THU 7/28The Rubber Robot that plays Emerald Lounge this week is not the band by the same name that wears horse-head masks and plays the theremin. Nor are they a soulless, automated device that looks and responds just like a human. “I kind of got Rubber Robot from — well,…
FRI 7/29Though you could make the argument that a majority of 21st-century kids (or adults, for that matter) couldn’t find Japan on an unlabeled map of the world, that doesn’t stop them from looking to the East for their animation. The popularity of anime, the Japanese form of animation influenced…
7/28-8/31While the action emanating from the local nine at the BOB this year has been roughly akin to watching paint dry, the up-and-coming rookies participating in the Arizona Summer League offer a unique alternative for baseball purists hoping to catch an early glimpse of tomorrow’s stars. There’s nowhere to go…
SUN 7/31Thank Salvador Dali for Blade Runner. That goes for Fight Club, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Truman Show, and even Total Recall, too. His name doesn’t pop up in the credits, but the most famous name in Surrealist art is credited with making the genre a profitable commodity in Hollywood, where Dali…
At their CD release party scheduled for the Old Brickhouse Grill this Friday night, The Society of Invisibles plan to perform a song so across-the-board offensive, even their staunchest fans have been advising the crew against it. “We’re gonna be doing a song we’ve never performed before, called ‘Down,’ that’s…
After more than a decade of transmitting seditiously confrontational artistic communiqués to the Valley, the rabble-rousing raconteurs of Thought Crime received a pretty disturbing reply on their doorstep earlier this month — an eviction notice instructing them to get the hell out. Despite what you might expect, the reasons behind…
Remember the scene in X2 where Wolverine grabs a Dr Pepper and enlists the aid of Iceman to make it cold? Take the tone of that scene and stretch it out to feature length and you get Sky High, a less angsty, more kid-friendly movie about teenagers attending a school…
So little time, so much trouble. In the 24-hour period that’s dissected in Heights, the first feature from Harvard/Cambridge/USC Film School-educated Chris Terrio, an aspiring Manhattan photographer named Isabel (Elizabeth Banks) gets cold feet about her upcoming marriage to a dull but pleasant lawyer named Jonathan (James Marsden); a needy…
Must Love Dogs, it should be clearly stated, is not the greatest romantic comedy ever made about a quirky couple who meet at a dog park. That honor goes to Dog Park, the oddball 1998 flick starring Luke Wilson and Natasha Henstridge, written and directed by former Kids in the…
If the Navy is looking for splashy recruiting tools, it could do worse than Stealth, a zillion-dollar action movie stuffed with futuristic jet fighters, glamorous carrier pilots, and an overload of explosive, mostly digital derring-do. Here is Top Gun revised and updated, complete with a new array of enemies –…
Pit er Pat is like a Long Island iced tea — what sounds like a nasty concoction actually turns out to be pretty good. And ends up messing with your head. One part Alkaline Trio, one part Neutral Milk Hotel (speaking of) and, figuratively, one part Blonde Redhead, the members…
Head Automatica is the brainchild of Daryl Palumbo — you probably know him as “that guy from Glassjaw.” He may have started out screaming for a rap-metal band, but he says he always wanted to make party music. So he picked the perfect partner in Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, a…
The Michigan songwriter has promised to write a song for every state, and while that may sound ambitious, with his talent, don’t doubt the possibility. He certainly isn’t going anywhere. Stevens is a nimble songwriter heavily influenced by early ’70s pop melodicism, but while he can go in for a…
Few may have noticed, but history of sorts was made this past March with the release of Now That’s What I Call Music! Volume 18. For the first time since Now! Volume 3’s triple bang opener of Smash Mouth, Lenny Kravitz, and blink-182 last millennium, an installment of this best-selling…
Röyksopp’s debut disc, Melody A.M., produced mood-setting mix-tape fodder and soundtracked any room at a rave that came with a couch. The Understanding starts in the same vein, with parochial piano and a gentle percussive pulse, but then it turns the beat around, disco-style. Bop-gun bloops, vocoder murmurs, quick-click drums,…
Brooklyn rhymer Kenyatta “Buckshot” Blake is one of many shoulda-been-huge MCs who suffered when hip-hop became a blinger’s game. However, despite legal battles, label struggles, and plain bad luck (Tupac was a fan, but died before he could get Buckshot’s career into overdrive), the Black Moon leader hasn’t given up…
Two lyrical heroes of indie hip-hop team up to pay tribute to everyone’s favorite Cosby Show castoff, Lisa Bonet. Well, actually, Slug and Murs’ sweet memories of Denise Huxtable play only a minor role in the duo’s stories about the opposite sex. Felt Vol. 2 pops off with the picked…
If the Pernice Brothers’ newest full-length, Discover a Lovelier You, sounds just a little more optimistic than earlier releases, it’s an unintended nuance. Singer-songwriter Joe Pernice really doesn’t see it as a radical departure from 2003’s Yours, Mine and Ours, although the press has called it everything from his poppiest…
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is exactly the kind of entertainment I deplore: a corporate-inspired translation of a cutie-pie musical cartoon adapted from classic literature. It’s peopled by actors dressed in character costumes that all but swallow their performances, which are anyway built on attempts to ape the motion picture…
Good news, girls. Apparently, mankind has at long last passed through that era where guys only wanted to get laid and have someone cook for them. Young men today, according to a cover story in this month’s Marie Claire magazine, want to get married and have babies, and they’re even…
Robert Shawn Owens stepped into the 4th Avenue Jail in downtown Phoenix about noon last Wednesday, July 20, crisply attired in khakis and a pink pinstriped shirt. Owens didn’t forget his glasses so he could read the legal papers about his case at his initial appearance in court later that…
Kelli James, Broadway’s first-ever Eponine in the original production of Les Misérables, is here among us. Tired of living out of a suitcase, and after a distinguished career that includes dozens of Broadway starring roles, James has settled in Phoenix, where she’s featured this month as a singing teapot in…
