Bid adieu to Lili’s 21
“Where things break and spill, there all goes well.” —Polish proverb How disgustingly poignant to be sitting here writing a eulogy for a bar. How perfectly mawkish. The pressing urge to write in full-blown melodrama is almost unbearable. I’m tempted to give in. All the ingredients for a weepy farewell toast are there: lost youth,…
Rashomon
Director Akira Kurosawa’s 11th feature (1950), set in medieval Japan, is a film of enduring popularity that manages to be both deeply cynical and cautiously optimistic. Its title has become synonymous with its central concept — that different people can experience and remember the same event in very different ways — with Toshiro Mifune.
Bush to state rep: Buzz off
State Rep. Buzz Thomas receives a brief and insincere response letter from George W. Bush.
The Four Feathers
In this near-epic drenched in sand, longing and plenty of suffering, Djimon Hounsou appears as the desert savior of a disgraced British soldier (Heath Ledger) who, shamed by friends and fiancee, runs off to the Sudan in order to assert his self-worth.
She’s free (for now)
After nearly a decade behind bars, Kylleen Hargrave-Thomas emerged from prison last week.
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
After a year of blood, sweat and tears shed over Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, rock band Wilco’s record company requires marketing-driven changes for the album’s release. Leader Jeff Tweedy refuses and this documentary becomes a more archetypical drama: today’s music industry’s David-and-Goliath fable.
All’s not well
State Rep. Raymond E. Basham is appalled by Kwame Kilpatrick’s administration.
The Lady and The Duke
This story of one woman’s courage — or obstinacy — during the French Revolution is a rare period piece for octogenarian New Wave veteran Eric Rohmer, though it has the signature approach of his more modern tales, all of which feature characters talking obsessively about … well, everything.
Harem Scarab
Scarab Club domain name has fallen into the hands of a triple-X porn site.
The Banger Sisters
Bob Dolman directs his own fun-loving script with the high-charisma trio of Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon (as aging former rock groupies) and Geoffrey Rush. Unfortunately, the film loses its imaginative bite when all the ugly loose ends are neatly and unnaturally tied in a Hollywood bow.
Stratus-seeking
Susan Goethel Campbell has her mind on the clouds….
Stroll for the goal
Help fight AIDS in the AIDS Walk Michigan Detroit on Belle Isle Sat., Sept.28.
Godtalk: Travels in Spiritual America
A few weeks ago, I visited a friend in Miami’s South Beach for a bit of revelry. Come Sunday morning, though, she insisted that we attend her church, a massive Holy Roller bunker well removed from the cosmopolitan demimonde of Ocean Drive. The experience was a real revelation — the hopeful pride of the congregation,…
Model behavior
Interpol is tied and coifed for world domination….
Edifice wrecks
Erected in 1914, this building at 1983 E. Canfield looks its age, and then some. Strips of sea-foam green aluminum siding — a decades-old attempt at modernization — still cling to the brick walls in some places, and all windows and doors been reduced to gaping holes. Toys, trash and a couple leather valises tumble…
Memory Effects: The Holocaust and The Art of Secondary Witnessing
As he accepted the Academy Award for Best Director for the 1993 film about the Holocaust, Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg said again and again, “This is so that we will never forget — This is so that we will never forget,” as he held the Oscar high above his head. Remembering the Holocaust and representing…
Talking dirty, coming clean
Q: Whenever we make love, my girlfriend begs me to say “sexy things” to her. I have no clue as to what she means or what to say. She tells me she’s turned on by “dirty” talk. Can you please give me some examples of sexy things to say or tell me where I can…
Letters to the Editor
Trials and errors I congratulate Metro Times and Lisa M. Collins on her timely and well-researched story, “Slipping up” (Metro Times, Aug. 21-27) concerning the staggering amounts paid out by the city of Detroit in personal injury lawsuits and other “tort” cases. I found Collins’ reporting to be as fascinating as it was consistent with…
My Generation Deluxe Edition
A recent edition of Mojo roll-called the 100 greatest record producers, and Shel Talmy was one of them, although he’d never get my vote. And I’m not even going to mention his judgment in producing Nancy Boy, the worst record ever made by kids with rock-star daddies. True, Talmy did produce numerous rock classics, but…
Ex-pats
John Doe and Kristin Hersh talk of past lives and exile follies….
