First Friday heats up July 5 with creative works going up all over the city. Here are our picks for shows not to miss this artful evening. Coyote Ghost @ Palabra Studios “Coyote Ghost,” which will be on view at Palabra Studios through July 5, will be Rebecca Green’s farewell…
This weekend has potential plans aplenty, Phoenix. Here are our top picks for what to do in and around the city. Video Blender @ Phoenix Art Museum “Will It Blend?” is the ongoing series of online videos by personal kitchen appliance manufacturer Blendtec in which CEO Tom Dickson gleefully wields…
If you’ve ever imagined Phoenix becoming totally submerged in water, then you and Abbey Messmer have something in common. The local artist says living in the desert didn’t prevent her from finding inspiration for her current series of aquatic artwork in “Submerged” currently on view at Eye Lounge. “There is…
You probably know the Scottsdale Culinary Festival is a big deal in the world of food. But you might not have known that the nine-day event is actually a fundraiser to provide grants to local non-profit organizations and their arts-related projects…
When you hear the words “science fiction,” the last thing that comes to mind are pole-dancing, pasties-wearing, baton-twirling, seductive vixens. But Scandalesque’s Sexy Sci-Fi bridges that gap perfectly…
Editor’s note: We had so much fun over on Chow Bella, pitting New Yorker-turned-Phoenician Nina Gruber against Phoenician-turned-New Yorker Dominique Chatterjee against each other on the topic of food that we decided to do it again — and this time, we’re talking about culture. Today we share Chatterjee’s view of…
Evolutionary psychology is a can of worms to begin with. If you want to find a particularly violent online argument, search out two people — one of whom believes mental and behavioral differences between men and women are entirely a social construct, and the other of whom thinks it’s possible…
In honor of what would have been Frida Kahlo’s 106th birthday, the Phoenix Fridas are preparing a celebration fit for a queen. Starting on July’s First Friday with the exhibition “Celebrating Frida” at Burton Barr Central Library, the local group of artists and artisans will pay homage to the Mexican…
Sporting on-trend nails this summer means going big or keeping your mani to yourself. Choose one of these looks or choose to rock them all. Whatever you decide, keep in mind that bling and bold shapes are accessorizing fingers across the Internet — and they take up less room in…
By now, it is well known that hipsters and other assorted smart alecks enjoy watching Die Hard ironically at Christmastime every year. Why should Christmas be the only holiday to get its own ironic films? Here are five movies that you can watch with your friends on the Fourth of…
By now, most of us have heard that if Mattel’s Barbie were a real person with the toy’s proportions, she wouldn’t just be clinically anorexic but, like a piece of badly rendered CGI animation, would succumb to the laws of physics and bend and snap (and not in the cool,…
Before he was one of cinema’s finest dramatists (All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Volver, Broken Embraces), writer-director Pedro Almodóvar was a provocateur and a satirist. The 63-year-old filmmaker harks back to that past with his first comedy in nearly 25 years, I’m So Excited!, a lighthearted, ensemble-driven bit…
¿Como se dice “hot mess” en español? It’s about the only term I can think of to describe “Turn Off the Sun,” an ongoing exhibition of selections from the mighty Jumex Collection now showing at ASU Art Museum. Initially, I was ecstatic when I heard that work from the Jumex…
Since it opens with a suicide bombing in downtown Tel Aviv, and since its mystery plot involves an attempt to track down a sheik whose public expectorations call for the slaughter of Israeli civilians, The Attack is most avowedly “about” terrorism. But that’s a subject, not the subject. The film,…
“You use big words to say simple things,” says Augustine, an illiterate kitchen maid, to the esteemed doctor treating her for the distinctly female malady “hysteria.” This would be a show of boilerplate feistiness in most films, but in writer-director Alice Winocour’s Augustine, it stands as a subtler, more complex…
We have the Twilight franchise to thank for the fact that almost no sane adult wants to see another vampire movie, ever. Not that all the Twilight movies were bad. The first, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, hit a teen-dream sweet spot, the point where gothic lit meets the iPod. And…
Admit it: Redemption is boring. We think we want characters to “grow” and “change,” but, really, it’s the people around us in real life — people who, say, loudly pick their teeth in restaurants or walk too slowly in public thoroughfares — who need revamping. (We ourselves, of course, need…
The great movie Westerns are about honor, dignity, the majesty of the landscape. But they’re also about beautiful men, charismatic, sometimes dangerous-looking demigods like Robert Ryan, James Stewart, Franco Nero, Randolph Scott, and, of course, John Wayne. The Lone Ranger has Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp, the former a long-legged…
This Independence Day, families, veterans, and all forms of red-blooded Americans are heading west to Firework Fest — Glendale’s biggest display of fireworks, food, and family festivities.Westgate’s Independence Day party will offer something for everyone, including water works and face painting for kids, live classic rock and historic military vehicles…
Fourth of July is all about tradition, whether you’re stuffing your face with barbeque or dressing up in your finest red, white, and blue garb. Fireworks are bound to be part of the equation, and though it may be tempting to watch the Boston display from the comfort of your…
Phoenix celebrates Independence Day with a bang and its largest fireworks display ever at this year’s Fabulous Phoenix Fourth.The fireworks blast off at 9:30 p.m. and last approximately 25 minutes. This year’s show relies heavily on aerial shell fireworks, boasting 355 shells per minute for an incredibly large firework display…
Forget the Cheeto-loving-slacker stereotype you associate with skateboarding. Truth is skateboarding and creativity are inseparable. After all, super-complicated tricks like Shaun White’s heel-flip body-varial frontside 540, which won him an X Games gold medal, take a whole lot of imagination to arftully orchestrate and execute. (Fun fact: White’s the only…
