Screw the Duff — when Groundskeeper Willie is lookin’ to get his swerve on, he’s likely to be sipping one of the arse-kickin’ brews featured at the second annual Strong Beer & Ale Festival, put on by the Arizona Craft Brewers Guild at Papago Brewing Company in Scottsdale. The libations…
People assume that big spenders head to Las Vegas for high-rolling, hedonistic pleasure. That may be true some of the time, but for four frenzied days every January, Scottsdale becomes the planet’s prime destination for elite car connoisseurs prepared to duel it out to purchase amazing autos. The Barrett-Jackson Classic…
It’s a good thing you’ve found your way here, because not only will you be informed of much to anticipate in the cinematic year ahead, you’ll be kept safe from those nincompoop mainstream critics who have already pre-mailed their annual comment cards to the studios, arbitrarily checking off words like…
Cate Blanchett can do no wrong, but even she can’t save Charlotte Gray, a World War II drama that never rises above the level of a 1950s-era adolescent romance novel. The Australian-born actress, who should have won an Academy Award for her performance in 1998’s Elizabeth, plays the titular character,…
There’s no need to suffer from cabin fever in January in the Valley of the Sun. This weekend, you can get out of the house and satisfy your cultural curiosity at the 10th annual West Valley Invitational Native American Arts Festival in Litchfield Park.More than 200 Native American artists will…
Can you think of a better way to spend a winter Arizona afternoon than by taking a leisurely stroll through a park? It sounds picturesque enough, but there sure is one way to top it — if the park is bustling with festival activities and if it’s an official pit…
You might be tempted to give Ugandan-born Namu Lwanga one of those trendy hyphenated career titles, like “singer-dancer-actress-musician.” But that kind of job description still isn’t enough to sum up her accomplishments.Perhaps “Renaissance woman” is the most accurate label for Lwanga, who is the founder and director of the Kayaga!…
Normally, these year-in-TV columns are a breezy, easy write–a plea for good shows buried somewhere in an embittered litany of bad ones. In recent years, it has felt as though the proliferation of channels and choices has given us only more of the wretched and less of the watchable; satellite…
In time, 2001 might well be remembered as the year of the overhyped and undercooked, the year storybook wizards cast spells to eradicate critical good judgment, the year from which there was so much detritus to choose that much of the good stuff makes a best-of list only by default…
Got a New Year’s resolution to get out a little more in 2002? Here’s your chance to get a hefty dose of schmoozing, courtesy of ArtLink’s monthly First Fridays. The year’s inaugural event will showcase about 30 downtown Phoenix galleries for a roving night of art and adventure.ArtLink insiders recommend…
When he first auditioned for Any Given Sunday director Oliver Stone to play quarterback Willie Beamen, an embittered bench-warmer prone to fits of vomiting before each snap, Jamie Foxx was sure he’d blown it. Stone, as subtle as an ice pick to the cornea, said as much–loud enough so Foxx,…
Appropriately, A Beautiful Mind does not offer a literal translation of the life of John Forbes Nash Jr., the mathematician whose work on game theories won him a Nobel prize in 1994. The film leaves out significant events, people and places; it amalgamates central figures, disguises prominent locations and hides…
College football’s bowl days are here, those glorious excuses to sit on your ass in front of the tube and drink beer through game after game after game. But since you’re in the Valley of the Sun, you can get off your duff and go catch a bowl game firsthand…
New Year’s Eve will find some 150,000 revelers packed cheek-by-jowl along Mill Avenue and environs at the Tempe Tostitos Fiesta Bowl Block Party. Here are the Top 10 reasons to go.No. 10: It’s big — the “block” covers about 4 million square feet of downtown Tempe and Tempe Beach Park…
David Salo’s colleagues and classmates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have absolutely no idea how he spends his free time. It’s not that the 32-year-old linguistics grad student is ashamed of his hobby (or obsession), which has occupied him for some 26 years. They simply cannot be bothered with it…
Since the horrors of dominator culture — destruction, devastation, dumb-assness — do not appear to be receding of their own accord, there’s great poignancy to the new cinematic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The film succeeds as massive, astonishing entertainment; enthralling…
Arizona Jewish Theatre Company’s production of Play It Again, Sam opens Saturday, December 22, at The Playhouse on the Park, in the Viad Corporate Center at 1850 North Central. Shows are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays, through January 6. Tickets are $25-$27, with $7 student rush tickets available 30 minutes before curtain. Call 602-264-0402 for more information.
If you’re dreaming of a white Christmas in Phoenix, maybe you’d better hit the snooze button. But if a bright Christmas will make up for any unfulfilled fantasies about precipitation, there are plenty of local light shows to give you a jolly holiday glow. Offering Yuletide eye candy and more…
It is December 5, the day AOL Time Warner-owned DC Comics has been anxiously awaiting for almost 15 years–the day writer-illustrator Frank Miller once more dons cape and cowl to resurrect the Dark Knight, his fiercely rendered vision of an obscenely obsessed middle-aged Batman. Today, stores will finally open their…
Lest I be mistaken for a holiday-hating Scrooge, I’ll open by mentioning that I’m writing this theater review surrounded by Christmas trees — three of them, all mine, and each trimmed to sagging by myself and my beloved, while we drank eggnog and ate wreath-shaped cookies and listened to The…
