Function Over Form

FRI 10/21Unlike those works of art that can’t even be breathed on without a whack on the hand by a beefy security guard, J. DeSanti’s creations are meant to be used. They’re pretty nice to look at, too. His funky, functional pieces — which he crafts out of shattered glass,…

The Write Stuff

SAT 10/22Their résumés boast credits from Seinfeld to The Simpsons, but Everybody Loves Raymond executive producer Phil Rosenthal and the sitcom’s writers found the richest material in the minutiae of domestic life. While the show, starring Ray Romano (pictured at right), may be gone to that great rerun channel in…

Got Game?

10/22-10/23Critics of dodgeball consider the game a “dangerous sport,” but it’s really only as sadistic as the person chucking the ball at you. The main thing to remember is: A big rubber ball full of air is flying at your torso. So move. We know from experience that a rock-hard…

GUV Hurts

10/20-11/6Broken pipelines, rolling blackouts and real estate fraud — ah, life in corrupt paradise. GUV TV, the long-awaited sequel to GUV: The Musical, picks up where the original cult classic left off, making light of our most notorious politicos, as well as polygamous cults in Colorado City and the recent…

New Times‘ top DVD picks for the week of October 18

The Adventures of Superman: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) American Movie Musicals Collection (Columbia/Tristar) Batman Begins (Warner Bros.) Bruce Lee: Ultimate Collection (Fox) The Care Bears: Big Wish Movie (Lions Gate) The Coen Brothers Collection (Universal) CSI New York: The Complete First Season (Paramount) Dark Shadows: The Complete Revival…

Trails to Terror

You feel the chill in the air, that ooky tingle at the base of your spine, the growing sense of dread in the pit of your stomach. You know it’s coming, and your ass had better be prepared. We’re not talking about yet another numbskull Adam Sandler flick, pal. Nope,…

This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks

THU 20What a glorious racket the Yamato: Drummers of Japan make — glorious, that is, unless you happen to be the poor schlep who lives above them in Japan’s notoriously cozy residential quarters. The 12-piece percussion ensemble makes joyful noise reminiscent of Stomp, only with hands instead of feet. Founded…

Why We Need DVDs

Arrested Development: Season Two (Fox Home Entertainment) The best show on TV — which you’d know, if you actually watched the thing — also serves as one of the best reasons for the existence of DVD: No show has ever rewarded multiple viewings the way Arrested Development does. The second…

Prophecy Not Fulfilled

Waking from a trance, you find yourself in the restroom of a diner. You just stabbed a complete stranger to death as he urinated. Blood is on everything — including you. And to make matters worse, a police officer is sitting outside, drinking coffee. Should you take the time to…

All’s Wyatt on the Western Front

In the bad old days, Wyatt Earp was — depending on whom you asked — a famed lawman or a rascally bandit. Today he’s a brand of coffee and a steak sauce and a slew of Web sites (most prominently wyattearp.biz) and, in most parts of the world on any…

What’s It All About, Alfie?

There are so many reasons Desert Stages Theatre’s production of A Man of No Importance shouldn’t work: the cramped quarters of the company’s Actor’s Café space, into which this odd musical has been squeezed; the mostly amateur cast; an unusual, time-bending script; the curse that blights most all stage musicals…

Crowe Flies Home

It happened almost with the first step off the airplane at the Toronto airport last month. Someone, a friend or merely a concerned stranger, would stop to warn you of impending peril. They would plead with you to avoid the danger ahead in Elizabethtown, the Cameron Crowe film that screened…

Exhuming McCarthy

Good Night, and Good Luck, a riveting movie that’s as entertaining as it is socially and politically important, could not have come at a more propitious time. But more than just the right film at the right moment, George Clooney’s sophomore directorial effort is dynamic filmmaking: brilliantly conceived, visually arresting,…

Keira Get Your Gun

Her name is Domino Harvey, and she is a bounty hunter. If you’ve seen even one TV spot or theatrical trailer for Domino, you’ve heard that message ground into your brain like an annoying jingle. What you may not know is that Domino Harvey was a real person, daughter of…

Better Mood

Cineastes swooned over Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai’s 2000 film In the Mood for Love, a slow-as-molasses melodrama about two tediously formal people whose spouses are having an affair with one another. Thrown together by circumstances, they find themselves falling in love but, determined not to emulate their cheating…

Swift Kick

Elijah Wood is not a believable tough guy. Probably this comes as no great revelation to you. There’s a reason that the Lord of the Rings video games tend to focus on Aragorn, Legolas and Gandalf — Wood’s Frodo is a wuss, and everybody knows it. So any movie that’s…

Truth Syrup

It’s the cover-up, stupid! It doomed Nixon during Watergate, got Clinton impeached, inspired outrage against the Catholic Church, and apparently it’s just part of the day-to-day operations at places like Enron and Tyco. The initial crime is bad enough, but the conspiracy to hide it always ends up hurting more…

Quantum Bleep

“I recently got a tattoo that says ‘bleep’ on my forehead,” says William Arntz, one of the filmmakers behind the blockbuster docu-movie What the #$*! Do We Know!? Arntz is joking, but given the immense fan base behind the film, which explores, through quantum physics, the idea that the mind…

Butter Tart

The Arizona State Fair is known for rodeos, midway rides, music, and . . . spreadable art? Yep, you heard it right. This year’s fair features “The Lost Cow” butter sculpture by California artist Sarah Nep. Nep’s specialty is cheese sculpture, and she made her first foray into fromage after…

Bone Mama Mia!

SUN 10/16″Poetry readings are boring. This is a rock show compared to poetry readings,” says Mary “Bone Mama” McCann, who will perform her high-octane sound poems at the Noisy by Nature book-release party on Sunday, October 16, at Modified Arts, 407 East Roosevelt Street. This definitely ain’t your ordinary “I…

Amazing Race Home Edition

SAT 10/15f you’re tooling around in Tempe on Saturday, October 15, and see a screaming horde running around and tearing its collective hair out, don’t fret; it’s not Godzilla rising from the abyssal depths of Town Lake, but a high-concept affair called High Trek Adventure. The homage to TV’s Amazing…

This Year’s Models

SAT 10/15There you are, surrounded by models from Maxim, FHM, and Playboy, all wearing butt-floss bikini bottoms. The smell of burning rubber permeates the air and, out of a fog of custom-car exhaust, Maxim “Top 10 Hottie” Martina Andrews materializes. She leans over your table with her firm, perfectly symmetrical…