If you have a pulse, you probably listen to music. Auditory inspiration is something human beings latch onto – especially when we’re feeling intense moments of emotion. Your chick broke up with you, cue up “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart. You just got a promotion? Pop in “I Feel Good”…
Walking down Roosevelt Row has become an art form in itself. Avoiding the pitfalls of light-rail construction and handling the transients asking for money — all while trying to catch the eye of that handsome indie fellow who’s on his way to Carly’s — is no easy feat. But we’ve…
If First Friday is Phoenix’s art/fashion/music love child, then SMoCA Nights is the older brother who aced law school at Harvard and married a B-list celebrity. While Birkenstocks and dreadlocks define the dress code on Roosevelt, the Scottsdale art scene is strictly dress to impress. The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary…
Light-rail construction, deteriorating inflatable rubber dams, and a vice mayor named Hut. Tempe can sometimes lean to the frightening side. Now Mill Avenue ratchets up the scare factor even more with the third annual International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival. This year’s bill of fare includes retro classics such as…
The downside of being Vietnam, Southeast Asia’s Grand Central Station: centuries of Chinese, Portuguese, French, and American boot prints (and land mines) in your flowerbed. The upside: cultural and artistic variety and cross-fertilization out the yin yang, as displayed in the “Contemporary Vietnamese Paintings” exhibit. The show, featuring works running…
True, the Shaolin Temple-inspired Wu-Tang Clan “ain’t nothing to fuck wit’,” but GZA, the RZA, Raekwon the Chef, and the rest don’t have nothing on the Shaolin Warriors. These cats from China’s Buddhist Monastery represent with flowing martial arts moves fused with ancient Far Eastern spirituality. Sat., Oct. 20, 7…
Conceived by dance maven Twyla Tharp, Movin’ Out is a jukebox musical welded together with Billy Joel songs and set in ´60s-era Long Island. No, seriously. Twyla Tharp and Billy Joel and a Vietnam War story involving people named Brenda and Eddie and James and Judy — all familiar monikers…
Lying is the essential strategy when surviving adolescence. We tell our parents we’re going to see a movie while we’re really planning to drive out to the abandoned dog track (across the highway from the state prison) and smoke a jammer. But now that we’re adults, we’ve dropped the habit…
In a town where the four men’s professional sports franchises get mad love, the so-called “lower-tier” teams get the shaft, even when they’re hoisting championship banners. Just look at the Phoenix Mercury. Though the Phoenix RoadRunners of the ECHL have yet to add a playoff appearance to their résumé, the…
Forever Plaid: Theyre dead and they like to sing close harmonies, so whats not to love about The Plaids, a fictional guy group thats become a fixture of sorts in local theater? This time, theyre brought to you courtesy of Copperstate Dinner Theater, where theyll cover the Four Aces and…
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Three (Universal) Black Sheep Unrated (Genius) Bob Mould: Circle of Friends (Granary) Bruce Springsteen: Under Review-1978-82: Tales of the Working Man (Sexy Intellectual) Concert for Diana (Universal) CSI New York: The Third Season (Paramount) Man Push Cart (Koch Lorber) The Marx Brothers Collection (Passport) Meerkat Manor:…
He’s one of three Draculas currently flapping their capes on local stages, but future Oscar contender Shane Dean is not willing to take third place — or any crap about his use of Mop & Glo, either. I knew I wanted to be in show business when I saw Michael…
The estranged brothers Whitman have reunited for a journey on the Darjeeling Limited, a colorful old train traversing the Rajasthan region of India. Along the way, they will stop to visit temples (“Probably one of the most spiritual places on Earth!”) and shop for souvenirs (slippers, cobras, pepper spray), with…
It will, no doubt, be said time and again of Michael Clayton: best John Grisham adaptation ever. Except, of course, it did not spring from the billion-dollar mind of the attorney who turned into a franchise, but from Tony Gilroy, who made his big-screen bow 15 years ago as the…
Calling all pundits. It’s a baffling caprice of the zeitgeist to have two studio Westerns released in the same season, 30-odd years after the genre basically gave up the ghost. James Mangold’s better-than-competent and highly crowd-pleasing 3:10 to Yuma has provided a harmonica fanfare for something more ambitious and polarizing…
“Will you leave your kingdom to a heretic?” That was the question posed to a dying Queen Mary in 1998’s Elizabeth, director Shekhar Kapur’s grim and dingy film now viewed in retrospect as the origin story of a superhero: The Armored Virgin Queen, faster than a speeding lead pellet, more…
“Beautiful” and “cruel” — that’s how director Ang Lee describes Eileen Chang’s 1979 short story about obsessive love and effortless betrayal in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, a tale upon which Lee has based his epic-length Lust, Caution. Writing in the afterword to a recently republished version of the 54-page story, which took…
Welcome to Phoenix, where the sun never sets and one can typically find on local stages the same half-dozen shows (Little Shop of Horrors, Forever Plaid, West Side Story always among them) playing pretty much year-round. Sometimes, one can even find the same show playing simultaneously at two different theaters,…
What’s left to say about Halo 3? How about this: All the pomp and circumstance surrounding its launch sure have been distracting. Commercials that look like clips from a Hollywood movie, extravagant collectors’ sets that sell for $130, limited-edition Xbox 360s with a green-and-gold Halo-inspired color scheme, and a midnight…
You Kill Me (Genius) Funny thing seeing Philip Baker Hall in You Kill Me, as he’s already played the role of a drunken hit man’s boss in The Matador, to which this feels like a slapshtick-noir sequel. It’s also the photonegative of Sexy Beast: Once more Ben Kingsley plays a…
Jessica Gooding and Lauren Vasquez’s Zombie Prom 2007 is not a new idea, but it’s a good one — zombies being really hip at the moment. So grab your gore-soaked tuxedo and your undead date and lurch down to Trax for the bestial bash, which features drink specials, professional prom…
As children, we often heard that secrets don’t make friends. What a load of crap. If that’s true, how is it that Frank Warren, the man responsible for PostSecret.com, is so popular? His project, in which people send anonymous postcard confessions, has made his Web site a raging success. Now…
