DreamWorks is so eager to have you believe in its latest family movie that the words “Inspired by a True Story” are actually part of the title. Yep, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story is the proper name, and publicists have been well-coached to say and write out the whole…
When we first see the protagonist of North Country, a working-class heroine portrayed by a deglamorized Charlize Theron, she’s sporting a black eye and a slight limp, the results of an encounter with her abusive husband. We soon learn that Josey Aimes is only now beginning to take her lumps…
It’s always exciting when a world-class DJ hits the ‘Nix for the first time; it does our egos good and quashes a bit of our desert metropolis’ inferiority complex. So clap your hands and say “yeah” for this Saturday’s inaugural appearance by U.K. producer and DJ BK, a.k.a. Ben Keen,…
Here’s a band that should’ve gotten some of the drooling praise that was slathered upon the similarly guitar-drenched music of Longwave. Then again, hype like that is never good for any artist, so let’s keep our fingers crossed that this Los Angeles four-piece can get the credit it deserves without…
Boys Night Out and Fall Out Boy may be on the Nintendo Fusion Tour, but don’t let the monikers of these poppy emo bands fool you — they’re still adults. The real boys of the tour are the four teenage members of Las Vegas’ Panic! At the Disco, who formed…
Caitlin Cary began playing violin when she was very young, but had let music lapse in favor of a creative-writing degree when she met Ryan Adams, who recruited her to play Emmylou Harris to his Gram Parsons in the band Whiskeytown. Her smoky alto had enough character to write its…
Taking a cue from their successful Verve Remixed series, the folks behind the legendary jazz label open the catalogue of their sub-label for 10 producers to modernize classics. While Verve was always a bit more “mainstream” — if you can ever claim that of anything outside of light jazz –…
Ray Raposa, the singer-songwriter at the core of Castanets, makes oddly elusive music. The lyrics are oblique, the delivery is matter-of-fact, almost spoken as much as sung, and the playing is minimal, just enough music to make the tracks into songs rather than poems or conversation. First Light’s Freeze balances…
Of late, hip-hop supergroups have fared better than their rock counterparts. C’mon — Madvillain? Handsome Boy Modeling School? Incredible stuff, especially in comparison to Velvet Revolver. Now let’s add Dangerdoom to that distinguished list. A collaboration between it-producer Danger Mouse and Madvillain rhymer MF Doom, The Mouse and the Mask…
Clint Black got tired of hassling with his label a few years ago and started his own logo. This is his second outing for his own outfit (not counting last year’s Christmas album), and being his own boss obviously agrees with him. The title track has the sound of a…
Now that Lady Sovereign and Dizzee Rascal have conditioned enough ears to accept the kind of flow that rhymes “garage” with “carriage,” German electro-queen Quio isn’t going to seem like such an anomaly. Wisely ditching the “MC Looney Tunes” moniker she used in her early days as a sideshow in…
Halloween reeks of charity, so what better way to get into the spirit than with a UNICEF-posse cut produced by some of rock’s biggest trick-or-treaters? We’re talking Beck, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Arcade Fire, Sonic Youth, Malcolm McLaren, Sum 41, an Inuit throat singer named Tagaq — along with…
Although Decemberists vocalist Colin Meloy went on a solo tour this past winter, Picaresque, the Portland, Oregon, band’s third album, is arguably its lushest yet. The nuanced production of Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla finally matches Meloy’s obsession with detail: Horns, strings and accordion drift in and out of…
Mega-producer Clive Davis of J Records declared Gavin DeGraw his “next big thing” a few years back, but ivory tickler DeGraw is still waiting for everyone else to realize just how good he really is. If you know anything about him, then you already know it might just be his…
Last Chrismukkah, an entire generation did a double take when The O.C. ‘s resident indie geek, Seth Cohen, uttered the words “Death Cab for Cutie” on network television during prime time. A year later, it’s clear a new era has arrived when the biggest name on the soundtrack to TV’s…
John Rich of Big & Rich — the funniest and funkiest new rebels in country music — likes to tell a story about his preacher dad and Mötley Crüe, a group that embodies rebellious fun (if not exactly funk) for a whole generation of heartland Americans. About four years ago,…
It helps to love good acting and the writing of Jane Austen in order to really appreciate Arizona Theatre Company’s lush, immaculate production of Pride and Prejudice. This practically flawless adaptation, crammed as it is with wonderful acting and gorgeous technical design, should come with a snooze warning for anyone…
There’s a message folded into Armentine Duryea’s The Sun City Cannabis Club, a self-published murder mystery suspense novel about a drunken granny who stumbles onto a medical marijuana ring in Wrinkle Town. That message, wedged craftily into scenes involving gun-toting, pot-smoking oldsters with black belts in karate who take out…
One of Arizona’s most enduring murder mysteries resurfaced recently when the convicted killer of Phoenix heiress Jeanne Tovrea returned to court for his re-sentencing. Now 51, James “Butch” Harrod has been incarcerated on Arizona’s death row since shortly after he was sentenced in November 1997 for first-degree murder. Though the…
Rudy Adler steps into the den of his parents’ house, a sprawling, ranch-style home in an old-moneyed section of Paradise Valley, and pulls up some scanned digital photos on his PowerBook. “This is a nice one,” he says, staring at a shot of what looks like an empty stretch of…
Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997 (Warner Home Video) There’s good reason to be skeptical of an eight-disc Batman set that forces you to buy the campy Joel Schumacher movies (Batman Forever, its title a veiled threat, and Batman & Robin) when all you need are the dark Tim Burton…
It’s ugly to watch a grown man gush over a puppy. The kissing. The cooing. The “widdle-doggie” talk. Embarrassing stuff. So it was with trepidation that I approached Nintendogs, the cuddly dog-rearing sim for Nintendo DS. A million and a half people have already adopted virtual pooches, making the game…
