“He’s pretty heavy,” Diane Putnam says of her late husband, Gary. “But I’m used to toting him around.” She’s talking about the big-as-a-brick box containing Gary’s ashes that she’s kept with her since he died six years ago after a brief battle with cancer. But there was a week late…
I won’t add my voice to the cacophony of complaints about the gratuitous nudity forever on display at Nearly Naked Theatre, in part because I don’t care, but also because it’s bad form to bitch that the players are undraped when we’ve been warned ahead of time. The name of…
DC Comics has kept its superheroes locked in a fortress of solitude for almost a decade, forcing the likes of Superman and Batman to warm the bench while longtime rival Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man and the Hulk and the X-Men and Blade galloped up and down the playing field. Not counting…
For all their exceptionality, there is also a numbing sameness to the movies of Hayao Miyazaki, the revered animator who has bewitched Japanese audiences since the late 1970s and bewildered American ones since 1999, when Princess Mononoke was among the first of his movies to receive significant stateside release. There…
It won’t ruin anyone’s experience of 3-Iron, the new film by Korean writer/director Kim Ki-duk, to reveal that it closes with a single epigraph: “It’s hard to tell that the world we live in is either reality or a dream.” Presumably, the correct translation would replace “that” with “whether”; even…
When he left Mesa Community College for Chicago State back in 1999, Tony Jones knew in his gut that he’d be back in Phoenix as a pro baller. Of course, he hoped he’d be wearing an NBA uniform. But six years later, Jones, a.k.a. “Go Get It,” is playing straight-up…
Matt Brown’s house is filled with painted doors, boxes of spray paint, secondhand canvases, paintings propped up in corners, and palettes crusted with layers of coagulated colors. He says a lot of cool new Tempe artists drop by just to hang out and paint. “It’s my house, but it’s also…
WED 6/22Carpetbag Brigade finds fire fascinating, and not in a Beavis-and-Butt-head, preteen-pyro kind of way. The members of the “physical theater company” will emulate the flames of the 2002 fires that ravaged northern Arizona in an acrobatic, stilt-walking production called Mudfire, showing Wednesday, June 22, at the Paper Heart, 750…
SAT 6/18Elvis. He’s in the building. He’s left the damn building. Oh, it really doesn’t even matter, because fans everywhere still seem to witness and connect with that jumpsuit-wearin’, love-me-tender, peanut-butter-eatin’ crooner on some plane, be it earthly or astral. In fact, he’ll be making an appearance via the body…
MON 6/20Vince McMahon has no shame. Throughout the existence of World Wrestling Entertainment (and its previous incarnations), the pompous promoter has created controversial characters to draw attention to his brand of sports entertainment. Among the many “heels” (or bad guys) Vinnie Mac has conjured over the years, none has been…
SAT 6/18Valley metal band Eroticide believes the fastest way to a woman’s heart is through her ribcage. The band swears that “God made love to kill all of us” in the lyrics to their song “Cyanide Orgasm.” Now Eroticide comes to spew its views while mutilating female mannequins and bludgeoning…
High on the list of life’s great mysteries, way up near “Why do we wait until a pig is dead to cure it?” and “Why do women sometimes shave off their eyebrows and then draw them back on?” is this one: “Why does dinner theater always suck so bad?” On…
THU 16 There’s a secret cove in Fat Cats, a room like a big cave, covered in mirrors, with disco balls twinkling off the black-and-white art-deco walls and plush black leather seats. The downtown neighborhood biker bar at 915 Grand Avenue is mostly known for its billiards and beer, but…
The group exhibition “Fur, Feathers and Family: Our Relationship With Animals” at Arizona State University Art Museum is far better than its name. The show of animal-themed art is aimed at children, which explains the facile title. It’s the centerpiece of the museum’s sixth annual Family Fun Day (July 16,…
“Trench Coat” at Phoenix Art Museum: You thought the belt on your beloved trench coat was there to accentuate your hourglass figure. Turns out it’s a place to hang hand grenades and pistols. That’s just one of the tidbits you’ll learn at this exhibition tracing the coat from its origin…
Ah, progress. It’s given us better medicine, faster computers, tastier snack cakes. But often as not, progress in Phoenix involves the obliteration of our already tenuous local history. And while we’ve grown used to city landmarks being torn down to make room for another Osco, we’ve learned to rely on…
The consequences of marital discord in Mr. & Mrs. Smith go way beyond sleeping on the couch or maintaining icy silence at the breakfast table. Thanks to a cartoonish premise by British screenwriter Simon Kinberg — and the dictates of the summer-movie marketplace — the battling Smiths of the title…
About a year ago, buzz started building among horror fans about a French slasher movie titled Haute Tension, about two girls who go to a country house and get terrorized by a maniac in workman’s coveralls. It had been well received in Europe, and horror geeks with Web sites here…
Robert Rodriguez just keeps cranking ’em out. This hasn’t always been a good thing — Spy Kids 2 and 3 felt rushed in a way that the first one didn’t, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico looked cheap compared to its cinematic predecessor, Desperado. But the more Rodriguez keeps…
It’s always difficult to pan a movie that features good actors, important issues, and noble intentions. But In My Country, a romantic drama about two journalists covering the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in post-apartheid South Africa, leaves little choice. Clunky and obvious, it makes the mistake of asking drama…
If you’re trying to navigate the gulf between the absolutist view inside Fortress Bush and the relativist politics of Western Europe, you need go no further than Brothers, a provocative new drama from Denmark. Superficially, it’s an intimate and rather self-contained film, but director Susanne Bier (Open Hearts, The One…
What do you call a guy who’s old enough to remember “when Andre the Giant was skinny,” but still puts on stage makeup and sings in a heavy-metal band? Prophet, of course. He’s the ringleader of local “carnimetal” band St. Madness. And he’s stoked because he and his bandmates –…
