The sport of roping ain’t just for a bunch of steers and queers. Steers, definitely, but not the latter. If you’re not buying it, we challenge you to approach a cowboy and drop a “queer bait” blast in his face. There’s a 99.9% chance you are going to lose. Be…
The Cardinals are perpetually pilloried. The Suns are scrutinized like lab rats. The Diamondbacks get love even in the off-season. The Phoenix Coyotes are just ignored, and that’s the worst thing you can say – or not say – about a pro team. Sports-radio buffs that we are, we’ve only…
When it comes to the automobile, grandma’s right: They just don’t make ’em like they used to. Sure, cars are more environmentally friendly now, but they’ll never look as cool as they did 50 years ago. Fortunately, there are still plenty of vintage-vehicle enthusiasts to keep these gentle giants on…
Sure, the Arizona Cardinals will end yet another season without a winning record, but – and we can’t believe we’re saying this – Ken Whisenhunt has ’em headed in the right direction. Pigskin hardcores who can’t wait ’til next season get one last dose when the Cards host the St…
Good news for all of you fans of faux wrestling. The two largest wrasslin’ organizations in town — Impact Zone Wrestling and Rising Phoenix Wrestling — have literally formed a tag team that should improve matches by including more pile drivers and sleeper holds. Check out the new incarnation during…
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, why are we directing you to the Rogue Bar and Coach & Willie’s for New Year’s Eve? Easy. They’ve got the banginest bashes in the Valley. Coach & Willie’s presents the third annual Ritmo Latino New Year’s…
We all love underdogs. Overlooked and underestimated, they rise to the occasion and put the critics in their place, like that spindly kid in fifth grade who kicked Sister Philomena right in the box. Fuck, yes. Kicked her right in the box and then set fire to the school chapel…
If you need a good excuse to salivate over estrogen-rich cheerleaders and huge inflatable dolls, tell your wife that you’ll be attending the Fort McDowell Fiesta Bowl Parade. She’ll likely want to come along, if only to see a bunch of supercool floats and spruced-up marching bands beating their drums…
Local theater director Joseph Benesh won’t go so far as to say there’ll be nudity in the underground production The Bobo Theatre Project: A Lullaby Jubilee in 3 Acts, but he and his partners in aesthetic crime do hope to make people squirm in their seats. The Project is the…
Yippee-ki-yay! The Arizona National Livestock Show presents its 59th annual critter competition with more than 2,000 cream-of-the-crop cattle, ewes, horses, and swine from across the nation, all primped and primed by idealistic 4-H and FFAers. Is the competition cutthroat? It will be for the “winners” of the climactic Junior Market…
If you thought McLovin from Superbad was a badass, wait ’til you get a load of MacReady, Kurt Russell’s alien-slaying character in John Carpenter’s classic horror film The Thing (1982). Based on John W. Campbell Jr.’s 1938 novella Who Goes There?, the flick centers on an army base in Antarctica…
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume Two — The War Years (Paramount) Alien Apocalypse (Anchor Bay) Balls of Fury (Universal) Black Moon Rising (Anchor Bay) Boy Eats Girl (Lionsgate) Braveheart: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) Bring It On: In It to Win It (Universal) Cinderella II: Dreams Come True Special…
As the waning days of 2007 tick away like Vicodins down the gullet of some rehab-bound starlet, so do your final chances of being bad. See, you’ve finally decided to cut the bullshit, buckle down, and stick to those troublesome New Year’s resolutions you’ve blown off year after year. Which…
She’s got the lead in Black Theatre Troupe’s production of Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change, but actress Taylore Mahogany Scott has also got humbling memories of auditioning for a Miami Vice star and a deep fear of clowns. You can get to know here a little better here, but don’t…
Once (Fox) Easily the year’s most perfect pop album — damned good movie too, the finest “musical” of the past 20 years. The disc’s making-of refers to it as a “modern musical,” but Once is as old-fashioned as it gets: Guy (Glen Hansard) meets Girl (Markéta Irglová), they fall in…
Here’s the thing: Tim Burton pulled it off. Nearing the end of an uncommonly strong year for American movies, he’s taken a hallowed classic of the modern musical theater, hemmed in the narrative from well over two hours to well under, cast confessed non-singers in the principal roles, and somehow…
Simmering below the squeamish elder-care euphemism “uncharted territory” is a fearful awareness that when it comes to dealing with the growing army of senile parents, we have no idea what the hell we’re doing. Tamara Jenkins plumbs the depths of that terror in her new film, The Savages, and jacks…
As an actor, John C. Reilly is the opposite of Mr. Cellophane. He doesn’t disappear into a role; roles disappear onto him — the unlikely porn sidekick of Boogie Nights, the inadequately adequate family man of The Hours, the cutup cowboy of A Prairie Home Companion, all stamped and imprinted…
Nothing says “holiday spirit” quite like stabbing a terrorist or hammering a goombah, as the hottest games this season invite us to do. But no matter how cutting-edge the stars of 2007 may be, they are also unmistakably familiar. This week, we stack the holiday hits of today against the…
If there’s a criticism to be leveled at Black Theatre Troupe for presenting Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change, it’s that attempting such a challenging piece of theater seems imprudent of any company that has failed in the past with musicals only half as complicated. But artistic director David J. Hemphill…
Anything Goes: Not to be confused with the super-cheesy ’70s game show of the same name (Remember? Pie fights and challenge rounds featuring The DeFranco Family?), this popular book musical is among the better composer-centric homages. Sing-along standards from Cole Porter like “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “You’re…
Kites fly high over the San Francisco Bay and Kabul (okay, China), but not much else soars in Marc Forster’s flaccid adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s vivid 2002 novel, which covers three decades of Afghanistan’s misery under serial totalitarian rule. Arriving on the heels of Atonement, The Kite Runner tells a…
