Artist Matt Eaton Just Wants To Get Along
Tomorrow night, at 323 East, artist Matt Eaton presents an exhibition of new work. It’s his first solo show. Matt is the brother of acclaimed pop/street artful icon Tristan Eaton (Thunderdog Studios) who now works out of New York, and though both bros have been influenced by graffiti, that much is apparent, their approach to the canvas…
For Colored Girls
For Colored Girls GRADE: D Like a starlet with a drug conviction or a politician with a sex scandal, Tyler Perry ducks the media. He hasn’t screened one of his films for mainstream reviewers since his 2005 debut, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, and his sparse interviews since have been mostly with hand-picked, friendly…
Nine Nation Animation
Nine Nation Animation GRADE: B It’s like the United Nations of animation, but instead of promoting world unity through peace, this 80-minute anthology of animated shorts from nine different countries (curated by Brooklyn Academy of Music’s "The World According to Shorts" program) explores the inevitable constrictions and complications of mass culture. As with most mixtape…
Due Date
Due Date GRADE: C+ Most comedy threads the needle between humor and discomfort, but the noisy and curiously bleak Due Date jabs that needle right in your eye. Repeatedly. And then tries to wish the pain away with belly laughs and warm sugary kisses. After the smash, genre-redefining success of The Hangover, Todd Phillips has opted…
Megamind
Megamind GRADE: B- If you missed the last mediocre 3-D computer animated movie about a misunderstood super villain who reforms himself into a hero (aka Despicable Me), well, here’s another. The animation’s a bit snazzier, the jokes a little hipper and, hey, it’s got Will Ferrell and Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt and David Cross…
New Mayer Hawthorne remix: “Dig the Roller Boogie …” FREE Download Here
Direct from the Mayer Hawthorne’s press flack: Seems MAZDA2 locked Hawthorne and DJ Jazzy Jeff in a tour bus to create a stunner of a remix for Hawthorne’s “No Strings.”  Dig the “Roller Boogie Remix” … Download the latest ditty here…
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Drop Free Single + $4 Remix EP: “Our Love Is Easy”
Fresh off their eight-shows-in-five-days rip through New York for CMJ, Detroit’s biggest buzz band since someone else, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. continues to traverse (dig this recent nod from ESPN) through the obstacles of indie stardom. It’s incredible that so much hype has been produced off of their debut four-song EP Horse Power. The DEJJ camps says a…
A wild Halloween ride with Detroit Critical Mass
One evening a month, you’ll find 100-some cyclists mingling and socializing, gearing up for a leisurely Detroit ride. It’s called Detroit Critical Mass (not to be confused with Critical Mass Detroit, another ride starting in Grand Circus Park). At around 6:30 p.m. on the last Friday of every month, a hodgepodge of cyclists gather on…
Cheat Code
Dead Rising 2 Capcom PS3 (Review Copy) Xbox 360, PC Apparently zombie is the new black. Where vampires were once chic de rigueur, the undead have risen from hipster indie fandom and exploded in the mainstream. Er … in video games at least. Seriously, look around: Every game seems to have a zombie mode. So…
Couch Trip
South of the Border Cinema Libre Studio It coulda-shoulda-woulda been a great doc … if only it were directed by somebody else. It’s not that Oliver Stone’s truth-to-power anger isn’t in the right place, it’s that he’s incapable of making a political film without undermining it with his own old-school lefty righteousness. Where Michael Moore’s…
Left of center
Within a city like Detroit, there’s never a shortage of highly skilled hip-hop producers who can crap on most of their competition. The always-fierce Red Bull Big Tune producer showcase held at St. Andrew’s Hall two weeks ago helped illuminate that. The organizers of that national competition admitted to being more impressed with Detroit’s beatmakers…
Letters to the Editor
Double-take Wait, did Jack Lessenberry really just endorse a Maroun lackey (albeit unenthusiastically) for governor ("Snyder’s shortfalls," Oct. 27)? Perhaps he should refer back to his last, I don’t know, 30 articles or so to remind himself how he feels about Matty’s political puppets. As long as he’s going to throw his vote away on…
