Whenever I find myself trapped in a theater with another lousy production of another dreary play or musical, I always turn to my friend the playbill. I’ve destroyed my eyesight peering into the dark at these marvels of bad syntax and questionable grammar, but it’s been worth it. Because playbills…
The last good punk rock that came from Los Angeles was probably in the early to mid-1980s. Those were the days. The Angry Samoans, Black Flag, X, The Germs, Fear, and so many other greats. Then Social Distortion and Bad Religion won the lottery and it was all downhill from…
SEX AND THE CITY Perversion, plus a buffet!: My wife and I have wintered in the Valley for many years, and we often read New Times for the informative articles. But this past week, I was shocked and appalled to discover that you sent one of your writers to one…
Some chicks just hate to see a man enjoying himself. And Jett, the PHX’s bisexual Rachel Bilson, is one of those. The other day, I’m lounging in my New Times office, feet up, halfway through a box of peanut-butter Girl Scout cookies, crumbs all over my shirt, when the bizzatch…
THU 24 While it’s been said that Thomas Gibbons’ “provocative and fearless drama” Permanent Collection does a lot of preaching to the choir, we hear that these are the salad days for religious symbolism, anyway, so why not? The play, produced by the Arizona Theatre Company in its Southwest premi’re…
Thursday 24 Acme Roadhouse: College Night with DJ J. Alan (Top 40) Anderson’s Fifth Estate: Area 51 with AKA (gothic, industrial) AZ 88: DJ Seduce (experimental, jazz fusion, funk) Big Fish Pub: Reggae Thursdays with Selector J-Cut & DJ Blackstar (reggae, dance hall) Bobby McGee’s: DJs Mark & Mikyl (Top…
1. 50 Cent, The Massacre (Aftermath) 2. Baby Bash, Super Saucey (Universal) 3. Nb Ridaz, Nbridaz.com(Upstairs) 4. Akon, Trouble (Universal) 5. Gwen Stefani, Love, Angel, Music, Baby (Interscope) 6. The Game, The Documentary (Aftermath) 7. Trillville/Lil Skrappy, Chopped & Screwed (Warner Brothers) 8. Jack Johnson, In Between Dreams (Universal) 9…
A brand-new band doesn’t usually wait a couple of years to follow up a debut, unless we’re talking about Audioslave or some other aggregation that’s got a lot of lazy supergroup money lying around. But Chicago’s Plain White T’s managed to let two and a half years go by between…
This coupling is a little like TNT wrapped in plastic explosive — a kind of hard-rock overkill. The Burning Brides are the more accessible of the two bands, mixing a dirty garage-rock roar with flashes of metal style, sounding at their best like The Stooges in a grudge match with…
3/22-3/26 Mark Lundholm refers to himself as “a professional mistake-maker.” In 1988, he found himself in a halfway house after carjacking for fixes. The divorced father of two had gone from being a Catholic altar boy to a homeless addict and mental patient. He found some humor in it all,…
SAT 3/19 Grandpa’s been acting kookier than normal lately, whistling “Pennsylvania 6-5000” to himself, and doing a solo Charleston in the mirror. But don’t up his dosage of Xanax just yet, as the old coot’s probably just aching to skedaddle to “A Night in the 40’s” Big Band Dance and…
SAT 3/19 Slash and Scott Weiland (formerly of Guns n’ Roses and Stone Temple Pilots, respectively) might have mellowed a bit — a tad bit — since the days of their reckless youth. But the Speed Jam at Phoenix International Raceway, 7602 South 115th Avenue in Avondale, on Saturday, March…
FRI 3/18 “The Moog,” as it’s known among musical types, is the indispensable electronic synthesizer that has pioneered both mainstream and independent music movements over the past 40 years. It also happens to be one of the most criminally mispronounced names in the history of popular culture (correct pronunciation rhymes…
By day, Paula Shimel is an unassuming real estate marketer who loves to eat chocolate, update her blog and gush over her three cats, Nermal, Nala and Bastet. But on Friday nights, she straps on black vinyl platform boots, carefully laces up her corset, and, if it’s cold outside, grabs…
You’d think your own brother wouldn’t bust your watermelon. Produce-pulverizing comedian Gallagher didn’t have a problem with his younger brother, Ron, touring as a Gallagher impersonator, as long as Ron didn’t perform Gallagher’s signature move: smashing watermelons with a sledgehammer at the end of the show. But things got messy…
The Ring, Gore Verbinski’s 2002 remake of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, offered sufficient closure that it didn’t exactly demand a sequel. The horror lay in wondering why a mysterious videotape kills viewers seven days after they watch it; to a lesser extent, there was the mystery of the creepy girl, face…
The Upside of Anger belongs to Joan Allen, who plays Terry Wolfmeyer, a wife abandoned by her husband and left to pick up the pieces and collect them in a giant bottle of vodka. Terry’s is the cold, composed visage of a woman struggling to keep it together; through her…
Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s Steamboy will be released nationwide in both subtitled and dubbed versions. At the press screening, both were shown simultaneously in neighboring theaters, leaving the reviewer to choose which one to see. Your critic went with the subtitled cut, not purely for reasons of cinematic snobbery, but mostly because…
Rated R.
A cynic might describe movies as the most depraved and fantastic system of exploitation ever devised. After all, they trade on the greed and hubris of financiers, the beauty and allure of stars, and the trust (or, if you prefer, gullibility) of the audience. No one involved in the process…
Perhaps in honor of the fourth anniversary of Cher’s farewell tour, MGM recently released a DVD edition of Chastity, the 1969 stink bomb featuring the singer’s first dramatic role. Shot entirely in Phoenix, this long-lost indie (for which Cher’s daughter is named) was written, produced, scored, and some claim directed…
A lot of what’s appealing about greater Phoenix falls into the classic can’t-judge-a-book-by-its-cover category. I don’t mean the lusher parts of Scottsdale or the desert vistas out by Carefree. I mean just tooling about the city, parts of which, let’s be honest, can be less than enchanting. Ours is not…
