English Bulldog Puppies for Sale in Ann Arbor, MI

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DETROIT, MI [November 20, 2024] – Co-written and co-directed by Neal Kelley and Jono Sherman, in their feature film debut, DADDY is a sci-fi dark comedy set in a dystopian society where the state has the power to determine who can and cannot father children. Four men attend a government-mandated retreat in the remote mountains of California. When they arrive, there’s no guide or instructions waiting for them. So left to their own devices, they must prove to themselves that they have what it takes to become fathers.

The cast features Chicago Fire series star Yuriy Sardarov in the lead role. Sardarov appeared in over 160 episodes of the hit NBC show as the beloved fan-favorite character of Brian "Otis" Zvonecek. Starring alongside him are Jacqueline Toboni (The L Word: Generation Q and Grimm), Pomme Koch (WeCrashed) and Britt Baron (GLOW).

The filmmakers hail from Michigan and share a deep connection to the state, along with key members of the main cast, who are proud alumni of the University of Michigan.

DADDY has been an official selection at numerous film festivals including Dances With Films, the Oxford Film Festival and the Rhode Island Film Festival. It won best film at the 2023 Ridgefield Independent Film Festival and was a marquee film at the 2023 Cinequest Film Festival.

Thomas Zambeck and Brian Katz are Detroit Area natives, and the co-founders behind the newly reimagined Anchor Bay Entertainment, a revival of the beloved and widely recognized horror brand. With a fresh perspective and a passion for storytelling, they are dedicated to building a dynamic new library of films for distribution. Their slate encompasses a diverse range of projects, including innovative genre releases, hidden cinematic gems, cult classics, and meticulously remastered catalog favorites. Through this curated collection, Zambeck and Katz aim to honor the legacy of Anchor Bay while introducing a new generation of audiences to unforgettable stories and timeless films.

“DADDY had been on our radar since its festival run,” says Zambeck, also a University of Michigan Alum. “It fits in line with our vision for Anchor Bay, and redefines preconceived notions of both science fiction and comedy. We’re thrilled to share this brilliant, poignant film with audiences around the world.”

Katz, added, “We are absolutely thrilled to be partnering with Nick and the Michigan Theater. The Michigan Theater is an iconic venue that has been a cornerstone of the local arts community for decades, and collaborating with Nick and his team is an incredible opportunity to bring something truly special to audiences and the start of what we hope is a long-term partnership.”

Anchor Bay Entertainment recently debuted CURSED IN BAJA, directed by Rob Zombie acting alum Jeff Daniel Phillips, and CRUST, directed by Sean Whalen and featuring Alan Ruck, who was recently nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his role on Succession.

They also released the ambitious horror film ABRUPTIO, a groundbreaking project and the first of its kind, utilizing lifelike puppets in hyper-realistic settings. James Marsters, best known for his iconic role as Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, stars in the film. The film was named one of Harper’s Bazaar’s Top Horror Films of 2024 and also features genre icon Robert Englund and Academy Award winner Jordan Peele. Hana Mae Lee (Pitch Perfect), Christopher McDonald (Happy Gilmore), and Sid Haig (in his final performance) also feature in the film. The project is written, directed and produced by Evan Marlowe, alongside Kerry Marlowe.

Another highlight in Anchor Bay Entertainment’s catalog is DINNER WITH LEATHERFACE, a highly anticipated documentary about Gunnar Hansen, the actor who famously portrayed Leatherface in the 1974 horror classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film is set to debut at the New York Horror Film Festival in December as their opening film. It includes intimate interviews with horror icons such as Evil Dead franchise star Bruce Campbell, Barbara Crampton, Betsy Baker, Brian O'Halloran, and Danielle Harris. This film is written and directed by Michael Kallio and produced by Lowell Northrop. Post-production was handled by Umbrelic’s subsidiary, OutPost X.

Prior to launching Anchor Bay Entertainment, the partners founded Umbrelic Entertainment in 2018. Under that banner, they have successfully produced and executive produced over 14 feature films. Recent highlights include Solo Mio, starring Kevin James and Alyson Hannigan; Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose, featuring Mission: Impossible franchise actor Simon Pegg and Academy Award-nominated actress Minnie Driver; American Murderer, starring Ryan Phillippe, Tom Pelphrey, and Idina Menzel (Frozen); And the adrenaline-fueled Mafia Wars, led by Smallville star Tom Welling and Twilight actor Cam Gigandet.

