Up to a certain point, Paul Marino’s story is a familiar one, especially to any single guy in his 20s who likes playing with his joystick. Four years ago, Marino and his pals would leave their offices on a Friday night and go to another friend’s workplace, where they’d play…
LYT: Don’t you find it interesting that Blue Crush director John Stockwell is on this whole girl-power kick, going off on the “sexist” guys who’d rather “appreciate a cute girl in a bikini, but ain’t gonna give up a wave for them,” yet the movie’s marketing is all about appreciating…
Sometimes when a director shoots at a barn, the satisfaction comes in simply watching him hit it dead center. So it is with The Good Girl, wherein Miguel Arteta (Star Maps) targets middle American ennui with wit, compassion and no shortage of ornery malaise. Like Arteta’s second feature, Chuck &…
Hey, Mom and Dad, is your teenage son exhibiting any of the following behavioral symptoms: showing a sullen and angry demeanor, bottle-bleaching his hair, excessively utilizing headphones, mumbling epithets about Tipper Gore and Lynne Cheney? Yeah? Blame it on Marshall Mathers, a.k.a. Eminem — he’s dying to take credit for…
When 17 life-size fiber-glass horses clopped into downtown Scottsdale in late 2000, lovers of animals and art took to the streets to admire the stallions. This summer, another curious collection of creatures has made its way into the city’s gallery district, and though it lacks the noise of the Scottsdale…
Every high-energy minute counts with Jeff Barthold. He’s already networking when I arrive at Maloney’s, one of several Valley bars that carry Liquid X, the “euphoric party energy drink” that Barthold invented. He’s here to tell me about the caffeine-infused beverage, which he hopes will give Red Bull, the energy…
A press pass, reporter-turned-novelist Gregory McDonald once said, is good for one thing: It allows the journalist to ask very smart people very stupid questions. Certainly, that’s how it feels after this 45-minute drive from downtown Dallas to the Allen home of Stan Liebowitz, professor of economics at the University…
In case you didn’t happen to read the tag line on the ubiquitous poster, Xander Cage, also known as xXx because he’s tattooed his first initial three times on the back of his neck, is “a new breed of secret agent.” The old breed, we learn pretty quickly, is Bond,…
Blood Work, Clint Eastwood’s 23rd directorial effort, is a crime thriller in the mode of, but better than, True Crime (1999) and Absolute Power (1997), two of his last three films. More than these, however, it resembles In the Line of Fire (1993), the Eastwood vehicle directed by Wolfgang Petersen…
Ever since she opened reZurrection Gallery with her husband Damian in December 2000, Darci Johnson has been hosting monthly openings for the artists who exhibit their work there. To keep things unpredictable, she alternates the media in the shows, bringing in sculptures one month, paintings the next, and then perhaps…
The man who is perhaps the most unlikely pop star of our time is returning to Phoenix. Morrissey — son of librarians, celibate singer of sexual songs, violent vegetarian, bundle of endless contradiction and controversy — graces Celebrity Theatre with his presence on Friday, August 9. The question is: Why?…
This time around, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan puts the surprise at the beginning of his film, and it’s a subtle, shimmering clue — one easily missed and, frankly, one that might not even be there at all. Such are the temptations offered by the maker of The Sixth Sense and…
It’s daunting to hear that John Sayles’ new film Sunshine State is almost two and a half hours long and consists mostly of calm conversations. But don’t be deterred, or you’ll miss out on a study of character, class and changing times that puts Robert Altman’s stodgy Gosford Park to…
“I am Deke Dickerson,” he says, “entertainer, musician, singer, guitar player . . . Renaissance man.” What’s more, Dickerson has made it his personal mission to drag folks from the moribund monoverse of Friends reruns and out to his traveling road show, a 200- to 300-day-per-year tour of musical duty…
Although it’s been several millennia since we abandoned the fig leaf as a form of dress, humankind hasn’t been able to shake its spirit from the ever-evolving cycle of fashion. Phoenix Art Museum’s new major exhibition “Garden of Eden” poses the question “Why do we wear clothes?”, then demonstrates the…
The cocktail waiter at Barmouche is staring longingly out the window at Laurie Notaro. “Hey, man,” he says to me. “That’s Laurie Notaro, huh?” I assure him that it is. “Wow,” he says. “I love Laurie Notaro. I read her all the time. She’s absolutely the best. Hey, how come…
Yoga, an ancient practice that’s one of the hottest exercise trends of the past decade, has become popular in part because you need no special equipment (except, perhaps, the ubiquitous blue mat), and you can do it anytime, anywhere. But in an art museum? Bending over into downward-facing dog might…
Tim Hart is having a hard time concentrating. He wants to tell me the complex, nasty story of how his Ensemble Theater Company got booted from its performance space — a story rife with bomb threats, infighting, even a Seinfeld connection. But the story isn’t coming easy to Hart, who…
Arizona has mud that even Shout can’t Shout out: 26 years ago, Shout laundry stain remover ran a promotion called “Shout It Out,” in which kids ran an obstacle course in pools of mud to prove Shout’s stain-removing superpower. After realizing they couldn’t get Arizona’s red mud out, even with…
Her name sounds like the answers to a multiple-choice question on a catechism quiz, but the Reverend Doctor Lady Bishop swears she’s all of the above. She is America’s premier voodoo priestess, a messenger of a mélange of disciplines including black magic and Mormonism who’s here, she explains, to “work…
