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Artist Spotlight - The Raconteurs |
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Written by John Louse
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Wednesday, 04 June 2008 |
 O.K., so Meg White’s
health issues held up the White Stripes from touring behind their Icky Thump record last year. A lot of us in Detroit got
bummed over that; but it gave Jack White a chance to head back into
the studio last year to start work on the second Raconteurs album in
Nashville. The output of the
recordings is the brand new album, Consolers Of The Lonely,
which came out back in March and debuted in the Top 10 of the
Billboard Album Chart. Always an impressive feat, but even more
impressive when you mention the fact that the band announced the
release of the album a week before the album’s release. This
was to stop the music pirates from leaking it out on the internet and
causing minimal damage to album sales in the process. Even with the
rushed release, the band has seen the first single “Salute Your
Solution” has risen up the rock radio charts.
Lonely
turns up the riffs for the band, with tracks like “Rich Kid
Blues” and “Attention” switching up the band’s
sound slightly from the more blues-based first record Broken
Boy Soliders. The album also does delve into those moments as
well, with cuts like “Old Enough” and “The Switch
and The Spur” to satisfy the fans of the first record. White takes more vocal
command on the new record, but still trades off with former
Detroit-singer-songwriter Brendan Benson with the vocals these days.
White and Benson form an admirable duo as songwriters in the band
and former Greenhornes Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler add to the
band’s mix.
The band is on the road
currently in support of the new record. The tour is winding down with
two big shows back in Detroit June 7th and 8th.
The band wraps this leg of the tour up at the Bonnaroo Festival on
June 13th. The band hits Europe, before heading back to
the States for Lollapalooza at the beginning of August. So, for all the White
Stripes fans in Detroit that didn’t get to see them last year,
this is your chance to check Jack White and Brendan Benson out and
see them return home.
The Raconteurs
play the Fillmore Detroit on June 7th and 8th.
June 7th is SOLD OUT, but tickets remain for the June 8th
show. Tickets are available at www.ticketmaster.com.
Additional dates can be found at www.theraconteurs.com . NOTE: Go
check out the website, you’ll get flashbacks of a computer
screen in 1982 if you do- it's great!
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Review - The Cure |
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Written by Taryn Shick
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Wednesday, 04 June 2008 |
 The Cure
Starring: Mollie
Weeks, Judy Maier, Douglas Davis, Joe Tonkin, Shahina Rahemanji
Written & Directed
by: Ryan Jafri
The Cure is a short
film that captures the intensity of emotions that often accompanies
the end of a romantic relationship. The film runs about six minutes in
length but says a lot in that short amount of time.
Done completely in a
voice-over narration with a score, The Cure details one woman’s
solution for stopping herself from obsessing over an ex-boyfriend.
The director chooses to display the events leading up to and
following the woman’s decision both in black and white and
color, creating the desired dramatic effects. Liberty is also taken
with the score. Instead of the usual piano and violin score, it is a
strong guitar arrangement.
The choice to have the
film narrated lends a deeper look inside the mind of the woman,
letting us perhaps better understand her decision. Had the film been
characters acting out the events through dialogue, I feel a lot of
the intensity of The Cure would be lost.
I really enjoyed the
cinematography. There are some daring angles and then the back and
forth between color and black and white. I liked that the score used
guitar, rather than piano and violin. But at times, it does tend to
distract from the story since it is such a heavy score. Still, I
found The Cure to be a really strong, intriguing film.
The Cure was inspired
by an article about people’s obsession with lost loves and how
that can lead to rage and despair. Finished in January 2006, the
film traveled the festival circuit for the next year and a half. It
won two awards from The New York International Independent Film &
Video Festival: Best Short Film-Romance, Genre Award and Best Short
Film, Screencraft Award.
See the whole film
online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSSrHFCGxQM.
For more on the film,
visit www.jafripictures.com.
The Contact Us section has links to IMDB and to a MySpace
page. Writer/Director Ryan
Jafri is working on his next project, No Man’s Land, which he
hopes to begin production on within a year. If you’d like to
contact him, you may do so at ryjafri@jafripictures.com
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Ode to Eli |
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Written by Taryn Shick
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Wednesday, 04 June 2008 |
 I take it back –
I love Hostel and I like Hostel II. FEARnet is currently
featuring Hostel online and through Comcast ONDemand. Accompanying
the film is a contest to win a trip to Europe where the film takes
place. Well, hopefully not exactly where the film takes place
– that might turn out to be unpleasant, if you meet the same
fate as its characters. But this all made me recall the fact that I
said some not-so-nice things in the past about Hostel and its sequel
which I must now recant.
I have watched many
movies. Some I watch over and over and love them more each time.
Some I watch after loving it the first time I saw it and then wonder
what I loved about it. Hostel was a film I loved when I saw it in
the theater, hated upon a second viewing and now am totally enamored
with. I like Hostel II more now than I did when I first saw it. My original review of
Hostel had me bowing to it. Then I said I didn’t like it in my
review of Hostel II. I support my first impression of Hostel as
awesome. It has an awesome story line, great acting, excellent
character development and gore that, despite what it may seem, is not
gratuitous but relevant to the plot. I could write a book on all the
ways Hostel is a superior film, but suffice it to say, I love it.
In my review of Hostel
II, I basically said that I don’t hate it but I don’t
adore it. I still feel that way, but I do like it more than I did.
It still has all the elements that make a great film – good
story, strong character development and entertaining events. And
there’s enough gore to make it a good horror film. As a
sequel, it’s not the exact same story even though, at its core,
it is. As with Hostel, we follow three friends who fall victim to
the club where people pay to kill. But this time it is three
females, not three males. And we get to see more of the killers’
perspectives. Hostel gives us the what. Hostel II gives us the who,
why and how. It’s just that the what was a lot scarier than
the who, why and how. Nevertheless, I think Hostel II is a good film
and a better film than most, particularly most horror.
