Tue 10/7 While percussion plays a supporting role in almost all of Western music, it is an art form and musical genre all its own in other parts of the world. Nowhere is this truer than in West Africa, where drum ensembles are revered for the spirituality and tribal force…
Marcia Rowlette’s life was full of pain and suffering. At age 2, a case of spinal meningitis left her mostly crippled. She lived her adult life in assisted-care facilities in her hometown of Prescott, where years of physical therapy were hindered by Marcia’s other medical conditions, which included psoriasis, arthritis…
It’s a safe bet that one of the very first performances of the season will almost certainly live on as the best of the season, because it’s hard to imagine any other actor outshining Benjamin Stewart’s Big Daddy in Actors Theatre’s production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Stewart’s…
Out of Time, in which we’re to believe 48-year-old Denzel Washington and 32-year-old Sanaa Lathan were high school sweethearts, demands its audience ignore all manner of implausibilities. Chief among them is the behavior of Washington’s Matt Whitlock, chief of police in a tiny coastal town just outside of Miami, who…
D irector Richard Linklater’s School of Rock imagines, sort of, what might have become of voluble rock snob Barry the morning after his grand finale in Stephen Frears’ adaptation of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity — after his Marvin Gaye impersonation had faded and been forgotten in the daylight hours, after…
10/6-10/12 Its drunken 16th hole notwithstanding, the Phoenix Open has little, if anything, on the Valley’s other great PGA event, the Gila River Golf Classic, Monday, October 6, through October 12 at Whirlwind Golf Club in Chandler. Securing the game’s greatest players is feat enough, but throw in a week’s…
Maybe she read Charlotte’s Web one too many times as a kid. Maybe she got a bad slice of veal shank. Whatever the reason, Kari Nienstedt is devoted to saving cute little farm animals (and big, ugly farm animals) from being mistreated on their way to slaughter. Kari’s the Arizona…
The publicity materials sent in advance of the at-long-last release of The Kids Are Alright on DVD suggest that the maker of the 1979 documentary about The Who has been on the lam–in the rock-and-roll witness relocation program, perhaps, far from the long windmilling arm of justice. A “recluse” is…
Paula Vogel is some kind of a genius for having written a play about pedophilia that’s both amusing and provocative. While ASU’s mainstage production of How I Learned to Drive doesn’t entirely do Vogel’s work justice, it’s just sturdy enough to evoke the rage and ardor of the playwright’s bold,…
The script for The Rundown has lingered for more than a decade and was originally a Patrick Swayze vehicle, well before those wheels fell off. Universal Studios revived it because the studio knows what it has in Dwayne Johnson: a gold mine made of bulging biceps, a man who was…
The dumbed-down movie version of Frances Mayes’ best-selling travel memoir Under the Tuscan Sun is a virtual case study of Hollywood’s irrepressible urge to lower the bar in the hopes of upping the take. Mayes’ 1996 book is a nicely written, carefully observed meditation on buying a decrepit Italian villa…
Somewhere in the deepest mists of Eastern Europe lies an urban hell shrouded in shadowy azure, where darkly enchanted, black-leather-clad denizens leap about to thudding techno, blurting outrageously melodramatic proclamations in randomly accented English. It’s The Crow meets The Matrix, it’s goth-core tricked out with wire stunts, and, most important,…
Contemporary dance can inspire confusion and panic in the average viewer. But now it’s time for us all to get over it, and Rayn Hookala is here to help. A graduate student in Arizona State University’s department of dance, Hookala works overtime with her own dance company, Rayn Dance Theatre…
Thursday, September 25 The Phoenix Symphony toasts its new season on Thursday, September 25, with champagne, a gala atmosphere and a rare appearance by the legendary pianist Van Cliburn, who hasn’t visited the Valley in nearly 30 years. Among other works, he performs Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, the piece…
Phoenix Body Positive, an HIV and AIDS research and resource center, is presenting “HIV Through the Eyes of Parents,” an art exhibition of collaborative pieces by artists and family members affected by HIV and AIDS. It opens at downtown’s APS Gallery on Monday, September 29. For the project, which Body…
Sat 9/27 No time to cruise? No matter. Landlocked Arizonans can experience exotic island culture at this weekend’s Caribbean Multicultural Festival, which brings native music, food, dancers, storytellers, and arts and crafts to Heritage Square, 601 East Monroe. The Caribbean American Association of Arizona, in conjunction with the Children With…
Fri 9/26 The lure of wheel-to-wheel racing is reserved for a special kind of person, one for whom life truly begins when the rubber meets the road. Arizona has always been a fertile breeding ground for racing aficionados, a group about to be indoctrinated into the world of European-style kart…
9/25-11/6 Spread the words: The Valley’s top slam poets have a shot at the big time — the World Championship Poetry Crown. Slammers judged to be the best of the verse will represent Phoenix at the 2004 World Poetry Slam Championship, set for February in the world poetry capital –…
Sun 9/28 Author Eric Carle has illustrated more than 70 books with his hand-painted collage imagery. His whimsical tales of the animal world are read by millions of children worldwide. With the help of a black light and puppets based on Carle’s illustrations, Very Eric Carle brings three of these…
Sat 9/27 In Measure for Measure, Shakespeare wrote, “What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.” This weekend, that spirit of give-and-take becomes notably one-sided: What’s his really is ours — but it doesn’t cost us a thing — when ASU West’s Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance Department presents…
Secondhand Lions is cornier than the cornfields spread out in front of the dilapidated rural Texas manse inhabited by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine, playing grumpy old brothers with mismatched accents. (Caine, in fact, has accent enough for three actors — one English, another maybe Texan, another perhaps Australian.) There…
Never mind the trailers, which advertise Cold Creek Manor as some kind of horror-thriller, complete with the image of a hand emerging from the shadows to quiet (yes!) Sharon Stone. Mike Figgis, most recently a maker of unwatchable art-house fare shot on digital video (Timecode, Hotel) that suggests a fetish…
