New Times‘ top DVD picks for the week of May 8

Because I Said So (Universal) Breaking and Entering (Weinstein) The Bridge on the River Kwai: Collector’s Edition (Sony) Cagney & Lacey: The True Beginning (MGM) The Caine Mutiny: Collector’s Edition (Sony) Catch & Release (Sony) Deliver Us From Evil (Lionsgate) Dirty Dancing: Twentieth Anniversary (Lionsgate) Donnie Brasco: Extended Cut (Sony)…

Captain Kidder

During the Industrial Age, some English brewers created ales by using ingredients like opium, strychnine, and Indian hemp. For another bizarre (but not so lethal) concoction, check out Captain Tripp’s Strange Brew Crew Comedy Gong Show. The good Captain (a.k.a. local comic Jeffrey Maikos) acts as your guide through the…

A Little Night Música

Any time major-league beat manipulator DJ Seduce is a featured MC, you know it’s gotta be one hot, blowing-up-the-spot shindig. The musical-mélange master – who spins a pleasing mixture of Afro funk, soul música, Cubana, and more – is a wizard at flooding dance floors with positive energy. Now imagine…

Have a Rice Day

Bar snacks and the appropriate beverage can create a spa day for your mouth, and you know you need one. It’s Monday. Come on. So alert your parched entourage and hit Taneko Japanese Tavern’s Half-Price Wine and Sake Mondays (that’s all day). “We just started our happy hour from 3…

Art Scene

“Life in a Cold Place: Arctic Art from the Albrecht Collection” at the Heard Museum: The humble aesthetic of Grandma Moses — the self-taught early-20th-century folk artist — is beloved because it serves as a simple reminder of quaint, rural life in America, rich with homely traditions and collective practices…

Margarita Madness

Given P-Town’s proximity to Mexico, we Phoenicians pretty much experience Latino culture in one form or another nearly 365 days a year. But things are really gonna get amped up from Friday, May 4, to Sunday, May 6, as the PHX is fixing to host some serious Cinco de Mayo…

Spider Bites

What is it with the third installments in superhero franchises? For whatever reason — let’s just call it the lack of fresh ideas commingled with the love of money — they always strike out swinging their third time up to bat. It happened with Superman, when Richard Pryor became a…

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Camilla Taylor, 26, is a Utah native with a home studio in central Phoenix. With a background in printmaking, she has turned to printing on fabric to create patterns for plush anthropomorphic dolls. The petite artist sports granny glasses and a bright blue Mohawk that matches the plugs in her…

Rolling Paper

After starring in 20 years’ worth of video games, the Super Mario Brothers have been spread mighty thin. The mustachioed heroes’ latest outing, however, takes this concept to a literal extreme. Paradoxically, Super Paper Mario is like every Mario game you’ve ever played — and like nothing you’ve seen before…

Crisis in Suburbia

Little Children (New Line) In the eyes of Hollywood, our American suburbs are so filled with perversion and treachery that it seems the government ought to crack down on something. Until then, we can count on movies like Little Children to keep us informed. Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson are…

New Times‘ top DVD picks for the week of May 1

Alpha Dog (Universal) An Officer and a Gentleman: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) The Best of the Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet (Shout) Beverly Hills 90210: The Second Season (Paramount) Clint Eastwood: Western Icon Collection (Universal) A Collection of 2006 Academy Award Nominated Short Films (Magnolia) Fletch: The Jane Doe Edition…

Baby Grand

Roosevelt/Grand is the undisputed kahuna of the Phoenix arts, but the First Fridays concept has started to seep out of downtown like a stream of bubbling goo. One of the places the sticky stuff has landed is the long-suffering stretch of Seventh Avenue between Indian School and Montecito, which seems…

East Infection

The proprietors of Olive Branch Mediterranean Restaurant figured that good Middle Eastern eats, a hookah lounge, a full bar, and belly dancers weren’t enough to create an authentic and worldly experience, so they added other global flavors to their entertainment palette, including knock-your-socks-off DJs spinning world sounds of Africa, India,…

Margarita Madness

Given P-Town’s proximity to Mexico, we Phoenicians pretty much experience Latino culture in one form or another nearly 365 days a year. But things are really gonna get amped up from Friday, May 4, to Sunday, May 6, as the PHX is fixing to host some serious Cinco de Mayo…

Here, Mike! Sit! Good Boy!

Speaking as the new owner of a puppy, I can say definitively that a dog is both more and less annoying than the average person. Year of the Dog makes much the same point with its pack of uncontrollable pooches, including a cute beagle that rips into the wrong bag…

Austin’s Powers

“10 people will fight. 9 people will die. You get to watch.” So proclaims the poster for The Condemned, a movie executive-produced by World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon, and starring self-professed “whup-ass machine” Stone Cold Steve Austin and oft-suspended former soccer star Vinnie Jones. So can someone explain where…

Crashed Diet!

The folks over at North Valley Playhouse had better hope that the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation doesn’t get wind of the offensive gay stereotypes they’re promoting in their new, original, so-mean-you-won’t believe-it show, Diet! The Musical! For that matter, they’d better hope that anyone with half a brain…

Theater Scene

The Pillowman: Child abuse and child murder are all the rage in theater these days. There’s John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, about a group of boys still scarred from their abuse by a pedophilic priest. And Frozen, the British import about a serial killer that was so nicely done here by…

This is Madness

A game based on 300 has no excuse not to kick ass. Just picture yourself leading 300 Greeks (that’s 1,800 abs) against the massive armies of the Persian Empire, led by the evil, pierced, and preening King Xerxes. Since your Spartans are the deadliest soldiers in the world, the Persians’…

Five Wonders of the World

Planet Earth (BBC/Warner Bros.) Roll over, Marlin Perkins, and tell Jacques Cousteau the news: There’s never been another nature series like this. You will spend forever glued to this five-disc BBC collection, finding such holy-shit discoveries as a herd of never-before-photographed camels who live in the frozen wastelands, great whites…

New Times‘ top DVD picks for the week of April 24

Al Franken: God Spoke (Docurama) Code Name: The Cleaner (New Line) Columbo: Mystery Murder Collection 1989 (Universal) Djà Vu (Buena Vista) The Documentaries of Louis Malle (Criterion) The Drew Carey Show: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) Flipper: Season One (MGM) .45 (Velocity) Ironside: Season 1 (Shout! Factory) Jean Renoir:…

Slay Belle

If the new Tarantino/Rodriguez co-lab didn’t sate your appetite for zombies and fiendish sex, or if you’re an exploitation-starved suburbanite, Phoenix’s own Midnite Movie Mamacita will serve up a steaming buffet of squeamish delights with her Grindhouse Redux. The twin shot of original 35mm turkeys includes the sleazy sex bomb…