The pair are also in post-production on several other films including Hellfire, starring Avatar franchise star Stephen Lang, The Possession of Gladstone Manor with Lin Shaye and Barbara Crampton and Stay at Home featuring Jenna Davis and Jack Griffo.

ABOUT THE FOUNDERS

Thomas Zambeck is a post-production veteran with more than 16 years of experience, having overseen the global delivery of over 1,500 projects. Zambeck began his career at the original Anchor Bay Entertainment and later held roles at Starz, Sony, and Post Haste Digital. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and currently resides in Los Angeles.

Brian Katz, a seasoned film production expert with over 20 years of experience, also brings expertise from the technology, manufacturing, and private equity sectors. Katz resides in the Detroit area.

For more information or to arrange interviews, please contact pr@umbrelic.com.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Xander Mueller forced a fumble and recorded an interception as Northwestern (4-7, 2-6 Big Ten) fell 50-6 at Michigan (6-5, 4-4 Big Ten) on Saturday afternoon at Michigan Stadium.

Michigan struck first, capitalizing on an interception with an 11-play, 53-yard touchdown drive. Kalel Mullings scored the game's first touchdown with a two-yard plunge to put U-M up 7-0.

The Wolverines added on with a 56-yard field goal by Dominic Zvada to take a 10-0 lead into the end of the first quarter.

Xander Mueller's second quarter interception gave Northwestern the ball at the Michigan 20-yard line. It marked the sixth interception of Mueller's career, and his first of the season. Luke Akers converted on a 28-yard field goal to put Northwestern on the board and trim the Wolverine lead to 10-3.

The Wildcat defense forced a punt on the ensuing possession, which A.J. Henning returned to the Northwestern 46-yard line. Jack Lausch found Bryce Kirtz for a 39-yard gain to put the Wildcats at the Michigan 15-yard line. Akers converted on his second field goal of the day to cut into the Michigan deficit again, trimming the U-M lead to 10-6.

Michigan closed out the first half with an 11 play, 65-yard drive, capped off with a three-yard touchdown reception by Colston Loveland to extend its lead to 17-6 headed into the intermission.

The Wolverines outscored NU 14-0 in the third quarter and 19-0 in the fourth quarter en route to a 50-6 victory.

Gallery: (11-23-2024) Football at Michigan

Game Notes » Xander Mueller recorded an interception and a forced fumble. » Mueller is the first Wildcat to force a fumble and record an interception in the same game since Bryce Gallagher on October 1, 2022 at Penn State. » Mueller recorded nine total tackles, including six solo tackles. » Luke Akers converted a pair of field goal attempts, his third game this season with multiple field goals made. » Damon Walters led all Wildcats with 10 total tackles, including a career-high seven solo and one tackle for loss. » Aidan Hubbard his fifth sack of the 2024 campaign and 12th of his career. » Kalel Mullings rushed for 92 yards and three touchdowns on 12 attempts for Michigan. » Tyler Morris caught seven passes for 64 yards for the Wolverines.

Up Next Northwestern will close out its 2024 regular season on Saturday, November 30 with an 11 a.m. CT kickoff at Wrigley Field that will be broadcast on BTN and WGN 720 AM.

WASHTENAW COUNTY, MI – A handful of elementary schools in Ann Arbor and a charter school in Ypsilanti were ranked this year in the top 50 by U.S. News and World Report.

For Ann Arbor Public Schools, those include Angell, King, Wines, Bach and Eberwhite, which were ranked at 10, 12, 26, 28 and 33, respectively.

South Arbor Charter Academy was ranked 44th out of 50.

According to information released on Nov. 13, the latest elementary institution rankings are based on schools’ share of students who scored proficient and above on the state’s math and language arts assessments.

The evaluation formula is split between the scores in general and test results in the context of students’ socioeconomic demographics.

Students at each of the schools included had exceeded the state average for proficiency rates on the 2023-24 M-STEP, or the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress administered to third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students, at 42% for reading and 33% for math.

Read more: How Ann Arbor schools is addressing learning gaps in latest state test results

Rankings also involve other school factors, such as the student-teacher ratios.

“The Ann Arbor Public Schools is proud of the work going on in all of our schools,” Ann Arbor Superintendent Jazz Parks said in a statement Wednesday. “The U.S. News rankings highlight the powerful outcomes achieved from our teachers, building leaders and staff working together with our students and families every day in the AAPS.”

