A displaced mother and daughter beg for food in India, where women and children make up 75 percent of refugees. A homeless Ethiopian woman clutches her baby, fighting the chill of winter from the newborn’s tiny body. A woman slaves away on a plantation in south Asia. The images are…
Fri 8/27 Adult puppetry is all the rage these days, but the folks at Skeleton Puppetry Theatre don’t think the genre’s sexual innuendo or macabre humor would have any appeal outside the nightspots of downtown Phoenix. “This stuff is more for late-night crowds,” says puppeteer Nathan Greene. “It’s definitely after-dark…
8/27-8/28 It’s dawned on us — while pondering this weekend’s Vans Triple Crown of Freestyle Motocross at America West Arena –that there is much in this world of considerable irrelevance, pardon the contradiction in terms. Case in point: tires on a dirt bike at AWA, 201 East Jefferson, on Friday,…
Xicanindio at Tempe Public Library: Tucked away upstairs in the Tempe Public Library are prints from local and regional Latino/Chicano and Native American artists produced at Mesa’s tiny but vibrant Xicanindio Artes. Xicanindio is more than just a place for artists to make prints — it’s one of the surprisingly…
THU 19 Going back to school sounds like a perfect reason to panic; if we remember the nightmare correctly, we show up late, ill-prepared and naked. This calls for a field trip to Anderson’s Fifth Estate, 6830 East Fifth Avenue in downtown Scottsdale, where the panic! Back to School Party…
It’s too easy to label Rachel Bess dark. After all, the 24-year-old artist harbors an obvious obsession with mortality. Her artwork is more still-dead than still-life, often incorporating fragments of animal skeletons or human skulls, and the bleak landscapes she paints, with titles like The Nightmare, have earned the moniker…
Fri 8/20 What if Spider-Man 2 or The Bourne Supremacy had skipped out on Phoenix movie theaters? Madness would take to the streets. Yet fans cope as independent films regularly bypass silver screens around the Valley. Beginning Friday, August 20, one of six indie flicks will premi’re each week exclusively…
The future is almost here. At least, it is according to screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce (Pandaemonium) and director Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People), two cinematic visionaries whose combined vision in Code 46 sparks tremendous intrigue — and unrest. At once a weirdly familiar sci-fi trip, a bleak romance, a…
Summer movies don’t get much sillier or more empty-headed than Without a Paddle, and that includes Catwoman and King Arthur. What we have here is a low-wattage buddy flick proposing that a trio of boyhood friends, now 30 years old, can shed the last vestiges of their adolescence by traipsing…
Although most people in the moviegoing universe by now know the differences between an “Alien” and a “Predator,” putting the two critters together in one movie really ought to necessitate more specific species names for each, since both are technically aliens and predators (they’re from outer space and they hunt…
Randall Wallace is a curious guy. Raised in Tennessee and schooled at Duke, he put himself through a year of divinity school by teaching karate, wrote songs for a while in Nashville, and managed shows at Opryland. Then he kicked into high gear by writing the script for Mel Gibson’s…
Those zany kids at Stray Cat Theatre have strapped a leash onto their new season, which they’re opening with something called Poona, the Fuckdog — a title as compelling as it is unprintable, at least in Phoenix. “The Rep has Poona, the (Expletive) Dog,” laughs Stray Cat’s artistic director Ron…
Sat 8/21 Existence, the Buddha says, is suffering; proof positive according to students of Eastern mysticism that he spends his Sundays moonlighting as an Arizona Cardinals fan. Despite an unrivaled string of losing seasons, hope once again springs eternal in Redbird Country, for from the ashes of the Stallings, Bugel,…
Sat 8/21 Vertical proficiency isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Just think of all the comforts average-height folks enjoy — waste-level countertops, overhead shower heads and, above all else, average expectations. So don’t think that a Central Arizona Tall Society (CATS) shindig is all about flexing some soaring dominance…
Thu 8/19 Radio drama? These days, there isn’t much, unless Rush Limbaugh’s bout with OxyContin counts as dramatic fare. But there was a time — in the 1930s and ’40s — when live electronic entertainment came solely via radio, with War of the Worlds and Arch Oboler’s Lights Out leading…
Chauvinism is funny. Misogyny is a laugh riot. And Robert Dubac, author and star of The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?, is pretty darn amusing, too. The show, which ran for months in Chicago, Cleveland and Boston, and has occupied the Herberger Stage West for most of the summer, recounts the…
THU 12 The Invincible Czars — an Austin quartet with a thing for mixing buzzing guitars with accordions and horns — buzz into town Thursday, August 12, for a show at the Emerald Lounge, 1514 North Seventh Avenue. The Czars play a mean set of “indie-riffic-mathrockery to Eastern-European folk idioms,”…
Grease is definitely the word, even if I don’t entirely understand why. I have nothing against fab ’50s musicals or playwrights Warren Casey and Jim Jacobs, who co-authored Grease back in the ’70s. Their score is among the best of its kind, because it mimics the sound and sentiment of…
A good friend likes to say that there’s only one kind of great pop song — the song that someone had to create, as though the writer and performer had no choice. The song can be corny or cynical, upbeat or downhearted; it doesn’t matter. All that counts is that…
Garry Marshall is at it again. The director of Pretty Woman, Beaches and the original Princess Diaries has returned to peddle his particular brand of überschmaltz in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, in which he disguises an insidious worship of wealth and privilege as a “feel-good” comedy about a…
Most boys seem to tumble down the assembly line with their main switch factory-preset to Aggression. Toys are for throwing, army men are for melting, and eventually grown males consider punching each other senseless, hurling deadly bombs, or surreptitiously undermining one another to be completely reasonable forms of discourse. But…
Troy Tinker sounds exasperated as he explains why the World Famous Lipizzaner Stallions Tour would be of interest to discerning hipsters. It’s almost as if his horse sense was tingling, anticipating the question before it was asked. “I know where this is going,” says Tinker, the emcee of the show…