Bamboozled
News Hits wants someone’s help. Anyone’s, really. We’re not certain about protocol, but we suspect that it’s not exactly kosher for a reporter to be sending information to a judge regarding a case being heard. But that doesn’t mean it’s questionable for someone from the general public — someone exactly like you, say — to…
A map to our future
The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains.—Paul Simon There’s a great scene in the movie Enemy at the Gates, about the Battle for Stalingrad. The Nazis are winning, and the Soviet leaders are desperate to find a way to make their troops fight better. What about…
Smoke screens
Reefer Madness (1938) Sure, lots of other 1930s films exploited Americans’ newfound fear of the evil weed, but Reefer Madness is the granddaddy of them all. There’s a reason it’s a cult fave, with its over-the-top performances and tales of dope-smoking that end in manslaughter, suicide, rape and insanity. Plus, it has a strange post-release…
Weeding through
It’s not that there isn’t popular knowledge about marijuana’s relative medicinal value for conditions such as glaucoma, chronic pain, lack of appetite and multiple sclerosis. The problem is that findings — from folk medicine, anecdotal use or government-sponsored studies — aren’t translating to agreement about marijuana’s effectiveness and therefore its acceptance as a federally approved,…
Food Stuff
We Zagat taste! — The 2011 edition of Zagat’s America’s Top Restaurants hit bookstores last week, and the folks at Zagat were nice enough to send up a copy. The section for Detroit has 20 restaurants, including some standard-bearers (The Lark, the Rattlesnake Club, the Earle), some newcomers from the last decade (Roast, Logan, SaltWater)…
Amsterdam is Viper Central
As a prominent European port city, Amsterdam has served as a center for lightweight vice — recreational drug use, prostitution, gambling, public sexual excess — for several centuries. This sort of activity has been tolerated in Amsterdam since the city’s beginnings, exemplified in modern times by fully legalized prostitution and the virtual legalization of small-scale…
Backlot
The Hollywood invasion hit critical mass this past summer, but our proud metropolis somehow survived a litany of imported horrors including: Gerard Butler karaoke, Ashton and Demi’s Twitter overshare, robot-on-robot violence, and the dreaded Miley Cyrus VIP backstage booty shake. While the temperature drop has sent the blockbuster crews and pampered stars hightailing it back…
Pot songs through the decades
Pre-1940 As Eric Schlosser recounts the history of pot in Reefer Madness, in the late 1800s, marijuana became "a popular ingredient in patent medicines and was sold openly at pharmacies in 1-ounce herbal packets and alcohol-based tinctures, as a cure for migraines, rheumatism and insomnia." It was the Mexican Revolution of 1910, and an influx…
Unseen Michigan
Si Quaeris Peninsulam Amoenam Circumspice — "If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look around you." That’s the motto of the great state of Michigan. Si Quaeris Ostendo TV Peninsulam Amoenam Inviso Sub Radar — "If you seek a TV show about our pleasant peninsula, watch Under the Radar." That’s the motto of two guys from…
That research joint
Four years after California legalized the use of marijuana for medical conditions in 1996, the state legislature established and funded the Center for Marijuana Research housed at the University of California-San Diego. Over the next decade, the state provided nearly $8 million, and the center distributed it to researchers throughout the state who conducted scientific…
Tits ‘n’ Fuckin’ Wieners
D’Anne: Oct. 30 is always a fun night in this city. While people in other cities across the country are trying to figure out which Halloween party to go to, Detroiters have the delightful choice of being devils (aka "arsonists") or angels (aka "people who don’t want their neighborhood burned down for funsies"). Laura: Then…
Motor City Five
Half-vaudeville half-Detroit dubsteppers, Cirque De Womp brings the half-time bass-drop phenomenon to the Majestic this weekend with a blacklight-rich masquerade. It’s the 7th incarnation of their Dubstep Circus. We talked with de Womp’s Angela Palaian for five wompin’ Detroit venues. —Pietro Truba 5. The Majestic Theater: We love the high ceilings … we’re going to…