At South Arbor, which is managed by National Heritage Academies, Principal Fletcher Morgan called the ranking a testament to the hard work of the school community’s staff, students and parents.

“Our academic success is truly a team effort that has culminated in being named to this ranking over consecutive years,” he said in a statement. “As a National Heritage Academies partner-school, we are proud to combine rigorous academics with character education to improve student outcomes.”

The following is a breakdown of local schools’ U.S. News rank for 2025, grade level, tracked enrollment, student-teacher ratio and test proficiency.

Rank: 10

Grade level: K-5

Enrollment: 298

Student-teacher ratio: 14:1

Math proficiency: 87%

Reading proficiency: 82%

Rank: 12

Grade level: K-5

Enrollment: 508

Student-teacher ratio: 17:1

Math proficiency: 84%

Reading proficiency: 81%

Rank: 26

Grade level: PK-5

Enrollment: 401

Student-teacher ratio: 16:1

Math proficiency: 82%

Reading proficiency: 77%

Rank: 28

Grade level: K-5

Enrollment: 344

Student-teacher ratio: 14:1

Math proficiency: 77%

Reading proficiency: 77%

Rank: 33

Grade level: K-5

Enrollment: 354

Student-teacher ratio: 15:1

Math proficiency: 72%

Reading proficiency: 77%

Rank: 44

Grade level: K-8

Enrollment: 801

Student-teacher ratio: 20:1

Math proficiency: 68%

Reading proficiency: 78%

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ANN ARBOR, MI - Voters submitted nearly 15,000 ballots at the two University of Michigan voting hubs, officials said Thursday.

The Central Campus hub was at the Museum of Art off South State Street, while the North Campus one was at the Duderstadt Gallery off Bonisteel Boulevard. Between the two sites, a total of 14,932 voters either voted on-site or deposited absentee ballots, officials said.

The Ann Arbor campus saw three times as many ballots submitted for the Nov. 5 general election than there were in the 2022 midterm, according to university officials.

Additionally, the two hubs processed 6,373 in-person voter registrations during the 2024 cycle. These accounted for 88% of the City of Ann Arbor’s registrations, officials said.

In 2022, 4,608 absentee ballots were submitted, and on-site voting was not available, officials said. One potential contributing factor to the increased numbers is that there are 1,630 additional students on the Ann Arbor campus in fall 2024 compared to two years ago.

City Clerk Jackie Beaudry called the campus voter hubs extraordinarily efficient.

“The Campus Voting Hubs were a success all around, from voter registration numbers, early voting turnout and of course line management on Election Day,” she said. “The lessons learned from 2022 and the changes we made could not have been implemented to this level without the commitment from the entire UMICH Votes team. The city is very grateful for this amazing partnership.”

The city clerk collaborates with the nonpartisan university group UMICH Votes to make voting easier and more accessible.

This presidential election was the first on campus with the two voting hubs, as well as the first presidential election with nine days of early voting, officials said. UMICH Votes has worked since 2020 to build the voting access on campus, said co-founder Stephanie Rowden alongside her colleague Hannah Smotrich.

“We work to make the voting process clear, calm, welcoming and even delightful,” Rowden said. “Over and over we heard from students how much they appreciated the spaces and the support.”

Lines were also much shorter this cycle. After some wait times were four hours in the 2022 midterm, the longest wait time to register was 15 minutes this election, officials said.

The voting hubs did have an issue with Chinese student Haoxiang Gao, 19, casting an illegal ballot despite not being a citizen. He submitted the ballot at the University of Michigan Museum of Art on Oct. 27, according to City Manager Milton Dohoney.

Gao was arraigned Nov. 8 in 14A-1 District Court on felony charges of an unauthorized elector attempting to vote and for perjury for making a false affidavit for the purpose of securing voter registration, court records show.

He will be at a probable cause conference at 9 a.m., Dec. 12 in 14A-1 District Court, records show.

Noncitizen voting is “an extremely isolated and rare event,” according to a joint statement from the Secretary of State and Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office.

“Only U.S. citizens can register and vote in our elections. It is illegal to lie on any registration forms or voting applications about one’s citizenship status. Doing so is a felony,” according to the joint statement.

Read more: See where Trump, Harris had biggest support in Ann Arbor area

In some precincts around campus, support for the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, dropped to 77-79% where support for President Joe Biden was around 87-89% in 2020, as former President Donald Trump saw his share of votes in some cases go up from about 10% to 20%, according to Washtenaw County election data.

