Stan Lee, for better or worse the most recognizable face in the history of the comic book, insists he has no love for rehashing his past. He claims to take no great joy from talking about long-ago yesterdays spent in smoky rooms co-creating the likes of the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man,…
A fire last September forced Amsterdam co-owner Todd Colin to consider a major restoration to the nightclub. On Central just north of the downtown core, the gay bar has been known for its swank interior, so Colin naturally set about making the place as cushy as it had been before…
Swami Dâ Prem is the youngest American swami in the history of Sanatana Dharma, and a teacher of Brahman-Atman yoga. While you’d expect someone with those stats to be sitting cross-legged on a mountaintop, Swami Dâ Prem can be found sitting in a sparsely furnished studio apartment in Glendale. We…
More like Hollywood fluff than Gallic farce or sophistication, the French romantic comedy Jet Lag stars Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno as mismatched lovers who meet when circumstances — bad weather, computer glitches, a strike by air traffic controllers — ground them both at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris…
To prepare for reviewing Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, I did the obvious research: I watched Yellowbeard again. Yes, yes indeed — can’t do without Fairbanks as The Black Pirate and Flynn as Captain Blood. But when appraising a new comedic pirate adventure, it’s important…
If you’re reading this paper, chances are you’re more literate than the average American. If you’re reading the film reviews, it’s also likely that you’ve become familiar with words like “bravura” and “eponymous,” which seem to exist only in the vocabularies of professional movie assessors. But what if you were…
For some reason, the local promotions firm putting on a preview screening of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines last week figured it would be a good idea to have several dozen middle-aged burnouts on motorcycles cruise up and down outside the theater in a menacing spectacle. Besides tying up…
Thursday, July 10 We should all be so fortunate as to receive a posthumous tribute like “The Garden of Compassion,” the summer exhibition at Lisa Sette Gallery held in memory of beloved former gallery secretary Jane Kealy, who passed away in April. “Everybody who encountered her just loved her,” says…
The independent film revolution is upon us. Thanks to ever cheaper and widely available technologies, just about anyone — with or without film school creds — can make movies. Of course, the democracy fizzles out at the distribution level, which is why your neighborhood megaplex prefers to rake in the…
ONGOING More than 40 years after his death, Frank Lloyd Wright remains a true giant in the world of architecture. Evidence of his genius abounds, and nowhere more so than at the winter home, studio and architectural campus he created at the foot of the McDowell Mountains: Taliesin West. Experience…
7/10-7/13 Phoenix pro basketball teams are sharing the heat with Native American NBA hopefuls in the first-ever Native American Basketball Invitational, sponsored by the Phoenix Suns and Mercury. Twenty-four teams of high school-age Native Americans representing seven tribes are participating in the double-elimination tournament, which organizer POD Productions hopes will…
Sun 7/13 Grade school trends may come and go, but music will always be one of the true joys of childhood. Seventies tykes sang along to Sesame Street disco records, children of the ’80s got caught up in the lip-synching craze, and ’90s youngsters got a piece of the airwaves…
Sat 7/12 “The only way I can sum it up is: a freakers’ ball with bands,” E Bomb guitarist Eddie Lopez says of Planet Sex, the third installment in his band’s series of risqué parties featuring the burlesque ladies of Lezbosagogo, Cut Throat Freak Show, body latex painting, bands and…
7/10-7/29 For folks ruled by reason, magic can be more frustrating than fun. Clearing away the smoke and mirrors, magician Craig Davis sets suspicious minds at ease through his combination “matinee-workshops.” A mix of education and entertainment, the hourlong sessions provide the curious and confused with a lucid hocus focus…
Not much grows in the Valley during the summer — sweat stains, heat-induced hostility, and the Hulk’s bulging box office take ranking among the unsavory exceptions. A rare instance of positive growth takes hold in downtown Scottsdale this Thursday evening, when the weekly ArtWalk morphs into the bigger, better and…
7/3-8/23 Lions and tigers and a buffet? Oh, my. Starting Thursday, July 3, Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre West, 5247 East Brown in Mesa, presents The Wizard of Oz. No word on whether the production will be timed, like the film, in synch with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon,…
7/8-7/13 Created by buskers on the streets of Brighton, England, the phenomenon known as STOMP is thundering its way through Phoenix once again. The show is a roller coaster ride through sound, using instruments such as brooms, Zippo lighters, plungers and hubcaps to create a symphony of a different sort…
Of its many owners, surely the strangest person to purchase Phoenix’s first skyscraper, the Westward Ho hotel, was Roger Rudin, a fundamentalist preacher who briefly took over the building with a business partner in the late 1970s. Only after his death in 1998 was it revealed in New Times that…
Michael Senger isn’t just another pothead survivalist. He’s a pothead survivalist with an Armageddon shelter and a working knowledge of the end of the world. None of which mattered to Pinal County officials last month when they hauled Senger to the pokey for growing marijuana on his two-acre spread near…
Much like “hilarious Islamic comedy” or “sublime Affleck picture,” the term “terrific second sequel” isn’t bandied about too much. Name one. Took you a minute, didn’t it? Don’t be ashamed — there are probably support groups for fans of Smokey and the Bandit III. Generally, creative juices are drained by…
DreamWorks’ Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas pulls into port but a week before Walt Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, the theme-park-ride-inspired, Jerry Bruckheimer-produced spectacle that bears a screenplay co-written by the very men responsible for last year’s Disney-made animated flop Treasure Planet, a…
The first question on the minds of most potential viewers of Owning Mahowny is probably something along the lines of “What’s up with that spelling? Who spells Mahoney’ with a w’?” Do the marketing people think we somehow won’t get that it rhymes with “owning” if there isn’t a w’…
