In a small Tempe strip mall, Marna Kay and Charissa Lucille are painting walls and hanging small paper zines in an artistic frame to go up on the wall. The pair has spent many long days preparing for the December 8 opening of the Valley’s newest gathering spot for local…
If your shopping list is stressing you out or you simply wish to support local artists instead of corporate mega stores this holiday season, these holiday marketplaces are for you. Each one will feature countless vendors with unique and handmade goods that will make even those hard-to-shop for relatives happy. …
Yes, Janis Joplin made a hell of a record out of Rodgers & Hart’s “Little Girl Blue,” but you’re right if you winced to learn that Amy Berg’s new documentary feature about Joplin takes that song as its title — and as its dismal argument and organizing principle. “I want…
So, you’re looking through all those holiday shopping advertisements in the newspaper (just kidding, we know it’s on your phone) and you realize you have no idea what you should get bae for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Winter Solstice/Festivus. Well, we can’t help you on that one (when in doubt, go Star Wars?), but…
The holiday season has us in its grip, so why not embrace and enjoy it? Along with the season come the seasonal celebrations. We’ve rounded up a list of December festivals that allow you soak up that holiday spirit. Many of these events also have holiday shopping as a focus…
Winter is coming, and so are the barrage of nerdy commentary about that latest Game of Thrones tease. You’ll have to wait until April to find out what’s happening in the seven kingdoms, but we found some things that could keep your inner nerd satisfied at least until the end…
It’s easy to get a steady flamenco fix in metro Phoenix, thanks to Flamenco Por La Vida, the dance company founded in 2009 by Angelina Ramirez, who continues to perform with the company and serve as its artistic director. This week, Flamenco Por La Vida presents its third Lluvia Flamenca…
While folks in many states are trying to find their cars beneath heaps of ice and snow, Arizonans get to enjoy seasonal fun outdoors without that kind of stress. There’s a slew of holiday events going on. Maybe you can’t make it to all of them, but you can certainly…
December is a wonderful time to be outdoors in Phoenix. With the city getting increasingly busy, and the holidays speedily slinging the days past, escaping into the cool desert is a great way step back and enjoy this time of year — and our surroundings. Plus, it’s a chance to…
Spend all your money on Black Friday shopping? That’s okay. It’s an expensive time of year, and we’re here to help you out as much as we can by providing the cheapest — actually, free-est — activities that will keep you out and about instead of sulking in broke sadness. …
Though movie-goers have known for a while that Harkins Camelview 5 is closing, the art house theater’s days are officially numbered. As of this writing, the much-loved 1973 movie house known for being a hub of indie cinema in the Valley has just over a week before its final films…
New Times picks the best arts and culture events and things to do from November 30 through December 3. ZooLights Your neighbor Carl and his Christmas display have nothing on ZooLights, the Phoenix Zoo’s annual showcase of flora and fauna dazzlingly constructed from millions of colorful bulbs. This year the zoo’s…
With the temperatures around Phoenix dropping below a million degrees, the snowbirds from the north are making their annual migration to the Valley of the Sun.For those of us who live here year-round, that only means that life is going to be more of a hassle, thanks to the sudden…
Booking special guests for a big geek convention often takes a lot of time, effort, patience, and persistence. Just ask Brandy Kuschel, who spends most of the year wrangling all manner of famed actors, artists, and geek icons for both Phoenix Comicon in the spring and its spinoff wintertime event,…
At a time in their lives when many families are shopping for their second house, the one with a media room and a guest suite, Paul and Keri Mosier have no plans of moving from their cozy home in the historic Coronado neighborhood. Built in 1928, the 914 square-foot Pueblo…
For whatever reason, it always seems like Phoenix is getting a bad rep — which shouldn’t be the case.We love Phoenix, and here are the top 10 reasons you should, too:…
In a 2001 interview, producer Lee Mendelson recalled the reaction of a CBS executive who attended a screening of A Charlie Brown Christmas shortly before it was scheduled to premiere, on December 9, 1965: “Well, it’s in the TV Guide logs — we gotta put it on the air. Nice…
Last week, the Oxford English Dictionaries announced its annual selection for Word of the Year. It was not “fleek,” or “Brexit” or “lumbersexual,” though all three of these were runners-up. The phrases “sharing economy” and “ad blocker” also made the short list, but didn’t make the Number One spot. No…
A mural once imbued with authentic local love has been transformed into an American Express ad. For several years now, people cruising down Central Avenue near Civic Space Park in downtown Phoenix have been greeted by a blast from the past —- a mural depicting a trio of local legends…
Maybe Cars and the Hot Wheels-ification of Pixar has been a good thing. Now that the storied studio has, like its rivals, puked onto our screens indifferent kid-distracting junk, its new movies come un-freighted from expectations of genius. Miserable as it was, Planes: Fire and Rescue (from corporate parent Disney…
The big breakthrough in Legend, the latest well-crafted studio throwback from writer-director Brian Helgeland (Payback, A Knight’s Tale, 42)? At long last, here’s one movie with two often incomprehensible Tom Hardy characters, sometimes muttering their Cockney swears at each other inside the same scene. Hardy plays twins, real-life gangsters who…
The heads of the City Dionysia, the Grecian playwriting competition that pitted Aeschylus against Sophocles and can be considered the original Oscars, had a rule: no original characters. Instead, the best creative minds of a generation — or really, a millennium — exhausted themselves finding new spins on, say, Medea…
