It’s time to welcome ’06 here in the PHX, but you’ve got no idea where to go. New Year’s Eve is (arguably) the biggest hootenanny of the whole Gregorian calendar, so you definitely don’t want to wind up stuck at home while your friends are out living their champagne wishes…
Restaurants Bars and Clubs Canyon Raceway 9777 West Carefree Highway, Peoria Droppin’ the Ball rave and massive DJ event with five stages hosting more than 25 different turntablists spinning such genres as breakbeats, drum ‘n’ bass, trance, and more. The lineup includes Harmonius, Atomic Mage, Spy vs. Spy, Defcon 4,…
Special Events Bars and Clubs Bada Boom Pasta Room 4151 North Marshall Way, Scottsdale www.badaboomaz.com “A Dinner to Remember” featuring beef tenderloin, Chilean sea bass, and plenty of Italian favorites. 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. Dinners start at $40. Call 480-214-2666. Barcelona Scottsdale 15440 Greenway-Hayden Loop, Scottsdale www.barcelonadining.com Executive chef…
Special Events Restaurants Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness 3031 East Indian School Road www.aintnobodysbizness-az.com New Year’s Eve bash featuring drink specials, giveaways, champagne toast at midnight, and DJ Tsunami spinning hip-hop and dance hits. 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. No cover. Call 602-224-9977. Amsterdam 718 North Central Avenue www.amsterdambar.com New Year’s Eve…
Robert Birmingham (a.k.a. Fun Bobby), 38, towers over the Valley nightclub scene. This 6-foot-6 beer-busting beanstalk is one of the Valley’s “StarTenders” — or celebrity bartenders — famous for his mixology mastery, suds-slinging, and affable nature. He’s seen many an Auld Lang Syne during his 12 years behind the sticker-laden…
Kendon Victor, 41, will help start 2006 off with a bang, or several hundred of them. As head pyrotechnician for Tempe-based Fireworks Productions of Arizona, he’ll coordinate the launching of skyrockets in flight over both Scottsdale and Tempe’s block parties, as well as at various casinos and country clubs Valleywide…
While Alexandria Paveloff recently turned the magic, alcohol-friendly age of 21, don’t expect to see her wasted on New Year’s Eve. This diminutive customer-service representative already knows about the evils of alcohol, including getting thrown in the poky after drunkenly decking a dude several times her size. Breast-laid plans: On…
Steve Sims, 38, doesn’t watch Taxicab Confessions — he never needs to. The former computer programmer turned cabdriver has already seen plenty of explicit and outrageous action in the back seats of the taxis he’s driven for Discount Cab over the past four years, especially on December 31. Lettin’ loose:…
“Agony and beauty for us live side by side,” laments Mameha (Michelle Yeoh), the most successful geisha in Gion. You’ll know how she feels: Memoirs of a Geisha, as directed by Chicago’s Rob Marshall, is beautiful to look at, but when it comes to the dialogue and storytelling, agony just…
Those who will sit around wondering whether Munich is the work of an anti-Israeli or just a self-hating Jew — which is to say, Steven Spielberg, who has been branded both by Israeli officials and newspaper columnists in recent weeks — give the movie and its maker far too much…
The Jerry Lewis chromosome is running amok again inside Jim Carrey, and if you don’t feel like getting clubbed half to death with a slapstick, stay away from Fun With Dick and Jane. On the other hand, if Carrey’s tireless antics — slithering onto nightclub tables, speaking in tongues, and…
It’s impossible to talk about The Ringer, a comedy about someone pretending to be retarded in order to rig the Special Olympics, without mentioning that episode of South Park in which Cartman does the same thing. The Ringer was already in production when that episode was made, and has taken…
The Amazing Race: The Seventh Season (Paramount) Battlestar Galactica: Season 2.0 (Universal) The Biggest Loser: The Workout (Lions Gate) Bob the Butler (First Independent) Cry_Wolf (MCA) ER: The Complete Fourth Season (Warner Bros.) The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Sony) Frankie & Johnny Are Married (MCA) The Great Raid (Miramax) Ice…
It’s a pop culture tenet that Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, was a perv. Carroll, who wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, was a shy, stuttering deacon and lifelong bachelor with an interest in little girls that, to contemporary eyes, appears very Michael…
Jennifer Bartlett at Bentley Projects: If you want to see how a painter’s brain differs from the gray matter of people who don’t know which end of a paintbrush to hold, go see this retrospective of work by the famed California-born artist. In a piece titled Boats, Bartlett places a…
Be he ever so humble — and he really is, as you’ll see — there’s no one quite like William Fucking Reed, host of the Shake! Motherfucking Dance Party. First off, what’s up with the middle moniker? “My parents weren’t very original, I suppose,” he says with a laugh. So…
Sin City: Recut, Extended, Unrated (Buena Vista) Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s near frame-for-frame adaptation of Miller’s bone-crunching comics finally gets a rewarding DVD treatment, following a shamefully sparse edition earlier this year. The theatrical cut boasts two commentary tracks (with Quentin Tarantino and Bruce Willis, among others), but there…
No wonder Iraq is a mess. If the battlefield in America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier is an accurate picture of what it’s like in the Middle East, we should cut and run ASAP. The United States Army’s officially licensed shooter puts you smack in the middle of the action…
At last, a means of upstaging actor Jon Gentry — whose huge presence swipes every scene in every play he’s ever appeared in — has been discovered: Surround him, as has been done in Childsplay’s Seussical, with wildly costumed, maniacally energetic players, a frantic and noisy score, custom choreography, and…
It’s not hard to predict how Ang Lee’s controversial Brokeback Mountain will play in John Wayne country. This romantic tragedy about a pair of lean, wind-burned cowpokes who secretly live to poke each other flies in the face of everything that most people in Casper or Riverton or Laramie think…
For whatever reason, the modernized, comic redo of King Kong released exactly 29 years ago has become less the “pop classic” that Pauline Kael insisted it was at the time than a dimly remembered punch line. It barely registers with modern-day moviegoers, who remember it as a campy, eco-aware update…
One cannot, in good conscience, describe the countless strands of plot and strains of characters skittering through The Family Stone without knowing that description merits at least a snicker. . . . Okay, all right, bellowing guffaws. The movie’s too overstuffed by half with pointless people and plot lines that…
