If you’re looking for a horror film to revitalize the genre, keep looking. If you’re looking for a horror movie with believable characters . . . yes, you’re gonna have to keep looking. But if sudden loud noises, relentless strobe lights, digital hallucinations and mutilated corpses make you jump, and…
The Valley’s newest movie theater is coming out swinging. It’s cocked and loaded. Starting the weekend off with a bang. Last week, Chandler’s Madstone Theaters celebrated its grand opening with three days of free screenings. This weekend, that spirit of generosity and, ahem, sharing continues. On Friday, the theater hosts…
Matt Smith is praying. The waiter at DJ’s, an Old Town Scottsdale bar that serves darn good burgers and even better kamikazes, has just dropped off Smith’s chicken sandwich, and now — like every good Catholic boy — he’s bowing his head and clasping his hands and muttering quietly to…
Two weeks along, the theater season is already shaping up to be the finest in years. Three of our smaller companies have weighed in with real contenders: The Last Wallace & Ladmo Show has filled Theater Works’ stage with more Equity actors than it hosted all last year. And Is…
The Valley is teeming with unsung comedic talent, like the huckster satirists who staked “Vote Mormon” signs next to Matt Salmon’s gubernatorial street corner ads and “Vote Gay” next to Janet Napolitano’s. All these anonymous jolly-makers and piss-takers oughta be lining up to compete in the Funniest Person in the…
Michael Crow has arrived. The former executive vice provost and science policy expert from Columbia University is now Arizona State University’s new president. Crow doesn’t mind discussing his successes in stuffing Columbia’s coffers (the college consistently ranked first or second among all U.S. universities in income from patent and license…
Things you will learn from a forthcoming oral history of Saturday Night Live: Dan Aykroyd slept with, among others, Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman and writer Rosie Shuster, the latter of whom was, at the time, married to the show’s producer and creator, Lorne Michaels. To this day, Chevy Chase regrets…
Color me surprised. An upstart theater company has kicked off the new season with a real long shot: an out-of-the-box smash delivered by a stageful of amateurs and first-timers. Is What It Is Theater’s production of Studs Terkel’s Working shouldn’t work at all. This company had never produced a musical,…
Andrew Niccol keeps making the same movie over and over again, dressing it in slightly different clothes: the sleek charcoal Hugo Boss grays of Gattaca, the crisp Crayola hues of The Truman Show and, now, the silk-and-satin Hollywood resplendency of Simone. Niccol, writer and director, is obsessed with a single…
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Citizen-soldiers eager to renew hostilities in the American culture wars can shoot a couple of spitballs at each other this week over Little Secrets, a teen-anxiety movie that leaves no doubt where it stands on “family values” and moral absolutes: It approves. The shock troops of the Cinema Without Limits…
What Latin phenomenon combines sex appeal with cultural tradition, gets parties grooving, and makes your thighs burn? No, not Ricky Martin. It’s the salsa, and it’s spicing up Sunday nights in Tempe — and proving that the Valley’s club scene isn’t as segregated as is commonly thought. Hundreds of young…
Moviegoers wanting to see the latest summer blockbuster will have no trouble finding a giant local multiplex offering dozens of Hollywood hits — they’re liberally scattered across the Valley. But for those who seek out independent, foreign and classic films — cinema that doesn’t have to be obscure — options…
Deborah Hopkins, curator of exhibitions at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, likes art that “gets out of the frame and jumps off the pedestal” — an apt way to describe the works in “Thin Skin” (known to many of us as “the bubble show”), on view at the museum…
I nearly drive my car straight into Portland’s, the downtown bar and restaurant where I’ve arranged to meet local craftsman Jim Bell. My near crash is caused by the scary tangle of life-size mannequins hanging out of an oddball vehicle (Bell tells me later it’s a three-quarter-ton 1952 Dodge M-27…
Up to a certain point, Paul Marino’s story is a familiar one, especially to any single guy in his 20s who likes playing with his joystick. Four years ago, Marino and his pals would leave their offices on a Friday night and go to another friend’s workplace, where they’d play…
LYT: Don’t you find it interesting that Blue Crush director John Stockwell is on this whole girl-power kick, going off on the “sexist” guys who’d rather “appreciate a cute girl in a bikini, but ain’t gonna give up a wave for them,” yet the movie’s marketing is all about appreciating…
Sometimes when a director shoots at a barn, the satisfaction comes in simply watching him hit it dead center. So it is with The Good Girl, wherein Miguel Arteta (Star Maps) targets middle American ennui with wit, compassion and no shortage of ornery malaise. Like Arteta’s second feature, Chuck &…
Hey, Mom and Dad, is your teenage son exhibiting any of the following behavioral symptoms: showing a sullen and angry demeanor, bottle-bleaching his hair, excessively utilizing headphones, mumbling epithets about Tipper Gore and Lynne Cheney? Yeah? Blame it on Marshall Mathers, a.k.a. Eminem — he’s dying to take credit for…
When 17 life-size fiber-glass horses clopped into downtown Scottsdale in late 2000, lovers of animals and art took to the streets to admire the stallions. This summer, another curious collection of creatures has made its way into the city’s gallery district, and though it lacks the noise of the Scottsdale…
Every high-energy minute counts with Jeff Barthold. He’s already networking when I arrive at Maloney’s, one of several Valley bars that carry Liquid X, the “euphoric party energy drink” that Barthold invented. He’s here to tell me about the caffeine-infused beverage, which he hopes will give Red Bull, the energy…
A press pass, reporter-turned-novelist Gregory McDonald once said, is good for one thing: It allows the journalist to ask very smart people very stupid questions. Certainly, that’s how it feels after this 45-minute drive from downtown Dallas to the Allen home of Stan Liebowitz, professor of economics at the University…
