Burning questions about sludge
The Detroit City Council has approved a controversial contract with a company that will treat 50 tons of sludge daily from the Water and Sewerage Department. Last week’s 6-3 vote followed heated debate over the environmental issues, the impact on jobs and the two-day period the council was given to consider the complicated issue. The…
Guinevere
May-December romances have become so prevalent in recent Hollywood films that older man-younger woman scenarios have come to be treated as normal. Screenwriter Audrey Wells (The Truth About Cats and Dogs) doesn’t see it that way – and in Guinevere, her smart, funny and surprisingly poignant directorial debut, she dissects one such love affair and…
Prisons say, keep out
In the wake of scathing reports that Michigan routinely allows sexual abuse of female inmates, state corrections officials are seeking to formalize their practice of keeping the media out. Officials say the proposed policy change was in the works long before NBC’s Geraldo Rivera was refused access to the prisons. Rivera nevertheless highlighted Michigan in…
The Last Metro
Two English Girls (1971) is the 11th of François Truffaut’s 21 features and the director seemed preternaturally aware that he was at the midpoint of his career. “I prefer to regard (this film) as my first,” he said, “the first of the next 10 movies I plan to film in the years ahead.” And 10…
Computer beats rap
A recent report on Detroit’s new multimillion-dollar computer system – created to update and integrate city departments – shows that its problems are people-related, not technical. Solbourne, a Texas-based company, assessed the city’s Detroit Resource Management System (DRMS), which has raised the ire of vendors to the city since it began last April. "These problems…
François Truffaut: Stolen Portraits
Two English Girls (1971) is the 11th of François Truffaut’s 21 features and the director seemed preternaturally aware that he was at the midpoint of his career. “I prefer to regard (this film) as my first,” he said, “the first of the next 10 movies I plan to film in the years ahead.” And 10…
Java jab
UNCOMMON GROUNDS: THE HISTORY OF COFFEE AND HOW IT TRANSFORMED OUR WORLD By Mark Pendegrast Basic Books, $27.50, 520pp. With cream? Sugar? Both or neither? Do you prefer your brew scalding hot, gulped down straight from Mr. Coffee’s mouth, or tempered by the jazz-steamed atmosphere of a earth-toned espresso bar, cushioned with a cloud of…
Sugar Town
With all its spoofing on not-so-gracefully aging rock stars and the light and airy nature of life in Los Angeles, Sugar Town means to combine the irreverent pop music hilarity of Spinal Tap with Steve Martin’s sunny and funny L.A. Story (1991), and the premillennial tension of the West Coast’s over-30 set. But the dish…
Victoria revealed
I’ll tell you Victoria’s secret. Its success. As to where the success comes from, that’s a harder question. It’s not the retail stores that hold the answer, although there are almost 800 of them in the United States. Those quasi-ironic, borderline-wholesome boutiques have made thong underwear and lacy black bras seem a normal part of…
Three Kings
The action movie is dead. The superheroic-larger-than-life-politically-deranged-badass-let’s-all-be-Quentin-Tarantino-war-mockumentary has taken its place. Is this good, bad or – merely – ugly? It’s not like we haven’t noticed that recent movies tend to mix and match genres – to take, say, an action-drama and make it look like a surreal comedy with cartoonish yet macho characters who…
Hopes for housing
Real estate expert Jim Saros didn’t mince words last week when he briefed Detroit City Council on the state of bankrupt mortgage corporation MCA. "It is an absolute disaster," said Saros, who has been in the real estate business 25 years, specifically addressing blight in Detroit. "But where there is disaster," he said, "there is…
Two English Girls
Two English Girls (1971) is the 11th of François Truffaut’s 21 features and the director seemed preternaturally aware that he was at the midpoint of his career. “I prefer to regard (this film) as my first,” he said, “the first of the next 10 movies I plan to film in the years ahead.” And 10…
Revisiting Waco and other wackos
Granted, you don’t have to be a right-wing maniac to have a deep-seated – and generally healthy – suspicion of Our Federal Government, not to mention certain of its occasional members, such as G. Gordon Liddy, Spiro Agnew, Newt Gingrich and the Clintons. But I have to admit I was slow to sign on to…
The Woman Next Door
Two English Girls (1971) is the 11th of François Truffaut’s 21 features and the director seemed preternaturally aware that he was at the midpoint of his career. “I prefer to regard (this film) as my first,” he said, “the first of the next 10 movies I plan to film in the years ahead.” And 10…
Purple promotion
I’m digging around in the catchall nightmare storage closet, in desperate search of a warm sweater, when I come across a tangle of legs, arms and silky hair. Granted, the legs are each about six inches long and somewhat rubbery, but it’s still kind of unnerving. Even more unnerved is the Lizard of Fun, who,…
