Cultured tastes
Sandor Ellix Katz has 30 gallons of miso fermenting in his basement, raises goats for milk and cheese, and has been making sauerkraut pretty much nonstop for the past 12 years. He’s a ferment-aholic. Katz is the author of Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods, a fermentation cookbook (we use the…
Yes
British director, writer and producer Sally Potter turns Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet upside down and inside out. Romeo (Simon Abkarian) is a Lebanese surgeon living in exile in London, making ends meet as a cook in London. Juliet (Joan Allen) is an Irish-American caught in a lie of a marriage with husband Anthony (Sam Neill).…
Ten years after
Ten years ago this month, more than 2,000 newspaper workers went on strike against The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press. The short version of history is that they lost, badly. The newspapers, both owned by powerful national corporations, had replacement workers ready to roll. They had secretly arranged to pay the costs of…
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
Much has been made of how Tim Burton’s new version is more faithful to Roald Dahl’s original vision, but aside for superfluous flashbacks of Willy Wonka’s troubled childhood and the director’s twisted and flamboyant visual style, it’s not much different. As Willy Wonka, Johnny Depp concocts a bizarre amalgam of Michael Jackson and John Waters,…
Asked and answered
We issued the invites and they responded. Detroit’s incumbent mayor and the three leading challengers all came in. We prodded and probed. They responded with candor and slippery answers, with ease and icy stares, with bold visions and vague outlines. The purpose of these interviews with Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Councilwoman Sharon McPhail, state Sen. Hansen…
Wedding Crashers
This buddy comedy is a throwback to the days in movies when boys could be lecherous, girls could be brainless, booze flowed freely and we called it good fun. Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play two fast-talking divorce mediators who get their kicks by turning up uninvited to wedding parties and trying to seduce young…
Hansen Clarke
Hansen Clarke, 48, was first elected to Michigan’s Legislature in 1990 as a state representative. Clarke holds a BFA from Cornell University and a law degree from Georgetown University. He was elected to Michigan’s State Senate in 2002. Born on Detroit’s East Side, Clarke has held a variety of positions, ranging from taxi driver to…
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Don’t believe the hype: Artist Miranda July’s debut feature is cutesy and precious without being particularly meaningful. Borrowing themes from any one of a number of recent indie flicks, July piles on the quirks in the hopes that of creating something unique; but with the exception of John Hawke’s brilliant lead performance, the film is…
Freman Hendrix
Freman Hendrix, 54, has worked in government for 25 years, starting in an entry-level position in the city of Detroit’s Finance Department. Hendrix’s last job with the city was as former Mayor Dennis Archer’s deputy. Hendrix has also worked in the Wayne County government, as the director of community development and in legislative affairs. He…
Happy Endings
Writer-director Don Roos has a few surprises in his goodie bag — including a right on target performance Lisa Kudrow, and Tom Arnold engaging in a tender love scene with Maggie Gyllenhaal. Packed full of art house up-and-comers and a few Sundance darlings, the movie is set up like a second-rate Short Cuts. The stories…
Laughs and crafts
Behold Richard Jeni: the world’s most famous unknown comedian. Maybe you’ve heard his name before but you can’t place his face. He’s not flashy, lewd or loud. And he’s highly unlikely to disappear and turn up in a South African rehab center. Where you’ll find Jeni is on the stage. That’s where he’s been night…
Kwame Kilpatrick
Kwame Kilpatrick, 35, is a lifelong Detroiter. A graduate of Cass Technical High School, he holds a BS in political science and a teacher certification from Florida A & M University. He earned a law degree from the Detroit College of Law. Kilpatrick worked as a middle school teacher in the Detroit Public Schools before…
Night and Day
Thursday • 21 Ron English Jazz Ensemble MUSIC Guitarist Ron English was at the center of last year’s 40-year commemorations of the Detroit Artists Workshop. English wrote the original manifesto that helped launch the Cass Corridor scene of the 1960s, and contributed much to the sound track of the time. The “golden age of arts…
What Detroit needs and what Detroit can get
