Bring On The Apocalypse
Forge surely had warfare-cum-doomsday on the brain when crafting its third release. The sullen, bolted-steel title track says it all: “Of human achievement/The further we advance/The closer we come to our extinction/I say we do it/Let’s stop waving swords/Let’s get them bloody/Let’s satisfy the hordes … Bring on the apocalypse.” And, the best part is,…
Meals on wheels
Dim sum is the Chinese equivalent of Sunday brunch; carts rolling from table to table, diners pointing to what they want, little dishes piling up on the table, which are later counted to calculate the bill. We had three steamed buns, round, white and fluffy as biscuits, filled with a savory mix of chicken and…
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Big Boi and Andre 3000 — the duo known as Outkast — scored the biggest victory of their storied career by convincing conditioned hip-hop fans to accept them for who they are, a weird-ass rap group that will never give you the same album twice. Their sixth album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, is easily the biggest…
Gangland Ballads & The Death Sex Set
How do I like thee? Let me count the ways. One: The record label name, which evokes vivid images of a martial arts massacre in the skies over Midway circa 1943 between Shang-Chi, Master Of Kung Fu and Enemy Ace, The Hammer Of Hell. Two: The convoluted album title, which syntactically twists the tongue in…
Rock till you drop!
By all rights Five Horse Johnson should be knee-deep in overseas travel preparations right now: taking new passport photos, making sure their gear’s voltage converters are in working order, checking on the latest European terrorism updates, etc. Instead, the band’s just stocking up on guitar strings and transmission fluid for a quick weekend trip to…
The Wonderful World of Barney
Attempting to sum up the scope of Matthew Barney’s epic in a few words is like trying to shove the history of existence through a scrotum-shaped pinhole. Like a magic lantern tapped directly into the obscure struggling crevices of Barney’s brain, The Cremaster Cycle allows the psyche to reign over a legion of evocative icons-in-action…
All fizz, no gin
New York’s perennial music fest, the College Music Journal (CMJ) Music Marathon, limped through its 23rd year last week like a 7-foot hoops stiff, slow afoot and horribly uncoordinated, whose still-valued size can’t distract from frequently uninspiring performances. Featuring more than 750 acts at 50 venues during four days, the festival’s still a boon for…
Discs in the mail
Gold Cash Gold Paradise Pawned Vol. 1 Times Beach The original Gold Cash Gold is a decrepitly lovely Michigan Avenue pawnshop whose facade is at once imposing and discreet, with garish proclamations of easy riches still projecting from the wall face. It’s as fitting a rock ’n’ roll metaphor as any, full of the fading…
The Ladybug Transistor
Pretty much anything on long-running indie Merge — owned and operated by two members of Superchunk — is worth owning, and the fifth studio album from Brooklyn’s Ladybug Transistor doesn’t break the label’s streak. It does, however, represent a significant break in the combo’s modus operandi; for the first time, the Ladybugs ventured outside their…
Semi-Conducted
From Metallica’s S&M and Kiss Alive IV to Billy Idol’s Orchestral Removers In the Park and Pink Lady’s Won Ton Baton, every washed-up weasel with nothing left to say is nevertheless insisting on saying it these days by recording a live album with a symphony orchestra. And why not? After all, what better way to…
Bring out your dead
A few weeks back at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, Comedy Central’s Lewis Black was in town, warning us about how “STUPID!” Halloween can be. Without getting too deep into the perils of candy corn and the amnesia that makes us taste it again for the first time every year, Black’s most scathing denouncement…
Tell It From the Heart
He enters the stage to perform — no, to minister — carrying scripture in one hand, and a microphone in another. Luciano prays before he sings, if not always, then every time I have seen or heard him. He treats his music as more than mere blends of words and instrumentation. His songs are reverential…
Prime cuts, warmed over
The original was cheap, inventive trash. This remake tends to settle for more run-of-the-abandoned-mill scares. Even so, it works the teen horror film formulas with gusto, taking its sweet time to build up then hitting its marks like an old pro in the final reels.
The Station Agent
Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) is a quiet, reclusive dwarf who works at a toy train shop. His boss dies and leaves him an old train depot in New Jersey. Fin walks to the property; once there, he just wants to be left alone. But the people who barge into his life are less "normal" than…
A program in check
The Detroit Public Schools’ chess club is in check — but it is not for lack of interest. The district has little funding for the chess league, which had more than 1,000 students, says Dr. Paul Grams, a school administrator and the league’s director. The league had an annual budget of $70,000, Grams says. Half…
Mystic River
This murder mystery has believable chemistry, acting and dialect. But what begins as a good script disintegrates disappointingly toward the end, and what should be a thrilling plot twist involves mere coincidence and cliché. Directed by Clint Eastwood, featuring Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Marcia Gay Harden and Kevin Bacon.
