Move, baby, move
Ah, springtime. The time of year when Detroiters turn to fretting and bickering about the status of Memorial Day weekend’s electronic music festival. Check the threads on the bilious and hilarious Detroit Luv forum (detroitluv.com) and witness the anticipation and the angst, the love and the hate, that those three days in late May have…
Coachella
Over the past few years, the vast Coachella Music Festival in Southern California has earned a sort of mystique among the indie-rock set. “A person can go to Coachella and experience one thing, and his friend can experience another thing,” a promoter says early on in this concert film documenting the event. If that’s the…
Am I my sister’s keeper?
Q: My 18-year-old sister met a creepy old man (COM) when he snuck into a dorm party at my sister’s college. He proposed to her on their first date after the party. Our parents were immediately suspicious because of the large age difference — COM is older than they are. My sister also told COM…
Classe Tous Risques
The basis for director Claude Sautet’s 1960 crime noir is familiar enough: an aging gangster on the run. But what’s surprising is the way Sautet humanizes his tragic characters. Woven into the film’s genre conventions are the first stirrings of the French new wave. Instead of romanticized violence, a sense of human waste and fatalism…
Letters to the Editor
Airport links work I read the visionary article “Trains, planes and (fewer) automobiles” (Metro Times, March 8) with much interest. It seems to me that it would not be difficult to connect Metro Airport to downtown Detroit by rail. The rails are there, most of the way, and a junction and spur near the airport…
From Berlin to Detroit
Before the wall dividing Berlin into East and West fell, some people risked their lives crossing that deadly no-man’s-land. Hansel, a self-proclaimed “girlie-boy,” escaped by marrying an American soldier named Luther. Upon his lover’s request, Hansel gave up his penis, changed his name to Hedwig and donned women’s clothes. She came to America as a…
Head Cheese
Animal Chinz lead singer, songwriter and guitarist — and one-time Gryphon Shepherd frontman — Zach Kadro just wants to play. His interest in creating a musical din came after hearing a pal play Nirvana. Hence, AC’s balanced debut, The Real Lesson, reveals a tidy mess of ’90s nods, from Nirvana to Fugazi to Pearl Jam,…
Still on top
Look at any picture taken outdoors in prewar America and you see hats. Shots of hat-wearing crowds can be terrifying evidence of the conformity that once permeated American society. At the turn of the last century, hats were so common that even a convict’s mug shots would show him with and without his hat. Hats…
A Texas chirp
With tails fanned wide they descend in groups of 10 or 12 — their glossy, gun-black bodies falling in line on telephone wires overlooking the Red River district, scratching at each other in small packs, eyeing the heels of bread behind the Sixth Street dumpsters. We’re debating their breed — Magpies? Blackbirds? — before accepting…
Rock-a-bye baby
When 21-year-old Gaclyn Schanes was brainstorming a creative way to earn some extra cash last summer, she thought of hipster baby clothes. It’s an unlikely scheme for this College for Creative Studies glassblowing student, but her mom is a Michigan rep for baby clothing companies, and Schanes had long considered baby wear styles insufferably tired.…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Beautifying Bricktown
The day spa as “oasis” may be a shopworn beauty industry cliché, but, as far as Detroit’s newly opened Innergy salon goes, it’s a term that fits. Nestled in a cozy two-story brownstone on Beaubien, not far from Niki’s Pizza and the Greektown Casino, Innergy, which opened in early February, beckons with flickering candles at…
Fashion frontiers
“I think I saw Brokeback Mountain and Walk the Line too close together!” laughs Kate Bennet, explaining her Cowgirl Collection — a line of spring and summer women’s fashions now featured at the Pure Detroit Design Lab. Bennet’s adorable clothes are anything but somber; they’re a cheeky, girly take on swinging short skirts and flirty…
The kids are alright
The Modern Exchange in Southgate has a perceptible personality disorder: it’s a performance space, vintage clothing shop, art gallery, coffee shop and record store. But for owner Doug “Doogs” Blair, 48, the raison d’être is simple: the music. “I have a real passion for helping out independent musicians, and my goal was to create a…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Seventh grader Michael Kawa’s poem is about the official face he shows the world. "My mask helps me when I am scared and when I am embarrassed," he writes. "My mask tells me to act like someone else when I want to act like myself. My mask tells me I should…
All in the family
“Undressed” might be the operative word for characterizing Shoot the Family, Cranbrook Art Museum’s current exhibition of photographs and video works. Not only are there a lot of naked bodies to see, but, more to the point, a number of the artists have composed psychologically raw portraits of their beloved family members. Shoot the Family…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies
A bridge too far?
