Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed return to the fray, Youth Without Youth, is a curious project — well-crafted, personal, and movie-movie old-fashioned even in its vanguard aspirations. Simply put, it’s a Faustian romance about the reversal of time and transmigration of souls which, shot mainly in Romania, adds a soupçon of…
Since promising Armageddon in the leadoff bars of Straight Outta Compton, star-producer Ice Cube has been one canny career man. In recent years, he’s pulled up stake in the foundering rap game and doesn’t seem to think twice about the cred damage that could come from pratfalling through PG family…
When I was 12, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway totally screwed me over. After visiting the famed Brickyard and eagerly paying 10 bucks to take “a lap around the track,” I was placed in a golf cart that putted around the asphalt at a not-entirely-death-defying 9 mph. This was not the…
I’ve been thinking about strip malls again lately. They’ve been an on-again, off-again obsession of mine since the ’80s, when I started traveling and noticed that other cities didn’t seem quite so boxed in by as many of these long, low rectangles of grafted-together storefronts as is Phoenix. I also…
People go to the Heard Museum to see woven blankets, turquoise jewelry, and ancient pots. Joe Baker tried to change that. Although he left late last year (part of the near-constant game of musical chairs the local art world likes to play), Baker may just have a lasting impact on…
Living knee-deep in this postmodern world means a constant flux of meaning and connectivity. What was rigidly defined for previous generations is now a junk drawer of ideas, overlapping and blurring traditional boundaries. Just think of your baby boomer mother’s definition of “family” versus your own. She sees family as…
The Gore fest (as in Al Gore) chronicles the loser politician (as in the 2000 Presidential election) and his global warming tutelage. Wed., Jan. 16, 7 p.m., 2008…
Tyler Perry may be the biggest one-man media empire you might never have heard of. His movies (Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Why Did I Get Married?) have debuted at No. 1 at the box office, he recently closed a $200 million TV deal with TBS, and no less…
We’re glad we don’t have it rough like underground-comic-book schlub Harvey Pekar, with his two divorces and bout with cancer, but as he says in the autobiographical film American Splendor, “Hey, man, every day’s a brand-new deal, right? Just keep on working and something’s bound to turn up.” Harvey seems…
Boys Don’t Cry star Hilary Swank is a lot of things, but none involves belting out showtunes. Thank God. Things’ll be busting out all over, though, at the Phoenix Kings Club Drag King Show. The girls-cum-boys of the Kings Club put on a saucy little cabaret, which will be augmented…
We have a no-way-in-hell-you’re-gonna-win challenge for you, dear reader. Check out any fashion mag from the newsstand and try to tell us that the faux Photoshopped beauty on the cover has something over any portrait snapped by Richard Avedon. You won’t have a chance. The late American shutterbug — who…
Recall the last time you mounted an odd-toed ungulate? Bet you felt pretty smug afterward, sucking on that postcoital cigarette. What did you truly get out of it, though? A 20-second sound clip of tense whinnying and neighing? You certainly didn’t win national acclaim and the deed to your very…
Enough with these weenie two-mile leisure walks through the desert. The Cholla Mountain Loop Hike at McDowell Mountain Regional Park will kick your freaking ass. The four-hour gauntlet is an eight-mile jaunt filled with peaks, valleys, and thigh-burning switchbacks. Meet up with other macho men and women at Alma School…
Why do Americans insist on everything being so BIG? Supersize trucks. Get-fat-as-soon-as-possible fast-food meal deals. Big-box stores. Whether purchasing an Escalade or sucking down a 64-ounce Thirstbuster, bigger is considered better. Unless you’re talkin’ about chicks. Right, bro? If you’re sick of being told to “think big,” “bigger is better,”…
Bookended by two of our more illustrious ex-lovers, we contemplate the cyclical circumstances that brought us to this particular bar rail. For ages, the tiny Chez Nous Cocktail Lounge – steeped in velvety darkness and dangerous liaisons — stood guard against formulaic nightlife at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and…
Abandoned houses are always creepy, but there’s nothing more disconcerting than driving by your old childhood abode and seeing a stuccoed monstrosity, an empty lot, or the crumbling squalor of a meth lab. The punch in the gut that follows is unexpectedly severe, even if the change is as innocuous…
Cars. Cars. Cars. What the hell’s going on with all of these friggin’ cars? It’s like somebody flipped a switch and thousands of garage doors opened simultaneously, their owners looking to hock their high-end roadsters while the hocking’s good. And while we peons in our battle-scarred Neons can’t hope to…
Pollak — who began his show-biz career doing standup — is a Hollywood star, sort of. He’s one of those cats whose face is all over the place but whose name escapes you. Well, check out the star — or, mostly, minor star — of A Few Good Men, The…
A post-race blowout featuring Kool & the Gang starts at 5 p.m. at Tempe Beach Park. Sun., Jan. 13, 8 p.m., 2008…
To heck with James Cameron and his Leo-centric fantasy about the doomed ocean liner Titanic. In Christopher Durang’s stage version of the story, about to set sail (but hopefully not sink) in an Artists’ Theatre Project production, we’re seated far from the captain’s table with Richard and Victoria Tammurai and…
The show captures the essence of ancient Chinese culture with classical dancers, musicians, and acrobatic tumbling. Mon., Jan. 14, 7:30 p.m., 2008…
October 29, 2007, was a dark day in our fair town. Downtown’s most recognizable coffee shop, the Willow House, closed its longstanding locale on McDowell for good. We could say economic factors (two Starbucks within a one-mile radius) spelled doom for the indie hang, but anyone who downed a house…
