Get down and get cozy
Outside, the Bear’s Den is an unassuming block of brick on a bland Berkley street. There are no windows, and the main entrance is completely unmarked. As you open the door to the bar, you’ll gasp at the sight of a giant stuffed polar bear mounted inside a brightly lit glass case. The bear dominates…
More campaign buttons
If you’ve got Web access, don’t let a lack of information stop you from casting a ballot that counts. Here’s a crash couse on the best sites to visit before Election Day.
Parking roulette
Greektown Casino gobbles up spaces….
Water Drops on Burning Rocks
Director François Ozon’s (See the Sea) adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s one-bedroom drama exposes and dramatizes the games couples play. Sex is power, life is a game and love is trump — implying that relationships are performances apotheosized in the sex act.
Fantastic realms
Colin Charles Harris photographs natural objects minus their usual identities.
Letters to the Editor
Candidates and readers respond to MT’s election coverage…
Venus Beauty Institute
This light comedy is a vehicle for French actress Nathalie Baye, who made her debut in Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973). Here she plays a woman who works in the beauty shop of the title, and who, unlucky in love, finds her last chance may have arrived in the form of an amiable stalker.
Mood bars & other treats
Soy-enhanced linguini … Chocolate bars spiked with ginseng … Can you really nosh your way to health?
More letters to the editor
MT’s election features inspired additional reader feedback which we couldn’t fit in print….
The Legend of Drunken Master
Alcohol is to Wong Fei-Hong (Shanghai Noon‘s Jackie Chan) as spinach is to Popeye: Drinking fills him with a weird power and turns him into a goofy fighting machine. Chan proves himself to be the Buster Keaton of kung fu, brewing up a unique blend of martial arts and slapstick comedy.
A classical duet
Andrea Eis melds ancient myths and the world we live in.
He sees dead people
The Sci-Fi Channel’s resident psychic has the hookup
Just Looking
This look at carnal curiosity in 1955, directed by actor Jason Alexander ("Seinfeld"), is a charming, ribald memory tale about the rocky transition from innocence to experience. Nothing flashy or earth-shattering here, just solid performances and a story told with clarity and kindness.
Dark humor
Lisa Goedert’s colorful montages slyly sneak up on you.
Stylish noir
The images Nicola Kuperus shoots are seductively beautiful.
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
The monetary success of The Blair Witch Project made a sequel inevitable, but since its unique style was a source of much of its appeal, any duplication would be anticlimactic. Unless somebody could come up with a really killer script. And guess what, folks — apparently nobody could.
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In her analysis of George W. Bush’s horoscope (www.ErinSullivan.com/bush.htm), astrologer Erin Sullivan warns that the presidential hopeful “is dangerously easily deceived and capable himself of deception.” Why? “His core life force is not grounded in tangibles,” Sullivan asserts, “but in theoretical potentials, and thus he can succumb to inflated self-importance. Conversely,…
Liquid echoes
For Edward Pratt Foley, water fuels a whole body of work.
Comic madness
The mystery of J. Scott Campbell has finally been solved. Yes, the comic book industry icon has been at his drawing board for the last year — despite the belated release of the newest issue of Danger Girl. Sharpening his pencil for countless hours, he’s been edging the video game adaptation for his badass girls…
Trimming the lunatic fringe
Q: I am a recently divorced man of 31, who’s re-entering the dating pool after six years. I’m finding that most of the women I’m meeting are either psychotic freaks or flashy on the surface but uninteresting. All I want is an intelligent woman who doesn’t play games. There is one other problem — I…
Good to be back
There’s too damn many people in New York … Matthew Jacobson the hypnotist … Bright Eyes gets us through the stupidity … & more.
Downriver opa
Brick archways and a pretend grape arbor overhead contribute to the atmosphere, but it’s basically your family bar scene. Dinner starts with “Opa!”, of course, along with warm, lightly toasted pita triangles. Skordalia, the pureed potatoes-and-garlic dip, is biting and good. Both lamb and chicken gyros are nicely done, wrapped in an excellent warm, thick…
You’re never too old
Q: I am 73, haven’t had it in 10 years and want it so bad I can taste it … or wish I could! And all because my wife of 49 years feels she has “done her duty” and no more. To think we would occasionally 69 back in our younger days. It last happened…
Time to get real
What becomes of us if Albert Gore manages to lose to a man who has neither the credentials, knowledge nor values to lead this country?
