Remember way back when Bridesmaids was released, and Manohla Dargis referred to it as “unexpectedly funny”? (It’s amazing what still survives the editorial gauntlet at The New York Times). And then a couple of months ago, podcast host Adam Carolla cast his douchey feelings into words regarding women’s inferior capacity…
Like antidepressants, artificial sugars, Botox, and other miracle inventions of the past century, corporate culture became an omnipresent fact of life before anyone could know how it would affect the human body and brain on an extended timeline. One way to look at writer/director Craig Zobel’s second feature, Compliance —…
Weddings make such bitchin’ film scenarios because the stakes are believably high: If anything goes wrong, social opprobrium, the loss of your beloved, or both can ensue, right in front of your disdainful parents, the clergy, and probably Vince Vaughn or somebody. Directors have placed every obvious symbol of holy…
Nearly Naked Theatre has joined the fray and moved its curtain time from the more traditional 8 p.m. to a half-hour earlier, and therefore I — not having paid attention to these details — missed the first 15 minutes of Parallel Lives, its season opener. Which turned out not to…
The story goes that while filming in Tunisia in the summer of 1980, Steven Spielberg avoided the dysentery that afflicted most of the cast and crew of Raiders of the Lost Ark by holing up in his hotel room with a suitcase full of SpaghettiOs. Like most studio-approved behind-the-scenes errata,…
The big movie event of September will be the anticipated latest from a certain filmmaker who signs his films with the surname Anderson and a pair of initials, a prodigious talent who burst onto the scene with a stylish entry in the mid-’90s crime-thriller wave and never left. The master…
“I’ve made six movies, and I feel like I’m only just finally figuring out how this business fucking works,” Paul Thomas Anderson says on an August afternoon in Queens, New York, where later that night he will preview his latest film. The movie is The Master, Anderson’s first in the…
The Mighty Zulu Kingz are way old school, to say the least. In fact, the members of the infamous Bronx b-boy and graf art crew, which spun off of Afrika Bambaataa’s renowned Universal Zulu Nation back in November 1973, were ruining cardboard and transforming brick walls into masterpieces while your…
Five years ago, Rachel and Jim Malloy applied their funky aesthetic and love for locally made clothing and accessories and set up shop in downtown Phoenix. Ever since, Bunky Boutique (named for Rachel’s grandmother) has been a sure stop on any of our gift-finding missions — yes, including those for…
The work of Venezuelan-born artist Saskia Jordá is often influenced by its place. Now Phoenix-based, the artist specializes in site-specific installations and has filled rooms at the Scottsdale Public Library, a storefront on Mill Avenue, and corners of Shemer Art Center with industrial felt, hanging fabric, and geometric sculptures that…
Rappers might have furthered the multi-pronged hustle of stepping out of music to pursue careeers in TV and film, but comedian Anjelah Johnson is flipping the script right back. The MADtv alum steps to the mic at Stand Up Live this Friday, September 7. The one-time Oakland Raiderette cheerleader works…
When Cult Classics, one of the Valley’s finest film showcases, went kaput last month due to a rickety AC unit and a very sweaty showing of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, curator Victor Moreno went scrambling to find his patrons a new locale in which to get their big screen fix…
Drag isn’t just about getting all dolled up and tucking away unmentionables — though a fierce lip sync ability and throwing some shade at the audience do make a performance memorable. Cover charges don’t always go toward wigs and eyelash extensions. Plenty of queens use their position as entertainers to…
Wash away the beer, sweat, and other mystery stains from your ASU gear. It’s time for another pregame celebration. Leave the brats and DJ equipment home, this time the Devils on Mill Tailgate Party will take care of your needs at the best amped-fest this side of the Rio Salado…
Mondays have always been the black sheep of the seven-day calendar week. Nobody wants to hang out with Monday, and usually everyone is pretty happy when he leaves. But that may change now that Scottsdale’s Dollhouse Cocktail Lounge has resurrected Monday Night Mass. Turn your boring Monday into a sacred…
Not all college students can dance. A trip to Mill on any weekend night will reveal quickly how painful it can be to watch a roomful of co-eds shimmy and shake their brains out. We prefer to leave creative motion to the pros — or at least the dance majors…
Women’s soccer is a kick. With the U.S. women’s team taking gold at the London Olympics, the beautiful game’s popularity is soaring stateside. As always, the ASU Sun Devils make for a highly competitive and exciting women’s team on the pitch. This season the team features a handful of returning…
The preseason in the NFL is often a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. After last year’s preseason, the St. Louis Rams looked like a team poised to take over the NFC West, the New York Giants looked mediocre, and Cam Newton looked like a bust. This is about…
The Arizona Diamondbacks, by the numbers: 64 wins, 65 losses, 4-6 in the last ten games. They have 576 runs scored (good!), but 546 runs allowed (bad!). They’re 7.5 games behind the National League West-leading Padres, and five games behind the LA Dodgers. All that equals a 6.8 percent chance…
This year’s September issue of Vogue weighs in at a whopping 4 pounds 10 ounces thanks to its 916 pages of fall fashion — 658 of which are ads. But it wasn’t always such a massive endeavor. The proof? That’s in the Phoenix Art Museum’s Vogue archives, available in the…
Why hang around grimy little arts venues? Well, for one thing, to like stuff before it’s cool. In 1980s Manhattan, for instance, we enjoyed the fresh-faced, low-rent versions of now-mainstream performers: Eric Bogosian, John Malkovich, the late Spalding Gray, Bill Irwin — and Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney, whose Obie-winning…
Yes, we’ve avoided some plays just because they’re crazy popular, or massive, spectacular musicals, or both. But it turns out that Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s Les Misérables is a gritty, visceral, and appropriate setting of Victor Hugo’s populist novel of pre-Revolutionary France. As emotionally manipulative as E.T., as action-packed…
