The room is dark and loud, and a projector plays the image of a guy in a suit slamming his body against a wall, again and again, as strobe lights flare. No, it’s not a Sid Vicious video and this is not a bad flashback. It’s art. And it’s what…
It’s been said that Noel Coward’s Private Lives is foolproof; that it’s such a well-written, tightly strung play that even a third-rate company can’t mess it up. But this isn’t something that’s being said by people who’ve been to Phoenix Theatre recently. There, despite the efforts of one leading lady,…
Russell Crowe to his agent: “More Oscar-bait. Now.” Agent, considering his cut of Crowe’s $20 million payday: “Yes, sir.” A possible scenario, anyway. Thus, Crowe is back in another iconic, self-serious performance, and his beefy mug will stare down upon us from this season’s heroic movie posters until Tom Cruise…
In the annals of fraud and fakery, a discredited ex-magazine reporter named Stephen Glass will likely wind up a mere footnote. The people who forge van Goghs and the con artists who bilk naive grandmothers out of their life savings (not to mention certain fast-dancing corporate executives) even more richly…
The first question that comes to mind upon hearing that the Looney Tunes are back and, indeed, in action, is the following: Back from where? Who Framed Roger Rabbit married the Tunes to live action in 1988, and Space Jam (a 90-minute Michael Jordan commercial) featured the Tunes as recently…
The halls of higher learning hold something different for everyone, but in a perfect world, every college education would hold true to the virtue of exposing students to the value of pluralism and the beauty of different cultures. In light of the rampant jingoism and unilateral tendencies in the current…
Thursday, November 13 Osha Gray Davidson’s most recent book, Fire in the Turtle House: The Green Sea Turtle and the Fate of the Ocean, tells “a compelling story about turtles and their future that ought to change our view of the world,” says Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the late ocean…
The Umbilical Brothers are taking a bite out of mime, and audiences worldwide are overcome with laughter — and appreciation. With a bizarre blend of physical agility and vocal ability, the duo from Down Under turns conventional comedy upside down. This Saturday, November 15, David Collins and Shane Dundas –…
Sat 11/15 Thanks to designers who routinely revive styles from past decades, American consumers are well schooled in the diversity of silhouettes that defined 20th-century fashion. But they’re much less familiar with the trends of the 1800s. “Beauty and Style in 19th Century American Fashion,” opening this weekend in Phoenix…
Sun 11/16 It’s all run and games this Sunday, November 16, when the 28th annual New Times 10K takes over Steele Indian School Park, 300 East Indian School. Bad news for Sunday sloths: The event’s exhaustive options eclipse any excuse to sit it out.Not up for a 5 or 10K…
11/15-4/11 Bone up on history’s big shots at the Arizona Science Center; this weekend, it unveils the largest exhibition of dinosaur fossils ever to tour North America. “Dragon Bones” — a 10,000-square-foot traveling exhibition — takes guests back 248 million years, chronicling the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods through original…
Sat 11/15 Arizona’s aspiring filmmakers have a tendency to flee to Hollywood, but that’s all going to change if the Movie Militia has anything to do with it.Open to anyone interested in independent filmmaking, the organization is the brain child of Ben Juhl, a local writer, director and actor. Frustrated…
11/13-11/122 The Brazilian art form/dance/martial art Capoeira has been described as “a conversation between two bodies in motion,” a succinct description that doesn’t quite convey the complexity and historical significance of the art. Capoeira was invented in Brazil 400 years ago by African slaves as a method of expression and…
Peter Petrisko is back from the dead. Literally. After a near-death experience a decade ago, the onetime wunderkind of Phoenix’s underground arts scene vanished without a trace. Five years before, Petrisko had made a name for himself by ravaging a yucca plant on East Van Buren on which the Virgin…
Even when people were watching Will Ferrell on television every Saturday night, they weren’t seeing Will Ferrell. They saw no more than a glimpse of him, beneath wigs and behind glued-on beards and buried under characters who became almost better known than he during his seven years on Saturday Night…
They call it “Phantasmagoria: De Trop Capsule Episode #2,” but the scene looks like Trading Spaces meets Alice in Wonderland. Mark Freedman and Grant Wiggins wrestle with the sand-colored carpet as Oliver Hibert looks on, dark circles rimming dazed eyes. It’s one day before the innovative exhibition is set to…
Over at the Herberger Theater Center, Cathy Dresbach is playing an extraordinarily ordinary woman. In Actors Theatre’s Frame 312, Dresbach is pretending to be Lynette, a typical suburbanite with a house, a yard, and two grown children — an angst-ridden daughter hooked on antidepressants, and a greedy son whose marriage…
Not terribly long ago in an uninhabitable galaxy called Burbank, a generally astute movie studio founded by four Polish siblings alienated a young hotshot filmmaker. The studio was Warner Bros. and the project was a cold, disturbing, highly stylized vision of a mechanized future called THX-1138. Not wholly original, but…
‘Tis the season and all that jive; beneath the tree this first week of November you will find two films set during the final week of December, when sugarplums and candy canes go on sale at the concessions stand for all the good little girls and boys’ parents to buy…
Pieces of April, made by playwright turned novelist turned screenwriter turned director Peter Hedges, could be confused for a compendium reel of someone’s home movies. Shot on digital video using existing light, it looks like something assembled by a film student for a final and lost soon after, left behind…
With its soundtrack stockpiled with songs of romance and Christmas and a screenplay by the man who wrote Bridget Jones’s Diary, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, it’s appropriate that Love Actually feels less like a brand-new movie than a greatest-hits compendium. It offers nothing new and instead…
There’s no business like slide-show business. And, certainly, there’s no stage act like the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. “We are a conceptual art-rock-pop-music-multimedia spectacular unlike anything the city of Phoenix has ever seen before,” says Jason Trachtenburg, singer/songwriter/keyboardist/guitarist. “I’m not just saying that.” Saying what, exactly? “Here’s the concept: The…