Ratt, crack and Jack
BIG HAIR BLAST I’m coming out full guns – with the intention of alienating the culture-safe crowd right off the bat – by telling you straight away that Saturday night found me in attendance at Harpo’s for none other than Ratt, live in concert. I have no big names to drop here, other than the…
Spheres of influence
The whole of the globe is open for bartering and exchange in the one-world musical market. American musical ears have, thankfully, become attuned to the same pervasive and constant interchange of cultures that’s now taken for granted in the business and corporate realms – sans most of the exploitation. And, while American pop culture colonialism…
Going, going, gone
It’s over. Baseball at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull is officially obsolete. But Michael Betzold – whose Tiger Stadium Fan Club fought for years to keep the team from relocating – has already moved on. He’s writing surrealistic b-ball fiction. Betzold’s new novel, Casey and the Bat, recounts a truly alternative closing day at…
Tunes of our lives
If you were watching "Saturday Night Live" in 1977 when Elvis Costello abruptly switched songs in midverse from the tenderhearted "Alison" to the vitriolic "Radio, Radio," you know how exciting this show once was. For 25 years, SNL has presented what it feels are the most important musical guests it could find. Certainly, the masses…
Pitch’d
Chicks on Speed For some reason when I was in school, there were always fewer females than males in my science and math classes. I could never figure this out. When I got into techno, there was the same problem. Perhaps some of the curriculum needed to be modified: more bass, more syncopation. It’s a…
Crazy bastard
Do you hear that crazy bastard’s mouth? Crazy bastard comes out of the side of his neck with some of the most vile rhetoric in music these days – and calls it music. Bastard’s got to be hip hop’s answer to Marilyn Manson. One listen to his latest album, N***a Please, and you have evidence…
Now’s the time
There’s always a point in a William H. Macy performance when he captures with dead-on accuracy the specific nature of his character. It’s that quality that made him a respected character actor in the years before Fargo (1996) garnered him an Oscar nomination and a higher profile. In Fargo, Macy plays a car salesman with…
Aspiring, surviving
Remember when people made big, ambitious records playing big, ambitious music with big, ambitious production? Chris Cornell does. A veteran of the Seattle grunge scene and former lead singer of the group Soundgarden, Cornell has always had a penchant for bold musical statements. On his solo debut, he distills his grandiose rock posturing into a…
Food stuff
CRAVING KILLER I had a hard time enlisting friends to try Sugar Blocker Gum. Their responses ranged from a genuinely confused "Why would anyone want to block the taste of sugar?" to "No way!" When told that my preteen daughter had chewed a tab in the interests of science, they asked, "Did you have to…
Future perfect
If you’re not familiar with England’s Stereolab, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. For close to a decade, these kids have been operating light years ahead of everyone else. Like a musical Jules Verne novel, their utopian future fever is hopelessly romantic and based on the best bits of the past’s packaging.…
Laughing at the edges
After 25 years, the Willem Breuker Kollektief keeps the avant-garde fun by just doing it….
Good stuff
Soul Clique is good. These brothers make good music. And their stuff sounds like other stuff I’ve seen before: Unification sounds like a human sandwich I saw two guys and a girl make at a party back in college. They were dancing to Prince’s "Anothalovaholeinyohead." It was good. "Threshold" has this guitar that sounds like…
Voices si, acting no
Rossini’s Barber doesn’t quite cut it at MOT….
Sophisticated bar fare
CK Diggs runs a frequent drinker beer club: Order one of each of their beers in a six-month period, and you win a prize. To qualify you’d pretty much have to make this sports bar your home away from home, because CK Diggs carries 103 varieties bottled and on tap. That’s a lot of imbibing…
Studies ‘n’ style
For WSU students, fall means cool beginnings and laid-back looks….
Loosy groovy
Ain’t no secret about Mudpuppy. If you’ve heard them, then you know. If you haven’t, then you should find out. If you can’t check them out live anytime soon, then check out this CD, recorded live at Big Sky Studios in Ann Arbor. Like long distance, it’s the next best thing to being there. What…
Breathing primal air
ECM’s New Series makes itself home to an important connection – between sonically perfect interpretations of early music by Gesualdo, Perotin, Thomas Tallis, Orlando di Lasso, etc. (by, among others, the exceptional Hilliard Ensemble), and indispensable releases of contemporary works by Giya Kancheli, György Kurtág, Arvo Pärt, Gavin Bryars et al. (by the stellar likes…
