P.H.I.L. Talks It’s a world première of something Phoenicians — a lot of Phoenicians — have already been talking about: innovation. Think part TEDx (but less stuffy), part Ignite PHX (but longer), and part NerdNite (but not so niche)…
While Phoenicians hardly need convincing that their city has culture, it never hurts to hear it from someone else. That’s why we were excited to see that not only is our Southwest metropolis being recognized for its artistic and intellectual endeavors, it’s being ranked among the best. On Friday, August…
Where did our obsession with nails — and particularly manicures — come from? Suzanne Shapiro broached the subject on Wednesday, September 10, with her lecture “A Century of the Modern Manicure” at Phoenix Art Museum. Her new book, Nails: The Story of the Modern Manicure, explores the growing popularity and…
Phoenix is brimming with creativity. And every other year, we put the spotlight on 100 of the city’s creative forces. Leading up to the release of this year’s Best of Phoenix issue, we’re profiling 100 more. Welcome to the 2014 edition of 100 Creatives. Up today: 10. Rosalind Shipley. “I…
Courting Disaster is Jackalope Ranch’s weekly column of dating horror stories, observations, how-tos, and more by Katie Johnson. Names of ex-boyfriends, past hookups, and bad blind dates have been changed to protect the guilty. I have made quite a few mistakes in dating. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still making…
For six years running, Phoenix Art Museum has performed an artistic service with its annual PhotoBid photography auction and fundraiser. Curated by Rebecca Senf, the Norton Family Curator of Photography at PAM and the Center for Creative Photography, the annual survey exhibition returns online and in-person featuring an array of…
Goodbyes are never easy. So when street artist Mike “Mad One” Neely packed his bags and left for Portland a few years back, we took it pretty hard. Fortunately, the former Phoenix-based artist must have sensed our withdrawal because he’s just announced that he’s coming back for a one-night-only Sticker…
Gammage is kicking off the 2014-2015 season in style. Kinky Boots tells the story of shoe factory owner Charlie Price who turns the family business around after he meets drag performer Lola and begins manufacturing high-heeled shoes to meet the specific needs of Lola and her fellow performers. The show…
Four years ago, comedian Bill Hader told his agent he wanted to do a drama. It took awhile. “I used to think typecasting wasn’t a thing, and it totally is,” Hader admits. “That’s an industry feeling: ‘How can I take that person seriously when I know they’re capable of such…
“I’ll always be anti-authoritarian, as long as I live,” says Terry Gilliam, the comic provocateur who’s been taking aim at the establishment for over four decades. The only thing that changes: his targets. In Life of Brian, it was religion. In Brazil, the government. And in his latest film, The…
#454887520 / gettyimages.comJustin Long, Kevin Smith, Haley Joel Osment and Genesis Rodriguez of Tusk pose for a portrait during the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.This summer, a prankster stole Kevin Smith’s Twitter account and tweeted, “Before this comes out I want to state that I am a gay proud man.”…
What’s fascinating, new and neglected across all major video platforms. Among other things, cinema has always been a ready-made self-eulogizer — Hollywood was making two-reeler silent comedies about the craft of moviemaking before the viewing public even knew what it entailed, and documentaries about famous and forgotten threads of film…
The sex scene almost makes it worth sitting through Atlas Shrugged III, the last and least of the cheapjack adaptations of Ayn Rand’s brick-thick celebration of taking your ball and going home. About an hour in, after she’s toured and left the hidden Colorado enclave of the captains of industry…
Married Women Over 30, here’s a pitch for a movie: My Dinner With Idris. You never thought it would happen to you, but one rainy night when your handsome and successful but distracted husband who doesn’t appreciate you is out of town, Idris Elba (The Wire, Mandela: Long Walk to…
From the black market to Boston Market, Eric Schlosser has single handedly disclosed the ugly truth behind both under-the-radar dealings and over-the-counter fast food. Now, the New York Times bestselling author of Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness is setting his sights on mankind’s most destructive creation: nuclear weapons.With his…
Adam Wingard’s The Guest opens with a wet-eyed woman (Sheila Kelley) sitting so still in a chair in her desert ranch house that all we hear is the clock loudly counting seconds. We sense that she’s been sitting like this for months, and the film is charged with anticipation. Horror,…
In two minutes, the Beatles captured the empty life of sad singleton Eleanor Rigby. Director Ned Benson is devoting three films to her namesake — a New York divorcée (Jessica Chastain) — and this first entry, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, barely explains her at all. Wan and adrift,…
They’ve done it at last: made a Liam Neeson-stomps-some-ass flick where, as the credits roll, there’s more stuff to be glad you saw than Neeson himself. Based on one of those Lawrence Block novels that are pretty smart but also too invested in the mechanics of rape and torture, the…
Kevin Smith is a bright guy who over the years has become a little too taken with his own persona, his own jokes, his own cult following — it’s the filmmaker’s equivalent of getting high on your own supply. No matter how awkwardly pontifical or ill-shapen his movies have gotten…
“I’ve spent my whole life playing it safe,” whines Judd Altman (Jason Bateman), the middle-class milquetoast at the center of This Is Where I Leave You. Yes, well, so has director Shawn Levy, but on the basis of his latest vacuous trifle he has no apparent intention, as Altman does,…
It’s a world premiere of something Phoenicians — a lot of Phoenicians — have already been talking about: innovation. Think part TEDx (but less stuffy), part Ignite PHX (but longer), and part NerdNite (but not so niche).The P.H.I.L. Talks — which stands, appropriately, for Phoenicians Have Ideas Live — takes…
Those who can win spelling bees do. Those who can’t live through their over-achieving children, making them memorize multisyllabic words over flashcards night and day in the hopes of achieving academic success. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a Tony-winning improv sketch turned musical that portrays the ridiculous…