On the eve of the most important primary election in contemporary Detroit history, the desire is to have a candidate who meets every one of the city’s needs, who puts a capable and proud face on Detroit as the city finds its place in the new global economy, and who has the drive and innovative…
Media Blackout
MB41 is not for everyone! Side effects will include a weekly alliteration addiction and exposure to astute, acute, erudite, caustic wit! • Daphne Loves Derby — On The Strength Of All Convinced (Outlook) :: Tie your brother down! Freddie Mercury joins Wings! • Kraftwerk — Minimum-Maximum (EMI) :: What’s the speed limit on Information Highway…
Letters to the Editor
We salute you Re: “No more puppetry” (Metro Times, July 6), as a young black rocker myself, (I’ll be 21 in September), I just want to say you’re not the only cat who’s liked rap and heavy metal. Coincidentally, you remind me of a rapper who loved heavy metal and rock and made a career…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Nitrogen comprises 80 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere, but plants can’t access it in its gaseous form. That’s a problem, because plants need nitrogen to live. Luckily, there are five million lightning strikes on our planet every day. The fierce heat they generate compels nitrogen to blend with oxygen, thereby forming…
Comics
This Modern World
Dispelling myths about casual sex
Q: I have a question I don’t think you’ve ever addressed in your column. I’m a 32-year-old heterosexual female who was stricken with near-terminal cancer eight years ago. I’ve gone through every sort of treatment known to mankind (and had the gross misfortune of going through menopause at 27 years old). I was sort of…
Head Cheese
Dave Buick — Italy Records honcho, sometime Go man, Young Soul Rebel at heart and lucky hubby to sightly Fonda frontwoman Julie Benjamin — is, beginning this weekend, the new co-anchor of MT-approved radio show Radio Fever, the arch and droll local-“jams”-supporting broadcast heard Saturday nights on WKRK 97.1-FM. Yep, Buick’s on-air ass is now…
In The Flesh
“These people sitting down here in the front must really trust us that we’re not going to jump on them,” said Blanche frontman Dan Miller from the stage of Silverlake hipster venue Spaceland. His deadpan joke was that there’s very little jumping at a Blanche show, especially this one, which capped the Detroit quintet’s monthlong…
Born to Boogie
Born to Boogie — the Ringo Starr-directed, 1972 concert film of a newly electrified T. Rex — was meant to capture leader Marc Bolan’s Beatlemania-like grip on his young, impressionable audience. The film has been restored and expanded into a two-DVD, five-hour-plus collection. Among its features are two same-day shows at London’s Wembley arena, and…
Leg work
In a crowded studio on Wayne State University’s campus, 50 ridiculously flexible kids watch an instructor show a young dancer just how much higher her leg extension could be. The toned pre-teen scrunches her face in pain as her teacher guides her leg from the front to the back in a half-circle — a grand…
Jim White Presents Music from Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus follows songwriter Jim White on a journey through the heart and soul of the American South. White and his insights putter through the truck stops, tiny towns, jailhouses and juke joints in a 1970 Chevy with a giant Christ jutting from the trunk. Along the way the film evokes Flannery…
Art Bar
American Life in Poetry by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate. There are thousands upon thousands of poems about love, many of them using predictable words, predictable rhymes. Ho-hum. But here the Illinois poet Lisel Mueller talks about love in a totally fresh and new way, in terms of table salt. Love Like Salt It lies…
Boyz N Da Hood
If every member of Boyz N Da Hood could write as reflectively as group member Big Gee, this debut might survive its hype. Instead, it’s a collection of trunk-rattling beats featuring a cast of boastful Southern rap heavyweights. On “Happy Jamz,” Gee raps, “My sister had cancer on the clit … my uncle had cancer…
Perfect pitch
At first, words tumble slowly from the mouth of Aksel Schaufler, a guy who’s unknown here but is Europe’s most charismatic and engaging electronic pop musician. Asked what he’s doing at the moment, the man who calls himself Superpitcher says, “Sweating. Ha-ha-ha. It’s so hot, you can’t do anything but to try and chill. Ha-ha-ha.”…
Stolen innocence
A haunting and provocative portrait of sexual abuse that boasts a pair of powerful performances by Brady Corbett and Third Rock From The Sun’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Bravely treating molestation as an act that haunts its victims while shaping their sexual identity, the film follows two brothers who attempt to reconcile their traumatic past. Despite the…