When Melinda Romero moved into her two-story wood house on Ste. Anne Street in southwest Detroit more than 20 years ago, she could look out back and see the tree-shaded yards and homes of her neighbors. Now she sees a brick wall that’s high enough to block the view but not the aggravation of a…
American splendor
The Grill is a step up from owner Mike Sophiea’s last restaurant, Rumors, the now-shuttered, venerable burger-and-beer joint that arrived on Main Street in 1985, when then-sleepy Royal Oak was best known for its army-navy store. Compare those humble beginning with a menu that spills over with filet mignon, peppercorn sirloin, blue filet and pecan-encrusted…
Art Bar
Walt Whitman’s poems took in the world through a wide-angle lens, including nearly everything, but most later poets have focused much more narrowly. Here the poet and novelist Jim Harrison nods to Whitman with a sweeping, inclusive poem about the course of life. Marching At dawn I heard among bird calls the billions of marching…
Big things in small packages
Short films are finally coming into their own, thanks mostly to Internet distribution. For those who prefer to view films on something bigger than a three-inch screen, the Maple Art is showing this year’s nominees for both live action and animated shorts. Though it would have been nice to see these films before the Oscars,…
Collective consciousness
I’m guilty of looking at a couple of them like they’re freaks in a funhouse. Upon visiting one home, I couldn’t hold back a crack about the ritual room in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Teetering over the boxes, bags and bins, I wondered: How can he live like this? It’s so tempting to try to…
Tsotsi
Tsotsi is difficult to watch; the characters and situations depicted in this South African film are so unrelentingly grim that it’s all but impossible to find any joy at all in the bleak lives of title character Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) and his mates, shantytown thugs who make a living by stealing, violence and mayhem. But…
Still showing
With local film festivals popping up like weeds, it’s easy to forget that one of the oldest, most venerable forums for underground filmmakers takes place every year right by the University of Michigan. In its 44th year, the Ann Arbor Film Festival finds itself at a crossroads of sorts, striving to maintain an identity as…
V is for Vendetta
Vendetta isn’t the stink bomb many fans of the graphic novel expect. Andy and Larry Wachowski, the screenwriters responsible for the flashy Matrix series, have managed to do justice to the subtle and intricate sensibilities of Moore’s 1982 work. A timeless story about rebellion in the face of totalitarian government, it’s just as relevant today…
Island hopping
Is Detroit ready for “the frogback” and “gangsta rock” and “dutty wine”? Can the Motor City catch up to reggae capitals like Toronto and Kingston? Can dancehall queen Candie and Haitian Rudebwoy help show us the way? In Jamaica, the dances change weekly — popular dancers such as Shelly Belly, Mad Michelle and countless others…
Spirit of the Beehive
By now, most European art-house flicks about children follow the same predictable, Miramax-friendly formula: A doe-eyed, adorably round-headed boy or girl grows up against the backdrop of a nation’s unrest; cue lots of nostalgic music and amber-toned shots of the European countryside. But before the template was set, director Victor Erice shattered the very notions…
Night and Day
Tuesday • 28 Blowfly MUSIC PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT IS NOT ON WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, AS PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED. He’s known as “the Original Dirty Rapper,” but Blowfly is more than an outrageous performer in a crazy costume. His hilarious X-rated songs like “Electric Pussy Sucker” and “Shittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” might make…
Ask the Dust
The script is adapted from writer John Fante’s 1939 novel of the same name. Fante admirer Robert Towne directed and wrote the screenplay for Ask the Dust. As great as the novel is, it’s damn near plotless, amounting to the ins and outs of a slow-boiling romance; however, the film is too often left to…
Should we bring back the draft?
What, am I nuts? That is a reasonable question, but for now, let’s stick to today’s topic. Anyone who pays attention and has the reasoning power of a chimpanzee knows that the war in Iraq is a horrible failure. In fact, it may be the greatest foreign policy failure in American history. As Molly Ivins…
