Punk rock, baby. It’s been one of those weeks where nothing seems to be getting my joystick hard. It’s probably because I’m still down from this surgery I had, but, well, I just can’t get my mojo working. As Elvis would say, “my stuff.” It’s just kinda flaccid. The biggest…
“Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life”: Designers get stereotyped as unexciting pragmatists, but this exhibition of fashion, architecture and product design from around the world shows that sly social commentary can be slipped into ordinary objects. Works in the 45-piece show range from Constantin and Laurene Leon Boym’s Buildings of…
THU 17 Believe it or not, we capitalist pigs get it right once in a while. For example: a little thing called electricity, the assembly line, and, uh, belly-dancing. True, belly-dancing was originally a gift from the Turks, but it took American innovation in the form of Hollywood know-how to…
About one week out of major abdomen surgery, it starts. Not the pain, or my clock-watching hours of when I could take my next pain pill. No, that would have been easy. A week after they gutted me like a pig, Nick, my visiting 74-year-old stepdad, starts in with the…
You shouldn’t know from Sunday morning AM radio — with maybe one exception. Too Jewish With Rabbi Sam Cohon and Friends, which debuted here last month, is fast becoming a guilty pleasure among Jews and gentiles alike. The 3-year-old Tucson-based program, which can be heard Sunday mornings at 7 on…
John Nelson, 48, renowned outsider artist, creates primitive acrylic and collage-on-wood-panel works inspired by puns and word play that strike his fancy. Nelson’s new show, “VACANCY (at the Madson Hotel),” is a collaboration with writer Eric Susser about a metaphorical transient hotel where sad, sick people (representing you and me…
Perhaps in honor of the fourth anniversary of Cher’s farewell tour, MGM recently released a DVD edition of Chastity, the 1969 stink bomb featuring the singer’s first dramatic role. Shot entirely in Phoenix, this long-lost indie (for which Cher’s daughter is named) was written, produced, scored, and some claim directed…
A cynic might describe movies as the most depraved and fantastic system of exploitation ever devised. After all, they trade on the greed and hubris of financiers, the beauty and allure of stars, and the trust (or, if you prefer, gullibility) of the audience. No one involved in the process…
Rated R.
Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s Steamboy will be released nationwide in both subtitled and dubbed versions. At the press screening, both were shown simultaneously in neighboring theaters, leaving the reviewer to choose which one to see. Your critic went with the subtitled cut, not purely for reasons of cinematic snobbery, but mostly because…
The Upside of Anger belongs to Joan Allen, who plays Terry Wolfmeyer, a wife abandoned by her husband and left to pick up the pieces and collect them in a giant bottle of vodka. Terry’s is the cold, composed visage of a woman struggling to keep it together; through her…
The Ring, Gore Verbinski’s 2002 remake of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, offered sufficient closure that it didn’t exactly demand a sequel. The horror lay in wondering why a mysterious videotape kills viewers seven days after they watch it; to a lesser extent, there was the mystery of the creepy girl, face…
You’d think your own brother wouldn’t bust your watermelon. Produce-pulverizing comedian Gallagher didn’t have a problem with his younger brother, Ron, touring as a Gallagher impersonator, as long as Ron didn’t perform Gallagher’s signature move: smashing watermelons with a sledgehammer at the end of the show. But things got messy…
By day, Paula Shimel is an unassuming real estate marketer who loves to eat chocolate, update her blog and gush over her three cats, Nermal, Nala and Bastet. But on Friday nights, she straps on black vinyl platform boots, carefully laces up her corset, and, if it’s cold outside, grabs…
FRI 3/18 “The Moog,” as it’s known among musical types, is the indispensable electronic synthesizer that has pioneered both mainstream and independent music movements over the past 40 years. It also happens to be one of the most criminally mispronounced names in the history of popular culture (correct pronunciation rhymes…
SAT 3/19 Slash and Scott Weiland (formerly of Guns n’ Roses and Stone Temple Pilots, respectively) might have mellowed a bit — a tad bit — since the days of their reckless youth. But the Speed Jam at Phoenix International Raceway, 7602 South 115th Avenue in Avondale, on Saturday, March…
SAT 3/19 Grandpa’s been acting kookier than normal lately, whistling “Pennsylvania 6-5000” to himself, and doing a solo Charleston in the mirror. But don’t up his dosage of Xanax just yet, as the old coot’s probably just aching to skedaddle to “A Night in the 40’s” Big Band Dance and…
3/22-3/26 Mark Lundholm refers to himself as “a professional mistake-maker.” In 1988, he found himself in a halfway house after carjacking for fixes. The divorced father of two had gone from being a Catholic altar boy to a homeless addict and mental patient. He found some humor in it all,…
Playwright Oscar Wilde once quipped, “Work is the curse of the drinking class,” and we’re inclined to agree with the swishy scribe, especially when it comes to this year’s St. Patrick’s Day. Since the annual exercise in alcohol excess falls on a weekday, you’d better have a sick day up…
“I hate them guys,” explains my stepdad as he sits and watches me shoot Nazis through my XBox on my 32-inch Panasonic television, which he can’t stop raving about because of the colors. “Okay, Indy,” I say to Nick, who’s 74 years old and able to remember every great movie…
Imagine for a moment that you’re at a diner, and you’ve just ordered one of those “man-size” breakfast combos, the kind that come with four eggs and three kinds of meat and griddle cakes and a side of hash browns and a little plate of toast. In the space of…
THU 10 You’ve heard the joke about joining the Army, right? “Travel to exotic places, meet interesting people, and kill them.” Well, in James’ Journey to Jerusalem, which closes out the Phoenix Jewish Film Festival on Thursday, March 10, at the Harkins Camelview 5, 7001 East Highland in Scottsdale, our…
