College theater gets a good rap next week, when Grip the Mic Tight premières at ASU’s Herberger Mainstage Theatre New Plays Festival. Mark Ebsen Zeller’s “slam poetry and hip-hop lyrical odyssey” recounts the life of Ivory, a famous white rapper bent on self-destruction. “He’s about to commit suicide when the…
4/8-4/10 It doesn’t take Andy Granatelli to see the difference between the cars on the NASCAR circuit and those of the Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series. For those highbrows who scoff at NASCAR — America’s most popular spectator sport — one glance at a Grand American car will make…
ONGOING “Bonzai Bumrush” has been blowing up at Tempe’s Ichiban Japanese Restaurant for nearly two years. But those outside the local hip-hop loop likely have missed the word-of-mouth campaign spawning the weekly show’s loyal following. “We haven’t exactly done a grip of promotion for it, but we get a pretty…
4/8-4/11 “When you watch anything in performing arts,” explains Ballet Arizona’s artistic director Ib Andersen, “or you go and see a painting, it’s all about you as an individual.” His baritone voice reaches an even lower pitch as he lingers on the last “you.” Andersen can describe the abstract sets…
John Epperson is more than a man in a dress. He’s Lypsinka, a man in a dress whose off-Broadway, award-winning act (Lypsinka! Boxed Set, playing this weekend at Scottsdale Center for the Arts) is a post-modern commentary on men in dresses. And women. And homos. All of it lip-synched to…
In an era where film studios make movies based on old TV series and broadcast networks make TV movies about the making of ’70s sitcoms, it’s only natural that three of Broadway’s most recent successes — Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Producers and Hairspray — are based on big-screen favorites. Theater…
In the beginning, there was The Evil Dead, and Stephen King looked down upon it and saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let there be Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, that the message of writer-director Sam Raimi be spread across the land!” So it was written, so…
It’s a measure of continual cultural desensitization that The Girl Next Door plays like a remake of 1983’s Risky Business, yet very little of it feels risky in the slightest. Twenty years on, the notion of a high school student getting involved in the sex-for-pay business seems almost cute, rather…
Scott Tompkins isn’t the pretentious and flamboyant chef one might expect to find at a culinary festival filled with wine tastings, cooking demonstrations and black-tie galas. But that’s what’s so appealing about the Scottsdale Culinary Festival, Tompkins says. The six-day event gets cooking — and celebrates its 26th anniversary –…
4/8-4/11 Every day is Halloween for Dee Snider. Whether gender-bending as the flamboyant front man of ’80s hair-metal gods Twisted Sister, or helping create the band’s zombie-filled music video “Be Chrool to Your Scuel” (banned from MTV because it was “too gory”), Snider mixes the macabre into his masterpieces. So…
Temporary Public Art Projects at Burton Barr Central Library: Next time you stop by the Burton Barr Central Library — maybe to catch the First Fridays shuttle, maybe to pick up a good book — don’t miss two of the temporary installations from Art Detour weekend that remain on display…
Thursday, April 1 Ensuring their spots in hawg heaven, local bikers gear up for the greater good this Thursday, April 1, when the eighth annual MDA Charity Ride and Silent Auction hits the highway. The “official ride of Arizona Bike Week” benefits the Muscular Dystrophy Association — and in a…
Before Star Wars and Indiana Jones, audiences thrilled to an epic big-screen trilogy of a different sort: the tale of one righteous lawman and his big piece of wood. Based on the real-life exploits of Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser, the first Walking Tall movie (1973) made lead actor Joe Don…
If it weren’t for Chris LaMont’s and Golan Ramras’ curious desire to spoof Hollywood “it” boys Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, the Phoenix Film Festival might still be a figment of the young filmmakers’ imaginations. And movie buffs might still be sifting through “Mike’s favorite picks” at their local Blockbluster…
4/6-4/9 Artists often are criticized for throwing their berets into the socio-political arena. Claiming that artists are immersed in the idealism of happy little trees and a palette of mixed colors that get along gloriously, pundits question the legitimacy of artists’ opinions on anything outside the studio. But when the…
4/1-4/2 East and West, past and future . . . Desert Dance Theatre and New York’s H.T. Chen & Dancers prance across cultural and spatial divides in Looking Back, Dancing Forward. The bridge has largely been one of incorporation. Think modern dance peppered with hints of classical Chinese dance and…
Trust me when I say that “Landscape in the Fireplace: Paintings by Pedro Alvarez,” an exhibition of 40 large mixed media paintings by the Cuban artist currently on display at Arizona State University Art Museum, may be your very last opportunity to see so much of Alvarez’s work — particularly…
The downtown Phoenix gallery scene is often lauded as a place where you can discover fresh, young artists. But if you want them even younger and fresher, head to Tempe. In contrast to the established work shown at the university’s museum, Arizona State’s art department runs on-campus galleries that exhibit…
Full disclosure: I like precisely one and a half Kevin Smith movies. There’s the one everyone else hates, the John Hughes homage Mallrats, and the first hour of the one everyone else loves, Chasing Amy, which dries up around the time Ben Affleck dumps Jason Lee for Joey Lauren Adams…
As a proud sponsor of the Colin Farrell media blitz, Intermission opens on the lad’s salable mug, basically sporting the same buzz-cut ‘n’ tats look from his punky cameo in Veronica Guerin. It’s a cunning editorial move, pushing the product from the get-go, yet it gets interesting as Farrell’s dumb…
When Chris Normandin steps in the ring Saturday night at Dodge Theatre, the gloves are coming off — figuratively, of course. The SuperCop Boxing Exhibition might be a charity event, but once the bell sounds the first bout, Normandin, a 28-year-old Phoenix police officer who works out of the Squaw…
4/3-4/4 The Valley’s first public skatepark needs some love — and not from the loyal skateboarders who’ve grinded the edges off the steel coping for seven years. Desert West Skateboard Plaza needs some TLC from the City of Phoenix, says one of the park’s founders, Laura Martin, who — through…
