7/28-8/31While the action emanating from the local nine at the BOB this year has been roughly akin to watching paint dry, the up-and-coming rookies participating in the Arizona Summer League offer a unique alternative for baseball purists hoping to catch an early glimpse of tomorrow’s stars. There’s nowhere to go…
FRI 7/29Though you could make the argument that a majority of 21st-century kids (or adults, for that matter) couldn’t find Japan on an unlabeled map of the world, that doesn’t stop them from looking to the East for their animation. The popularity of anime, the Japanese form of animation influenced…
THU 7/28The Rubber Robot that plays Emerald Lounge this week is not the band by the same name that wears horse-head masks and plays the theremin. Nor are they a soulless, automated device that looks and responds just like a human. “I kind of got Rubber Robot from — well,…
THU 28Though he failed to cement his place in history as the first pop star in space, *NSYNC’s Lance Bass could always head down to the Challenger Space Center, 21170 North 83rd Avenue in Peoria, to see what he missed besides the Top 40 charts for the past three years…
Screw Willy Wonka. Colin Redding is our very own chocolate wizard, a man with his own candy factory who’s willing to make a 40-foot dildo out of chocolate (although he’d rather not). He’s even pulling a Wonka by sneaking golden tickets into chocolate bars sold at Changing Hands Bookstore (ticket…
b royalty, 37, painter, day-care artist and self- proclaimed mediocre violinist, says she paints “to make me visible to myself.” Visible to the rest of us are her enormous talents, via the oil-and-collage paintings that have brought her almost instant recognition in the fickle art world. Royalty’s texture-heavy, color-saturated paintings…
Murderball is a gem of a little film, one that’s at very least worth renting in its inevitable DVD release. It’s also one of the most over-hyped indies of the season. It won a couple of awards at Sundance — the Audience Choice prize and another for editing — and…
It should come as no surprise that the hero and heroine of the new Michael Bay action extravaganza are clones. Exact copies of other people. You don’t get to be a Hollywood hitmeister like Bay — 200 Zillion Tickets Sold! — without indulging in formulas, and the characters Star Wars…
Gregg Araki likes to shock. That’s no secret to anyone who has followed the director’s career, but a cartoonish layer of unreality has usually kept the polymorphous sexual pairings and graphic violence somewhat at a distance. There’s a little bit of that in Mysterious Skin, but mostly it stays grounded…
Going to the theater this summer has been like stepping into a time machine where your fondest childhood memories are retooled by cynics and sadists. Bewitched, Herbie: Fully Loaded, last week’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and now Bad News Bears are meant to be gobbled like comfort food by…
When rocker turned director Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses was released in 2003, after years of bouncing around between studios afraid to put their name on a movie about a cartoonishly murderous family, it was anticipated as a hard-core gore fest. Instead, it was a plotless mess, with decent…
MTV Films made a wise purchase in picking up Hustle & Flow at Sundance: The soundtrack is killer. Rapping over music composed by Three 6 Mafia and Al Kapone, star Terrence Dashon Howard has the skills. The rest of the songs heard on-screen, most of which fall into the uniquely…
Matt Ringel, creator of the Nesquik Game Riot, the country’s largest touring expo for video gamers, drops a challenge to the disgruntled loser of last year’s battle against Matt Leto, a.k.a. “Zyos,” the reigning world Halo champ: Bring it! As the event rolls into the Valley for its third visit…
Before punk bands had their own summer festivals, punk bands were just that: a group of punks who had to load their own equipment, drive their own vans, and finance their own one-take records. Witness the spirit of punk before the cash cows started to moo, when Modified Arts hosts…
WED 6/27Alex Garcia is not a revolutionary. The founder of the Phoenix fashion school Instituto de Modelos Merge has no intention of shifting the balance of sociopolitical power or causing any sort of world domination movement. He simply wants to give an artistic voice to the culture that surrounds him…
7/22-7/23The auto-racing set has dominated motor sports in recent years, but the left-turn crowd has nothing on the daredevils on display at the IFMA Freestyle Motocross tour. As if the death-defying tricks the sport is known for weren’t enough, this year’s tour has incorporated elements from the Extreme Sport Bike…
THU 7/21Once upon a time nearly a century ago, something known as burlesque became the variety show of choice in America. And while its musical revues and vaudevillian comedy were certainly a draw, the genre made its mint as the birthplace of the modern-day striptease. Fast forward to 2005, and…
THU 7/21Bob Log III once described his music as “poo-party, tit-clapping, techno blues.” But the 35-year-old bluesbilly, who sings through an old telephone glued to the front of a motorcycle helmet, spouts “Mom” similes these days. “I’m just trying to sound like your mama calling up with some recipes for…
“Super Heroics” by Mark Newport at Arizona State University Art Museum: Fiber artist and ASU professor Mark Newport pokes fun at traditional gender roles by using the feminine art of knitting to make manly superhero costumes. His empty Daredevil and Spiderman suits hang flaccidly from the museum walls, waiting for…
THU 21 You’ve probably met those condescending old farts who always say crap like, “I was doing this before you were born.” Wouldn’t it be great to say, “Yeah, well, I was doing this before I was born, too”? Ferret out your former incarnations on Thursday, July 21, when Glendale…
If Vince Vaughn puts any effort into what he’s doing, it doesn’t show, which is perhaps one of the benefits of always appearing to be hung over. The man probably has to check the bags under his eyes at the airport, and he’s about as in shape as a toddler’s…
Phoenix artist Hector Ruiz fires a shot right between the eyes of American values in his “La Realidad (Reality)” exhibition at the Heard Museum. The show, which addresses Mexican-American identity, border issues, race, misogyny, capitalism and the injustices of the global economy, is notable because it’s a highly politicized exhibition…
