Summer officially starts to end with the dawn of film festival season, when we critics pack our suitcases and trek to the Toronto International Film Festival to see what great, smart, small movies are going to make a run at the art house, or even the Oscars. The 10 best…
Since 1963, the Austrian birthrate has halved. You can’t blame Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s new thriller, Goodnight Mommy, for the trend, but it sure isn’t helping. The quiet creepshow follows 11-year-old twins Lukas and Elias (Lukas and Elias Schwarz, great), who suspect their mom (Susanne Wuest) wishes they hadn’t…
Desperation, anxiety, stubbornly saying yes to survival: If grand struggles are your thing, there are plenty in Ridley Scott’s The Martian, based on Andy Weir’s popular novel, which was first self-published in 2011 and then picked up by Crown in 2014 — itself a rare seedling that took root against…
With a spooky holiday at the end of the month, we had to throw in a new slasher flick and a classic horror movie on this list of the best films to see this October. The rest of your movie nights can be spent checking out a space adventure, a…
New things are coming to Space 55’s this fall season. The small downtown Phoenix theater space has welcomed Duane Daniels as its new artistic director. Apart from the theater presenting an upcoming season of “off-Broadway style, adventurous theatre,” it will also host Kim Porter as she leads an eight-week (versus the typical…
The nerd scene in Phoenix is alive and well, and is strongly reflected in this month’s events. Whether you’re a geek, a nerd, a dork, or a Trekkie, there’s plenty to keep you busy this October. We’ve got literary examinations, comic expos, zombie walks, Jason Segel, and so much more…
Rebecca Fish Ewan performs at Bar Flies: Take a Walk on Wednesday, September 30, at Crescent Ballroom. Find tickets ($10) and details on Facebook. I walk with dead people. Not in a Rick Grimes zombie apocalypse way. More like Cole Sear, who said to his therapist in The Sixth Sense:…
As Abigail Lynch and Bart Dangus pack up their belongings and ready themselves for a road trip with no set itinerary or destination, something rests heavy on their consciences: their cats. “I love the desert and am going to miss the landscape,” Lynch says, “but we talk so much about…
Labor Day has come and gone, Halloween is just around the corner, and we’re told that one of these days the temperature just might fall down into the double digits. Here’s a list of great outdoor events that’ll get you up and moving this October — but won’t break the…
We all know that the West Coast is full of transplants from the Midwest and Atlantic fleeing the cold. But why settle for a shoe box in California when you can live it up like your favorite episode of Cribs in Arizona? Along with the Valley’s longstanding popularity as an…
“Hello, it’s Laurie. I’m so sorry!” Laurie Notaro’s on a beach on the Oregon coast. The bestselling author and humorist whose Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club is all but required reading for 20-somethings explains that a very rousing game of phone tag was the result of one distracting and delicious chicken…
This past week marked the beginning of fall, a time when we can drink hot lattes and imagine the leaves are changing color. It’s also a time when we face the ever-present dilemma of how to have a champagne-soaked social life on a pumpkin-flavored beer budget. We scoured metro Phoenix’s…
Heaven Can Wait Your spirit’s in limbo, and your body’s toast. Turns out you died by mistake, destiny-wise, and the admins need to send you back. So you occupy a murder victim’s body, but now you have to avoid people who want to kill you — well, kill him —…
Melissa Pritchard hasn’t been in her office for a while. It’s probably been months, maybe even a year or two. She tries to figure out exactly how long during the early moments of our interview as she settles into the small space in the English Department of Arizona State University…
Phoenix creative Matt Noakes has kept busy for years: attending ASU and Berkeley to study architecture, project managing at Kornegay Design in Phoenix, guitar playing for local mega band Black Carl, buying a house – name it. Yet since returning from Berkeley in 2010 and the disbanding of Black Carl…
In 1985, Phoenix Mayor Terry Goddard had an idea. He approached the City Council with a proposal to create a commission dedicated entirely to preserving the growing arts scene and encouraging others to pursue their artistic endeavors. Interest and funding for the local art scene had grown significantly, and Goddard…
“New Graduate Student Exhibition” Class is in session, and the graduate students at ASU’s Art School are busy as ever. How else could they present a gallery show a mere month after their first day? Working in media including paint, metal, fibers, and ceramics, 16 artists share their work in…
The minds of math and science geniuses have long fascinated the makers of crowd-pleasing narrative features, which is curious, as the complexities that fascinate those minds are antithetical to the feelings-first bounce of popular filmmaking. The movies, having settled into candied naturalism, already struggle to suggest interiority, even of characters…
The hardest type of guy for an actor to play is one without charisma. That’s the challenge faced by Tobey Maguire in Edward Zwick’s Pawn Sacrifice, which tells the story of Cold War-era chess champ and totally strange human being Bobby Fischer. He’s good at it — maybe too good…
Ballet is a beautiful thing, especially performed by moonlight. Which is why one of our favorite fall dance traditions is Ballet Under the Stars. It’s a series of free Ballet Arizona performances on outdoor stages at several parks throughout metropolitan Phoenix at 7 p.m., just as twilight descends over the…
No matter how much you think you know about dating slang, there’s always more to learn. As everyone you know gets involved in relationships for the next six to eight months (welcome to cuffing season!), here are 10 more dating slang terms you should know. Lumbersexual You know those dudes…
Arizona is filled with transplants. About half the people who live here, including plenty of artists, come from other places. Yet their work often reflects a strong sense of place and connection to the Sonoran Desert. Some draw inspiration from the desert, while others actually use desert materials as art…
