The opening night performance of Brelby Theatre’s Beyond Musketeers: Utopia Lost began with a curtain speech from director Brian Maticic, who warned us that the production was “super combat-heavy.” He wasn’t kidding. It seemed that nearly every scene of this occasionally entertaining retelling of Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers ended…
Long gone are the days when depictions of reporters in movies were reduced to a fedora with a white “Press” card tucked into the bow. We have Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in All the President’s Men and Peter Finch’s epic cry of “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take…
Few networks are as willing to bet on new voices as Comedy Central. The network’s hustling approach to original programming has yielded such breakout hits as Broad City, Inside Amy Schumer, and Key & Peele — some of the freshest and most distinctive shows of the last few years. Just three…
The problem with clamoring for more woman-led comedies is that actual comedy may be the thing that ends up being left by the wayside. Tina Fey, among others, has railed against the boneheaded dictum that women can’t be funny. But in the current climate of watchfulness — one in which…
New York has often been the setting for films about heroin addicts, with titles ranging from Shirley Clarke’s cinéma-vérité-tweaking The Connection (1961) to Slava Tsukerman’s new-wave cult classic Liquid Sky (1982) mining the drama of smack freaks tying off, shooting up, and nodding out. But Josh and Benny Safdie’s tough,…
“Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow,” declared Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In the case of Jimmy Gralton, she took bites and spat him out a couple times. It’s tempting to say some people never learn, but, as played by…
We may not need another hero, but true believers don’t need to shrink-ray their expectations. Ant-Man is the first Marvel film — and the first of this summer’s pixels-go-kablooey time-wasters — to get better as it goes. The filmmakers save their biggest, wiggiest ideas for the climaxes, where they wittily…
As others are lay low for summer, plenty of metro Phoenix artists seem to be kicking it into high gear. July Third Friday attendees will be richly rewarded with opportunities to see works by dozens of artists — including several who use unconventional means or materials. “Maybe Tomorrow, Darling” See…
What happens in the studio shouldn’t always stay in the studio. Studio Visit Q+A is a weekly series that profiles artists in their studios. We ask them questions, they provide answers, and then we have a nice discussion about their work. This week: Phoenix artist Rachel Bess. The small, detailed…
Not long ago, Justin Bush took a trip to Flagstaff to ride his bike. An Indiana native, Bush is an avid cyclist, and he loved Flagstaff’s breathtaking landscape and ample trails. When he visited a local restaurant, Bush struck up conversation with another customer – Jason Boles, an insurance salesman…
Word on the street and in many reputable news publications is that a woman’s face will be on the redesigned $10 bill in 2020. You know what that means: time to start hoarding all of those soon-to-be vintage $10 bills. And we don’t think there’s any better way to do…
Someone should give Stephen “Scuba” Clark a home improvement show immediately. In the eight years that he’s been in his 1955 “cookie cutter” Central Phoenix home, Clark has redone almost every room in the house — some twice. And we’re not talking about just moving the furniture around or adding…
Fairy tales and worlds of make believe have been with Chris Colfer from the beginning. The first story the New York Times bestselling author and Golden Globe-winning actor wrote in second or third grade dealt with an imagined world. It was a twist on Cinderella, involving an elderly woman named…
New Times’ guide to five artsy things to do this week is here. Emerging Arts Leaders Happy Hour Tired of yelling into the void? Want to discuss your opinions of the art scene freely and with people who actually give a crap about what you have to say? You just…
Last night Phoenix New Times and Valley Bar brought you the second Bar Flies, another smash hit! (If we say so ourselves.) Get out your calendars, because we have some dates for you for upcoming events. The next installment in the live reading series will take place at 7 p.m…
Rosemarie Dombrowski is a writer on a mission. The poet, ASU lecturer, and co-founder of the Phoenix Poetry Series will lead a two-part creative writing workshop on the art of the flash memoir at 7 p.m. on July 22 and 29 at Changing Hands Bookstore. The writing workshop is open…
Downtown Phoenix taqueria PAZ Cantina is definitely a vibrant place, thanks to the kaleidoscopic array of art work and murals that dot its walls. Later this month, however, the Roosevelt Row eatery will become even more colorful (and a bit livelier to boot) when a crew of lucha libre wrestlers,…
Whether you’re friends and then hook up or hook up and then become friends afterward, being friends with someone you’ve seen naked generally isn’t easy. That said, it’s not impossible. Here are some tips on how to remain friends with someone you’ve hooked up with. Choose the right person Not…
Meet Ethan Carter III, the man that fans of TNA Wrestling love to hate. You can’t blame ’em, since there’s much to detest about the character. He’s a pompous prick in the third degree with a privileged upbringing, chiseled looks, a ripped physique, and a one-percenter attitude. And like most…
Beyond Musketeers: Utopia Lost Apparently, we can’t get enough dystopian future in our entertainment. (As though the past and present haven’t been dystopian enough.) So Brelby Theater Company reaches into the past to create a play set in just such a future, Beyond Musketeers: Utopia Lost. One of the adjustments…
Two and a half years ago, Judd Apatow released This Is 40, the most personal film of his career. He was anxious. He usually is. His default setting is inward panic. “I don’t know if people can understand the pressure to be funny,” Apatow says today, “just knowing how badly…
Photographs representing the entire history of photography are currently on view in the “One-of-a-Kind: Unique Photographic Objects from the Center for Creative Photography” exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum. The exhibition was organized by the museum and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “One-of-a-Kind” was curated…
