SUN 5/8 Willie Nelson’s career has evolved from silky-voiced crooner in the 1960s to pot-smoking hell-raiser in the 1970s and ’80s to critically acclaimed country legend in the aughts. You might figure that’s a semi-natural progression for artists who’ve been around for the span of five decades. But that’s just…
Gifted playwright alert: Donald Margulies is in town, or at least one of his better plays is, in time to help wind up what’s turned out to be a mediocre season and to remind us of what we’d have lost if the troubled Actors Theatre had succumbed to its recent…
THU 5 Nothing beats a good shag. In the ’30s and ’40s, all the hip cats were doing it, and they were using bad lines like, “Hi, sugar, are you rationed?” They still got girls to shag with them all night. And swing with them. Of course, they probably did…
I love hate mail. Next to the envelope that arrives at my home each week filled with what screenwriter Joseph Mankiewicz once called “the most restful shade of green,” getting hate mail is the best part of my job. I’m nuts for letters written by angry actors whose work I’ve…
THU 28 Still thumping “Hey Jealousy” from your Dodge Laser and mouthing “The Gin Blossoms are sooo fresh” to a carload of babes at the stoplight? Time to hightail it to Martini Ranch, 7295 East Stetson Drive in Scottsdale, on Thursday, April 28, for New Times New Music, which starts…
Want to know what’s spicing up the night on Cinco de Mayo? Put away the blender and the salt and head to one of the more than 100 celebrations and activities taking place all over the Valley. We have everything from parties south of the border to kid-friendly fiestas. But…
“Street Credibility”: Diane Arbus stars in an exhibition that puts her photos alongside the work of photographers who influenced her, and the ones who followed in her footsteps. The exhibition fails to show how the accidental strangeness of documentary photography morphed into the deliberate strangeness of art photography, because in…
Marcia Myers grooves on color, texture and ancient Italy. Her abstract diptychs and triptychs — artspeak for paintings made of two or three panels attached to one another — are floating fields of sun-soaked Mediterranean color that will remind you of an ancient Roman villa crossed with a cool, downtown…
Virgil Ortiz, ceramicist, fashion designer and Cochiti Pueblo Indian, makes visual mash-ups by putting designs inspired by traditional tribal pottery in contemporary places. In “La Renaissance Indigène” at the Heard Museum, Ortiz’s black-and-white swirls, lines and animals show up on purses, corsets and skirts; in a jerky black-and-white video; and…
Author Douglas Adams died at age 49 on May 11, 2001, of a heart attack suffered during a workout at a Santa Barbara, California, gym. His biographer, M.J. Simpson, blamed Adams’ demise in part on his unending battle to get The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on a big screen,…
Most contemporary thrillers aren’t concerned with moral dilemmas; the emphasis is on action and intrigue. The Israeli film Walk on Water — which, conveniently for American audiences, is primarily in English (the rest is in Hebrew and German with English subtitles) — not only raises questions about right and wrong,…
Agent Fox Mulder, the coolly instinctual sleuth of The X-Files, got pretty good at unraveling paranormal mysteries. If only the actor who played him were as adept at solving the riddle of his movie career. David Duchovny’s new vanity project, House of D, is the tortured tale of a 13-year-old…
When was the last time you walked out of a theater feeling shell-shocked, saying to anyone who would listen (in language more profane): “Dude, that was some seriously messed-up stuff!” Not your garden-variety messed-up stuff, mind you, like in Saw. Not the messed-up revelations of political docs. We’re talking the…
It’s a good thing Aaron Coleman is thick-skinned. After all, the 32-year-old tattoo artist’s pugnacious pelt has not only been punished by plenty of pigment, covering his arms, legs and back. But his durable dermis has even withstood all the disdainful dissing both the general public and the art world…
You must, we repeat, must go to the Phoenix Art Museum and see the Impressionist paintings on exhibit for just a few more days. We know what you’re thinking. Impressionist paintings are boring, and those oh-so-pretty depictions of bucolic French landscapes are the sort of art swill your grandma would…
FRI 4/29 Erotic torture, submissive slaves, leather, latex, hot wax to the flesh, and other forms of fetish will arise on “Black Friday,” April 29, at The Sets, 93 East Southern in Tempe. Evoking images fantasized by boys and girls yearning to be bound and gagged, the event, presented by…
FRI 4/29 Analyzing Georgie “El Torito” Garcia Jr.’s boxing style can be as perplexing as a politician’s talking points on tax reform — though with more sudden and painful consequences. The heavyweight Garcia, who brings a 5-0 professional record (with four KOs, including three in the first round) to “Fight…
FRI 4/29 Ten years ago, any place on Grand Avenue was rotting somewhere between a crack house and a whorehouse. The downtown pocket’s metamorphosis from seedy street to ultra-hip arts district has been slow but sweet, thanks largely to First Fridays and the community of artists who have moved into…
FRI 4/29 Loud-ass guitars dealing out sadistic riffs, flailing hair, sweaty bodies and hands raised and locked in the two-finger devil horn salute can only mean one thing. No, not a night with Beavis and Butt-head, fool. It’s the “AZ Blackend Deth HardKore Fest II” on Friday, April 29, at…
Wendy Cashaback is wearing a stiff upper lip these days. She’s also wearing a tiny Danskin dress and flashing a warm smile at everyone who visits her shop, even that creepy guy over by the sex lotions who’s been admiring the fur-lined handcuffs for way too long. When Creepy Guy…
Remember back in the day, when you’d fire up your NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), and instead of hunting ducks or picking flowers, you’d shoot drug dealers? Those were the days. When kiddy games were kiddy games, and adult games were kiddy games as well. The original eight-bit NARC for the…
It’s the bane of my existence, a hideous blight to which I’ve been witness countless times, a painful bore that causes me to shrink in my theater seat each time it waggles its ugly theatrical head. Audience participation gives me gas. It ruins any play, lovely or ugly, and destroys…
