The Sound of You and Me
There’s a great photo of Garrison Starr inside Sound of You and Me. Barely made-up, with short hair and the hint of a raised eyebrow, it’s revealing like a snapshot of a long-lost friend. This is me, it suggests. This is how I’m feeling right now. That’s the sense of Sound, too, Starr’s second record…
Baby, say Unh!
Demolition Derby Tuneful trumpeters of the ass, er, rather, gospel-soul-sludge-punk din minimalists, the Demolition Doll Rods are gearing up for the release of their fourth full-length called There is a Difference (out mid-April on Swami). In support of Difference, the band leaves town March 22 for a tour through Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, France and…
Ironic effect
It’s 15 minutes past showtime and everyone — from the packs of rawboned mall rats crowding the stage to the puffy 30-something divorcees at the bar — looks half-dead. When the band, basically a one-man show led by James Dewees (a 30-year-old recent divorcé himself), gets under the lights looking like animatronic wax statues and…
Collectors’ Choice Series
Of the numerous Dino retrospectives that have surfaced in recent years, the Collectors’ Choice series — an exhausting offering of Capitol releases spanning a nine-year period — gives the consummate picture of Martin’s early recording career. Beginning with the slightly lackluster 1953 debut, Dean Martin Sings we hear him become Dino — relaxed, ice cold,…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Night and Day
Wednesday • 15 Devour the Snow THEATER Abe Polsky’s rousing courtroom drama, Devour the Snow, is set in the spring of 1847. It recalls factual events from the tragic Donner party expedition, where a failed attempt to cross the Sierra Nevada mountain range resulted in some of the explorers resorting to cannibalism to survive. The…
Yoo Doo Right, Yoo Doo Slide
As if the title’s Can nod isn’t enough to tip you to this Japanese trio’s ’60s/’70s space-rock mojo, proof spins into view on the very first track, “Sympathy For the Junkies,” an acid-gobbling instrumental mélange of Hendrixian guitar, sonorous bass and hissing maracas. Sympathy for Spacemen 3, by any other name. Things then quickly kick…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Your horoscope this week comes to you courtesy of the ancient Chinese book of oracles, the I Ching, translated by Richard Wilhelm. "In times of standstill it will happen that inferior people attach themselves to you and even seem to grow indispensable. But when the time of deliverance draws near, with…
Flame on!
Normally the Ukiyo Dojo, a modest space in an industrial stretch of Warren, is filled with kids and young adults tossing out flying kicks and precise punches. Friday nights, however, are a bit different. Starting around 8:30, a stream of bizarre characters begins trickling in, hauling light-up hula hoops, knives, a unicycle, torches and “fans”…
Let My People Go
This Bay-area hustler, comedian and part-time singer, isn’t just some slicked-back relic; rather, he’s your jive-ass neighbor who parks his Rolls Royce on the lawn. He’s your Auntie’s unemployed boyfriend with a pocket full of dough — the Negro who’s as cool as the other side of the pillow, with gilded teeth and gold rings,…
Family of fare
To most folks north of the Rio Grande, “Mexican food” conjures ground or shredded meat (usually too spicy) wrapped in a tortilla, then deep-fried, covered with cheese and kept under a broiler until the cheese becomes a molten glob. In several trips to various parts of Mexico, I’ve never found food that resembles this. Instead,…
Station to station
After a near run-in with some toughs on the block, Antonio and his friend Camellia rush from their southwest Detroit neighborhood up to the roof of the old Michigan Central Station. Once they get a chance to catch their breath, they stand before a mural Antonio has painted, wondering what life has in store for…
Full of Grace
When Korean-American filmmaker Grace Lee set out to make a documentary about the sundry other Grace Lees in the world, she had no idea such a simple idea could turn into such a poignant film rich with political and social commentary. Her cinematic quest to find other Grace Lees who broke the mold resulted in…
March Madness
Where have they been hiding these shows? After forcing us to endure a 2005 fall TV season that included such unforgettable works of art as Just Legal, Night Stalker and Head Cases (forgotten them already, have you?), it appears the networks were holding back legendary playwright David Mamet’s first stab at an action drama, a…
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
An adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s 1760 novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, a book that was a bawdy romp, featuring an endless series of tangents and digressions that derail the narrator, Tristram Shandy, from completely telling his life story. Cleverly, Winterbottom has emulated the book by making a film about making a…
Dances with Ives
For a long time, dancer and choreographer Peter Sparling has had an affinity for prewar America. Before coming to Ann Arbor some 22 years ago, he was a featured dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, where he performed as a preacher in “Appalachian Spring,” inspired by early 20th century poet Hart Crane. He also…
Unknown White Male
On July 3, 2003, while riding the New York subway, 35-year-old former stockbroker and photography student Doug Bruce suddenly experienced a rare form of retrograde amnesia. Though his entire episodic (autobiographical) memory was wiped clean, his procedural (skill-based) memory remained intact. Over the course of a year, Bruce videotaped himself as he pieced together the…
