P.F. Chang’s Rock ’n’ Roll Arizona Marathon and Half-Marathon . . . huff, puff. We’re out of breath just saying the damn name, so we’re not too hopeful about taking home the trophy at this annual endorphin-o-rama. (A post-race blowout featuring Kool & the Gang follows at 5pm at Tempe…
Homer Simpson posited, “If horse racing is the sport of kings, then surely bowling is . . . a very good sport, as well.” What’s kept it from absolute perfection? How about shoe rentals, arm-straining equipment, blaring music, and seizure-inducing lights? Nintendo’s Wii Sports changed the game forever. Using the…
We’re used to seeing souped-up hood rides dotting the contemporary urbanscape, not dotting the walls of an art gallery. That’s why we’re gonna roll out to the “Lowriders: 8th Annual Dia de los Muertos Festival Exhibit.” The show merges modern automotive art with iconic Day of the Dead representations. Mondays-Fridays,…
“The Music of Led Zeppelin: A Rock Symphony” might be the Phoenix Symphony’s highest-grossing concert of the season, and that’s the point. Geezers with elbow patches on their jackets are an endangered species, so orchestras – like the London Symphony with its salute to the Beatles – are going to…
While January’s NBA sched is providing Your Phoenix Suns a mini-respite of sorts from the minefield known as the Western Conference, this year’s baffling Sunnies squad can’t afford to rest easy against anybody. Still, they might be able to catch a quick breather against the East’s poor-to-middling Milwaukee Bucks. Phew…
Hello? Oh, hi! I’m okay . . . considering. Nope, he’s still staying at the hotel. He says he doesn’t know if he can love me anymore. You’re right, he’s an asshole. Anyway, let’s talk about something else. How did it go last night? Mmm hmm. Oh, that’s a nice…
Supercross racers don’t get their blood racing by screaming down city streets on crotch-rockets or watching the open road fold out before them while riding hogs. They do, however, get a nitro-boost of adrenaline by tackling temporary terrain not found in nature on the backs of precision-crafted off-roading motorcycles. Need-for-speed…
It just don’t get any better than a Jumbo Jack and a paw clap with the little Sun who could — Brazilian blur Barbosa, by most accounts the fastest man in the NBA. Leandro’ll be at the fast-food joint signing autographs and promoting the upcoming Jack in the Box Celebrity…
A great brooding thundercloud of a movie, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood arrives as if from nowhere on a gust of critical acclaim, lowering over a landscape of barren mesas and hot, scrubby hills. Anderson’s epic, no less than his career, is both fearfully grandiose and wonderfully eccentric…
“You don’t meet the book when you meet the writer,” the novelist William Gibson has said. “You meet the place where it lives.” A relatively uncontroversial remark about the people who vent their imaginations on the page — no one should expect Philip Roth to sound exactly like Nathan Zuckerman…
Pajama Game: Word from Tucson, where Arizona Theatre Company debuted this recently revived Broadway favorite last month, is that the company has come up with another winner. With direction by ATC artistic director David Ira Goldstein, and a return from New York by local favorite (and former Phoenix native) Bob…
It’s that time of year again. Our six critics don’t always (or often) agree, but we’ve combined their top 10 lists (allowing for ties) to pretend that they do! So without further ado, the 10 (or 15) best movies of the year, kind of: 1. There Will Be Blood The…
How tough is it for a movie to find its audience, above the din of blockbuster marketing and beyond the clogged distribution pipeline? Tsai Ming-liang, the Taiwanese/Malaysian director regarded as one of the world’s greats, had two films in U.S. theaters this year, The Wayward Cloud and I Don’t Want…
The year: 2505. Your viewing choices tonight: an oldie but a goodie — a picture called Ass, a feature-length screensaver of butt cheeks punctuated by the occasional fart — or the hit TV show Ow! My Balls, a connoisseur’s compendium of nutsack whacks. Thanks to Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, we have…
Absolutely, unequivocally, this has been The Year of the Apatow: Judd got Knocked Up to the tune of $150 million (at the box office alone); the super-okay Superbad, which Apatow produced, grossed another $120 million, “gross” being the operative word; and at year’s end, he walks hard to the finish…
An acquaintance who fought in both Afghanistan and Iraq says he has no use for documentaries about George Bush’s bungling of the War on Terror. He has not and will not see a single one of the movies made about the tragic consequences of the administration’s rush to drop bombs…
Some years it can be hard to come up with enough stellar lead performances to make an awards minyan. But every year is a good year for supporting roles, and not just because the field has grown so wide since independent film became a force to be reckoned with. Many…
It was only a couple of years ago that the horror genre seemed newly resurgent, like an undead killer digging himself out of the grave. “Fresh-faced” directors like Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, Darren Lynn Bousman, and James Wan — many of whom were dubbed “The Splat Pack” — seemed poised…
Eastern Promises (Universal) David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen are becoming a Bizarro World Hitchcock/Cary Grant combo, and the world is a better (and bloodier) place for it. Chucklehead critics too smitten by Cronenberg’s “messages” dismissed this film — a vicious and brilliant exploration of the Russian mob in London —…
The inevitable challenge faced by Wii developers is this: Can you create a game so spectacularly awesome as to prompt a gamer to even consider ejecting Super Mario Galaxy from his console? The gravy train is over; good luck looking consumers in the eye while offering them another lame collection…
Billy Jack (Image) The Heartbreak Kid (Universal) Indie Sex: A Revealing Look at Sex in Cinema (IFC) Jimmy and Judy (Anchor Bay) Living & Dying (HBO) Resident Evil: Extinction (Sony) Seaquest DSV: Season Two (Universal) September Dawn (Sony) Shoot ‘Em Up (New Line) Solstice (Weinstein) The Tudors: The Complete First…
Early in the year, I wrote that I wondered whether I’d see a scene all season that was as astonishing to me as the one I saw in Space 55 Theater Ensemble’s Book of Liz, where actress Shawna Franks attacked a tray full of flatware with such gusto that forks…
