Roy Orbison rarely expressed anything celebratory in his work. In songs like “Blue Angel” and “Mean Woman Blues,” he — and we — found joy in heartache, beauty in the shades of gray in which Orbison’s music resides. So one wonders what the late singer would have made of the…
Remember every supersweet local act you’ve seen at Modified Arts? Well, there’s a supergood-ass chance that they’ll be playing during Modifest, a sidewalk art fair and live-music potpourri showcasing more than 20 bands. Here’s the rundown of groups who’ll be performing each day. Friday, Jan. 25: What Laura Says Thinks…
You know that garage rat who spends every waking moment tweaking his ride with hopes that he can one day compete in a sanctioned drag race? Problem is, when an event like the NHRA National Time Trials rolls into town, it draws all of those funnycar big boys who live…
The 2006 trapped-in-a-cave film The Descent is sorta dopey, but its albino, Nosferatu rat monsters are truly creepy. The pigment-challenged critters in the 1984 trapped-in-a-cave film What Waits Below are just plain dopey – like, original Star Trek dopey. Still, dorky demons don’t faze the Midnite Movie Mamacita, and our…
Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest (Fox) As someone with no use for Seth MacFarlane’s potty-mouthed Simpsons rip, I’ll admit to choking out a few giggles during his Star Wars send-up — though, truth be told, it’s slightly less daring than Spaceballs and, sure, Porn Wars. Stunningly faithful to the 30-year-old…
If Diane Keaton were a comer in 2007, she’d likely be stuck in romantic comedies cooked up in movie studio test kitchens. No Godfather for her. No Annie Hall, no Shoot the Moon, no Reds. Filmmakers who now use Katherine Heigl as their go-to girl would be flummoxed by the…
Persepolis is a small landmark in feature animation. Not because of technical innovation — though it moves fluidly enough and its drawings have a handcrafted charm forgotten in the era of the cross-promoted-to-saturation CGI-‘toon juggernauts — but because it translates a sensitive, introspective, true-to-life, “adult” comic story into moving pictures…
“I do think the writing is pessimistic — all that stuff about life being a tragic experience,” says Angela Stark (played by newcomer Hayley Atwell) early in Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream. An actress talking about the play she’s appearing in at a small London theater, Stark could just as well…
Unreal Tournament III is ideal for overcaffeinated teenage boys with PlayStation 3s, broadband internet connections, extensive online friend lists, hours and hours of time to blow, and — just for good measure — a deep appreciation of the steroid-addled dystopian sci-fi aesthetic. You know, the one where men are 450…
I suck at New Year’s resolutions. Resolving to discontinue my various bad habits is, I know, nothing more than an exercise in good intentions. Stop eating crap? Curtail my endless shopping for useless ephemera I coveted as a child? Refrain from procrastination? These things will never happen. I’m smitten with…
Okay, don’t laugh: This year, instead of bashing this sprawling, hot vacuum we call home, I’ve resolved to stop dissing Phoenix. That’s no simple task, because there’s something about these miles of desert-y ‘burbs that invites — no, begs for — criticism. From the endless traffic to the cookie-cutter houses…
The Oldest Profession: The cast of Algonquin Theater Company’s first show of the season features JoAnn Yeoman, Judy Rollings, Sharon Collar, Jacqueline Gaston, and Barbara McGrath — and that’s all you need to know. That this astonishing cast is performing Paula Vogel’s tart story about five aging hookers whose clientele…
There’s something about the planet tipping and calendar pages turning that makes us take a good, hard look at ourselves and say, “I could be better.” Then, typically, we go out and get plastered. We wake up the next morning having forgotten our resolution, with absolutely no intention of changing…
Alex Haley’s Queen (Warner Bros.) Amazing Planet Earth (Questar) The Attic (Allumination) Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (Warner Bros.) Breaker Morant (Image) Extras: The Complete Series (HBO) Dora the Explorer: Undercover Dora (Paramount) DragonLance: Dragons of the Autumn Twilight (Paramount) Good Luck Chuck (Lionsgate) In the Heat of the Night:…
It took nine years for Godzilla to rise up out of the ashes of Hiroshima and wreak his destruction on the good people of Tokyo in 1954. Here in America, it’s taken just over six years for the idea of an escapist disaster movie set on the streets of New…
JoAnn Yeoman’s played in everything from Becket to Bye, Bye, Birdie! (her fave role: Dulcinea in Man of La Mancha), from princesses to hookers (currently, in Algonquin Theatre’s The Oldest Profession). I knew I wanted to be in show business when I was 3 years old and my mom took…
Andrea Beesley-Brown ain’t crazy about going to the gym. Ask the affable 28-year-old why, and she rattles off some fairly standard anti-fitness excuses: lack of motivation, tedious workout regimens, and those dang perplexing exercise machines. “I’ve never quite figured out how to use a lot of those beasts,” Beesley-Brown says…
I needn’t have worked very hard this week reviewing the show I saw, because the noisy dame who sat in front of me critiqued every musical number, every punch line in Arizona Theatre Company’s The Pajama Game. “That was good!” she bellowed to her seatmate after the cast busted moves…
Downtown’s Burn nightclub is going out with a bang when RedMonkey, in association with White Crane Kung Fu, presents Drunken Monkey. Pete “SuperMix” Salaz put together this 21-and-over shindig that will feature a special Lion Dance and demo by White Crane Kung Fu. Best of all, Burn is trying to…
When you’re zooming too fast from one place to another, what do the constant pockets of construction say to you? Hope of a metropolis that balances our humble and quirky past with the aspirations of a prosperous future, or dread of a money-hungry wildfire obliterating open spaces and historic buildings?…
Mondays bite, which you already know. What you may not know is that you can haul yourself and your post-weekend malaise down to one of the hippest joints around — Majerle’s — for Martini Monday, where you suck down half-price cocktails. You’re welcome. Have a nice day. Mon., Jan. 21,…
Thanks to WindUp Gallery, the Mormon-rich city of Mesa, of all places, has gained a chokehold on lowbrow art. Since May 2007, gallery owners Anthony and Lindsay Cresta have regularly exhibited titillating, somewhat grotesque, pop-culture-heavy art, a medium that has its roots in the 1970s L.A. surf/punk/hot-rod subcultures. That these…
