No gratuitous violence, no blatant sex, minimal profanity. Must be a very short film festival. Passing the big-screen screening process at The Phoenix Jewish Film Festival is no simple task. Shel Pierson and his wife, Phyllis, who co-founded the fest nine years ago, devour a steady diet of movies, passing…
Thursday, February 19 Every weekend, news junkies across the country get an entertaining reward for their devotion to the headlines with National Public Radio’s quiz show Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!, which dares listeners and a panel of experts to discern real news from fake incidents. On…
“Ask your doctor if this poem is right for you,” Bill Campana begins innocently enough. “I took Levitra.” You can imagine what follows. Forget Browning and Byron — here are their professional descendants. Campana and poets like him are the sometimes funny, sometimes ribald, sometimes passionate participants in Mesa’s poetry…
Sat 2/21 Your boys don’t brake for art? Bring ’em along for the rides. Chandler’s “Saturday Music and Art in the Park” boasts a new attraction this go-around: the inaugural Classic Car and Hot Rod Show. Some 130 cars are set to roll in to Historic Downtown Chandler for the…
Sat 2/21 Who nuzzles our necks and sits all day on the couch with us when we’re sad? Dogs do. Pam Gaber knows the healing power of a pooch, so she started Gabriel’s Angels to take Fido’s fidelity to those who need it most. Volunteer Angels pad into Valley hospitals,…
Sat 2/21 People under the age of 21 need to see and be seen, too, so it’s cool that every once in a while an event like Empire’s Revenge comes up. Empire’s Revenge is an all-ages hip-hop and dance party being thrown at the Icehouse by local DJ Astonish and…
Sat 2/21 Is it really such a stretch to imagine Mozart decked out in hip-hop gear, penning odes to “the chronic” and engaging in an East Coast/West Coast-style feud with Beethoven? Hell yes it is, but it doesn’t mean that the disparate worlds of classical music and hip-hop can’t find…
With 50 First Dates, it seems as though Adam Sandler is trying to compile a Greatest Hits film, cobbling together the stuff that worked in his previous films in the hopes that it’ll play even better all in one go. There’s the falsetto comedy song bit from every episode of…
Some acts of courage command everyone’s respect — the firefighter’s return to a burning house to rescue a child, the infantryman’s sacrifice of self for a wounded comrade, the weary black woman’s refusal to yield her seat on a segregated bus. Sometimes, though, courage can feel clouded — especially when…
Gingerly open the signed and numbered, limited-edition portfolio of prints that accompanies “New Religions,” John Nelson’s new show at Gallery Materia, and try resisting the urge to smile at the first image: a big pair of tighty-whities. As with Nelson’s previous work, his paintings grab the viewer with deceptively simple…
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12 Downtown denizens and regular readers of Night & Day are surely familiar with No Festival Required, an eclectic monthly showcase of experimental short film and video work by independent local and national directors. Since June 2002 — has it really been that long? — Modified Arts has…
Although he’s been here all along, Charles Busch has finally arrived. After an estimable 30-year career in nearly every aspect of show biz — as an actor, illusionist, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, and a film and TV star — Busch became a national celebrity when his The Tale of the Allergist’s…
Greasy food and cheesy tchotchkes are staples of almost any Valley festival. But the Rathayatra Parade and Festival in Tempe on Saturday, February 14, promises something a bit different — a chance to touch the ethereal plane. Such spiritual transcendence comes by way of pulling a towering, 20-foot-high, crimson-domed, garland-anointed…
Wanna party with some celebrity swingers? Keep your pants on — we’re talkin’ softball. This Monday, February 16, the Scottsdale Charros present the 1st Pitch Celebrity Softball Game & All-Star Concert at Rawhide Wild West Town. Combining line drives and line dancing, the 1st case scenario includes a 3:30 p.m…
The book binds two women who share Collected Stories, Donald Margulies’ Pulitzer-nominated play chronicling the relationship between a successful writer and her protge. Over the course of six years, the characters navigate friendship and friction, as the student becomes her mentor’s confidante, colleague and, ultimately, rival. The Arizona Jewish Theatre…
On a Saturday sometime in the mid-’90s, the lives we were living — and the lunches we had just eaten — were erased forever. We were introduced to a couple of guys named Spike and Mike and the wonders of animation gone bad. Some days are a revelation, and any…
Seeing as how we don’t have children, we feel infinitely qualified to tell parents everywhere how to indulge theirs in a little something called “culture.” Far from suggesting near-impossible tasks such as getting them to read more and watch TV less, our suggestion comes in the form of music culled…
Jim Strait isn’t one of those whacked-out Star Trek fans. He doesn’t have a roomful of memorabilia from his favorite TV show; he doesn’t have a secret Klingon name; he doesn’t show up at my house in a Starship Enterprise crew shirt. Okay, so he does bring with him a…
The artistic offerings vary from metal giraffes to New York-sophisticated paintings. Before First Friday, there was First Thursday. For many years, snowbirds and equally gentle folk have flocked to Scottsdale on cool Thursday evenings, to sip wine and stroll through the galleries that line the city’s downtown streets. The artistic…
It was only a few days ago that Shane Carruth, software engineer-turned-filmmaker, was ready to walk away from the money on the table and keep his movie–78 minutes’ worth of cheapo celluloid that had, in a Utah instant, become as valuable as strands of gold. He had stopped answering his…
WaIt’s not so unusual to be bitten by a snake in Arizona. But it’s at least a little out of the ordinary to keep an Internet journal of your snakebite travails, especially when you refuse traditional treatment and attempt to cure yourself with prunes and meat tenderizer. Which is precisely…
Actors Theatre’s Stones in His Pockets is something of a conundrum: It’s a better-than-capably acted, expertly directed comedy that’s never more than amusing. It’s filled with goofy antics performed by silly characters (normally a winning combination in a comedy) who are often less than lovable. On opening night, this neatly…
