Ah, tourists. In Phoenix, we’ll be hardpressed to point out a tourist at any given theater, museum, or cultural center — we’re all wearing T-shirts and shorts, most of us are taking pictures and instagramming anything that moves, and no matter how many times we say we’ve acclimated, there’s not…
Like the Juggernaut or St. Patrick’s Day drunks, nothing can stop the hundreds of hours of filmed superhero junk that hits our faceholes each year. But rest easy, true believer! Once in a while, the onslaught can still offer surprise and pleasure. A shiver of both hit me minutes into…
Take heart, Newsroom fans. If you were hankering for more scenes of Jeff Daniels standing around talking, you’ll find an unlikely ally in the new young-adult sci-fi sequel Allegiant, the third entry in the Divergent series based on Veronica Roth’s hit novels. Too bad the stuff he’s saying is so…
Curious types, take note. More than three dozen students with ASU’s School of Art are opening the doors of their studios in the Phoenix warehouse district this weekend for all to explore. Which means you can check out work spaces of some serious creatives and talk with them about their…
Each week, we’re recapping the first season of Fuller House, episode by episode. Violin music not included. A subtle, but significant difference between Fuller House and its predecessor is the length of the episodes. The commercial-free oasis of Netflix allowed the premiere episode to clock in at a whopping 36…
The ASU School of Art now ranks 20th in the country among fine arts graduate schools, according to the 2016 U.S. News & World Report rating of best colleges and universities in the U.S. Last year, it ranked 22nd. Based on the 2016 report, ASU School of Art now ranks…
New Times picks the best arts and culture events in metro Phoenix from March 18 through 20. Nikki Glaser Nikki Glaser is NSFW. And we mean that outside the standard “not safe for work” acronym. The comedian, a veteran of Last Comic Standing as well as numerous late night shows and…
Become one with the art. That’s pretty much the crux of this year’s Spark! Festival of Creativity at Mesa Arts Center, which happens from noon to 10 p.m. both Friday, March 18 and Saturday, March 19. Mesa Arts Center has presented the free festival, which typically blends interactive arts experiences…
No joke, Phoenix is a pretty funny place. Thanks to comedians hosting shows on the regular, solid comedy clubs, and a thriving improv and sketch scene, there’s pretty much no excuse not to laugh on the regular. And that’ll be extra true the weekend of April 8 through 10, when…
Mesa is making a strong showing in the local mural scene, thanks to a newly commissioned piece by Miles MacGregor, or El Mac, one of the world’s most noted street artists. The Los Angeles-based artist with Phoenix roots just finished a towering mural depicting a woman holding a rose at…
For the protagonists of cable dramas, sex and death are twin forces of titillation, pressure valves for frustrated middle-aged men or steely-eyed careerists. That’s also true for the audience of cable dramas, of course, but there’s a reason we eagerly pursue onscreen what often makes us squirm in real life:…
The Pee-wee Productions logo that kicks off the new Netflix film Pee-wee’s Big Holiday trumpets comedian-turned-actor Paul Reubens’ comeback as the formerly ubiquitous man-child. Forget about The Pee-wee Herman Show, Reubens’ fan-service-intensive Broadway extravaganza. Big Holiday (which premieres March 18 on Netflix) plays like an un–self-conscious continuation of the character’s…
In Arnaud Desplechin’s My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument, intimate relations with Marion Cotillard lead one character to a spiritual awakening. Later, protagonist Paul Dédalus (Mathieu Amalric) declaims on what he considers “the one pleasure” that will never go away in life: “the surprise when I…
Here’s a minor miracle. From tiny Lighthouse Pictures, which specializes in Hallmark Channel originals with Christmas in the title, comes Bob Nelson’s The Confirmation, a bittersweet comedy about family, faith and a young boy saving up all his minor sins so he’ll have something to dish at confession. The surprise?…
It’s abundantly clear each time First Friday rolls around that spending one evening each month exploring Phoenix arts and culture just doesn’t cut it. There’s too much art out there, and it takes more than a few hours to see even a fraction of it. But once a year, there’s Art…
Nick Salerno liked to tell people he grew up in the dark. When he was a boy, Nick and his mother, a Sicilian immigrant, walked twice a week to the Cine Capri movie house together. She was there to improve her English by listening to American actors speak. Nick was…
Brash yet intimate, writer-director-editor Trey Edward Shults’ observant, unnerving first feature transcends the notion of a “promising debut.” Here, the promise is already fulfilled on the screen, which bustles with chaotic family life — and prickles with anxiety. Krisha is a heartsick family story that plays as psychological horror, its…
You’ve seen a lot of movies like Too Late, and yet you haven’t. Shot over several years on 35mm, Dennis Hauck’s neo-noir detective drama is only being shown theatrically in that increasingly rarefied format — a bold financial move for an independent film at a time when so many others…
In Jeff Nichols’ gripping domestic thriller Take Shelter, Michael Shannon played a family man convinced that Armageddon was upon us. But even as the character’s visions compelled him to take more and more extreme precautions, the film remained fixed in the world of the real. It was a portrait of…
The seemingly stark divide between sleep and wakefulness serves as the main motif in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendor, which allegorizes the history of Thailand as deepest REM slumber. Weerasethakul’s works are sensory delights, haunted, if obliquely, by Thailand’s violent political past and still fractious present. A film about the…
Just inside the front door of my house is a small library table that’s home to a short stack of books I have no intention of ever reading. I am not interested in Hendrik Willem Van Loon’s handsomely bound memoirs, published in Bombay in 1942. I don’t care to read…
It may seem hard to believe, but Luck of the Irish premiered on the Disney Channel 15 years ago. It was part of the Disney Channel Original Movie renaissance, part of a slate of films targeted at teens. While many of them now exist only in our memory, this one,…
