Slang promise. It doesn’t matter what genre the music is – as long as it has a Metro Detroit connection, it’ll get in. Preferably, we’d like to concentrate on new releases but, while we’re getting warmed up here, feel free to send…
