THE WONDER TWINS DO RA RA RIOT AT THE BLIND PIG; SUFFER FOR THEIR ART…
MT’s own Wonder Twins — Laura and D’Anne Witkowski — comment on the So Many Dynamos, Cut off Your Hands and Ra Ra Riot show at the Blind Pig last Thursday night, March 26th: Laura: Well this was the most expensive concert I’ve been to in a long time. D’Anne: Yes, as it turns out,…
Art Rant: The Cost of Art
You Gotta Pay the Cost to Buy The Boss … Pretty much everyone I know uses iTunes as their computer’s default music player/library. Many, though perhaps not even half, also use iTunes as there go-to source for buying music. I’ve done it from time to time, but there’s always some lingering qualms I keep to…
NEW YORK TIMES CELEBRATES DETROIT MUSIC
Detroit may be getting almost nothing but negative press on an international scale these days, due to the failing auto market. But as we’ve always known in this city, our other major export — namely, the local music scene — is still very much alive and definitely worth celebrating. And the New York Times did…
ART RANT: ART CZAR KAREEM DALE, FUNDING
Newly Appointed Arts & Culture Czar Kareem Dale I hear there are some folks who think President Obama’s “doing too much.” I know … I can’t believe it either. In this age of nationwide political disenfranchisement, our country seemingly still hung-over from Bush & Co. (where fear politics ran rampant and two wars by-and-large resulted…
AL SCHEURMAN, TAKKA TAKKA, SISTER SUVI & PRUSSIA SING PONTIAC’S A.C. RICH TO SLEEP
Prussia I got good news and bad news … Since ’05-’06, Brian Larson (of Silent Giants fame) housed bands at his place in Pontiac for practice space and full-on shows. It was a domicile that became a venue that became a short-lived legend known by the building’s namesake, the A.C. Rich, set in downtown Pontiac…
Gwen Joy & Marianne Audrey Burrows @ RIC & Guardian Building Turns 80
Gwen Joy You only have a couple more days to make it to the Russell Industrial to check out the new art space belonging to one of this writer’s favorite out-and-about Detroiters, Gwen Joy, and the marvelous Marianne Audrey Burrows. Marianne, we don’t know each other yet, but there’s a Leonard Cohen song called “…
State foreclosure bills diluted; Senate nixes role for judges
Stripping out the “stick” of judicial intervention from a bill the Michigan House approved last week, the Michigan Senate Banking and Financial Institutions Committee on Wednesday passed a watered-down foreclosure prevention package. The four Republican senators on the committee voted in favor of the measure but the three Democrats opposed it. The three-bill package —…
Electro-punk Anthony Rother, UK dubstepper Benga head next 25 announced acts for Movement Fest
Legendary electrohead, datapunk and self-described popkiller Anthony Rother and dubstep all-star Benga top the list of 25 additional artists scheduled to perform at Movement 2009. The festival is produced by Ferndale-based Paxahau and is set to roll May 23-25 at Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit. Last week, Paxahau announced an artist list that included Afrika…
Reporter in court
When News Hits went to witness the court proceedings involving reporter Diane Bukowski at the end of February, we came away thinking things were looking pretty good for her. Although we highlighted the outpouring of community support she’s received, what really had us believing her legal problems would soon end was the attitude of Judge…
Bridge backlash
Last week was a “win some, lose some” experience for Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel J. “Matty” Moroun, who is seeking to build a second span next to his existing crossing. The surrounding community, judging from turnout and comments at a public hearing March 17, is against him. But a state board has voted to authorize…
Food Stuff
WHISKEY DOWN — Want to sample Irish whiskey affordably?On Thursdays, Detroit’s Woodbridge Pub has a special “Irish Whiskey Appreciation Night,” with reduced prices on popular pours. At 5169 Trumbull Ave., Detroit; 313-833-2701. MODERN TIMES — Modern Food & Spirits is doing all it can to entice diners to drop in, with a crowded schedule of…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Short lifespan, but ain’t Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #210 grand! The Gaslight Anthem — The ’59 Sound (Side One Dummy) :: This ain’t no Johnny Horton nod, nor is it no Charles Boyer nod off. It’s an angst-rock overdose that’s lightly seasoned with a working-class twist of Bossteen. Bonus points for writing a song about…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Labor of love
A pink bloom climbs a windowpane, and leans softly against the cold glass.It shouldn’t be here at all, in late winter, hanging heavy on a thin stem. Yet it’s one of a handful of improbable flowers crowding the front window with a dozen other potted plants at Lip-Pan TV, on the corner of Chene and…
Eat for the world
Food columnist Mark Bittman discusses his new book about ‘conscious eating’
Flipped-out fantasy
What to do when your fantasy involves scuba gear
Blown away
Twelve year-old Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud) lives in a cramped apartment with his impatient mother (Claire Maurier), who wishes she’d never gotten pregnant, and his mercurial dad. Neither parent seems to care about Antoine, viewing him as an inconvenience — which is a small tragedy, because Antoine’s the type of kid who reads and emotionally responds…
