Consider some of the movies that were released in 1977: Star Wars. Close Encounters. Saturday Night Fever. All had their day in the sun (the first in the blinding light of Tatooine’s twin suns). One film that didn’t see the light of day that year was Charles Burnett’s Killer of…
While there ain’t no cure for the summertime blues, you can certainly dilute the effects by turning those blahs into booze and dancing the night away at French Kiss. Since March, the banging club event has made quite a name for itself (its opening night earned a spread in Spin),…
Shiver we timbers? We think not. The Arizona Diamondbacks’ lumber — formerly wee twigs — has finally started to smoke, and we don’t expect that a bunch of third-rate Johnny Depps like the Pittsburgh Pirates will have much to say about dousin’ the flame. As if, ye lowly sea dogs…
Last month, when Kevin Patterson, funnyman host of Grand Avenue LIVE!, traveled through the jungles of Colombia (yeah, that Colombia, the one currently immersed in a four-decade-strong guerrilla conflict), the buzz around downtown was whether he would 1) come back alive and 2) indulge in the crack pipe. We’re not…
Neil Simon. Big, splashy touring musical. “Hey, big spender” — va voom, va voom — “spennnnnd a little time with me.” This does not sound artistically promising. However, if you spend your time and money on such big-buck bangs, you’ll dig the Broadway revival of Sweet Charity, which stars Paige…
Have you seen the skit depicting Michael Vick’s love for animals? (Hold your horses, PETA.) Uh, well, we’re using the power of suggestion — something we’ve never been accused of before, right? — to hint at what y’all may find during the Galapagos Longform Bingo Jam Spectacular. The improv night,…
I’ve always been a sucker for the graphic print. Today, printmaking is considered a valid process used by high-end visual artists. But the medium hasn’t always been held in such regard. Because they could be produced quickly and in mass volume, prints were often considered throwaway street art. But if…
With all this talk of going green and cleaning up our carbon footprints, it’s no secret the world is knee-deep in trash. Changing old wasteful habits can prove difficult, particularly in a world of heavy industry. But leave it to an artist to find a way to appropriate scrap metal…
Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema 1928-1954 (Kino) Cashback (Magnolia) The Contract (First Look) Crazy Legs Conti: Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating (Blue Underground) Five Dedicated to Ozu (Kino) The Host (Magnolia) Live Free or Die (THINKfilm) The Long Weekend (Lionsgate) The Monster Squad: Two-Disc 20th Anniversary Edition (Lionsgate) The…
In the observation room of the spacecraft Icarus II, passengers sit on a bench in front of a large, rectangular screen displaying a view of what lies ahead. They gaze at the spectacle as you might marvel at special effects on some ostentatious plasma monitor. A seething orb of gas…
Sadly, No Reservations is not the big-screen adaptation of Anthony Bourdain’s snack-gulping, risk-taking Travel Channel show. You’ll find no monkey brains here, nor any attempts to party down in Beirut whilst Hezbollah and Israel blow each other to smithereens. This is just more of the same from the franchise factory…
Uplifted beyond its merits by a stunning performance from Marion Cotillard, the humdrum biopic of Edith Piaf, La Vie En Rose, jogs obligingly along with Piaf the legend rather than the woman. It’s not hard to do, given the fuzzy borders between Piaf’s undeniably scarred life and her relentless gift…
Examining the roots of Transformers: The Game is deep stuff: It’s a video game based on a movie based on a cartoon based on a toy. But unlike most laughably forced movie tie-in games (Da Vinci Code for the PS2, anyone?), there’s good sense in creating one devoted to giant…
Hard Boiled: Two-Disc Ultimate Edition (Weinstein) The Criterion version of John Woo’s masterpiece, about two cops (the overworked Chow Yun-Fat and the undercover Tony Leung) gunning for the Hong Kong Triads, is still the “ultimate” collection. It has a better commentary track (with Woo and Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary,…
In his big-screen debut, Homer Simpson utters the “D’oh!” heard ’round the world — or at least as far away as Washington, D.C. (which, given the unspecified coordinates of Springfield, might not be that far at all), where President Schwarzenegger and an overzealous EPA chief (voiced by Albert Brooks) rush…
Fausto Fernandez at The Latin American Art Gallery: We all need a little instruction — something to give us direction and guidance. Without it, wed be flailing aimlessly in this life, accidentally screwing each other over in a nonsensical world of no consequence. Fausto Fernandez taps into the need for…
Why are the three touring acts on the Queer Femme Dance Punk tour billed as such? Uh, because they’re, like, gay (duh), plus they wanted to be called “queer” rather than an offensive term spouted by some redneck clown. Jenna Riot (Casio-infused EDM), Diamond Beats (fronted by feminist pornographer Courtney…
Mountain bike in the moonlight? Kind of sounds like a lyric from a cheesy ´80s power ballad penned by a sex-fueled hair-metal band, huh? We can just imagine some butt-rock freak in baking-flour makeup making love with the mic and using the bike’s aluminum frame as a metaphor for intercourse:…
You’re a cultured individual. You read high-art fiction like Wizard of the Crow by Ngûgî Wa Thiong’o, listen to the odd out-of-print Milford Graves jazz record and to Daniel Johnston’s lo-fi masterpiece Hi, How Are You?, and support the visual arts. But does art featuring smoking-hot naked chicks engaging in…
Today’s indie music is so high school. You’re in or out based on the whim of those taste police called rock critics. Take The Offspring, the much-excoriated band that was long ago exiled to the loser den behind the Ag building. Jesus, we’d take the sublimely ridiculous “Pretty Fly (for…
Glendale equals nothing but lackluster sports franchises and puke-colored strip malls, true? False. Yung Face hosts the Hood Cartel hip-hop eve at the west side’s newest club. Trea-G, Crondo, Bruce Wayne, and K_Neezy are also scheduled to blow up the spot…
We know some artists are natural outcasts, but we can’t figure out what’s up Jacob Safari’s butt. On his MySpace page, the Tucson musician, better known as Bark Bark Bark, touts that “everyone hates me” and that he’s “100% unprofessional.” Locally, he has burned a few bridges with Grand Avenue…
