What do Ryan Gosling, Britney Spears, and Keri Russell have in common? They each got their start in the Mickey Mouse Club, and, whether in real life or on film, they’ve all played characters so annoying you want to beat the crap out of them. True-life examples like these are…
For Valley pro-wrestling fanatics, March 28 can’t get here quick enough. That red-letter date is when next year’s WrestleMania XVII comes to town, and the pay-per-view extravaganza (dubbed the “Super Bowl of wrestling”) promises to be one hell of a party. For grappling groupies, it’ll be like Woodstock, Christmas, and…
Book discussions are always a crapshoot, but their location will give you a clue to the tome’s level of suckage. Meet at a comic-book store and you’ll get Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Wine bar? Oprah’s next Book Club loser. Gun shop? Ann Coulter, natch! We’re holding out hope for…
To be honest, we sometimes cringe when one of our favorite musicians pipes up to speak his or her piece. It’s not that we believe the nonsense about entertainers not being fit to render a valid opinion, but that folks often swerve out of their lane to do so. A…
DJ Gramophonic, a.k.a. Pete Petrisko sporting a golden tuxedo jacket, yanks the time-traveling rug from under us via his dual wind-up Decca gramophones, spinning the warm crackle and pops of Billy Murray, Doris Day, and the Peerless Quartet from his 60-count collection of 78s. The canny lunatic, who also spearheads…
We like the attitude put forth by the folks who work at Salt River Tubing & Recreation. Inspired by a National Forest Service announcement proclaiming that America’s “iPod-listening, American-Idol-watching, X-box-playing generation increasingly shows a propensity toward sedentary life,” the guys and gals of Salt River Tubing have basically responded (in…
Would that we lived in a world in which Plan 9 From Outer Space truly was, either aesthetically or morally, the Worst Movie Ever Made. Alas, countless films, some from big studios and featuring big stars, are both less entertaining and more despicable than Ed Wood’s grandly inept 1959 sci-fi/horror…
The Phoenix artist takes found 16mm educational and pornographic film strips and creates short, still-life movies that hang silently on the wall. Fri., Aug. 21, 5-9 p.m., 2009…
As a rule, Internet sensations rarely find success in the real world because our online standards are pathetic. Remember when everyone got swept away by the bit of nothingness poofed out by video blogger Chris Crocker? Jon Lajoie is nothing like Crocker, but he is part of a new breed:…
David Mamet has been rather widely referred to as a misogynist, and Theatre Artists Studio has set out to consider the question. With David Mamet — Mothers, Daughters and Other Loves?, a festival of scenes and monologues from Mamet’s plays, the company places a spotlight on Mamet’s complex, lovingly crafted…
An endless summer might be perfect for sun-bleached surfers dreaming of the perfect wave, but by now, you’ve watched your electric bill skyrocket and have cooked your hand repeatedly on your steering wheel. You are so ready for this season to move on. The Trunk Space is, too, so on…
Changing Hands and Hoodlums Music co-present the documentary about the hyper-radical ’60s-’70s splinter group that waged homeland guerrilla warfare against the U.S. government and its policies in Vietnam. Fri., Aug. 21, 6 p.m., 2009…
It’s messy, this Tomatina festival. Not the one being celebrated at Flamenco! . . . the Studio on Saturday, August 22, but rather the traditional version celebrated in Spain, which involves the throwing of tomatoes at revelers who attend. Flamenco! has re-imagined the festival’s traditions by hosting a cook-off at…
The documentary Boundaries traces the life and career of American abstract-expressionist painter Grace Hartigan (pictured). Picasso & Braque, directed by Arne Glimcher of New York’s Pace Gallery and narrated by Martin Scorsese, compares and contrasts the works of the famous cubists. Wed., Aug. 26, 4 & 7 p.m., 2009…
Just in time for back-to-school, Midnite Movie Mamacita presents the 1970s sex romps set against the backdrop of academia. Fri., Aug. 21, 9 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 22, 9 p.m., 2009…
Hallelujah! No longer will you be forced to drink your beer indoors and eat healthy food like some sort of foreigner, because starting this weekend, tailgating season returns to the Valley. It’s time once again to shove red meat and brewski down your gullet in a show of prowess that…
It’ll set ya back a pretty penny, but in a good cause: The Arizona Cardinals All-World wide receiver and various pigskin pals serve dinner to the restaurant’s guests to raise funds for the Carol Fitzgerald Memorial Fund. Other slumming “servers” include Kurt Warner, Matt Leinart, Adrian Wilson, Anquan Boldin, Chris…
Remember how you lovingly pimped out your first ride with flames and a chrome shifter knob — despite the fact that the junker was worth less than a pair of designer jeans? Lowriders started out as cultural expressions of the poor, but things have come a long way since then…
In the tradition of Latin American filmmakers, who tend to focus on life’s small-yet-surrealistic snapshots, the bomb-diggity Argentine filmmaker Carlos Sorín directed a slice of Latin Americana in 2008 with his The Window (La Ventana). The celluloid version of Borges-meeting-Bolaño focuses on the 80-year-old protagonist Antonio, who is preparing the…
It’s been said that the only reason American businesses don’t outsource janitorial services is that they haven’t invented a broom handle that reaches to the Third World. In a sense, Alex Rivera’s 2008 movie Sleep Dealer shows us a world in which that broom handle has been invented. “It’s a…
It’s one of the most abused, misunderstood, and revered subjects in history. According to most artists, it’s a total bitch to capture realistically. See how the likes of Deborah Butterfield, Korea’s Nam Jun Paik, and Los Carpinteros of Cuba depict the human body in the “Figuring Prominently” exhibit at ASU…
Here’s a golf challenge: We triple dog dare you that you can’t land on the green in the dark. Sounds all Mission Impossible, right? Well, when the balls are fluorescent like they will be during the Night Flight Golf event at Palo Verde Golf Course, then it’s, like, mission possible…
