Scene by scene, This Is England gets the job done. Drawing on memories of a specific place and time — England in the early ’80s — writer-director Shane Meadows sketches with a keen eye for detail and the contours of experience. He nails the look and feel of a shabby…
Late in Rendition, in case you’ve been blind and deaf enough not to have cottoned to the drift, a tense Washington exchange on the legitimacy of bundling dark-skinned Americans off to secret prisons abroad takes place. On one side is a driven young senatorial aide (Peter Sarsgaard), on the other…
Killer timing! Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), Jason Kohn’s vivid, lean, and hungry documentary about São Paulo’s fatalistic food chain of extreme poverty, violence, unmitigated corruption, and overwhelming wealth arrived last month just as Vanity Fair’s “Viva Brazil!” issue hit the stands. Can’t we find a new country to fetishize?…
With Halloween just around the corner, time is running out for urbanites of the PHX to conjure up a killer costume for the annual celebration of everything thrilling and chilling. So whatcha gonna be? Better come up with something good, ace, and not just because you’re running out of bedsheets…
After more than a year of scouring my wee brain to come up with a reason not to hate the never-gonna-get-here light rail, I’ve finally come up with something: This looming transit system may very well bring about the resurrection of Christown Mall, a once-important destination for those of us…
Love him or despise him, head Jackass Johnny Knoxville has made millions from getting kicked in the yambag. Had YouTube arrived before Jackass, Knoxville, Steve-O, and the show’s other gutterpunk masochists might still be slinging French fries, getting burnt by hot grease in a strictly non-recreational way. But with a…
Transformers (DreamWorks) No doubt, Michael Bay’s slam-bang action-figure commercial doesn’t play nearly as well on TV, no matter how high-def your screen; this demands to be seen on a screen the size of a skyscraper and heard on speakers as large as jet engines. As such, the first half-hour plays…
We should give credit to our cowboy spirit, because it’s taught us Zonies how to get down and party. We’ve all been boozing since we were 12, and we’ve gotten really good at it. But unlike those who settled this dirt field with night after night of getting thrashed at…
Watch the Valley’s best oarsmen and women row row row their boats at a prime marina spot during the Hot Head Regatta. The men’s, women’s, and mixed rowing event of the year features competitors treading water on a three-mile course at Town Lake. Sat., Oct. 20, 7 a.m.-noon, 2007…
Knowing the pervs who read Night & Day, we betcha you’ll keep reading when we tell you that we’ve found something that serves up “mental foreplay and verbal intercourse.” If you’ve made it this far, told you so. Now, we should tell you about this unique spot, huh? Well, it’s…
In a culture where kiddy games like kickball and dodgeball have infiltrated the adult leisure sect — what would Jung say about the parallel between low IQs and our collective unconscious, hmm? — we’re surprised that the Rock Paper Scissors Tournament is just now making its debut into our conscious…
One thing that doesn’t make sense to us is why bands choose to perform in our nuclear town during the summer. So we bow before the folks running the SoCo (Southern Comfort) Music Experience, who must know what’s up (or maybe they’re just hopped up on the fine whiskey brew),…
Next Lounge is hopping the fright game, so grab some Night Train, release your snake brain, and make for the dope lane around Professa Dank’s fame. Well, it’s clumsy, but since our rap lessons come from a one-legged pirate, who can you blame? No blundering zombies working the tables up…
Some believe that creating books is a talent of the elite, others that the printed word is a manipulation of the masses. As fireman Montag asserts in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, “Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave.” The collective named ABBA (A Buncha Book Artists)…
Seems most folks around here still haven’t wrapped their heads around the notion of graffiti as art. In a land where the sand-colored wall is the signature contribution to design, graf’s considered little more than blight. So props to the Phoenix Art Museum for seeing the writing on the wall…
Okay, so Phoenix isn’t a cultural mecca. Big whoopin’ deal, ’cause we got pop culture, baby, and one of our societal claims to fame — skateboarding — permeates everything from music and fashion to film and art. Watch these elements coalesce during the opening of the “DECK” invitational skateboard exhibition…
Old golfing joke: Fred got home from his Sunday round of golf later than normal and very tired. “Bad day at the course?” his wife asked. “Everything was going fine,” he said. “Then Harry had a heart attack and died on the 10th tee.” “Oh, that’s awful!” she cried. “You’re…
If you have a pulse, you probably listen to music. Auditory inspiration is something human beings latch onto – especially when we’re feeling intense moments of emotion. Your chick broke up with you, cue up “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart. You just got a promotion? Pop in “I Feel Good”…
Walking down Roosevelt Row has become an art form in itself. Avoiding the pitfalls of light-rail construction and handling the transients asking for money — all while trying to catch the eye of that handsome indie fellow who’s on his way to Carly’s — is no easy feat. But we’ve…
If First Friday is Phoenix’s art/fashion/music love child, then SMoCA Nights is the older brother who aced law school at Harvard and married a B-list celebrity. While Birkenstocks and dreadlocks define the dress code on Roosevelt, the Scottsdale art scene is strictly dress to impress. The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary…
Light-rail construction, deteriorating inflatable rubber dams, and a vice mayor named Hut. Tempe can sometimes lean to the frightening side. Now Mill Avenue ratchets up the scare factor even more with the third annual International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival. This year’s bill of fare includes retro classics such as…
The downside of being Vietnam, Southeast Asia’s Grand Central Station: centuries of Chinese, Portuguese, French, and American boot prints (and land mines) in your flowerbed. The upside: cultural and artistic variety and cross-fertilization out the yin yang, as displayed in the “Contemporary Vietnamese Paintings” exhibit. The show, featuring works running…