Art Bar
Thousands of Americans fret over the appearance of their lawns, spraying, aerating, grooming; but here Grace Bauer finds good reasons to resist the impulse to tame what’s wild: the white of clover blossoms under a streetlight, the possibility of finding the hidden, lucky, four-leafed rarity. Against Lawn The midnight streetlight illuminating the white of clover…
Aristide and the Endless Revolution
The common wisdom (as promoted by our government and most of the media) is that Jean-Bertrand Artistide was a corrupt and violent leader unworthy of his post. Nicolas Rossier’s documentary attempts to untangle the complex and less-than-certain truth behind the popular clergyman’s rise to political prominence and the governmental misadventures that led him to be…
Head cheese
The lovely and talented Luciana Souza speaks out
The Hills Have Eyes
This cathartic adaptation of his 1977 road-trip-from-hell saga is surprisingly potent. This may not be a classic, but give director Alexandre Aja credit for finding new-millennium relevance in Craven’s post-Vietnam allegory. Aja directed last year’s stylish-if-ultimately-stupid French horror import High Tension, and he brings a similar sense of shock-flick history to Hills. Granted, the characters…
Girlfriend, interrupted
Q: I am a 26-year-old lesbian in a relationship with a 21-year-old. We’ve been together for five years. She is a brilliant student with a bright future. I love her but I feel that we need to part. I am worried about how she would get along financially without me. I make good money and…
The Libertine
John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, lived hard, died young and got away with so many bad boy antics he could probably make 50 Cent blush. Johnny Depp partakes of some on-screen ribaldry as the philandering Wilmot, and he does so with that patented charming nonchalance that’s made him Hollywood’s most beloved rebel. Libertine…
Passing around the stupidity
TV race-switch show gets skinned
Ballets Russes
“It is the nature of dance to exist for but a moment,” drones the narrator at the beginning of Ballets Russes. But it’s the nature of this documentary to drag through two utterly tiring and tedious hours. Dance buffs won’t want to miss this all-encompassing documentary on the rise of modern ballet told through the…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Paeans and pans for platters
Failure to Launch
Matthew McConaughey stars opposite Sarah-Jessica Parker as a 35-year-old with no plans to leave the comfortable shelter of his parents’ three-story colonial. Enter Parker as Paula, a self-proclaimed “professional interventionist” hired by Tripp’s folks to fake a relationship with him, jump-start his self-esteem and move him out of the house. A computer could — and…
Under wraps
When the Detroit City Council considers Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s plan to transfer management of the Detroit Historical Museum to a nonprofit group this week, the discussion is unlikely to generate the intensity and controversy that occurred when a similar cost-cutting move involving the Detroit Zoo was being debated. It’s also a good bet there won’t…
Silents are golden
The pioneering filmmaker and inventor August Lumière once said, “Our invention can be exploited for a certain time as a scientific curiosity, but apart from that, it has no commercial future whatsoever.” OK, so he missed the mark on that prediction. But the irony of Lumière’s statement is that the quest for commercial success is…
Backslash
EFF You — We here at Backslash feel like cyberdummies for not discovering this Web gem sooner: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, at eff.org. A nonprofit watchdog group for digital rights, it was founded — surprisingly enough — way back in 1990. Given today’s (justifiable) paranoia with regard to online identity theft, spying and privacy, many…
Food Stuff
Lola’s in downtown Detroit aims to provide a “welcoming environment” for harried Detroit professionals with their “Happiest Hour” event. Each Thursday, from 4:30 to 7 p.m., beginning March 16, the “sophisticated casual” Harmonie Park eatery will have live jazz and blues performances, starting off with an appearance by Detroit bluesman Johnny Bassett, as well as…
Abridging the law
Always buy before you build, unless you’re Manny Maroun
Made in Japan
In Yuiko Matsuyama’s six-minute film Flower, brilliant shards of light hover at the edges of a dark colorful frame, threatening to flood the field of vision at any moment. With macro photography, the artist films a small table containing flowing china ink and salts, and ends up creating a sublime pictorial tension. The film invokes…
The French collection
Bon Vie certainly scores with its crispy Tomato Provencal Flatbread appetizer ($9), which surpasses most of the thin designer pizzas offered for firsts elsewhere. And the roasted beets, accompanied by green beans, cheese and almonds ($7) compete easily with many of the recently trendy beet salads I have had. I wish I could say the…
War of the wages
Panicky pols would rather raise wage than let amendment go to vote?
Proof Darwin was wrong
Legislators try to sneak “intelligent design” into Michigan schools
Over and out
Detroit ex-residents Jennifer and Laura Rogers sound pretty comfortable with their Brooklyn home on Invisible Deck, the Rogers Sisters’ sophomore LP and first full-length for Too Pure. Post-punk tension and rhythms built for backroom dance parties full of thrashed hosiery and slight builds have been the borough’s main musical export for a while now, and…
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Distant calling cards
The Greencards bring their far-flung folk to the Ark
