French novelist Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) was so overwhelmed by Florence, Italy, that he reported: “I felt a pulsating in my heart. Life was draining out of me, while I walked, fearing a fall.” A reaction to a tainted spinach-and-egg dish? Mais non! Stendhal’s near-swoon had to do with Florentine art…
As much as we try to be good, we can’t help but spread gossip and ruin character. It’s human nature; we get off on knowing each other’s secrets. And no matter how hard we try to conceal our own stumbles off the moral high ground, the collective social thirst for…
We often feel like grabbing one of those raggedy-ass alt/indie musicians by the scruff and screaming, “It’s about the songs, dood!” One alt/indie musician who knows wassup is Brooklyn’s Anders Parker. The Son Volt pal and former leader of Varnaline writes tunes that ring true in their deceptively quiet, unvarnished…
Even those who weren’t yet born in 1968 know Hendrix, The Who, Floyd, the Beatles, Cream (pictured). But try to name five “modern” acts that have even approached that sort of immortality. Nirvana? Nirvana? Nirvana? Um . . . uh . . . Filmmaker Tony Palmer takes us back to…
Writing is hard. For some people. Like us. So we take a dim view of those who casually toss off book after best-selling book as larks between more, well, important things. Arizona’s Diana Gabaldon is like that, and so is Britain’s Zöe Sharp. This doesn’t stop us liking their books,…
Sports-radio behemoth KTAR defines its raison d’être thusly: “Suns, D-Backs, Cards, ASU. It’s . . . all . . . here.” That’s a pretty tenuous “all” without the Phoenix Coyotes. Sure, they stink, but it’s a major-league franchise coached by Hockey-Puck Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky, Chrissakes. If anybody cares…
In the 1970s, the Campaign to End Pay Toilets in America (CEPTIA) destroyed the last of the coin privys. Old as we are, we remember mother telling us to “crawl under the stall” when she didn’t have the requisite dime. Tempe Little Theatre takes it one belly-crawl further with Urinetown:…
On a recent Friday night, I made the most unattractive facial expression of my life — on purpose. I was imitating my pedophilic middle-school bus driver, complete with underbite. Later, I traveled across a parking lot with a hideous limp to illustrate a story about my best friend who once…
“My Favorite Year” at the Mill Avenue Post Office: Mill Avenue is one of the best pedestrian-friendly streets in the Valley, especially if youre looking to rest your eyes on pretty things. Typically, those attractive things take the form of drunken young folk, but the display windows of the Post…
The Black Donnellys: The Complete Series (Universal) Chill Out Scooby-Doo! (Warner Bros.) City of Violence (Weinstein) Delta Farce (Lionsgate) Desperate Housewives: The Complete Third Season (Buena Vista) Disney Princess Enchanted Tales: Follow Your Dreams (Disney) Georgia Rule (Universal) Gumby Essentials (Classic Media) It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Seasons 1 &…
Huffing and puffing to resuscitate a long-moribund genre, James Mangold manages to imbue a 50-year-old Western with the semblance of life. Mangold’s remake of 3:10 to Yuma isn’t as startling a resurrection job as his Johnny Cash biopic, but it does send a saddlebag full of Western tropes skittering into…
Back in 1995, Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise gave flesh to a Yank’s fantasy of worldly European womanhood: Julie Delpy’s Celine, a sprite who materialized on a passenger train for one sweet Viennese night of courtship and flirtation, as if willed from the fevered dreams above a thousand hostel beds. As…
Masterfully edited and cumulatively walloping, Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight turns the well-known details of our monstrously bungled Iraq war into an enraging, apocalyptic litany of fuck-ups. One may have already heard some or all of the absurd, shameful, appalling details that Ferguson collects — the well-connected American kid…
Sundance signals, for better or worse, the state of American independent filmmaking. Cannes keeps faith, for those who still believe, with the cinema d’auteur. And Toronto? The largest and most important film festival in North America seems to do nearly as many things as there are movies to see —…
My housekeeper busted me again. “You know,” she said, pointing her hot-pink feather duster at me, “there are other books in the world. I’ve been cleaning for you for years, and that book about Winnie Ruth Judd is the only book you ever seem to read.” It’s not true, of…
Funny how gaming’s most epic genre — the role-playing game — often feels the most limited in scope. After all, how many times can we traverse a medieval land, defeat the orcs, rescue the girl, save the world, and level up along the way? Never enough times would be the…
The Office: Season Three (Universal) After a shaky first season and a better-with-every-episode second, The Office proved itself one of the most consistent comedies in the history of the medium. The show has long since escaped the shadow of its BBC forebear and boasts an ensemble from which you could…
It’s pretty much a toss-up which I love more: gorging on cinema or getting up at noon. And so, on the first day of the Toronto International Film Festival, in lieu of contemplating Bela Tarr’s The Man From London, I lingered in my pajamas anticipating The Breakfast From Room Service…
Eight years before Stephen King invented Christine, a 1958 Plymouth Fury with a taste for blood, monster-truck icon Bob Chandler was transforming his used 1975 Ford F250 into the aptly named Bigfoot. More than 30 years later, Chandler and the original Bigfoot will make a guest appearance at Monster Truck…
We don’t usually think of trance music being dance-studio friendly. We think about drugs, glowsticks, and TIGI Bed Head Manipulators. Whatev, it doesn’t really matter when Mystic Jewell hosts the slamming Aura: Sapphire. Shake it to bellydance beats from 7 to 11 p.m., then get your 130 to 150 beats…
In Caryl Churchill’s A Number, a young man discovers that he is one of a number of clones produced by his father. Despite this rather fascinating premise, the play, which debuted a few years ago in New York, is remembered chiefly for its lead performance by Sam Shepard, who hadn’t…
Phoenicians are ambivalent about historic preservation. We mourned the Ciné Capri but turned our backs on the Washburn Piano building. Tempe’s geodesic dome disappeared overnight and we barely noticed. Enter artist-developer and Artlink founder Beatrice Moore, the Supergirl of historically significant structures, who stops bulldozers and saves buildings with a…
