Elmore Leonard new TV show!
There is a theory in TV criticdom that one can usually tell how high a network’s expectations are for a new series by how much money they’ve sunk into its press kit. The media guide for Justified, the Old West saga for the 21st century premiering at 10 p.m. Tuesday, March 16 on FX, is…
PROSECUTOR LISTS STUDENTS AS POTENTIAL WITNESSES
Wayne County prosecutors have made an unusual move in a murder case that could be likened to calling defense attorneys to testify against their own clients. Seven University of Michigan law students and a California journalist who was a U-M fellow are on the witness list submitted by assistant Wayne County prosecutor Bob Stevens in…
LOCAL TIDBITS: WEEKEND SHOWS, UPCOMING RELEASES, WHITE STRIPES, RUNAWAYS & MORE…
A couple of notable shows this weekend to mention: Scott Campbell, leader of the Sillies and co-owner of the legendary Bookie’s punk club is hosting another “Bookie’s Anniversary Reunion Show,” tonight (Friday, March 12th) at the Rack & Roll Club in Riverview (13634 Sibley Rd., 734-283-3100. A film documentary on Bookie’s will be shown, photos…
IGGY ON JULIEN TEMPLE’S DETROIT FLICK…
To go along with Jeff Meyers’ blog item (in B-Roll — see below) about limey director Julien Temple’s upcoming BBC documentary about Detroit and its decline, we thought it worth mentioning that Iggy Pop addressed it in the MT cover story about the Iggy & The Stooges’ reunion that ran last October. In fact, the…
ACORN WINS AGAIN IN COURT
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN, scored another victory in court Wednesday when a federal judge in Brooklyn reaffirmed her December decision that congressional efforts to cut off all federal funding of the embattled nonprofit antipoverty group were unconstitutional. Responding to a government request that she reconsider her previous ruling,…
An Englishman In Detroit
Julian Temple is a British filmmaker who’s made most of his career worshiping at the rock and roll altar, and who could forget his debut, the Sex Pistols’ whacked The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. There was a brief and, arguably, successful foray into musical feature filmmaking (Absolute Beginners, Earth Girls Are Easy), and even…
SXSW TO PRESENT A DETROIT RAP SPECTACULAR…
Detroit hip-hop will be making a big splash in Austin next week at the 2010 South By Southwest festival via a “Detroit Hip-Hop” showcase being curated by our own mighty Invincible (who is also curating a “Women in Hip-Hop Showcase and will be performing at both events. Slum Village will be headlining the Detroit showcase,…
Rave on: Movement 2010 rolls out headliners
The countdown officially begins now for Movement 2010, Detroit’s biggest electronic music party held each Memorial Day weekend. Let’s see, it’s 79 days (if our calculations are correct) until the first beats roll out at downtown’s Hart Plaza, where the festival has been held since 2000. Even bigger news: the headliners for the Main Stage,…
Irish blessings
St. Patrick’s Day, when it falls on a Sunday, results in one big blast of revelry. But when that big day falls — as it does this year — smack in the middle of the week, St. Patrick’s Day becomes a bender that stretches for days, starting with weekend revelry (often dubbed "St. Practice Day"…
Midtown’s menu
Thirteen years ago, the strip of Willis Street just west of Cass Avenue in Detroit was nearly vacant. Not much retail, dining or bar business went on in the area at all, and the businesses that were there went largely unnoticed by those who traveled nearby Woodward or Warren avenues. The few establishments were primarily…
Sons and lovers
It’s an intriguing question, one certain to evoke vivid remembrances and intense emotions: If you could, and you both were currently unattached, would you want to rekindle relations with your "first love"? I posed the question on my Facebook page last week and, perhaps not surprisingly, the response was an overwhelming "Great googly moogly, no!"…
Back on the block
The meal starts auspiciously with a couple of free papadams — crisp and strongly lentil-flavored — and three tasty dipping sauces. A mango lassi, seldom a mistake, is properly vibrant in color and flavor. The entrées are rich, perhaps due to lots of ghee? This was especially true of sag muttar paneer — peas and…
Blowing it
Q: I am a girl who sabotaged my relationship. I was angry; I had complaints. But my real issue was a store of repressed childhood trauma, and I was working it out on the closest person to me, my BF. We had something magical, and I destroyed it. I am now willing to give 110…
Wonderland Avenue
It’s been 13 years since Alice (In Treatment’s Mia Wasikowska) fell down the rabbit hole, and her memories of Wonderland have faded into dreams. But now, on the day she’s expected to be engaged to an insufferably priggish lord, she finds herself tumbling back into the realm of the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), Blue Caterpillar…
Metro Retro
6 years ago in Metro Times: News Hits went to court as White Stripes frontman Jack White found himself in front of a judge after being charged with aggravated assault on Von Bondies’ singer Jason Stollsteimer. White told the judge after Stollsteimer had "dissed" him in the press, and when he attempted to talk things…
Brooklyn’s Finest
Don Cheadle plays a deep undercover detective who has been running the razor’s edge so long he fears his head is messed up by the game. His loyalties get pushed even harder with the early release of his old prison homey, a drug kingpin played with renewed vigor by Wesley Snipes. There are some terrific…
Trolling for a governor
Twenty-five years ago, when my hair was still dark and "hypertext" was something you banged out after too many cups of coffee, I was in Poland, reporting about life under communism’s last repressive phase. One day, a bitter young man at the University of Warsaw put things this way: "Countries go through historical stages. Right…
Nollywood Babylon
