Letters to the Editor
No to Joy Thanks for publishing the story about Joy Management, slumlords ("This cold house, Metro Times, Nov. 6-12). The real victims of Joy Management are the average tax-paying homeowners who have to put up with these houses in their neighborhood. Many are rented to people with drug problems. A Joy Management house on Glenfield…
Magnificent warriors
The Detroit Film Theatre wraps up its retrospective of the collaborations of director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune with what is generally regarded as the director’s best work. A tale of adventure set in early 15th-century Japan, it’s one of the most entertaining films in the critical canon.
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): If you are an unevolved Aries, there’s a chance you will gravitate toward the archetype of the hot-tempered, bare-knuckled, street-fighting hooligan in the coming weeks. If you are an evolved Ram, on the other hand, you’ll probably smash a mental block, topple a rotting idol or destroy a parasitical hallucination. And…
Harmonica Shaw Band’s blues life
Things are chugging along pretty well these days for the Harmonica Shaw Band. They’re working on a new, as yet untitled, CD due to be released early next year by the Toronto label Electro-Fi Records. The label features such blues-dues-paid-in-full names as Snooky Pryor and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith. Shaw and the band’s co-leader/guitarist, Howard…
Frida
Based on Hayden Herrera’s biography of Frida Kahlo, and ranging anywhere from jaw-ajar triumphant to comic schlock, director Julie Taymor’s film follows the life of a woman known for her soul-piercing gaze and truthful self-portraits — with Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina.
No thanks to Thanksgiving
Q: I need your advice. My parents are bugging me to come home for Thanksgiving. The thing is, as a kid I always hated holidays. No, I loved holidays; what I hated was my parents. Growing up, I was ignored on holidays except when my mom would order me to wait on my brothers and…
Sodom and Ferndale
Piety is not one of our strong points here at News Hits, but once in a while something crosses our desk that brings us to our knees in prayer. Such was the case this week when we received a press release from the Westboro Baptist Church in that land of enlightenment otherwise known as Topeka,…
Femme Fatale
Director Brian De Palma’s stylish, contrived heist flick constantly inlays visuals and plot elements that echo cinematic history. When the plot slackens, this offers a game for the more dedicated film buff to play while waiting for the next twist — with Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Antonio Banderas.
Shots and plots
Detroit Docs What a week to savor metro-Detroit citizenship. After an election in which the good guys (er, gal) prevailed against racist ploys and right-wing scare tactics, it’s good to walk outside and take a deep breath of Motor City tolerance and creativity. Among the many hopeful sprouts in the tri-county sprawl is “Detroit Docs…
Transit transition
The daily news outlets may reach you first, but when News Hits went to press Monday this was an exclusive: Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is pushing a plan to build a state-of-the-art $45 million public transit center at Times Square in downtown Detroit. The center would connect the city’s buses, trolleys and People Mover. More importantly…
Umberto D.
Evoking pathos without resorting to sentimentality, Vittorio De Sica’s celebrated neo-realist film (1952) is the story of a retired bureaucrat living out his last days in a shabby boardinghouse, always on the verge of being evicted, alone except for the company of his beloved dog and the kindness of the building’s chambermaid.
Six feet of America
Everyone thinks he looks like Elvis. But look at him closer when he’s slinging his drinks and his sideburns and his wisencracker monologues all over Gusoline Alley. Ya, there’s an initial Elvis-oscity — followed by the blunt smash of ’70s detective-show bad guy, Nick Cage without all the whine and pout. He’s always geeked on…
Tagged out
Hardcore Detroit Tigers fans might remember a southpaw pitcher by the name of Kevin Wickander, who spent some time with the club during the ’95 season. The Arizona native is again achieving notoriety, but these days it’s for the consequences of addiction to speed rather than his ability to throw a fastball. Wickander’s rise to…
Real Women Have Curves
What happens when you take a savvy, first-generation Mexican-American high school graduate and force her to work in a factory on the east side of LA with no pay and no air conditioning? You end up with a sweaty combination of spoiled brat and fresh perspective.
