Another year of musical flesh-pressing kicks off when the popular Phoenix Symphony Close-Up returns to Borders Books & Music. The opening speaker in this monthly series is Robert Moody, the symphony’s associate conductor.Most of the musicians who appear at the Close-Ups bring their instruments and play a bit. But since…
The title is Killing Coyote, and that’s quite literally the subject. But as Hollywood’s own Wile E. has taught us, that’s easier said than done.The documentary, directed by Doug Hawes-Davis, is a chronicle of the brutal and little-publicized “predator control” policy toward the ubiquitous canines in the contemporary American West…
“Take it off the tripod,” says a reasonable facsimile of Brad Pitt to a reasonable facsimile of Edward Norton in last year’s execrable Fight Club. “How much do you know about yourself, you’ve never gone hand-held?”If these lines make you smirk, you’re probably a struggling independent filmmaker, or wish you…
Now pushing two months old, the latest breeding success at Wildlife World Zoo has sturdy limbs, big, clunky paws, white fur, black stripes, and wide blue eyes set in a face that would make even William F. Buckley gush. But there’s one thing the young Panthera tigris tigris, a.k.a. white…
If growing up the fat Jewish kid in an otherwise Catholic Long Island neighborhood wasn’t enough to make Eddie Sarfaty anxious, recognizing that he was gay must surely have done the trick. Sarfaty has grown up to make all of the above work for him, however, as grist for the…
In the ancient Greek tradition, Eros, a.k.a. Cupid, was the son of Chaos. This ancestry might make more sense to Phoenix’s own Jill Reger, creator of the online comic Dipuc.com, than the one which later Roman mythological tradition gave to the God of Love — that the spiteful little bastard…
Not since the Bay of Pigs Invasion blew over without nuclear fireworks, perhaps, has America breathed such a collective sigh of relief over the outcome of a crisis on an island as we did at news, two Wednesdays past, that Gervase would not be the sole Survivor. Now we can…
If you must be a musical completist, it’s refreshingly simple and economical to be a Tom Lehrer fan. As Dr. Demento observes in the copious hardbound notes that accompany this three-CD set, the entire recorded “Lehrer canon” comes to around 50 songs. Except for a ditty he composed for Rod…
Technically speaking, they’re supporting characters — in the dramatic scheme of the play, they don’t really advance the plot, they just provide a comic-relief subplot from the far duller story of the troubled courtship of Claudio and Hero. Yet their comical romance is what has made the play immortal. In…
Usually, no matter how much things slow to a crawl here in the Valley under the punishment of the summer heat, there’s always an out — you can go to the movies. But this summer’s crop of movies has been, by and large, so dull that even that’s not a…
This year marks the 10th anniversary of what some regard as the finest, and others the only, major accomplishment of the Bush administration: the day — June 26, 1990 — when ol’ George Senior signed the Americans With Disabilities Act into law. Various events are being held around the country…
T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock wondered whether he dared to eat a peach. But Valley residents need not ask themselves so soul-searching a question. For the next two weekends or so, we need only ask ourselves if we dare to pick a peach. Or several pounds of peaches.Wickenburg’s Date Creek Ranch –…
Peter Fonda is the top-billed star of Thomas and the Magic Railroad. The plot involves Fonda and Thomas the Tank Engine steaming across the country, with Steppenwolf blaring on the soundtrack, to Mardi Gras, a stash of dope taped under Thomas’ cow-catcher. They have an acid trip with New Orleans…
So you’re a live-theater nut, and you’ve seen Vampire Lesbians of Sodom at Planet Earth and Born Yesterday at Theater Works, and you’ve had dinner at Murder at Greystone Manor, and you think you’ve exhausted every option in town this lean summer season. You needn’t despair and start searching your…
Antonioni and Bergman, I get. Show me Buñuel or Godard, Tarkovsky or Marguerite Duras, and you won’t see me knit my brow. David Lynch is a snap. I can even sort of see where Stan Brakhage is coming from. When it comes to cryptic cinema, I’ll sit there and find…
As relief to us denizens of the scorched cultural wasteland that is the summertime Valley, ARTlab 16 presents the aptly named performance art fest Wasteland Circus. The sixth edition of the event, which has been absent from the Valley for the past two years, features “big screen video works, performance…
The special guest at HexaCon 10, this year’s edition of the annual gaming convention, Arizona’s largest, is Steve Jackson, head of Steve Jackson Games. Gameheads will presumably recognize this as a big deal, especially because Jackson will be bringing with him most of his game line, including two previously unreleased…
Armchair shrinks can debate for hours about why Mel Gibson loves to get the snot knocked out of him. A facile answer, considering the star’s reputation as a homophobe, is that the lady doth protest too much, and that getting electrically tortured by Gary Busey in Lethal Weapon or hacked…
“There ain’t no cure for the summertime blues,” says the song. Rubbish, Scottsdale Gallery Association would say — not only is it bad grammar, but patently untrue. Its cure: this year’s Summer Spectacular Artwalk, scheduled from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, July 6. Various openings and related events at and…
Have Pat Robertson and The 700 Club been informed? A major bookstore chain is encouraging parents to initiate their children into the world of wizardry and magic. To celebrate the release of the fourth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Borders stores around the Valley are…
Various area ensembles will be performing time-tested, goose-bump-raising, love-of-country rousers this week, in observance of Independence Day, in several patriotic concerts. Here’s a run-down: Scottsdale Symphony Orchestra — The free show is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 1, at Scottsdale Center for the Arts Amphitheater, 75th Street and Main…
You know the joke, no doubt — the greatest show-biz joke of all time. It’s been told innumerable times before, at least once in these very pages. You haven’t heard it? Okay, one more time: A guy goes into a bar. He’s sitting there drinking, and after a while he…