While Harris still had over six times as many votes as Trump in Ann Arbor — 59,424 to 8,951 — she only did about 200 votes better than Joe Biden did four years ago, while Trump gained nearly 1,300 votes in the city.

Trump won Michigan by about 80,000 votes. He won re-election with 312 electoral college votes.

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Election Day yielded few bright spots for the transition to clean energy, but there was one in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The city of nearly 120,000 voted 79 percent in favor of a measure to create a ​“sustainable energy utility” (SEU) that will supplement the existing grid and help residents shift to cleaner, more reliable energy.

With that overwhelming approval, city officials will now figure out the governance, staffing, and leadership of the new local utility. They have already begun outreach to residents interested in participating; 600 customers had registered by Tuesday afternoon. The plan is to assemble an initial tranche of 20 megawatts worth of demand, at which point Ann Arbor will finance the purchase and installation of solar panels, batteries, and energy-efficiency upgrades to serve those customers.

Installations — on homes, sheds, schools, libraries — could happen in the next 18 to 24 months, Mayor Christopher Taylor told Canary Media. Longer term, the utility hopes to construct a district-level geothermal network to heat and cool buildings without fossil fuels.

“I’m incredibly gratified by the support that voters of Ann Arbor have given to the SEU,” Taylor said. ​“The SEU is going to be both great for our carbon future and great for the pocketbook.”

The effort to fast-track local clean energy installations serves Ann Arbor’s ambitious climate goals. But it’s also a response to an uptick in power outages as extreme weather collides with for-profit utility DTE’s aging distribution-grid infrastructure. Monopoly utilities, for the most part, have shown little interest in seizing the opportunities of decentralized energy, but that’s core to the new Ann Arbor utility’s mission.

The measure’s success marks the latest episode in a sporadic national trend of communities trying to break free from the century-old model of for-profit, monopoly utilities controlling local energy systems.

Such efforts typically provoke a scorched-earth response from the incumbent utility. Utilities elsewhere have waged lengthy legal battles and spent millions of dollars on political campaigns to stop these escape attempts. When localities win their energy autonomy, they often have to pay hefty exit fees as a reimbursement for grid infrastructure built on their behalf. Communities that make it through that ringer then have to shoulder the laborious task of operating and maintaining decades-old infrastructure while trying to push ahead with new technologies.

In a bracing and punchily worded 2021 report, Ann Arbor’s sustainability office made clear that it would take a different route.

“Every dollar we don’t spend in litigation or to buy the [investor owned utility]’s old, failing infrastructure is money we can spend on new infrastructure here in Ann Arbor to generate power, distribute power, and store power — dollars we can use to immediately provide reliable, clean, and affordable public power to everyone,” the city wrote.

In short, it’s a distributed energy wish list coming to life. Ann Arbor has created a clear pathway to building more clean, local, resilient, and publicly owned infrastructure. If the city can make electricity cheaper on top of that, it will demonstrate that a better electricity system is possible even without completely overhauling the existing utility industry.

Local action for local needs

In 2019, Ann Arbor set a 2030 deadline to deliver equitable, community-wide carbon neutrality. Meeting that target requires sourcing clean electricity, driving out fossil-fuel combustion in buildings, and cleaning up transportation.

But the city’s built environment poses some challenges. Ann Arbor spans about 49,000 households, 52 percent of which are rentals. Overall housing stock averages 48 years old. That necessitates a lot of retrofits to turn these buildings into efficient systems running on clean electricity.

The SEU thus prioritizes energy-efficiency upgrades for customers. Unlike a for-profit utility, the municipally owned nonprofit has no incentive to let customers keep wasting energy. Ann Arbor aims to make efficiency more accessible with tools like on-bill financing, ​“structured to match or be lower than the monthly utility bill savings, resulting in a positive cash-flow for the customer immediately,” per the 2021 report.

The utility can buy equipment like solar panels and batteries in bulk and finance these upgrades with its AAA municipal credit rating, accessing far cheaper capital than a bunch of lone homeowners negotiating separately with private lenders. And the on-bill charge stays with the house — if someone moves out, the new resident takes over paying for the improvements that will lower their bill.

Climate goals weren’t the only factor motivating the change. The area’s aging grid has suffered a number of outages lately.

“Ann Arbor is currently served by an investor-owned utility that has a history of reliability challenges in our area,” Taylor noted. ​“We expect the SEU to provide far more reliable service.”

