We’ve all been there. A sizeable head cold left me laid out in bed, browsing my TV for something to keep my mind occupied. Since Hulu knows me better than I know myself, my recommendations featured The Hills right in front. I watched the show in real time while living…
There may be several auctions happening in metro Phoenix this January, but there’s only one Russo and Steele. Known as the “World’s Most Exciting Collector Automobile Auction,” Russo and Steele has a high-energy, frenzied “auction in the round” format. New Times had the chance to talk with John Bemis, Russo…
Get your Monday face ready for a Wednesday, because RuPaul’s Drag Race Battle of the Season 2016 Extravaganza Tour hits Phoenix on April 27 at Celebrity Theatre. Delight in a show revolving around eight of your favorite RPDR contestants: Courtney Act, Adore Delano, Ginger Minj, Miss Fame, Phi Phi O’Hara, Alaska…
Break out your best happy dance. Choreographer, performer, writer, and educator Liz Lerman recently joined the faculty for the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at ASU. As Institute Professor, she’ll lead programs and courses that span disciplines within and beyond the Herberger Institute. Lerman founded the Liz Lerman…
New Times picks the best things to do in metro Phoenix from January 25 through 29. Strange Brew There are plenty of films out there that spotlight man’s enduring affection for beer, but none so memorable as the 1983 release Strange Brew. So it seems rather appropriate that downtown Mesa’s first…
Sesame Street has relocated to an alternate universe. Everything there is the same, but also slightly different. Blame gentrification, or the show’s new network, or the hostile scheming of that old meany, Oscar the Grouch. Whatever the reason, every child’s favorite inner city suburb has changed. The venerable kiddie show…
“Who can give me the derivative of X?” a high-school teacher asks early in the YA-apocalypse mashup The 5th Wave. As soon as she asks that, the lights blink off, everybody’s cellphones die and jets tumble from the sky. We never hear a student respond, but here’s my Official Fan…
Call it a dissenting opinion if you must, but Dirty Grandpa has sporadic moments of hilarity: the spontaneous “USA! USA!” chant that erupts after an out-of-his-mind Zac Efron announces to spring breakers that he’s just unknowingly smoked crack, or Aubrey Plaza commanding as foreplay that Robert De Niro, as the…
New Times is seeking talented freelance writers to contribute to its arts and culture section. Are you obsessed with movies, pop culture, comedy, TV shows, video games, or comic books? That’s just a glimpse at what we cover — in addition to fashion, the dating scene, and general geekery. If…
January has been a rough one for fans of the arts — with the deaths of David Bowie, Lemmy, Alan Rickman, and Glenn Frey. We’ve seen tributes to Bowie and Frey pop up across the state. And starting on Friday, January 22, Harkins Valley Art will celebrate the legacies of Bowie…
Shooting photographs has long been a part of William LeGoullon’s art practice. But about three and a half years ago, the trajectory of his work changed after LeGoullon tried his hand at shooting a gun. “I went out shooting with some friends,” he says. “It’s a strangely seductive experience.” They’d…
Everyone’s got a story to tell (or so it seems). The Phoenix literary scene is in full force, in part, due to the many live storytelling events popping up all over the city. “There’s a nice feedback that’s occurring between these well-attended shows,” says Jake Friedman, founder of Four Chambers…
Sara Cochran and Ally Haynes-Hamblen have been promoted to directors of Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, respectively, according to a January 20 announcement from the Scottsdale Cultural Council. Cochran will also serve as chief curator at the museum. Both Cochran and Haynes-Hamblen had…
“Every film is a documentary of its actors,” Jean-Luc Godard once said. Starring Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling, Andrew Haigh’s shattering marital drama 45 Years expands that maxim: As we gaze at and listen to these performers, whose characters reflect on nearly a half-century together — almost as long as…
The movie they’re selling isn’t the movie this is. Sony Pictures Classics is peddling Nicholas Hytner’s film of Alan Bennett’s play and memoir The Lady in the Van like it’s the usual twinkly Best Exotic time-with-our-elders holiday entertainment. There’s Maggie Smith, dressed up as what my grandmother used to call…
A dry-rubbed lark from the often harrowing ultra-realist territories of the Romanian New Wave, The Treasure is about almost nothing — a shaggy-dog daydream as flyaway as its protagonists’ thoughts of instant wealth. Director Corneliu Porumboiu, whose 2006 12:08 East of Bucharest may still be the movement’s funniest film, reportedly…
After months of uncertainty, Alamo Drafthouse has announced a new location for its first-ever Arizona cinema. Originally, the Texas-based movie theater chain, which offers films, events, booze, and food, had planned to open at The Row in downtown Chandler. But those plans fell through in October 2015. Alamo representatives announced…
It goes by many names – Exquisite African Fashions, African Fashions & More, and formerly Boutique Afrique – but the little maroon shop in Central Phoenix has probably slipped your gaze when heading down Indian School Road. A turn south at A One Liquor or the La Paz Funeral Home…
Two degrees and nearly two decades into the American educational system, I suddenly realized a simple truth: I learned more about life from Clarissa Darling than I did from any of my teachers or professors. For those poor souls who never got to know Clarissa like I did, let me…
In perhaps the ultimate pairing of things you love even though they’re bad for you, controversial Instagram star Josh Ostrovsky, better known as The Fat Jew, and Four Loko are coming to Tempe this weekend. But wait, you’re thinking to yourself, I thought at least one of those wasn’t a…
But what about the meaninglessness of everything? William Monahan’s Mojave is one of those ’90s-style chatty-killer movies, mixed with one of those ’90s-style guns-in-the-desert existential cheapies, the kind of picture where good-looking dudes shooting each other is passed off as elemental and beautiful rather than just what it actually is…
Searching for a pick-me-up after this month’s excessively gray skies? How about 11 miles of rainbow-colored ribbon to brighten your day? For “11 Miles of Color: Repurposing Spring Crossing” — Scottsdale Public Art’s first exhibition of 2016 in the Gallery at Scottsdale Public Library — 11 Arizona artists breathe new…
