D.I.Y. PHX: from galleries to grub Venue guide and events listings (PDF 2MB) By Benjamin Leatherman On the Map: take the detour Click here to view map (PDF 3.8MB) D.I.Y. Downtown: blaze the trail Stiletto: gallery of sound Studio Visit: Lesli Englert Studio Visit: Janet De Berge Lange Studio Visit:…
A gritty portrait of ghetto life in contemporary South Africa, Tsotsi packs an unexpected emotional wallop. Gavin Hood’s film tells a story of violence and redemption that’s even more remarkable when you consider that neither of the lead performers had ever acted in a movie previously. It’s little wonder that…
“You want an easy job, go join the Red Cross,” someone says well into Thank You for Smoking, a gleeful farce about capitalist mendacity based on Christopher Buckley’s 1994 bestseller. The implication, made drummingly plain in the film’s every bon mot, is that our ethical barometers skew lazily toward goodness,…
Given Inside Man’s bullpen (director Spike Lee, stars Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster), moment in political history, and advertising, you could be forgiven for anticipating some kind of socially relevant, perhaps even politically volatile dramatic smashup — something with teeth, ambition, a functioning cerebrum, and a lusty relationship with reality…
It’s a humid summer day in 1976, and my sister and her kids and I are going someplace in her big blue Plymouth. I’m up front with Sis; the kids are in the back, and all three of them are singing something called “The Very Strange Medley” at the tops…
Lesli Englert, 32, is a study in contrasts. Although this tall and wispy blonde painter from South Dakota exudes friendliness and small-town charm, she’s created colorfully perverse and sharply rendered surreal paintings filled with almost carnivalesque fantastic realism, anthropomorphized animals, and tragic characters boasting huge kewpie-doll-like heads and soft features…
Janet De Berge Lange, 59, grew up in Arizona — a fact that’s evident in her popular assemblage art, which often includes bits of old neon signs from Phoenix businesses or even a photo of Lange herself as a 6-year-old in cowgirl drag. She’s survived the downtown art scene’s various…
Eyeless sirens trapped in the detritus of urban wastelands. Iconic gas-mask-clad craniums sprouting antlers like human jackalopes. Jigsawed female forms splayed out beside abandoned automata. Behold, y’all, the bizarrely bewitching realm that photographer Dayvid LeMmon, 23, creates with his camera and computer. Outwardly, the Glendale resident plays the unassuming, stringy-haired…
Phoenix artists Carrie Marill and Matt Moore, both 29, couldn’t be more different from each other — on the surface, anyway. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area; he grew up on a farm in Waddell. He is a fourth-generation farmer known for plowing floor plans of tract…
As celebrity career paths go, Sonic the Hedgehog has been tiptoeing dangerously close to Baldwin Brothers territory lately. Last year brought the embarrassing Shadow the Hedgehog, a dark title in which Sonic’s brooding alter ego wielded a gun, earning it the unflattering nickname “Grand Theft Hedgehog.” Still, at first blush,…
Breasts: A Documentary (First Run) Honest, compassionate, and funny, this documentary is remarkable for the bravery of its participants, who bare their breasts as they speak about them. The film delivers 22 women of all shapes, sizes, ages, races, and orientations — all of whom have interesting, surprising things to…
Broadway Palm Dinner Theater: Part of the Prather Family of dinner theaters, this local branch is now in its fifth season. The chain tends to share shows, which means we get to see out-of-towners hoofing the stage. Typical surf-and-turf menu. Current show: Funny Girl, through April 16. 5247 East Brown…
Natives: Arizona Jewish Theatre Company artistic director Janet Arnold stars in Janet Neipris’s contemporary comedy as Viola, a middle-aged divorcée trying to get on with her life after her three grown daughters are gone. When they come for a visit, it’s just in time to interrupt Viola’s romantic summer trip…
The Adventures of Brer Rabbit (Universal) Batman Beyond: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) The Billy Wilder DVD Collection (Paramount) Bukowski: Born Into This (Magnolia) The Busby Berkeley Collection (Warner Bros.) Capote (Sony) Chicken Little (Buena Vista) Crackheads Gone Wild (Xtreme Films) Dear Wendy (Fox Lorber) Derailed (Weinstein Co.) Dreamer:…
Being adopted by and revered in a city where you’ve lived for the greater part of a decade isn’t impressive. But, when that city just happens to be New Orleans and you are a white soul, blues and R&B singer from San Francisco, the feat becomes legendary. Such is life…
“Sensual Pleasures” at the Herberger Gallery: Phoenix artist Jeanne Collins’ installation Biopsy Banquet is the standout in this group show of predictable erotic-themed pieces. Her gleefully grotesque feast fit for Hannibal Lecter consists of ceramic entrees made from human organs. There’s Stomach l’orange with Sliced Beets and Green Beans, Lungs…
The posters for V for Vendetta read “An uncompromising vision of the future from the creators of The Matrix trilogy.” Uncompromising? It simply isn’t possible to translate Alan Moore’s multilayered comic-book masterpiece into a two-hour movie without making cuts that oversimplify, and it’s certainly not feasible to expect producer Joel…
So wait. It’s a movie about the longest criminal trial in U.S. history, it’s directed by the legendary Sidney Lumet, and it stars . . . Vin Diesel in a wig? In a role originally intended for Joe Pesci? Can Lumet be serious? Actually, no. The characters may be based…
Hollywood’s a sucker for cross-dressing. When the American Film Institute chose the 100 greatest comedies of all time, a pair of drag films — Some Like It Hot and Tootsie — earned the top two slots. From Operation Petticoat to White Chicks, slapping falsies on a dude is the fast…
John Fante’s novel Ask the Dust, published in 1939 and all but forgotten until its 1980 reissue with a Charles Bukowski foreword, is very much a work of thinly veiled autobiography; only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. Its protagonist, a struggling writer named Arturo Bandini, shared…
Her fans include Helena Bonham Carter and film director Tim Burton, and her line of funky Chicano folk art has been featured in better boutiques for more than a decade. Kathy Cano Murillo is everywhere these days: a regular on KPNX-TV Channel 12’s Arizona Midday; author of a nationally syndicated…
Heather Gargon, 22, has logged many miles since dropping out of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. After taking a cross-country trip to scope out a new place to live two and a half years ago, the redhead from rural Ohio chose Phoenix for its warm climate and low-key…