Au Revoir Borealis
There’s something about cottony vocals sifted through swirly synth, wavy guitar and the pulse of a steady slow bass line that’s tortured and soothing simultaneously. The four friends behind Au Revoir Borealis play regular old instruments just like everyone else, but the sound that escapes is sweeping and surreal, extraterrestrial even. A spinning sensation engulfs…
Pretty vacant
Punk style pukes up the high-priced spread….
Anybody home?
The stupidity Bush gets away with….
Vintage reinvention
Midway through “Stuck in a Moment,” a lovely gospel-tinged cut from U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind, frontman Bono quips, “You’ve got to get yourself together now. You’ve been stuck in a moment and you just can’t get out of it …” Hardcore U2 fans, especially ones of yore, will no doubt sympathize with…
Electric food hookah
Time to try another kind of backyard cuisine, from the electric water smoker. The results are extraordinary: polished, tender, juicy and infused with a smoky fragrance.
Bein’ his bitch
MT’s music ho gives it up for DJ Assault, amazing herself with an inexplicable love for booty bass.
Bottled bliss
A dramatic farewell to glowing flashes against northern black skies in the rearview mirror, or the clinical term for a rare itchy-foot fungus? The images construed from a name like Au Revoir Borealis stretch their fingers out across a crumpled-open map, and so do the images formed within the expansively gorgeous music the humans behind…
Plaid mad
It’s hip to be square…
Bat Pops, candy, cigars
Enjoying Halloween festivities, including live bats at C-Pop … A scary house party wiht MT staffers and the Atomic Numbers … Movie star madness at the old Tiger Stadium … & more.
High pop happy
So I was sitting there, listening to the latest by Moose, and my body had no idea how to react. Did I like it? Was I disappointed? Did I need coffee? Then I realized I was going through dissonance withdrawal. Moose is a light-hearted creature that knows not the ways of the angst-ridden. It lopes…
The Wright stuff
Repro stained glass from Frank Lloyd and Hudson’s
Shock the powerful. Vote.
There’s nothing more important than what’s going to happen on November 7. And as screwed up as the system may be, you have th…
Heartland reclamation
Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, as you may very well know already, was a landmark statement of spooky hush. In 1982, after Springsteen achieved the popular acclaim (thanks to Born to Run) to match the critical kudos that he’d had in his pocket for a half-dozen years already, he stepped away from the sweaty arena-rock bombast of…
Portable personal trainer
Give me 50 pushups (and 2 batteries)…
Green on green
Green voters can exchange votes to beat Bush
True to the root
Much is made of the apparent fact that younger blacks these days aren’t at all interested in — or respectful of — the music of their elders. They don’t want to be bothered with the blues, haven’t got the patience for jazz, and have all but written off the rock ’n’ roll pioneered by the…
Nostalgia is back
The return of the freaky fringed poncho
Pork barrel in the sky
Peace activists object to Star Wars spending
Early autumn
Charles Lloyd’s latest CD finds the veteran saxophonist in excellent form and is surely among the most satisfying recordings in his discography, which now spans five decades. Joining Lloyd on this session are Brad Mehldau, piano; John Abercrombie, guitar; Larry Grenadier, double bass; and Billy Higgins, drums. Selections include arrangements of two traditional melodies, five…
Doggie style
Spend a wad and pamper your pooch…
School duel?
More arguments over contamination on new school grounds…
Comic madness
The mystery of J. Scott Campbell has finally been solved. Yes, the comic book industry icon has been at his drawing board for the last year — despite the belated release of the newest issue of Danger Girl. Sharpening his pencil for countless hours, he’s been edging the video game adaptation for his badass girls…
Eyes in focus
An exhibit which spans the whole of southeast Michigan, Detroit Focus 2000 charts the image trajectories of photography now!
Legal masquerade
Unmasking free speech…
Disorient express
What Darren Aronofsky (π) captures with dazzling audacity in this film adapted from Hubert Selby Jr.’s novel is not just the pathology of addiction, but its mechanism. This is a junkie’s tale where everything feeds the habit — with Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans and Ellen Burstyn.
