Hands down (and hands down her pants, from the sound of it), the funniest bit from the summer’s raunch smorgasbord The Aristocrats was hearing Sarah Silverman tell the infamously profane family-act joke at the center of Paul Provenza’s documentary. Where Robin Williams, Drew Carey, George Carlin, and a hundred other…
Jada Pinkett Smith is quite the hyphenate. In addition to being the wife of rapper/movie star extraordinaire Will Smith, the mother of their three children, an investor in a cosmetics company (Carol’s Daughter), and a talented film actress in her own right (Collateral, The Matrix Reloaded), the 34-year-old superstar is…
When you’re an actor best known for playing one of the biggest buffoon bullies in screen history — a dimwitted tyrant with a penchant for messing up popular sayings and landing headfirst in manure — you basically have two choices: one, succumb to the typecasting and spend the rest of…
12/11-3/12If the photographers whose work will be displayed at Phoenix Art Museum’s new exhibition “Keeping Shadows” were a baseball team, they’d be the 1927 Yankees. The all-star lineup includes Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans, Imogen Cunningham, Man Ray, Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, Timothy O’Sullivan, Lewis Carroll, Henri Le Secq, Julia Margaret…
SUN 12/11We need some advice. Godzilla’s 51st birthday is coming up, and we haven’t a clue as to what to get the big fella. Imagine the pressure involved with selecting the perfect gift for this ungodly creature that’s laid waste to numerous cities and battled everyone from Mothra to onetime…
SAT 12/10If you want to act a fool this holiday season after consuming one too many eggnogs, feel free. Just don’t expect to rock the boat and poop on somebody’s parade during the APS Fantasy of Lights Holiday Boat Parade on Saturday, December 10. A fleet of more than 40…
SAT 12/10Liz Phair doesn’t want to be your blowjob queen anymore. She may have sung such on her groundbreaking 1993 album Exile in Guyville (an answer to the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street), but, truth be told, she’s stopped singing songs that make feminists pump their fists while manly…
Dirty Love (First Look) Dragonball Movie Boxed Set (Funimation) Everybody Loves Raymond: The Complete Fifth Season (Warner Bros.) Fun With Dick and Jane (1977) (Columbia/Tristar) The Future of Food (Cinema Libre) Gilbert Gottfried: Dirty Jokes (Image) God Save the Queen: Punk Rock Anthology (Music Video Dist.) Hellbound (Warner Bros.) He-Man…
“Big City” at Phoenix Art Museum: There isn’t a single image of the PHX among the cityscapes and urban life scenes drawn from PAM’s permanent collection. That’s odd, seeing as how we’re the nation’s fifth or sixth largest metropolis. The omission is partly because of the age of the work,…
THU 8Imagine your bath mat on acid — or you on your bath mat on acid. No, you’re not all wet; you’ve stepped into the Alice in Wonderland world of Brian Knep. The multimedia artist’s “Brian Knep: Healing Series” is a totally groovy collection of interactive floor pieces reminiscent of…
She’s played Shakespeare festivals and appeared on soap operas and been directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and right now Erika Rolfsrud is appearing all by her lonesome in Arizona Theatre Company’s one-woman Bad Dates. Here, she considers rug burns and lazy eyes and the horrors of slow-mo screaming. I knew…
If Hollywood wants to learn from the videogame industry — which outgrossed the box office last year — it should pay careful attention to Shadow of the Colossus, a game with the epic scale of a summer blockbuster but the emotional heart of an indie flick. Shadow is brought to…
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Fox) The pairing of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, both in real life and on celluloid, is so obvious as to be almost cartoonish. So even though both are better actors than they need to be, they perfectly belong in this goofy, explosiony world. Married assassins,…
I usually wind up on the sofa every night, watching those badly dubbed episodes of Sex and the City that are breeding like rabbits all over late-night cable stations. Probably you’ve seen them, squeezed between carpet-cleaning commercials and sanitized to the point of absurdity, all the “twats” and “fuckers” re-looped…
A common criticism of Hollywood from the right side of the political spectrum is that it hasn’t made any movies that deal with the War on Terror, the way it did with World War II, for example. The truth is that it’s probably less an example of political bias than…
It begins with a very literal cliffhanger. Five snowboarders — the best in their field, we’re told — are dropped off via helicopter atop an Alaskan mountain called 7601, imaginatively named for its height above sea level. Swooping aerial shots around the peak convince us that it’s steep, high and…
The holiday season may be the only time of year we’re prepared to kill other shoppers — right in the middle of the aisle — if they dare lay their hands on that last, limited-edition Star Wars thingamajig that every kid in the world seems to want. Or that damn…
The controversy-starved folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals may freak when word hits the street about Tara Logsdon’s hands-on operation “Ursidae Anaplasty” (Latin for “bear plastic surgery”) during the “Stuffed Animal Show” at Waycool. But before PETA starts protesting, we should tell you that the furry patients…
12/2-12/16Jason Hill’s retro-futurism is so bright, he’s gotta wear shades. You will, too, when you view his blindingly vivid works, which seem to leap out of their frames and smack you right between the eyes. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to liken Hill to Ed Mell, another…
FRI 12/2The giant squid may have eluded scientists for decades, but Phoenix artist Pete Deise has been capturing them for years — in metal, that is. Deise creates steel sculptures (including one at the airport and another in front of My Florist Cafe) with characteristic tentacles. His latest exhibition, “Ascension,”…
12/2-12/3Filmmaker Warren Miller is to skiing what Bruce Brown is to surfing. Brown’s instant-classic flicks The Endless Summer (1966) and Endless Summer II: The Journey Continues (1994) follow two generations of surfers seeking the perfect wave. The prolific Miller averages a film a year, and all deal with winter-sports fanatics…
THU 12/1The Reggaeton Festival 2005 is like a yummy mixed drink: two parts reggae, one part hip-hop, one part Latin dance, with just a splash of techno and dancehall. The Puerto Rican brew of Caribbean music and rap (mostly in Spanglish) will shake up the Venue of Scottsdale, 7117 East…