The SEU plans to install and own solar panels on customers’ rooftops and batteries in their sheds and garages, selling those customers the power at cost, without a markup. That lets residents access solar power and backup power without dropping a load of cash up front for it or taking on debt. This kind of subscription is available from companies like Sunrun, but they do it to make money, not to sell at cost.

The most radical dimension of the plan is to use the city’s utility franchise rights to build wires between properties, so that they can share excess solar power locally. Most everywhere in the country, customer-led upgrades have to stay on the customer side of the utility meter; crossing that boundary to sell power to a neighbor violates the utility’s legally enforced monopoly. This stands in the way of visions for interconnected neighborhoods generating and selling power with each other based on who needs it at a given moment.

But Ann Arbor officials tracked down a century-old precedent that makes sharing power possible: ​“The Michigan Constitution preserves the rights of cities and villages to form their own utility or to supplement an existing utility,” Missy Stults, the city’s sustainability and innovation director, told me.

Thus, the SEU will link up different properties if the people living there want it. If a home generates more solar than it can use, it could run a line to a neighboring house that’s shaded by trees, allowing it to buy surplus power.

“We’ll be able to connect homes with each other, schools with homes, schools with each other,” Taylor said. ​“We’re going to do this in a way that is cost-effective and fully opt-in.”

This plan assumes people will be happy to offer up their roof space for panels that the SEU will own and use for broader community benefit. But doing so will let that household buy cheaper, cleaner power for itself. The battery controls present some additional complications: Will the host customer get first dibs on backup power, or will that be split among the locally connected homes as well? This is new territory for distributed energy in the U.S.

That said, the strong show of support at the ballot box demonstrates the local community is fully on board with the general direction of the SEU. It’s no accident that this idea is coming to fruition in a college town like Ann Arbor, said Liesl Clark, a former state climate leader who now serves as director of climate action engagement at the University of Michigan.

“There are a lot of people who are innovative and also are interested in having agency,” she said. ​“It is a community that was ripe for a solution like this.”

Furthermore, the city structured the plan in a way to minimize any downside for residents who don’t want to jump on the decentralized power opportunity.

“You haven’t asked me how much it’s going to cost the taxpayer,” Taylor told me as I was about to wrap up our phone call. He answered the rhetorical question: ​“Nothing!”

That pledge veers into too-good-to-be-true territory, but the SEU structure makes it possible. The city won’t levy any new taxes because it’s not buying out DTE’s assets. Instead, it’s installing new equipment based on voluntary customer commitments, and those customers pay their way, while saving themselves money.

Breaking free from utilities without all the hassle

The outcome of this effort remains far from certain. But so far, Ann Arbor has managed to pursue a low-drama, low-conflict way to break up with a monopoly utility, in contrast to high-profile recent attempts elsewhere.

The city of Boulder, Colorado, famously fought for a decade to peel off from Xcel Energy, and ultimately gave up. In 2010, California mega-utility PG&E spent $46 million to make it harder for communities to source their own electricity, though even that gargantuan sum failed to stop the rise of community choice aggregators.

Maine has grappled for years with its deeply unpopular monopoly utilities. Last year, voters nonetheless soundly rejected a ballot referendum to seize utility assets under a new public power entity. The utilities spent $40 million to fight it, and independent experts raised concerns about how the public entity would deliver on promises of a cheaper, more efficient grid after saddling itself with billions of dollars of debt.

Activists in Ann Arbor have also pushed for full municipalization — a city-level version of what Maine considered and rejected. The city is working on a second study to dig into the details of what purchasing the grid infrastructure would entail. That conversation will continue as the SEU implementation moves forward, Taylor noted.

For its part, Michigan utility DTE hasn’t declared war on Ann Arbor. Following the vote, the company stated that it will continue to invest in making the city’s grid more resilient and clean — a recent Michigan climate law requires ramping to 60 percent renewable power by 2035 and 100 percent clean electricity by 2040.

The public interest in full municipalization may explain the muted response from the utility: The SEU allows DTE to go on with business as usual, and its distribution grid will continue to play a crucial role even if kilowatt-hour sales decline from the new local solar generation.

Instead of fighting the utility colossus head on, Ann Arbor is taking a live-and-let-live approach. It’s a case where avoiding head-on conflict could make it possible to deliver the benefits of clean, local energy far more quickly.