I adore Eli Roth. I
admire his skills as a writer-director and his passion for horror.
In interviews with him that I’ve seen and read, he always seems
like a really fun and intelligent guy. Many directors have started
out in horror, but then quickly abandon the genre lest they be
labeled ‘a horror director.’ Eli Roth wants to be known
as a horror director and doesn’t feel the need to apologize for
that. I love that he is at the forefront of the movement to get
horror to be recognized as a worthwhile film style with just as much
artistic integrity and moral value as any other genre.
I
must have been possessed by aliens when I spoke so ill of The
Hostels. If you haven’t seen them, check them out. If you
haven’t seen Cabin Fever, watch it. Many have said the film is
boring. To them, I say they are boring. The film shows what happens
to close friends when they are trapped and fearing for their lives;
how this can bring you together or tear you apart. Then there is
some actual physical tearing apart that makes Cabin Fever one of the
sickest films ever – and that’s a good thing. Also be
sure to see Eli’s fake Trailer, Thanksgiving – it rules.
This was created for the Grindhouse film, a double feature including
Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s
Death Proof. Neither of those films DVD’s features the
trailer, but you can find it on YouTube. You could also catch it
June 20 & 21 at The Main Art Theater in Royal Oak as part of the
Midnight Madness. They will be playing Grindhouse that Friday and
Saturday in its original theatrical release, featuring the trailer
from Eli and those from Rodriguez, Rob Zombie and Edgar ‘Shaun
of the Dead’ Wright. (For a complete listing of the Midnight
Madness lineup, go to:
http://www.landmarktheatres.com/market/Detroit/Detroit_frameset.htm
).
Eli Roth has been
labeled the future of horror. Some horror fans hope this isn’t
true since they see him as nothing more than a gore hound. But I
hope it is true, because I see him as a talented writer-director with
a great gift for writing strong characters into fantastic stories
mixed with dark humor and gore. To me, if Eli is the future of
horror, the future is looking good.
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Detroit Concert Spotlight - June 1st |
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Written by MCB Staff
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Sunday, 01 June 2008 |
SUNDAY
The Acacia Strain @ The
Ritz - The Massachusetts band is getting on the road, gearing up to
release their next album due out in August. The band brings the
Warriors and All Shall Perish to the Ritz, which is guaranteed to
have a mosh pit from wall to wall. Check out the interview Art did
with lead singer Vincent Bennett right here. Tickets are $12 and are
available at www.ticketmaster.com,
or at the door.
The Breeders @ Magic
Stick - Now that Kim Deal is done until the next big Pixies reunion
tour, her and her sister Kelley are resurrecting that little project
that came out of nowhere in the early 90s. If we had to hear
“Cannonball” one more time when we were all in school, we
were gonna go to Frank Black himself and plead for a Pixies reunion
back then. The band is out supporting their new album Mountain
Battles, released back in April. Tickets are $18 and are
available at www.ticketmaster.com.
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Interview w/ Vincent Bennett of The Acacia Stain |
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Written by Art Michalski
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Saturday, 31 May 2008 |
 The Massachusetts based
band Acacia Strain is just wrapping up the finishing touches on their
next album, out August 19th on Prosthetic Records. The
band is gearing up for a U.S. tour in June, before a European tour in
July and back in the States for the fall. As he was resting up at
home, we chatted with lead singer Vincent Bennett. Here’s a
little insight into the band:
On working with
producer Zeuss (Shadows Fall) on this new record: “Working with
him was really good. He doesn’t live up to his reputation as
being a hard ass. In the studio, he was very laid back and more hands
off. He would give the band free reign of the record; he was more
interested in capturing the essence of the band’s sound. We
worked with Adam Duktiewicz (Killswitch Engage) on the last two
records and he’s a great guy. He was more of a free spirit,
but would interject his direction a bit more. We just opted for
something different this time around though.”
On the sound of the
upcoming album: “I think it's more aggressive, if that’s
at all possible. In the two years since the last record (2006’s The Dead Walk), we’re more jaded, we’re
more bitter and angry. This time around, we communicated more as a
band. We all took turns writing different parts. As the singer, I
wrote some guitar parts on the record and so on. It should resonate
on how the album sounds. I think I delved a bit deeper in the lyrics
than in the past as well.”
On the band’s
appearance at Dirt Fest in Birch Run last year: “That was a
great day. It started as a bit of a bum-out kinda day, it was rainy
and shitty. But it got better, and we got to see a lot of good new
bands. We had some issues with the sound guy before our set, he was
yelling at us. He just wasn’t very professional on how to
handle bands. I would love to play there again anytime they wanted
us. But perhaps with a different sound guy is my recommendation.”
On why the metal scene
in Massachusetts has produced so many big names: “I think its
gotta be the weather. I think it affects the mood of the band. You
see these bands like Shadows Fall, who have been around forever, and
Killswitch Engage- this big conglomerate of a bunch of bands come
together. We are just trying to keep the legend alive and keep their
good names intact.”
On their MySpace page,
which states their platform for survival on the road: “As far
as food goes, any sort of food brought to the shows will make you
instant friends for life with us. We’re broke as f--- when we
are on the road, so any contribution is greatly appreciated.”
Any floor that they
wouldn’t sleep on? “About the only floor I wouldn’t
sleep on is a concrete floor in a basement. Plus, anything with
vermin or cat s--- would be a big no as well.”
The Acacia Strain
will headline a show at the Ritz in Warren on Sunday, June 1st.
Tickets are available at www.ticketmaster.com,
or at the door. For additional dates, check
www.myspace.com/theacaciastrain
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