We know: The beginning of the work week sucks. But if you take a quick look at the calendar, you’ll see we’re off to a pretty good week of art events, sporting events, dance parties, and more. Here are our must-see events from now to the weekend . . …
If Bob Ross were alive today, he’d be painting happy little trees all over the place in ecstatic fervor for all the arts and culture happenings in Phoenix. To help you see the forest for the trees, here’s a recap of the top arts and culture stories of the week…
Bless the girls and guys of Lena Dunham’s HBO television series Girls. Without them, we’d have far less awkward conversations with our boyfriends, mothers, and coworkers and even fewer reasons to talk about the seemingly ever-present boobs of Dunham, who’s the writer, producer, and star of her own show. There…
Sarah Hubbell is a big fan of Martha Stewart. She loves her how-tos on everything from garden parties to handmade wrapping paper and admires her simple, yet elegant style. But when Hubbell moved back to Phoenix after short stints in Hollywood and New York City, got married, and had a…
There’s a good chance of spotting someone of short stature while out celebrating St. Patrick’s Day this weekend, as local bars such as Giligin’s in Scottsdale (home to Chuey the Rock ‘n’ Roll Midget) have a tendency to hire little people to don leprechaun costumes to enliven their parties. Such…
The setup: A few years back, playwright Jordan Harrison was approached by Anne Kaufmann of The Civilians, NYC’s “investigative theater” troupe, who’d become fascinated with intentional communities such as Hasidic Jews, nuns, and the Amish, bearing transcripts of interviews and a request to let the concept marinate and come up…
Here they are — your five best bets for a good time out on the town this weekend. “The Joe and Jan Show” @ 335 Commons It’s no secret Governor Jan Brewer and Sheriff Joe Arpaio deal in antics. The duo has done more than inspire headlines, though, as 11…
Mary Shindell, Carolyn Lavender, and Monica Aissa Martinez are no strangers to working together. The three Phoenix-based visual artists work in a variety of media, but with similar scientific and obsessive attention to detail. Shindell, Lavender, and Martinez have showcased their work around the Valley, including Modified Arts in downtown…
Producer of ASU’s Performance in the Borderlands, Mary Stephens, is back with Banned Plays, to bring awareness to performances that have been kept off the stage. This weekend, she’ll present And Then Came Tango, about the real-life story of two male penguins that raised a baby penguin together in New…
In January 2012, Eric Firestone and Carlo McCormick (with the help of a few heavy-machine-driving professionals) dragged three DC Super 3 planes, a C45, a Lockheed VC140, a C97 cockpit, and dozens of nosecones out of the Tucson boneyard near Pima Air and Space Museum, and gave them new life…
Steve Wiley is Jackalope Ranch’s Parent Hood. He’s a slightly unorthodox father of five who will weigh in weekly with his mildly rebellious views and observations. If you’d like to see how he came to write this column, watch the intro video. This week, he breaks a childhood oath and…
The wealth of local bars and nightlife hangouts gearing up for Irish-inspired festivities this coming weekend might as well call it St. Patrick’s Days, since the partying is happening over more than just a single 24 hour period. It’s a boon for both their bottom lines and liquor sales, as…
Elisabeth Moss’s face is far from the only reason to savor Top of the Lake, Jane Campion’s smart, bracing, hugely enjoyable mystery rural noir Top of the Lake, which premieres on the Sundance Channel on Monday, March 18. But that pale-to-radiant instrument of hers—a mouth that suggests her characters might…
The six-foot saguaros dangling from the ceiling in “Creature-Man-Nature” at Mesa Contemporary Arts look like they could descend on you at any moment, so you’ll have to overcome the urge to duck while walking through the exhibition. Up through April 28, the multimedia show features works by Mary Shindell, Carolyn…
Steve Carell’s gift is for men who might drown in their own obliviousness. Like his Daily Show reporter or The Office’s Michael Scott, his 40-year-old virgin lived in terror that someone might catch on to the fact that he knows nothing about subjects he purports to have mastered. When his…
Puberty is sex and sex is murder in Stoker, a Hitchcockian stew of hothouse familial jealousy, sadism, and psychosis all tied together by one teenage girl’s homicidal coming of age. Psychosexual imagery permeates every inch of renowned South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s stateside debut. A blood-tipped pencil and water dripping…
Like the yearning Jimmy Van Huesen/Johnny Burke torch song that lends it its title, Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love is a sly, teasing riff on the heart’s irrational stirrings. But the film’s true spirit is even better encapsulated by Training a Parrot, an early 20th-century painting by the Japanese…
If you happen to have a vacation day to burn, it’s most definitely gonna come in handy during St. Patrick’s weekend. That’s because the annual Irish holiday happens to fall on a Sunday this year, which might ordinarily throw a kink into your plans to engage in a massive Celtic-style…
Unlike many fledgling web series that use broad comedic strokes to up the laughs per second, faux-vlogging gem My Bastard Son combines the naturalistic acting of shows like The Office with absurd circumstances and very specific characters. The grainy, five-minute video shows James Urbaniak (American Splendor) trying to connect with…
What a difference a quarter of a century makes. Twenty-five years ago, what’s now known as the arts district in downtown Phoenix was largely a single-family-home neighborhood that was rezoned as a high-rise incentive district. The rezoning was supposed to bring in huge, dense residential and office buildings. Instead, it…
With film, dance, music, and poetry, an assortment of Phoenix-area creative types will retell the classic fable of Faust. Dubbed Faust 2013, the inter-arts interpretation of the German tale of a man’s downfall is set to the 1926 silent film version of Faust, directed by F. W. Murnau.Accompanying the film…
Actor/author/comedian Paul Reiser is not the kind of guy who uses self-deprecating humor — even though Comedy Central once ranked him 77th out of the “100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time.” But the guy’s had mega-success. Mad About You ran for seven seasons. And while his other forays haven’t always…
