Bad News Bears (2005) (Paramount) The Beautiful Country (Sony) Death Race 2000: Special Edition (Buena Vista) F.I.S.T. (Columbia/Tristar) Gallipoli: Special Edition (Paramount) Gilmore Girls: The Complete Fifth Season (Warner Bros.) The Island (Universal) Kiss: Rock the Nation Live! (Image) The Last Day (Strand) Marvin Gaye: Behind the Legend (Red Dist.)…
1. Begin, from your earliest days, to greet each moment as if it were an opportunity for a graceful expression formed by your limbs as a gift to the world. Then learn to tap dance. Steal the show in your nursery school recital as the first-ever student to perform a…
You’re probably wanting to drain the lizard something fierce right now, brah, but try pinching things off. All of your beer buddies are here for a raucous, alcohol-fueled adventure at the weekly Bladder Buster Night, and they’d hate to see you piss it all away. For only $5 each (free…
If you want to see how a painter’s brain is different from the gray matter of people who don’t know which end of a paintbrush to hold, go look at Jennifer Bartlett’s retrospective at Bentley Projects. The show, composed of 30 paintings, sculptures and constructions chosen by the artist herself,…
Most Americans don’t think much about China. The nation that’s home to 20 percent of the people on the planet is a murky place that hovers behind low price tags and bird flu. Few of us think of China as a producer of first-rate contemporary art that gazes out at…
In less than a decade, first-person shooters like Doom and Halo have grown from a niche genre to a cottage industry. Whether it’s our love for their immersiveness, competition, or just old-fashioned bloodlust, the popularity of FPS games shows no sign of waning. They’ve become so much of a draw,…
Cinderella Man (Universal) Back in the Great Depression, boxing matches only cost a nickel, and the ring was uphill both ways. That’s the central message of this well-made if sappy bio of 1930s boxer Jim Braddock. Ron Howard’s direction and a stellar cast save the film from its one-dimensional characters…
Warner Bros. put $50 million into Syriana and allowed writer-director Stephen Gaghan as much time and travel as necessary to research and write his story. They’d be well advised to pony up a few extra bucks to provide filmgoers with a flow chart that connects the myriad, scattered dots that…
If you’re a fan of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, all you need to know is this: Disney has done right by The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It’s impossible to imagine it done much better, in fact. If you’re not a fan, perhaps you’re among…
Close to a decade ago, at a comic book convention in Los Angeles, animator Peter Chung was asked by a fan if he’d ever consider allowing a live-action movie to be made based on his avant-garde MTV series Aeon Flux. Chung said he had no interest in such a thing,…
Hands down (and hands down her pants, from the sound of it), the funniest bit from the summer’s raunch smorgasbord The Aristocrats was hearing Sarah Silverman tell the infamously profane family-act joke at the center of Paul Provenza’s documentary. Where Robin Williams, Drew Carey, George Carlin, and a hundred other…
Jada Pinkett Smith is quite the hyphenate. In addition to being the wife of rapper/movie star extraordinaire Will Smith, the mother of their three children, an investor in a cosmetics company (Carol’s Daughter), and a talented film actress in her own right (Collateral, The Matrix Reloaded), the 34-year-old superstar is…
When you’re an actor best known for playing one of the biggest buffoon bullies in screen history — a dimwitted tyrant with a penchant for messing up popular sayings and landing headfirst in manure — you basically have two choices: one, succumb to the typecasting and spend the rest of…
12/11-3/12If the photographers whose work will be displayed at Phoenix Art Museum’s new exhibition “Keeping Shadows” were a baseball team, they’d be the 1927 Yankees. The all-star lineup includes Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans, Imogen Cunningham, Man Ray, Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, Timothy O’Sullivan, Lewis Carroll, Henri Le Secq, Julia Margaret…
SUN 12/11We need some advice. Godzilla’s 51st birthday is coming up, and we haven’t a clue as to what to get the big fella. Imagine the pressure involved with selecting the perfect gift for this ungodly creature that’s laid waste to numerous cities and battled everyone from Mothra to onetime…
SAT 12/10If you want to act a fool this holiday season after consuming one too many eggnogs, feel free. Just don’t expect to rock the boat and poop on somebody’s parade during the APS Fantasy of Lights Holiday Boat Parade on Saturday, December 10. A fleet of more than 40…
SAT 12/10Liz Phair doesn’t want to be your blowjob queen anymore. She may have sung such on her groundbreaking 1993 album Exile in Guyville (an answer to the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street), but, truth be told, she’s stopped singing songs that make feminists pump their fists while manly…
Dirty Love (First Look) Dragonball Movie Boxed Set (Funimation) Everybody Loves Raymond: The Complete Fifth Season (Warner Bros.) Fun With Dick and Jane (1977) (Columbia/Tristar) The Future of Food (Cinema Libre) Gilbert Gottfried: Dirty Jokes (Image) God Save the Queen: Punk Rock Anthology (Music Video Dist.) Hellbound (Warner Bros.) He-Man…
“Big City” at Phoenix Art Museum: There isn’t a single image of the PHX among the cityscapes and urban life scenes drawn from PAM’s permanent collection. That’s odd, seeing as how we’re the nation’s fifth or sixth largest metropolis. The omission is partly because of the age of the work,…
THU 8Imagine your bath mat on acid — or you on your bath mat on acid. No, you’re not all wet; you’ve stepped into the Alice in Wonderland world of Brian Knep. The multimedia artist’s “Brian Knep: Healing Series” is a totally groovy collection of interactive floor pieces reminiscent of…
She’s played Shakespeare festivals and appeared on soap operas and been directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and right now Erika Rolfsrud is appearing all by her lonesome in Arizona Theatre Company’s one-woman Bad Dates. Here, she considers rug burns and lazy eyes and the horrors of slow-mo screaming. I knew…
If Hollywood wants to learn from the videogame industry — which outgrossed the box office last year — it should pay careful attention to Shadow of the Colossus, a game with the epic scale of a summer blockbuster but the emotional heart of an indie flick. Shadow is brought to…
