The lore of the Lost Dutchman’s gold mine runs deep in Arizona. Hundreds of books have been written on the subject; some speculate as to the mine’s whereabouts, others dispute the geological verity of the whole thing, and still others delve into the historical record surrounding the legend. It’s rumored…
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: Tempe artist Rossitza Todorova. Rossitza Todorova recently…
Imagine Donald Trump wanted to reboot his disastrous presidential campaign announcement month to start over as a younger man with real hair. In Tarsem Singh’s Self/less, Trump could hire the medical geniuses of Phoenix Biogenic to transfer his aging brain into a strapping hot bod for $250 million — the…
Hollywood lives by the simple, sad axiom “Where there’s money, there’s more money,” which is how we get remakes of movies that sometimes shouldn’t have been made in the first place, two Spider-Man reboots within five years, and a Star Wars franchise that ensures our children’s children will revere George…
The July 2011 death of Amy Winehouse at age 27, was one of the first great tragedies of 21st-century pop music, an event — like the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Kurt Cobain in the last decade of the 20th — that emphasized the jarring contrast between the fragility of…
We hope your Fourth of July was filled with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness just as our Founding Fathers intended, but now it’s time to get back to business. And for us, that business is finding cool, entertaining things to do around the Valley that won’t cost you…
The pole is candy-striped — red, white, gold, and baby blue. It’s fastened to the wall, right in the middle of the shop. It’s the same pole you’d see in any vintage barbershop in the country. For hundreds of years, that pole has told passersby: We cut hair. Come on…
If seeing works by Arizona artists exhibited around town has ever left you wanting to give art-making a try, this summer might be a good time to get started. Several local artists are offering classes or workshops in coming weeks and months, and we’ve found five that look especially intriguing…
Kaori Takamura Local artist Kaori Takamura has something to say and she’s using attention-grabbing, colorful design to do it. Using textiles and fabric patterning mixed with embroidery and meticulous digital art, “express[es] women’s tangled and intricate everyday feelings,” she writes in her artist’s statement. An award-winning graphic designer and mixed…
It’s easy to get in the groove of hitting First and Third Fridays in metro Phoenix without making time to explore art by artists working in other parts of Arizona. But there’s an easy solution. It’s the “All Art Arizona” exhibition presented each year by Gilbert’s Art Intersection, whose curatorial staff…
Maybe Phoenix doesn’t have that one skyscraper that rises above the rest like the Empire State Building and, sure, stucco abounds, but there are plenty of gems by big-name architects who found inspiration in the desert. These archetypal homes around the Valley, either built by our most notable architects or…
Phoenix is a cultured town, full of experts on a wide array of topics and eager audiences ready to learn. This month, there are a few lectures that are more than worth your time. If the idea of attending a lecture brings back traumatic memories of monotonous professors, don’t worry, no…
Arizona Theatre Company announced on Monday, June 29, that its 2015 National Latino Playwrighting Award and goes to Matthew Paul Olmos for his work the living’life of the daughter mira. Olmos will also receive a $1,000 prize. The NPLA was founded 20 years ago by Arizona Theatre Company artistic director David Ira…
Young Frankenstein We can’t get over the fact that Mel Brooks wrote the words and music to all of the songs in the stage musical version of Young Frankenstein (except for “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” or, as the monster sings it, “Oo atha Rih”). Dude is mad talented – he…
In the words of the immortal holy one known as Beyoncé, “All the single ladies (all the single ladies)” and all the single men in Metro Phoenix, you now have something you can (and should) do on Wednesday, July 15. The Great Love Debate is coming to the Phoenix Theatre…
There’s happy news this month, as galleries, museums, and other art spaces continue to offer an intriguing mix of exhibitions even as people are popping in and out of town for summer vacations. Take solace if you’re among those who couldn’t get away for the long holiday weekend. You’ll be…
There’s no one right way to show mental illness in the movies, yet there are hundreds of ways to get it wrong. Even though certain disorders come with specific traits, a diagnosis is not a human being, and doomed is the actor who just cycles through symptoms, rather than working…
After 12 years on the air, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart became required viewing during the Dubya years, when much of the nation was desperate to look to almost anyone else for political leadership. The Comedy Central series offered nightly catharsis in five- or eight-minute bursts, voicing the anger and…
A romance about wanting to see a romance, a comic tragedy about an onlooker willing something tragic, Anne Fontaine’s Flaubert-inspired meta-pleasure Gemma Bovery takes as its subject the act of watching the lives around us — and of wishing those lives were literature. Or films: Here’s a French film thick…
Mia Hansen-Løve’s lucid and shimmering movie memoir Eden traces the sloping rise and even more meandering fall of a French techno DJ across some 20 years. Eden isn’t even about anything as broad as electronic dance music: It deals largely with the specific techno subgenre known as garage — at…
The Heard Museum in central Phoenix announced on June 22 that it received a $1.25 million grant from the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust. The grant money will be used to combine two existing galleries into a single larger space that will accommodate bigger exhibitions and allow for greater integration of…
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 Ann Morton. Ann Morton’s work…
