She’s not a nun, but she plays one onstage. Patti Hannon is this week celebrating the third anniversary of Late Nite Catechism, the interactive, one-nun show in which she portrays Sister, a cranky bride of Christ who teaches an adult catechism class. The comedy was originally scheduled to play for…
The emotional, even healing, power of music is only one of the themes that interests acclaimed Chinese director Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine, Temptress Moon) in his beautiful new film, Together. Other, equally important concerns include father-son relationships and the way China, in its headlong pursuit of modernization, is abandoning…
If you experienced a sugar high between the years of 1956 and 1989 from Twinkies and candy stuffed into a Ladmo bag, it’s time to give back. The Arizona Historical Society Museum’s Wallace & Ladmo Fan Convention is your chance to relive the days of The Wallace & Ladmo Show…
John Melendez (a.k.a. Stuttering John) has been punched by some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Making an art form out of the stuttered guerrilla interview, Melendez has the balls of steel necessary to walk up to anyone and say just about anything, as his fourth-grade teacher noted on his…
Sat 6/14 Whether your dad is an astronaut or an actuary, he’s a cowboy at heart. This Saturday, June 14, treat him to an evening in the Old West at the Arizona Gunfighters Father’s Day Show at Rockin’ R Ranch, 6136 East Baseline in Mesa. Dinner starts at 6 p.m.,…
Jacqueline Gaston arrives early in act two of Is What It Is Theatre’s production of Critic’s Choice, and her presence is like a breath of fresh air in a stifling room. Which is precisely where this play, a dated comedy by author Ira Levin, happens to take place. But I…
He’s charming, super-intelligent, and he makes a better bouillabaisse than you do. He’s 11-year-old chef Rio Bowerman, a gourmet kid with a closetful of cooking gear and a featured spot on several local television shows. While most little boys are out shooting hoops and spitting, Chef Rio is indoors, chopping…
Whenever the stars of the adolescent street-racing fantasy 2 Fast 2 Furious were feeling balky or temperamental on the set, as movie stars are wont to do, the cure was probably easy — an oil change and a tune-up. John Singleton’s adrenaline-spiked sequel to the surprise summer hit of 2001,…
May opens with a scream, and a pair of scissors rammed into an eye socket. It continues with an opening montage of rapidly descending doll parts, which, as any Courtney Love fan can tell you, are inherently frightening yet simultaneously symbolic of fragility, or something. In between severed plastic limbs,…
The French government should officially proclaim actor Jean Rochefort a national treasure. A fixture of Gallic cinema for five decades, he is best known to American audiences for his comedic turns in such sex farces as Pardon Mon Affaire and The Closet, and of course his near-miss as Don Quixote,…
Any soccer team that can attract players from all over the world to play during Phoenix’s hellish summer must have something going for it. The aptly named Arizona Heatwave, an amateur women’s soccer club in the United Soccer League’s western division, plays its home opener against the Denver Lady Cougars…
Thursday, June 5 Tucson-born comedian Pablo Francisco, best known as one-third of The Three Amigos (with fellow funnymen Freddy Soto and Carlos Mencia), hits the road for a one-man tour coming to the Tempe Improv this weekend. While he’s already got plenty of fans from years of performing in the…
6/7-8/31 Angus MacGyver himself couldn’t have curated a craftier exhibition. Opening Saturday, June 7, at the ASU Art Museum, “Gadgets and Gizmos” showcases works that employ technology — whether extensive or elementary — providing techies young and old with an inside look at what makes things tick. The museum’s fourth…
Wed 6/11 Kick-start your blooming cycle with “Yoga Pura at the Garden: Finding Serenity” and discover the wonders within you. On Wednesday, June 11, from 7 to 9 p.m., the Desert Botanical Garden once again hosts the Moon Valley school Yoga Pura. Master instructor Eric Walrabenstein takes you through a…
6/5-7/20 We are supposedly the sum of our experiences. If we all had the experiences of Michel Sarda, we’d be pretty damn interesting. Equal parts architect, artist, photographer and designer, Sarda hails from France originally but holds Arizona close to his heart. “Dance in Motion,” Sarda’s collection of photographs of…
6/6-6/7 Mesa Youtheatre must mean business: The folks behind this weekend’s production are hauling out the superlative. The Best of Show, a collaboration of the Mesa Arts Center’s three performing companies, packs three pursuits — comedy, drama and dance — into one efficient production. The shared bill showcases some of…
Sat 6/7 Everyone who wears purple dies — at least in the Studio One production of The Curse of the Purple Tutu, choreographed by Studio One founder Melissa Cesarano. The curse afflicts all those who wear garments made of a purple fabric robbed from the grave of a woman long…
The life of a standup comedian is a study in simultaneous courage and masochism. Endless strings of one-nighters at clubs with names like The Funny Bone, Chuckles, and Haha’s; audiences expecting laughs on demand; and the occasional heckler make for a profession that easily excludes the faint of heart. In…
You’ve been warned: This is a column about politics wherein a popular-culture critic (dunno what that is either, but says so on my tax returns) interviews a former rock journalist-turned-publicist-turned-band-manager-turned-record-label-executive about how the Democratic Party alienated everyone under the age of death. You may take this with a grain of…
Another week, another remake — summer, that season of air-conditioned originality, must be upon us. Only unlike The In-Laws, which creaked into theaters last week, this latest updating of a decades-old action-comedy has two things going for it: Its forebear is a veddy British caper film little-seen in the United…
Matt Dillon learned his lesson early: Suck up to the Hollywood fat cats, and you’ll keep working. From his adolescent launch in the troubled-teen flick Over the Edge to dalliances with Francis Ford Coppola, Garry Marshall, Gene Hackman and Michael Douglas, the actor has been everybody’s boy. Now, as star,…
If grown-ups were meant to watch Walt Disney cartoons, God would have kept us all in the third grade for two or three decades. Still, somebody has to drive the SUV every time the Disneyfolk decide to lure the little ones down to the multiplex, and as long as the…
