A Very Long Engagement, the new film by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (most famously of Amélie), will have its fans. For one thing, there’s no denying its beauty, an onslaught of gorgeous tableaux, painstakingly arranged and shot through filters to exclude colors that don’t suit (i.e., anything other than sepia…
Gaynel Hodge didn’t pick a fight with Dick Dale. He just showed up at Dale’s December 8 performance at the Rhythm Room, got a picture with the man who’d recorded his song “Jessie Pearl” — twice — and thanked him for the $7.75 royalty check Dale sent him (the first…
SAT 12/18 Jonathan Swift’s satirical essay “A Modest Proposal” discussed how to prevent the children of poor people in Ireland from becoming a burden to their parents. One of Swift’s solutions was to eat the children, as they represented a renewable food resource. Modest Proposal magazine — named after Swift’s…
THU 12/16 Attention, earthlings: Space oddities are on a collision course with the terrestrial venue known as the Paper Heart, 750 Grand Avenue, and will invade on Thursday, December 16. Don’t swallow your government-apportioned cyanide pills just yet, as we’ve determined these non-hostile aliens will take the form of two…
Will Wilson: “Auto Immune Response” at the Heard Museum: How do you survive in a postapocalyptic world? According to Will Wilson, the key to survival lies in an understanding of the past. The Navajo photographer explores this, as well as the concepts of Native American identity and connection to the…
THU 9 While hot toddies, bourbon balls and hot buttered rum are required party paraphernalia in other parts of the country during the holiday season, we here in the desert prefer a south-of-the-border Christmas spirit: tequila! On Thursday, December 9, Scottsdale’s pair of Blue Agave Mexican Cantinas (at 4280 North…
Rated PG-13.
SAT 12/11 Normally we wouldn’t recommend walking the streets of Cave Creek after dark, given the number of bikers — inebriated or otherwise — who frequent the hamlet’s roadhouses and saloons. But we’ll make an exception on Saturday, December 11, for the second annual Cave Creek Luminaria Run. More than…
SAT 12/11 Look, there! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a boat covered in Christmas lights! Make that 40 boats, as a twinkling fleet of yachts, sailboats, motorboats, and even kayaks cruises down Tempe Town Lake, at Mill Avenue and Rio Salado Parkway, on Saturday, December 11, for the…
Sun 12/12 Could you ever have imagined a world where the sight of someone with facial hair and a mortgage spending quality time with a good comic book would actually be considered cool? Welcome to the 21st century, a brave new world where comics have transcended puberty and become must-read…
Robrt Pela interviews Emma Stone (then known as Emily) over Partridge Family records.
Indigo Verton, 33, painter, photographer, hat maker, ex-cabaret star, bartender, and self-proclaimed hippie child is one of three artists working in Red Door Studio on Grand Avenue. Why “Red Door”: The door was red when we moved in, so it was a no-brainer. The deal with her own name: My…
They walk among us. They resemble people, approximate our words and actions, present themselves more or less as human. And yet they are more — a different species, with their own dark legends, their own clandestine meeting places. They are dorks, and they are going to be pretty okay with…
Y’all remember the “Free Tibet” movement? Back in the late ’90s, it was the counterculture cause célèbre, on the lips of every hippie and alt-rocker from Burning Man to the East Village. But now it’s 2004, and while hipsters have focused their ineffectual efforts toward more trendy causes, his holiness…
Coming up with an original band name is hard without a thesaurus and some psychedelic drugs. So when we heard that Asylum Street Spankers were coming to the Valley, we couldn’t resist asking about the band’s moniker. The story goes something like this: Ten years ago, the band played some…
TUE 12/14 From what you’ve come to expect from emo groups, Novi Split — which visits Modified Arts, 407 East Roosevelt, on Tuesday, December 14 — fills the void in the way only the sensitive side of post-punk can. Offering sound design that is as adverse to “over-production” as slugs…
THU 2 Sorry to bear the bad news, ladies, but the catty confines of Paco Paco, 3045 North 16th Street, will be reserved exclusively for men on Thursday, December 2, as the Valley’s “hottest” gay Latin dance club puts aside its usual drag and trannie show in favor of the…
The Czech drama Zelary brings to mind Bertolt Brecht’s pointed observation that “war is like love; it always finds a way.” In this instance, war creates the atmosphere in which an unlikely love flourishes, then overwhelms that love. Only a fool would try to improve on Brecht, but after absorbing…
Sat 12/4 When y’all are ready to wade through them thar beer cans and lawn appliances that ain’t worked fer years, park yer double-wide at the Pumphouse II, 4132 East McDowell, for the Miss Trailer 2005 Pageant and Trailer Trash Party on Saturday, December 4. They’ll have all the PBR…
Ah, downtown Phoenix. Home to Bank One Ballpark, the famous Luhrs Building, that stunningly awful Patriots Park. It’s a tangle of high- and low-rise construction that has — dare I say it? — risen from the ashes of its former run-down self, reborn as a burgeoning almost-metropolis that might someday…
I saw Arizona Theatre Company’s production of Anna in the Tropics with a second-weekend audience, having missed its opening night. Second-weekenders are a tough crowd, harder to entertain; first-nighters are there as much for the schmoozing as for what’s up on stage. And so the warm reception given by these…
Has anyone but me noticed that Arizona Jewish Theatre Company never produces plays or musicals that depict Jews as whiny cheapskates? And that the Black Theatre Troupe never presents shows in which people of color are portrayed as lazy, shiftless field hands? Fortunately for fans of pitiless stereotyping, there’s the…