Motion to strike
City Council, infamous for arguments and personal spats, enjoyed a much-needed respite last week. During an Oct. 22 discussion segment, meeting chair JoAnn Watson attempted to get the attention of Lonnie Bates, who was having a side conference with his chief of staff Zen Braswell. Bates made the grim mistake of forcing Watson to call…
Persuasion, Prejudice and Psychology: Ephemeral Films From The Prelinger Archives
This anthology of six "ephemeral" films was created from the thousands of educational and industrial short subjects collected in the Prelinger Archives, movies of instruction and sometimes deception meant to be shown in schools, at middle-management pep rallies, churches or other civic outlets. It offers a cross-section of the ’50s mind-set, from the reactionary to…
She’s a brick house
Abandoned Shelter of the Week This dwelling at 226 Hendrie caught the attention of the Abandoned Structure Squad (aka ASS) because of its rich red bricks. The color reminds ASS of the adobe, earth-toned homes found in Arizona or New Mexico. The windows and front porch of this 1905 structure are in disrepair. A security…
Alien: The Director’s Cut
The razzle-dazzle of the special effects has dimmed with time, sometimes laughably so. But as a whole, director Ridley Scott’s genre-bending breakthrough stands up well — horribly well. Some scenes left on the cutting room floor the first time are restored, including one that foreshadows what’s in store for the sequels.
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): You have two biological parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents. Those 14 people played a major role in determining your talents and flaws, your predilections and aversions. And this is a perfect time to get to know them better. Deepening your connection to your family’s history will provide crucial clues as…
Wild, wild night
“I know that I can’t change how the world sees hip hop.” It’s an odd statement to hear from Wildchild, a man who has spent nearly a decade entrenched in the underbelly of West Coast hip hop. In the early days of the genre’s emerging bicoastal identity, Wildchild cut his teeth by dancing in break…
Where the boys aren’t
Q: I am a gay, healthy, native dude. I’ve got a great group of friends and a pretty well-rounded social life. You would think that I’d be swimming in a sea of eligible gay men to escort to the local hoedown. Unfortunately, I am not attracted to many gay men, or to the gay scene…
The Haunted Tuuuube
Taking the notion of transformation just a few steps too many over the established lines of decency, the good folks of Time Stereo are once again hosting their deliriously devious Halloween spectacle, the Haunted Tube. Hike up your ghost sheet and lift your princess dress — it’s time to jump into the “wrong door” —…
Who won the Dems’ debate?
Well, I guess we have to get to know our presidential candidates somehow. This week, we tried the “Siamese Byzantine” method. That is the phrase old Howard Crane, the architect, used to describe the Fox Theatre when it opened in 1928, and that pretty much sums up Sunday’s presidential candidates’ show on its stage. I…
Family values
“Indie-vaudeveille conceptual art-rock pop band.” Mull that over for a minute. For that is the only partially ironic epigram Seattle, Wash.’s, Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players have slapped on themselves. So what exactly is this thing called the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players? It is the family Trachtenburg’s invitation to join them for a collision of pop…
Fright club
It’s not easy to get into Theatre Bizarre. I mean literally. After wandering through blood-soaked, human-sized bags that carom off your body, you have to pass through a blood-spattered kitchen, before pawing your way through a maze that’s on the receiving end of a smoke machine, and a twisting hall that’s alternatively pitch black and…
Out from the dark
As she speaks, Cay Bahnmiller drags a cracked-polish fingernail across a brick wall to depict the way some lives are more linear than others. She circles an index finger on a pile of papers like she’s mixing paint as she describes the importance of her influences: Anna Akhmatova, Ted Berrigan, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Alfred Hitchcock, Hank…
October 29-November 4, 2003
29 WED • ART On the Edge: Contemporary Art from the DaimlerChrysler Collection — Did the guardian knights fall down on the job? The heart of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the areas around the Ford Great Hall with its displays of knightly armor, have seemed so steeped in tradition and antiquity for so long…
Inn fighting
Plans by the Ilitch organization to demolish the long-vacant Madison-Lenox hotel are facing pointed questions from downtown preservationists and an investigation from the city agency that oversees the fates of historic buildings. Detroit’s Historic District Commission has had the building under a “demolition by neglect investigation” since June 2001. The process could lead to civil…
Letters to the Editor
Blame the messenger Khary Kimani Turner’s article about the need for downtown hotel rooms quotes Patti Shock, chair of the Convention and Tourism Department of the University of Las Vegas-Nevada (“The inn crowd,” Metro Times, Oct. 15-21). “Detroit needs to do some heavy PR to combat the negative image painted by the press over the…
Dying with Fido
Theology has struggled for centuries to unravel the mystery of where people go after they die. Some believe the good go to heaven, the flawed to purgatory, and the fatally flawed to hell. Supposedly, legions of unbaptized babies float in limbo. But where do pets go when they can whine and scratch no more? Thankfully,…
Prosecutorial misconduct?
Did federal prosecutor Richard Convertino attempt to extort opposing counsel during a terrorism trial earlier this year? That’s what defense attorney William Swor says happened, according to an affidavit filed in federal court. The affidavit is part of a motion asking U.S. District Court Judge Gerald E. Rosen, who presided over the terrorism trial, to…