Spun
Magestik Legend To Be Continued… Chapter 2 Self-Released Listen to Magestik Legend’s latest mixtape and you’ll hear a Detroit rapper finally comfortable in his lyrical style. He has been grinding since his early Subterraneous Record days, and though that bolstered his hip-hop cred, his music lately is closer to his heartbeat. Chapter 2 is hosted…
Metro Retro
25 years ago in Metro Times: The city of Detroit and a group of small merchants start a master beautification plan for renovating and rejuvenating the areas bordering Detroit’s main traffic corridors. The cosmetic plan includes a $150,000 tree-planting project announced by the Woodward Action Planning Team. This won’t be the last time the city…
End the war
"Dope? Do you think the Russians allow dope? Hell no. … You see, homosexuality, dope, immorality in general: These are the enemies of strong societies. That’s why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing this stuff; they’re trying to destroy us." —Richard M. Nixon The question isn’t whether weed is inherently good or bad. Like…
Shiny, happy people
This band’s name is Citizen Smile, the kind that’ll find some people grinning like a chimp on a birthday card and see others upchuck guts. See, these guys are disproving the idea that a band can’t be outwardly happy in Detroit. That’s right, just because Iggy perfected the mutant Elvis scowl, it doesn’t mean everyone…
Poly on the downlow
Q: I have a bit of a situation. I’m a 23-year-old heterosexual male, and I am married. My wife and I also happen to have a girlfriend now, making our arrangement a polyamorous triad. We all love each other very much, and we are getting to the point that we are thinking about how we…
Inside Job
Inside Job GRADE: B+ American democracy has been bought and paid for, and we didn’t even bother to stop and get a receipt. This is the harrowing, revolting message of Inside Job, a workmanlike but undoubtedly persuasive documentary that maps not just the 2008 economic crisis but the ruthless three-decade-long campaign by leading financial firms…
Mexican goes halal
Fuego Grill 37040 Schaefer Rd., Dearborn; 313-581-9800 No traditional chorizo, no lomo, no carnitas? Certainly no menudo. Sam Alvarado is stepping up to the challenge of running the only halal Mexican restaurant in the state. That means no pork, of course, and no other meat that wasn’t killed using the methods prescribed by Islam. A…
Getting organized
It was a display of the worst behavior — publicly taunting a 7-year-old girl in the late stages of Huntington’s disease on a Facebook page. However, in the wake of that atrocious act by a neighbor, the outpouring of support for Kathleen Edwards, the young Downriver girl, was an equally heartening outpouring of the best…
In our pages
2Booli Fresh Mediterranean Eats 37610 W. 12 Mile Rd., Farmington Hills; 248-994-0614; $$: For many diners, the lack of a liquor license is a deal-breaker. That proclivity can relegate most Middle Eastern spots to a lunchtime treat rather than an evening pleasure. Farmington Hills’ 2Booli addresses the problem with not only a full bar but…
It’s a man’s world
A cop walks into a barbershop, and the conversation starts by going downhill. "Hello, John, how you doing, sir?" the Greek barber asks the Detroit cop. He replies with an unprovoked comment questioning the barber’s sexual preferences. The barber retorts, in so many words, that the cop ought to go have sex with himself. And…
Hey, Artists, the Kresge Fellowships Are Callin’!
Kresge’s about to give some serious thanks …. As we dance into and through the fourth quarter of 2010, we have much on our minds. Elections were today. We’ll see how that pans out. The holidays loom on our calendars, as do the weather patterns that come with those dates. We ponder growing a year…
Obligatory Cheech and Chong nod in Waterford: Millions in drugs go up in smoke!
Oh where, oh where is old Sgt. Stedenko? (Sorry, couldn’t resist). What does $8 mil worth of drugs look and feel like when it’s torched? Who the hell knows? Only your bird can sing. But we do know well the telling, glassy-eyed grin of a friendly contact buzz. Click on this Oakland Press story to…
