It’s hard to imagine how difficult it is to make a movie about mental illness, let alone how challenging it is to make that movie. It takes sensitivity, courage, and a great deal of accuracy at the very least to make the film believable, endearing, and relatable to the audience…
There are few things in the realm of love and courtship that are scarier than a blind date. No matter how much thought friends put into finding the right girl/guy for us, there’s a reason — in fact, lots of reasons — why most people are resistant to going to…
If Tim Burton and Betsey Johnson were to build a life together in downtown Phoenix, it likely would look something like John and Liz Tavarez’s 1926 Sears Craftsman home. Located in the Fairview neighborhood just east of the Arizona State Fairgrounds, the historic abode is best described as gothic glam…
In 1848, Euphemia Gray, a bright and pretty young girl from a family of modest means, left her home in Scotland to marry her era’s equivalent of an art-world rock star, the imposingly erudite critic John Ruskin. Perhaps as early as her wedding night, Effie knew she’d made a mistake:…
Mad Men has always been, among many other things, about the exit of the old guard and the entrance of the new — and the acceleration of that transition by the mood and the movements of the Sixties. The pilot, set in 1960, finds the Sterling Cooper higher-ups scrambling to…
The screen version of any long-running comic-book superhero inevitably feels thin compared to the richly detailed idea of that hero in the minds of the fans who grew up with it. Five movies in, no Hollywood Spider-Man has yet embodied, all at once, the comic iteration’s glorious contradictions. He’s the…
When you’re young, to be old — even just the 44 kind of old — is unimaginable. Yet no one who has ever turned 44, or 54 or 74, can tell you how it happened. There’s no single moment of passing to the other side of the looking glass; the…
Dinner and a movie? So passé. Thank Zorp for ASU’s Center for Science and Imagination (seriously a thing), because its recurring Sci-Fi TV Dinner events breathe life — bionic, alien, or otherwise — into the stale date night staple.Stretching your brain on Thursday, April 2, will be season-three Star Trek:…
These boots may be made for walking. But the stilettos at Inspired Soles? They’re made for showing off. The fourth annual exhibition that benefits Artlink Phoenix will showcase more than 50 artists who have transformed everyday stilettos into something truly one-of-a-kind. Inspired Soles Silent Auction and Artist Meet and Greet…
Butter the popcorn and pass the Milk Duds. The Phoenix Film Festival is back for its fifteenth year. In addition to the industry parties, geeky gatherings, and cinema seminars, this one week event will be bringing all forms of film to the big screen: from animated shorts and documentaries to…
Head to the Scottsdale Quarter this Thursday for the fourth annual AZ Wine & Dine, hosted by the Arizona Lodging & Tourism Association. The tasting event will feature 19 of the Valley’s top resort and hotel restaurants, plus several Scottsdale Quarter dining spots and a selection of wines, provided by…
Victor Levin’s 5 to 7 is a romantic drama about a young writer in Manhattan that could be a superhero flick if its leading man wore tights. It’s as much a triumph of boyish wish fulfillment as Peter Parker swinging on skyscrapers. Brian (Anton Yelchin) is one of those suffering…
“The public really doesn’t listen when they’re being told straightforward facts,” says the Amazing Randi. The magician, escape artist, and tiny lion of principled skepticism, now north of 80, leans forward in a black chair, all knees and elbows and Old Testament beard. If it weren’t for that sharpie’s suit…
Even if you think you don’t know the photographs of Sebastião Salgado, you’ve probably seen them. In one of his most famous pictures, taken in the mid-1980s in Mali, a woman whose face is half-hidden by a dark, rough-textured cotton veil, her bearing as elegant as anything you’d see in…
The Longest Ride is Nicholas Sparks’ most ambitious novel. Instead of one couple, there’s two — and he’s even stretched out of his blond/Southern/Christian comfort zone to make the older pair Jewish. For balance, and for pandering to the powerful conservative audience who made American Sniper a megahit, his young…
Local filmmaker Perry Allen, film program coordinator for the Phoenix Art Museum, presents his new short film 8 counts from dreams I’ve collected Friday night at Nanogram Studio’s Flatlot, a pop-up art space located at 813 North First Street in the historic Garfield neighborhood. Allen describes the work as a…
ASU student Samantha Lyn Aasen shares her ambivalence towards the princess industrial complex in her “Sparkle Baby” thesis exhibition that runs from April 2 to 11 inside the Step Gallery at ASU’s Grant Street Studios. The exhibition considers “cultural ambivalence towards women’s and girls’ sexuality” while exploring gender, sexuality, and…
You know what’s one of the only things that could make an Easter egg hunt better? Dinosaurs. And, as far as we know, the Arizona Museum of Natural History is the only place to find actual (fossilized) dinosaurs in the Valley. AZMNH, 53 North Macdonald in Mesa, will be hosting…
Thomas Paine made zines. Okay, maybe they called them “pamphlets” back then, but when you think about it, they’re kind of the same thing — handmade booklets made by someone to express their ideas.Well, get ready to tap into your inner Thomas Paine on Friday, April 3, at 5 p.m…
The average American consumes about 12 chicken wings in one sitting; the world record for most chicken wings eaten in a sitting is 444 in just 30 minutes. If you find yourself somewhere in the middle of the two, get yourself to Wingstock. At Mesa’s yearly celebration of the beloved…
Sustainability this, green that. We get it. The Earth is cool and maybe let’s not destroy it. So does Australia-based architect Glenn Murcutt. The Pritzker Prize winner and American Institute of Architects gold medalist embraces nature in designing buildings, which are constructed to connect with, instead of separate from, the…
We’re fairly confident that if you’re old enough to get into this prom, your days of dancing in a decked out high school gymnasium or hotel ballroom are behind you.Phoenix Spokes People are throwing a Bike Prom: a night of drinking, dancing, and riding. Expect all the prom staples, from…
