Friday Night Out? In Mesa? HAHA! LMAO! ROTFL! Uh, what’s so funny, ´Net chatters? If you actually, like, got out and did something with your life, you’d know that every second Friday of the month, Mesa’s Main Street drag goes off with art openings, Texas Hold ´em tourneys at Kirk’s…
The best part of any art history class is learning whom an artist was sleeping with when she painted her masterpiece. It’s natural — the thirst to hear the dirt behind the work. And the backstory often fuels the interpretation. In the case of the photography show “Lalla Essaydi: Les…
A few friends of mine who’ve adored Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up at early screenings have nonetheless voiced a similar complaint: There’s no way pin-up-pretty Katherine Heigl would end up with soaked-in-bongwater Seth Rogen, not even while drunk on a gallon of Everclear and stoned on a field of your finest…
Mr. Brooks — in which Kevin Costner plays a respectable Seattle businessman who kills for thrills, thanks to the goading of an imaginary friend who looks a lot like William Hurt — is stunningly tepid, neither the clever and poignant metaphor for addiction it strives to be nor the darkly…
Ian Wender, 42, has spent most of his life crisscrossing Earth searching for adventure and inspiration. Whether globetrotting in service of the armed forces or braving the Appalachian Trail, the hippie-ish painter and occasional photographer set foot on six continents before taking root in the Valley. The zigzagging nature of…
Dating games have come a long way since the days when Chuck Woolery invited mullet-sporting contestants to bump uglies on Love Connection. In Japan, the “dating simulator” video game craze has raged stronger than a schoolboy’s hormones since the early ’90s. But here in America — where our gaming interests…
Hannibal Rising (Weinstein) Pointless beyond belief, Hannibal Rising serves more as a cautionary tale than horror story. Made for $50 mil, the movie pocketed half that during its U.S. run and likely wound up in the red — an appropriate adios for a franchise starring a peripheral character better served…
The Coen brothers’ pulpy, pretentious neo-Western, No Country For Old Men, was screened early at the Cannes Film Festival and, by the end, had maintained its standing as the most widely approved Yankee feature to bow here since Pulp Fiction (though it didn’t win any awards). Once again, the appeal…
“Automotivated” at the Phoenix Art Museum, Fashion Design Gallery: If the cars in PAMs Curves of Steel show werent enough to get you revved up, check out the fashion gallery for more aerodynamic designs. The dresses on display are sleek, shimmering silks and satins from the 1930s — fabrics that…
Above the Law (Genius) The Andy Griffith Show: Complete Series Collection (Paramount) Big Train: Seasons One and Two (BBC Warner) Biography: Legends of the Silver Screen (A&E) Circle of Iron: 2-Disc Special Edition (Blue Underground) The Closer: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros.) Drive Thru (Lionsgate) The Foursome (Universal) Free…
Last weekend, as Jerry Bruckheimer’s pirates were once again storming the international box office, the Cannes Film Festival (May 16-27) bestowed its two top prizes on a gut-wrenching Romanian movie about backroom abortion and a plaintive Japanese drama about a sad old man who wants to dig his own grave…
No offense to downtown, but if you’re fed up with rank skate kids and street people whizzing in alleys, shuttle uptown for Phoenix Art Museum First Friday. You’ll have free access to the museum’s exhibits — including the newly opened “On the Street: The New York School of Photographers” –…
The other day, I found myself swooping a glowing green ball in front of me as I stepped forward, kneeled to the floor, and then scooted to the side. I was in the middle of the Americas Gallery at ASU Art Museum, and I looked like a conceptual interpretive dancer…
Mom-and-pop bait shops beware. You’re about to sleep with the crappies, ’cause the retailing behemoth Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World is here to put you out of business. The growth of the Springfield, Missouri, company bears an eerie resemblance to that of Wal-Mart — only it tramples outdoors competitors instead…
If your idea of fun is getting smacked in the skull by a large rubber sphere, AZ Dodgeball might be for you. The most semi-dangerous game has come into its own since the release of 2004’s Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, and even non-geeks now embrace it. Tuesdays, Thursdays, 7-9…
If you told people you were a DJ way before Beck proclaimed that two turntables and a microphone was “where it’s at,” it could only mean a couple of things — you were broke and lonely. Broke because you spent all your money on a pair of Technics and a…
Disney’s immense, booty-busting, pro-piracy epic has come to an End. I doubt very much that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is, in fact, the last we’ll be seeing of Captain Jack Sparrow and, you know, all those other people. How could it be? Treasure remains to be squeezed…
The most volatile, least easily psychoanalyzed of ’70s auteurs in Peter Biskind’s classic New Hollywood tell-all Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, William Friedkin may have mellowed since unleashing The Exorcist, sliding into box-office hell, and marrying a major studio boss. Indeed, the recovering bad-boy movie brat — now 71, believe it…
Once, written and directed by John Carney, is a deceptively simple movie. It’s a narrative strung together by pop songs, but without the sheen (or arrogance) of most cinematic musicals. By day, a Dublin busker (Glen Hansard) sings Van Morrison on a street corner for spare change, which, on occasion,…
“I don’t mind if you take a shot of me eating,” says William Friedkin, between bites of an avocado sandwich, to the photographer busily taking his snapshot. “People know I do that.” Friedkin and I are downing a quick dinner in the green room of west Los Angeles’ Skirball Cultural…
The play Bad Seed opened recently at the Herberger. (See capsule). Fans of Bad Seed know there’s no “The” in the title of the play but that there is one in the title of the movie. They know that Monica’s lovebirds and that pesky lightning storm occur only in John…
There’s a unique challenge in designing superhero games: How do you make it fun to play a character who, by definition, is vastly more powerful than his opposition? Hulk encounters a purse-snatcher: Hulk smash! Hulk win! Hulk bored. With battles that one-sided, the thrill of being superheroic quickly wanes –…