Out of necessity and a bit of innovation, the Nigerian film biz became a strictly home-video enterprise, scratching an itch that Hollywood was never, ever going to scratch. Many millions of copies get sold through in the bustling markets and endless back-alleys of Lagos, a swelling metropolis of over 8 million. Though it is in…
Cheat Code
Mass Effect 2 EA Games Xbox 360, PC Think cinema science fiction and your first thought is likely Star Wars. Since George Lucas’ trilogy is such a cultural phenomenon, try finding someone who hasn’t seen them. Conversely, science fiction in video gaming is a murky mix, but EA’s RPG space opera, a third-person shooter called…
The North Face
Philipp Stölzl takes a documentary-style approach to his period drama about German mountain climbers confronting the northern peak of the Eiger (dubbed “the death wall”) during the Third Reich, creating an experience that’s as brutal as it is riveting. If only the script were as good as the action. Based on a true story, The…
Dancin’ shoes
Paxahau Event Productions, producers of the Movement Electronic Music Festival, has announced a partial listing of performers and headliners, as well as ticket info for this year’s festival — one of the largest in the world — which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this spring and will run Saturday, May 29, through Monday, May 31,…
Deflorate
Back in November of 2005, Metro Times’ annual "Music Issue" named Waterford’s Black Dahlia Murder the "best metal band nobody cares about." Fast forward more than four years … and little has changed. OK, they’ve signed a deal with the legendary Metal Blade label, and they’ve played metal fests as prestigious as Wacken and OzzFest.…
Food Stuff
Easy as pi — You may have heard pi described as an irrational number. Well, here’s something that makes sense: In celebration of "Pi day," which celebrates the mathematical constant, Pi Restaurant & Lounge will have daylong specials on Sunday, March 14. Brunch (11 a.m.-2 p.m.) will have a mini-omelet station, mini-egg Benedict, French Toast,…
The Brutalist Bricks
During the George Dubya Bush presidency, there were a lot of prime targets for liberal-minded songwriters — of varying degrees of talent — to take political potshots at or simply to make political statements about. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists were reliably one on the bands at the very top of the heap during these…
Blowin’ the Wonder Twins
Every party has to start somewhere. And Blowout 2010 got warmed up on opening Wednesday night, March 3, at the Majestic Complex in Detroit, as a swarm of bands took over Hamtramck for three wild ‘n’ crazy nights. And the Wonder Twins were there, of course, to witness the Blowout unfolding. D’Anne: The Blowout Pre-Party…
World War Love
Troy Gregory is a slightly unhinged rock ’n’ roller who has logged stints in everything from prog metal grinders Prong to the Swans to the Dirtbombs, and of course his own bands the Witches and the Stepsisters, then World War Love. And though this doc about him is plagued by the some of the same…
Eye-Popping Detroit
It’s been about a year since we launched Motor City Seen (the Metro Times Flickr group featured on our website) and, since then, we’ve watched it grow into something bigger than we imagined. The idea is for you to show us and our online readers how you see our city and the outlying communities. All…
Get the buzz
When I was a kid, my mother used to make a big jar of honey and fresh-squeezed lemon juice every winter. The thick, bittersweet concoction was our cough medicine, and we would gladly line up for a spoon of that rather than cod liver oil or castor oil — both of which were also freely…
Stayin’ alive
Louie Pacini’s business is as fragile as the brittle creations he makes. He’s a craftsman whose plaster statues have been crowded out of the marketplace by cheap imitations from China. His health is faltering, tormented by persistent cancer. His customers have moved away, taking with them their patronage. And his employees were let go, one…
Letters to the Editor
Tiger by the tail "For the money, I will dance," Richard Burton reputedly said in exasperation to the director of one of his more inane movies during the ’60s. What Jack Lessenberry saw as a coerced confession by Tiger Woods ("Tiger, meet Mao," Feb. 24) I saw instead as Woods’ petulant, but voluntary, dance of…
Night and Day
THURSDAY MARCH 11 Vivian Girls DROWNED IN SOUND With the release of their self-titled debut in 2008, Vivian Girls became something of an indie-rock sensation, winning over jaded critics and fans alike with noisy two-minute punk ditties performed with reckless abandon and a complete disregard for accuracy. And while the backlash came quick (the Girls…
Blowed out!
Man, we are so burned-out at the moment that it’s hard to even type, let alone make sense of what it is we’re typing. After all, if you do Blowout "right," it generally takes a week to recover. But it’s well worth the effort. And Blowout 13 — despite its unlucky number this year —…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Where’s Kafka?
The case of Dwayne Provience keeps getting more and more bizarre. Convicted in 2001 of gunning down an alleged drug dealer named Rene Hunter at an intersection on Detroit’s northwest side, Provience was sentenced to serve as much as 62 years in prison for a crime he says he never committed. That claim gained credence…
The geek squad
It’s a quiet night in downtown Plymouth, where blankets of snow and warm lit windows give the impression of a sleepy village. What’s going on inside the neighborhood church is a different story altogether, though. That’s where the band Inkface is soundchecking, making a racket that betrays the tranquil feeling outside, as band members Michael…
Pimps, weasels and ACORN
The old aphorism that a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on came to mind last week when News Hits found a little-noted story about the group ACORN, which we’ve been keeping an eye on since this rag recently wrote abut the right-wing attack machine’s…