Zinester revolt
Modern literature sucks. Gifted writers suffer to near extinction because a handful of conglomerates ignorant of craft, narrative and suspense own America’s publishing houses, leaving a dearth of great novels since the 1950s that can hold a candle to Dickens, Hemingway, Woolf, Fitzgerald. The literary world headquartered in New York City is elitist, nepotistic and…
Catcher in the wry
Kieran Culkin, Claire Danes, Susan Sarandon and Jeff Goldblum star in this attractive, quick-witted but ultimately vacuous coming-of-age movie that never actually comes of age, no matter what first-time director Burr Steers wants us to believe.
United States of Imperialism
Anyone who fully realizes what is happening now ought to be scared, plenty scared. George W. Bush is proposing to radically change what the United States of America is and what it stands for in this world. No longer will we even pretend to be a democracy that believes other nations are entitled to govern…
Open up the furnace
It’s getting hot in here! So break out all your prose! Sorry. It’s just that the most overplayed song of the summer has something in common with a promising new Detroit magazine: heat. The Furnace, a literary journal, is gearing up for a Sept. 28 launch party, and “Issue 0” is full of the creative…
Secretary
Maggie Gyllenhaal gives a performance both maddening and touching. A girl dying to escape a pathetic home life, she takes a job as secretary to lawyer James Spader, who engages his employee in a bizarre S&M relationship that includes spanking and hunger strikes
Blood on the tracks
In discussing the unusual circumstances of her artistic lineage (her mom, dad, stepmother and stepfather were all well-known artists), including her painful experience of the prototypical “hygienic museum-gallery space,” artist Rebecca Quaytman writes, “I often experienced mild waves of dizziness when walking in highly lit white minimal exhibition spaces. I felt as if I was…
The ghost of Black Bottom
Editor’s note:Yeah, this guy Khary is a regular contributor to Metro Times. All nepotism aside, we thought it would be fun for him to interview himself using the same questions anyone would ask. Got it? A late summer night’s dream: Psst! You asleep? (yawning) Who’s there? It’s the ghost, the Ghost of Black Bottom. (stretching)…
Mr. Belvedere goes to court
Ex-aide claims “Mr. Belvedere” fleeced poor customers….
Abandoned Shelter of the Week
Erected in 1914, this building at 1983 E. Canfield looks its age, and then some. Strips of sea-foam green aluminum siding — a decades-old attempt at modernization — still cling to the brick walls in some places, and all windows and doors been reduced to gaping holes. Toys, trash and a couple leather valises tumble…
Eye spy
Sexual subjects caught living and looking in a hot new show….
Wyandotte winner
There are more than a dozen sandwiches on the menu at this eclectic neighborhood gathering place, including several vegetarian choices. After that, you have a choice of tried-and-true entrées of fish, pasta or meat.There is a full bar, a brief wine list and quality beer on tap. The Newcastle Brown Ale went well with all…
Muslims will help polish off Lili’s
Nowhere in metro Detroit can you feast your ears on anything more droll, more wry, more musically comedic than the Polish Muslims, an eight-piece band whose vibrant renderings of classic pop and punk songs satirize their own Polish heritage with an ever-provincial eye on Hamtramck. The songs, in fact, go to great lengths to kick-start…
Best Bukowskian watering hole
Christened after its elderly owner Steven Francis, Steve’s Place has the appearance of a 1940s Robert Mitchum film projected onto an old screen. It could be the last bar on the last block on the last day at last call. The long-in-the-tooth bar is a Bukowskian reverie, an overlooked jewel in downtown Detroit. The den…
We have seen the enemy …
I ended my last column by saying, “If we learned anything from [Osama] bin Laden and his followers it should be that we have enough enemies to worry about without having to be afraid of the enemies trapped in our own mirror.” One week later, a federal judge in Detroit ruled for a second time…
FULL
FULL satisfies musical cravings at the Ann Arbor Art and Music Festival.
Sept. 25-Oct. 1, 2002
27 FRI • MOVIES The Mouse That Roared — Anyone who has ever thrown their head back in hysteria at a Pink Panther film or chuckled their way through Dr. Strangelove knows exactly what it is that makes Peter Sellers great. Deadpan buffoonery, impossible circumstances and unique genius are served up on a platter, replete…
His master’s voice
A few weeks ago, I visited a friend in Miami’s South Beach for a bit of revelry. Come Sunday morning, though, she insisted that we attend her church, a massive Holy Roller bunker well removed from the cosmopolitan demimonde of Ocean Drive. The experience was a real revelation — the hopeful pride of the congregation,…
