Gracie Whyte and Laura Berg have a thing for dancing in unexpected places. The women behind the Los Angeles-based dance duo known collectively as WHYTEBERG have performed to Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life” in the left turn lane of a street in Echo Park, and to the Beatles’ “Don’t Let Me…
New Times picks the best arts and culture events and things to do from January 29 to 31. Spring 2016 Season’s Opening Reception Spring semester at Arizona State University means a new season for its on-campus art museum, and with it comes the Spring 2016 Season’s Opening Reception. The commencement offers…
Home bodies, take note, because you’re going to want to leave your well-decorated nests for this one. The 2016 Modern Phoenix Home Tour has been announced for April 10, and tickets go on sale February 1. We’ll wait while you set a reminder on your phone — a smart move,…
There are worse ways for a television star to transition into film than a horror movie. There are also better movies to do it in than The Boy. Still, Lauren Cohan of The Walking Dead shines bright in William Brent Bell’s dim genre exercise, a vital presence opposite a lifeless…
There’s essentially one joke in the Kung-Fu Panda movies. A ridiculous, adorable creature executes some extravagant action-flick flourish — vaulting over roofs, dropping a bad guy, striking a poster-perfect superhero pose. Then the battle music fades and that adorable creature breaks badass character to remind us it’s totally relatable, even…
Here’s an odd thing to say of a lavishly expensive 3D IMAX maritime disaster flick that hits theaters just a month after the last one: They don’t make them like this anymore. There’s a reason for that, of course — the parents and grandparents who like ’em stolid and corny…
We’ve all been there. A sizeable head cold left me laid out in bed, browsing my TV for something to keep my mind occupied. Since Hulu knows me better than I know myself, my recommendations featured The Hills right in front. I watched the show in real time while living…
There may be several auctions happening in metro Phoenix this January, but there’s only one Russo and Steele. Known as the “World’s Most Exciting Collector Automobile Auction,” Russo and Steele has a high-energy, frenzied “auction in the round” format. New Times had the chance to talk with John Bemis, Russo…
Get your Monday face ready for a Wednesday, because RuPaul’s Drag Race Battle of the Season 2016 Extravaganza Tour hits Phoenix on April 27 at Celebrity Theatre. Delight in a show revolving around eight of your favorite RPDR contestants: Courtney Act, Adore Delano, Ginger Minj, Miss Fame, Phi Phi O’Hara, Alaska…
Break out your best happy dance. Choreographer, performer, writer, and educator Liz Lerman recently joined the faculty for the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at ASU. As Institute Professor, she’ll lead programs and courses that span disciplines within and beyond the Herberger Institute. Lerman founded the Liz Lerman…
New Times picks the best things to do in metro Phoenix from January 25 through 29. Strange Brew There are plenty of films out there that spotlight man’s enduring affection for beer, but none so memorable as the 1983 release Strange Brew. So it seems rather appropriate that downtown Mesa’s first…
Sesame Street has relocated to an alternate universe. Everything there is the same, but also slightly different. Blame gentrification, or the show’s new network, or the hostile scheming of that old meany, Oscar the Grouch. Whatever the reason, every child’s favorite inner city suburb has changed. The venerable kiddie show…
“Who can give me the derivative of X?” a high-school teacher asks early in the YA-apocalypse mashup The 5th Wave. As soon as she asks that, the lights blink off, everybody’s cellphones die and jets tumble from the sky. We never hear a student respond, but here’s my Official Fan…
Call it a dissenting opinion if you must, but Dirty Grandpa has sporadic moments of hilarity: the spontaneous “USA! USA!” chant that erupts after an out-of-his-mind Zac Efron announces to spring breakers that he’s just unknowingly smoked crack, or Aubrey Plaza commanding as foreplay that Robert De Niro, as the…
New Times is seeking talented freelance writers to contribute to its arts and culture section. Are you obsessed with movies, pop culture, comedy, TV shows, video games, or comic books? That’s just a glimpse at what we cover — in addition to fashion, the dating scene, and general geekery. If…
January has been a rough one for fans of the arts — with the deaths of David Bowie, Lemmy, Alan Rickman, and Glenn Frey. We’ve seen tributes to Bowie and Frey pop up across the state. And starting on Friday, January 22, Harkins Valley Art will celebrate the legacies of Bowie…
Shooting photographs has long been a part of William LeGoullon’s art practice. But about three and a half years ago, the trajectory of his work changed after LeGoullon tried his hand at shooting a gun. “I went out shooting with some friends,” he says. “It’s a strangely seductive experience.” They’d…
Everyone’s got a story to tell (or so it seems). The Phoenix literary scene is in full force, in part, due to the many live storytelling events popping up all over the city. “There’s a nice feedback that’s occurring between these well-attended shows,” says Jake Friedman, founder of Four Chambers…
Sara Cochran and Ally Haynes-Hamblen have been promoted to directors of Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, respectively, according to a January 20 announcement from the Scottsdale Cultural Council. Cochran will also serve as chief curator at the museum. Both Cochran and Haynes-Hamblen had…
“Every film is a documentary of its actors,” Jean-Luc Godard once said. Starring Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling, Andrew Haigh’s shattering marital drama 45 Years expands that maxim: As we gaze at and listen to these performers, whose characters reflect on nearly a half-century together — almost as long as…
The movie they’re selling isn’t the movie this is. Sony Pictures Classics is peddling Nicholas Hytner’s film of Alan Bennett’s play and memoir The Lady in the Van like it’s the usual twinkly Best Exotic time-with-our-elders holiday entertainment. There’s Maggie Smith, dressed up as what my grandmother used to call…
A dry-rubbed lark from the often harrowing ultra-realist territories of the Romanian New Wave, The Treasure is about almost nothing — a shaggy-dog daydream as flyaway as its protagonists’ thoughts of instant wealth. Director Corneliu Porumboiu, whose 2006 12:08 East of Bucharest may still be the movement’s funniest film, reportedly…