TV Marches on
Television used to be so simple. The big networks (anybody remember when there were only three?) unveiled all their shiny new programs in September. Some would be hits. Most would fail. Then in January, they would trot out a mess of fill-in series to plug their open holes until summer, when reruns and “summer replacement”…
Cliff Bell’s
Stepping into the newly restored art deco live jazz bar with an even more recently opened kitchen is to arrive in another era. Before the stage, the main area is separated into two spaces: One with round, candle-lit tables, the other, a stunning curved bar. All this sits below massive barrel-vaulted ceilings. All this ambience…
Theaking outside the box
Sound and vision aren’t just words in one of David Bowie’s best songs. Increasingly, that phrase has come to describe a typical night out of experiencing live digital fun. In the clubs, in the galleries and museums, in festivals around the world, varied artists are using electronics-based multimedia to create the kind of immersive experience…
The Great Buck Howard
It sure must be nice to have Tom Hanks as your dad. How else to explain blander-than-bland Colin Hanks nabbing a lead role alongside acting powerhouse John Malkovich? And all those incredible cameos? The truth is, The Great John Malkovich would be a more appropriate title. The esteemed actor bites into his role as a…
A prophet to honor
Warnings and wisdom from one of metro Detroit’s smartest
Knowing
Directed by Alex Proyas, who once showed much promise with his moody goth-fantasias Dark City and The Crow, Knowing is stunningly stylized with nightmarish imagery and thick atmospherics but hopelessly muddled and clichéd. Cage plays a shell-shocked MIT astrophysics professor and widowed dad, struggling to raise his obstinate son Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) while hitting the…
Mighty whitey
Cobo flap dredges up Detroit’s race-baiting politics
Sunshine Cleaning
Rose (Amy Adams) is a single mom whose life peaked in high school when she led the cheerleading squad. Today Rose makes ends meet by cleaning houses, struggles to keep her misfit son in school, and frequently bails out her screw-up sister Nora (Emily Blunt). She’s also sleeping with her married high school boyfriend (Steve…
Letters to the Editor
Our readers on the bridge, health care, legalizing pot and Monica
Duplicity
Duplicity is wickedly sharp and breathlessly sophisticated entertainment, about as smart and shrewd as any studio star vehicle can ever be, but in the end maybe too smart for its own good. Clive Owen and Julia Roberts practically melt through the celluloid, playing sexy rival spies working for dueling cosmetic corporations, both racing to capture…
Night and Day
WEDNESDAY • 25 LADY GAGA GLAM SHAM Fierce, fabulous and utterly fatuous, Lady Gaga is topping the charts with her mish-mash of ’80s beats and ’70s glam. A songwriter-for-hire for candy popsters such as Britney Spears, the Pussycat Dolls and New Kids on the Block (NKOTB, say it ain’t so!), Lady Gaga went solo in…
I Love You, Man
Comedy supporting player and improviser Paul Rudd continues his route to leading-man dominance as endearingly geeky L.A. real estate agent Peter Klaven, a ladies’ man in the less obvious sense of the term. Pete’s a “girlfriend guy,” a straight dude who relates better with women, lacking any really close support group of male friends. You…
Fuzzy and sweet
“These Detroit-bred cuties are so goddamned good … Think ’60s Brit-pop with bluesy piano strut and raggedy garage-rock thrown in for good measure. [The song] ‘Well Well Well Well’ is our new theme song.” Those words were written on Rolling Stone’s website in November 2006 as part of the magazine’s recurring “Hot Band Preview.” The…
Six in Paris
In 1965, producer Barbet Schroeder armed them all with 16mm color cameras, and let each filmmaker pick a neighborhood, with little else in the way of guidelines. Like any anthology, the quality varies, yet Paris gives the pieces a kind of stylistic unity of purpose, and there’s an ironic, darkly comic thread that runs through…
South of nowhere
As we all know, it’s strange times for the music industry. And this year’s South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, saw fewer paid attendees than in recent years but had more folks cramming the free daytime shows. The major label presence was down dramatically, but people lined themselves around a block to get…
Antinuclear family
Sitting down over lunch at Detroit’s Majestic Cafe, Keith Gunter recalls the first time he saw a nuclear power plant. The year was 1966.As a sixth-grader at Taylor’s Fairlane Elementary School, Gunter visited the Fermi 1 plant in Monroe as part of a science-class field trip. And he was geeked. At a time when the…
Secrets inside of secrets: Reporter’s affidavit is for judge’s eyes only
Embattled Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter has submitted a sealed affidavit arguing why he shouldn’t have to provide testimony in a former federal prosecutor’s civil suit against the government. In an unusual move, U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland allowed the affidavit to be submitted so that he — and no one else — can…
