The consequences of marital discord in Mr. & Mrs. Smith go way beyond sleeping on the couch or maintaining icy silence at the breakfast table. Thanks to a cartoonish premise by British screenwriter Simon Kinberg — and the dictates of the summer-movie marketplace — the battling Smiths of the title…
About a year ago, buzz started building among horror fans about a French slasher movie titled Haute Tension, about two girls who go to a country house and get terrorized by a maniac in workman’s coveralls. It had been well received in Europe, and horror geeks with Web sites here…
Robert Rodriguez just keeps cranking ’em out. This hasn’t always been a good thing — Spy Kids 2 and 3 felt rushed in a way that the first one didn’t, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico looked cheap compared to its cinematic predecessor, Desperado. But the more Rodriguez keeps…
It’s always difficult to pan a movie that features good actors, important issues, and noble intentions. But In My Country, a romantic drama about two journalists covering the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in post-apartheid South Africa, leaves little choice. Clunky and obvious, it makes the mistake of asking drama…
If you’re trying to navigate the gulf between the absolutist view inside Fortress Bush and the relativist politics of Western Europe, you need go no further than Brothers, a provocative new drama from Denmark. Superficially, it’s an intimate and rather self-contained film, but director Susanne Bier (Open Hearts, The One…
What do you call a guy who’s old enough to remember “when Andre the Giant was skinny,” but still puts on stage makeup and sings in a heavy-metal band? Prophet, of course. He’s the ringleader of local “carnimetal” band St. Madness. And he’s stoked because he and his bandmates –…
More than 40 years ago, Buddy Stubbs won the Daytona 100 and finished his motorcycle racing career. And he’s still got a way with the ladies. On Thursday, June 9, Stubbs and his Arizona Harley-Davidson dealership in north Phoenix host the Buddy Stubbs Ladies’ Night, yet another indicator of women…
6/10-6/12Michaleen Kringle describes the “Big Boys & Their Toys” Arizona Men’s Expo, which she’s co-organizing with founder Gary Glava, as “family-friendly.” Right. We know better. As if any self-respecting man’s man could peel his eyes and attention away from more than 200 exhibitions of SUVs, luxury cars, speedboats, motorcycles, sports…
SAT 6/11 During opening day for the Mesa Miners, one of eight teams in the brand-spanking-new Golden Baseball League, 3,500 spectators turned prospectors waved makeshift pickaxes made out of foam fingers and aluminum cans to celebrate a historic win. It was mass hysteria! Pure bedlam! Okay, maybe the pickax thing…
THU 6/9Now that the old school’s all grown up, and seminal rap group Sugar Hill Gang is doing festival tours with unlikely matches like Lisa Lisa and Stevie B., Scribble magazine must look to urban culture once again to find the next innovator in underground hip-hop. On Thursday, June 9,…
SAT 6/11Can you imagine a more popular four-hour television show than Univision’s Sábado Gigante? Now, picture a live version of the program that honors the best entertainers in Latino/Latina arts. Saturday, June 11, will be a good night to set the VCR, because the Seventh Annual International Las Palmas de…
THU 9 We might finally see that “Dancing Queen” pop-up we never knew we always wanted when ABBA showcases its homemade books at . . . oh, wait, wrong ABBA. This ABBA acronym stands for “A Buncha Book Artists,” an Arizona State University student book-builder collective that creates original handmade…
Mercifully, the work in “Water, Water Everywhere” stays clear of the obvious themes you would expect to see in an exhibition in the desert about water. There isn’t a single piece in this group exhibition of artists from around the world that settles for the simple “water equals life” concept…
Local jazz favorite Jazzola plays on Friday nights. Saturday night features The Cueball Hamilton Duo. On balmy nights, you can enjoy the outside terrace or escape the heat inside the Bistro. Sample Kokopelli’s large selection of Arizona-grown wines – great with a “nosh” plate of cheese, nuts, fruit, chocolate, olives,…
Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa 2400 East Missouri Avenue, 602-381-7632 www.arizonabiltmore.com/spa Centre for Well-Being at the Phoenician 6000 East Camelback Road, 480-423-2582 www.centreforwellbeing.com CopperWynd Resort & Club 13225 North Eagle Ridge Drive, Fountain Hills, 480-333-1900 www.slh.com Four Seasons Spa 10600 East Crescent Moon Drive, Scottsdale, 480-513-5145 www.fourseasons.com/scottsdale Golden Door Spa…
THU 2 If you can get past Devil Doll’s (a.k.a. Cleveland-born Colleen Duffy’s) Sherilynn Fenn/”A Songstress Named Desire”/sell-your-soul-for-a-night-with-her good looks, you’ll have time to take a picture, too! But you’ll also hear a voice and a sound so smooth — smoother than Blue Velvet, in fact, the cinematic dreamscape one…
I’d like to meet the jerk-off who decided that founding a city in the middle of the desert was a good idea. I’ve been gunning for this guy (because it has to have been a man — no woman would be stupid enough to set up housekeeping inside a kiln)…
Short of submerging yourself in a vat of ice, home remedies for keeping body heat at bay are sparse. So let the experts soothe your scorched skin this summer. Swanky spa treatments, while a bit more pricey than a pound of crushed cubes, are the perfect solution for cooling every…
Talk about the heat of the night. The prevailing wisdom here in the Valley has long been that come 2 a.m., when bartenders turn off the taps and drop-kick drunks out the door, our banging burg transforms into a ghost town. It’s doubly so in summertime, as even the most…
When I migrated here from New York, I hadn’t counted on how near impossible it would be to put a band together and keep it focused during the hot summer months. Even the lamest justifications for missing rehearsals, from the persistent “Uhh, I spaced it, man” to the truly wretched…
One does not have to be relegated to an indoor air-conditioned environment to escape the sweltering summer heat. Here are some cold and dark out-of-the-box activities that will get you outdoors and away from that thermostat-controlled milieu. Ice Ice Blocking Need a method for turning the summer into a winter…
No matter how many summer vacations you plan or how well you plan them, a moment comes when you realize that you will never sword-fight with Lord of the Rings fans in Kazakhstan or reach that tiny island off the north coast of Australia where the school shuts down for…
