Kwame’s fiefdom
Controversy brews over proposed Detroit Land Bank Authority.
Anarchy in the soul
What if you refuse to believe in hell because you’re already living in the worst hell of all, adolescence in Catholic school? British director Peter Care’s feature debut captures that impossible time when idealism clashes with reality and religion, mixing the teenage point of view with the intensities of adulthood.
Indictment trifecta
Executives from MCA Financial Corp. indicted for fraud.
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
Here’s a movie that’s drenched in mood and has a tricky, multiple-story narrative structure that occasionally overlaps itself like a Möbius strip. It’s a clever device that lends an air of mystery and depth to the stories it tells — with John Turturro and Matthew McConaughey.
Uniform storm
Detroit Police Officers Association president baffled by nonunion uniforms.
The Bourne Identity
In lesser hands, this film could have been just another summer potboiler. But director Doug Liman (Go) distills rather than merely boils down Robert Ludlum’s story; Matt Damon and company keep things steadfastly real, even as thrilling chases and battles test the suspension of disbelief.
Sweet smell of decay
A white-hot destiny for this week’s dilapidated structure.
Windtalkers
With a fair amount of lively war porn, John Woo’s film isn’t the story of the military’s World War II use of Navajo Marines as purveyors of a code based on their native tongue, one too complex for the Japanese to figure out. Rather, it’s an old-fashioned B movie in which a compromised hero finds…
From Five to one
Ben Folds grows older but not up….
Cherish
The second film written and directed by Finn Taylor (Dream with the Fishes) starts promisingly, with interesting camera work and casting choices. But there’s just not enough of sleazy, Vegas-cool Jason Priestly, an actor gushing with talent, versatility and a great comedic sense.
Multiple voicings
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison is a mosaic of intensities — a musician with passionate interests in jazz, poetry, American theater songwriters from George Gershwin to Jerome Kern, and baroque masters from Monteverdi and Schütz to Bach — that make their presence felt in his own richly moving music. "For a while, in high school…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Here are the three most important questions for you to carry around with you in the coming weeks: 1) What are you always afraid you’re going to run out of? 2) What if it’s true that being afraid the good stuff will run out is the factor most likely to make…
Offstage, Onstage: Inside the Stratford Festival
Shakespeare’s Hamlet might comment that something is not rotten, but lacking in the National Film Board of Canada’s documentary of the Stratford Festival of Canada. In a brief 83 minutes, director John N. Smith’s documentary is like a sampler of chocolates.
Swagtown
Post-DEMF reviews, previews and breakthroughs….
Too young for sex?
Q: Thank you for raising such an important issue as the generational differences in viewing fellatio on your Sexuality Forum Web site. Even Oprah Winfrey had two shows on the topic of oral sex and young girls. I am a mother of an 11-year-old girl. I am somewhat confused about this issue. On the one…
Kompletely Krazy
A renowned philosopher once said, “Love Is a Battlefield.” That thinker was Pat Benatar, whose other treatise on romance, “Hit Me with Your Best Shot,” leads scholars to believe that her theories were heavily informed by the work of cartoonist George Herriman, whose fictional creation, Krazy Kat, also confuses violence with amor. Herriman’s comic strip,…
Hello Dali, meet Magritte
Cirque Du Soleil’s new Quidam is big-top surrealism….
But enough about you …
Q: Since your loyal readers tell you so much about ourselves and our sex lives, it would only be fair if you told us more about yourself and your sex life. What do you like in bed? What turns you on? What do you look like? —Savage Lust A: I don’t usually entertain “personal” questions,…
Why we aren’t at war
One John Militello, clearly one of my more fervent supporters, writes to me that “my ultra-left-winger view … does not take into account that we are at war, a war different than any other in our history.” And he adds, almost nonchalantly, “Is it going to be a perpetual war? Are we going to lose…
Web castes
Small Internet radio stations fear pay-to-play rule….
Letters to the Editor
Homeland terror Jack Lessenberry’s column, "Homeland Insecurity" (Metro Times, June 12-18), is so one-sided it should make your readers quake in their Doc Martens. We are at war, a war that is different than any other in our history. Is it going to be a perpetual war? Are we going to lose our civil liberties?…
You lookin’ at me?
Paranoia runs deep in Philip K. Dick’s tales and the movies made from them….
Party like champs
By noontime Thursday, they accounted for a significant percentage of the downtown population. By 18:00 hours, they had overrun restaurants and saloons. Long lines of them spilled from bars such as Niki’s in Greektown and Hockeytown on Woodward. By 19:00 hours, Red Wings fans, many clad in the jerseys of their favorite stars, were storming…
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
A perfumelike fragrance wafting from the lilac bush in front of this vacant home on the corner of St. Aubin and Forest on Detroit’s East Side is the only appealing aspect of the lot containing this dilapidated structure. The front and back yards resemble junkyards. Used tires, refrigerators and a large pile of rubbish embellish…
Fiend or faux?
Semi-pro wrestlers and their devotees are equally fanatic….
Mosaic Singers
Mosaic Singers lift souls to colorful heights…
The Lanternjack
Smack with Johnny Flash….
Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer
The world is a crazy place. In southern Asia, two countries threaten to reciprocate nuclear population culls. Not far away, two other countries play host to 32 teams of young men kicking around a white ball, young men who carry the hopes of billions on their insteps. The serious-minded might contend that the former territorial…
Remembering Vincent Chin
At first glance, it seems like an unlikely place for the genesis of an Asian-American civil-rights movement — inside the now-defunct Fancy Pants topless club in Detroit. It was June 19, 1982; Vincent Chin, a 27-year old Chinese-American was out to celebrate his upcoming wedding with three friends. Enter Ronald Ebens, a 43-year old Chrysler…
The Eminem Show
The Eminem Show, like The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP, carries all the elements of a typical prime-time package. Comedy, drama, anger and violence stream throughout the 20-song set. In TV-speak, Eminem’s first two albums were like “NYPD Blue” and “The Bernie Mac Show” in that they offered fresh, cutting-edge material. The…
June 19-25, 2002
19 WED • MUSIC — Soviet. It’s starting to seem like the parade of New-, no- and post-wave electropop "collectives" might never stop. This week’s notable knob-twiddlers are Soviet, a quintet of keytar-loving ElectroClashers (cq all) that has become something of the toast of the town in its Brooklyn home. See the band at the…
Gold Stars 1992-2002: The Juliana Hatfield Collection
Anna Waronker Anna by Anna Waronker Five Foot Two “Girls with guitars were all the rage,” Juliana Hatfield says, explaining the circumstances surrounding her mid-’90s major-label deal. “I sort of tried to play the [industry’s] game for awhile … but I was disqualified because I wouldn’t smile for the camera.” Duh: When it comes to…
DEMF deficit
The DEMF is no freebee for Detroit city taxpayers.
East Of The River Nile
One of the most influential albums in the history of reggae music was 1977’s East of the River Nile. By then, Augustus Pablo (Horace Swaby) had already begun carving an impressive career — but Nile would assure his place in history alongside such production legends as King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry. Just the mesmerizing…