Naturally curly
I am anti-team sports — except for the time my eighth-grade volleyball team won the division championship in ’95. I loathe butt-slapping, face-painting and hotdog-eating. So I am intrigued when Todd Gault tells me that curling “is more like chess on ice. … If you can walk, you can curl.” Besides, my grandmother loves curling.…
Going for the green
Atom’s Juice Café, Metro Times’ pick for best healthy food in the Detroit area, is no more, as previously reported here in News Hits. The Grosse Pointe vegan food café closed after a long, nasty legal battle spurred by a neighboring Subway sandwich shop. Now, “Friends of Atom’s” is holding a benefit to help owner…
N&D Center
13 WED • OPERA Donizetti’s Don Pasquale — Opera always seems to be about lovers getting buried alive together, or some other dramatic way of dying such as being stabbed or wasting away. It’s sometimes just too tragic for words. But the new production by Michigan Opera Theatre, Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, is opera buffa,…
Castellation complex
Forgive us, but the Abandoned Structure Squad has a thing for turrets. We’re sure a shrink could explain this edifice complex. On the other hand, who wouldn’t be intrigued by this week’s object d’ abandonment, which has more than a little bit of history attached. The GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) Building stands at…
Hope and glory
Is the CMJ music marathon a good idea gone wrong?…
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
Forgive us, but the Abandoned Structure Squad has a thing for turrets. We’re sure a shrink could explain this edifice complex. On the other hand, who wouldn’t be intrigued by this week’s object d’ abandonment, which has more than a little bit of history attached. The GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) Building stands at…
Jailhouse samba
The cops were polite when they arrived just after daybreak at the pop singer’s São Paolo apartment to bring him in for questioning. What a hassle, what a nuisance for someone who’d just been nodding off to sleep. Then one cop said something offhanded and chilling: “You’d better take a toothbrush.” With that, the singer’s…
Fine fresh French
Grapevine-wrapped pillars, classical background music and jeweled murals. Entrees prepared to order. Vegetable broth-based French onion soup, bay scallops poached in vermouth. Warm salad of duck confit and lobster. Pastries are beautiful to behold.
What really happened?
For the first time in many years, the Democrats last week won governorships in Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Tennessee and even Dick Cheney’s overwhelmingly Republican home state of Wyoming. They nearly held their own in both the House and even the Senate, where Democrats knocked off a Republican incumbent in Arkansas. George Bush openly sought…
Endgames in the sprawl
Who cares if you don’t believe everything he says, any more this time than you did the last time around — this guy is just plain fun to read: a two-fisted fabulist for the postapocalyptic world. It’s Mike Davis I’m talking about, who’s just published his 9/11 book, which isn’t really new (except for the…
MC at CMJ in NYC
After enduring three hours of errant subway navigation, I emerge from New York City’s underworld only to be greeted with a sideways shower of wet hail. It is 32 degrees and I am wearing open-toed high heels. With five more blocks to walk … a New Yorker I am not. Five blocks — no problem.…
Nirvana
Foo Fighters One By One RCA ‘Tis the season for Nirvana no$talgia! From the arrivals of the trio’s greatest hits and Foo Fighter’s One By One to Krist Novoselic’s tour with Eyes Adrift and the publication of Kurt Cobain’s Journals, there’s enough grunge-grade product inundating the market this fall to ensure that everyone’s strolling down…
Beach bingo
When is a picnic at the beach no picnic? When Edward Albee is the host. In his 1975 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Seascape, Albee puts his favorite victims, a couple entering late middle age, on the sand for a good two-act grinding. Nancy (Linda Hammell) and Charlie (Dave Cunningham) are at quiet loggerheads. As much as…
Phoenix
When Forrest Gump’s mom advised, “Life is like an LSD trip, Forrest. You never know when the room is gonna turn into a blob of Day-Glo slime oozing off a twirling disco ball while disjointed limbs jut out from the walls and try to throttle you,” she probably set the poor sap’s therapy back by…
Buried secrets
Nobody was punished for the murder of Ricky Creslaw. Except, perhaps, his little brothers….
Gilmore Girls
Musically speaking, TV and film "soundtrackese" is a language unto its own. Neither straight mix tape nor score, if a production deigns to show its musical language to the consumer at large, the compilation has to be both a mirror of the show (in this case) and a self-contained musical universe. Or, in the case…
Neck-wringing, ringed-necks
The Left’s hand-wringing in the wake of the GOP’s capture of Congress should be a precursor to some neck-ringing. Unfortunately, I don’t see anyone on the political landscape capable of forging an alternative to the status quo, which is the care and feeding of the United States of America Incorporated. George W. Bush has given…
Trane to heaven
John Coltrane A Love Supreme (Deluxe Edition) Impulse! Records A Love Supreme, recorded on Dec. 9, 1964, and released the following February, was tenor saxophonist John Coltrane’s last popular album. A rhythmic and soulful summing up made during his final experimental years, it was fierce without being intimidating, spiritual without being sentimental. As for its…
Water wars
A deep history runs beneath the battle for Detroit’s water department….
One by One
Foo Fighters One By One RCA ‘Tis the season for Nirvana nostalgia! From the arrivals of the trio’s greatest hits and Foo Fighter’s One By One to Krist Novoselic’s tour with Eyes Adrift and the publication of Kurt Cobain’s Journals, there’s enough grunge-grade product inundating the market this fall to ensure that everyone’s strolling down…
Ferry boat
Better than Bowie, cooler than Sinatra….
Trane to heaven
John Coltrane A Love Supreme (Deluxe Edition) Impulse! Records A Love Supreme, recorded on Dec. 9, 1964, and released the following February, was tenor saxophonist John Coltrane’s last popular album. A rhythmic and soulful summing up made during his final experimental years, it was fierce without being intimidating, spiritual without being sentimental. As for its…
