“Can you speak up a little, man? I dove off a boat yesterday, and I now have an immense amount of water in my ear!” Brady Corbet, 24, is on the phone from the Republic of Panama, where he’s filming a new movie opposite Benicio del Toro and Josh Hutcherson…
For a guy who has spent a lot of time planning how to brutally murder people in the woods, the most shocking thing about Fede Alvarez is his well-adjusted nature. As the co-writer and director of Evil Dead, the new remake of the 1981 gore classic The Evil Dead, Alvarez…
Tattoo Nation documentarian Eric Schwartz isn’t inked himself — “I’m nicknamed ‘The Virgin,’ ” he admits — but when he started photographing tattoo conventions, he stumbled across an untold, half-century history of color and style inextricably linked to California. Unlike the permanent art they’ve created, these tattoo artists and their clients…
By Mad Men’s fifth season, Betty Draper had walked out of our lives, and a much plumper Betty Francis had waddled in. The audience response to this swollen version of a once-slender character: a collective cringe. Suddenly Betty became a joke. In no time, a parody of Ram Jam’s “Black…
Soap operas are more wondrous and ridiculous than you may realize, especially if you’re under the misapprehension that soaps — especially daytime ones — revolve around nothing but steamy affairs, unplanned pregnancies, and Maury-style DNA tests. In fact, we thought the same, until we started watching General Hospital to catch…
Four years ago, on assignment for The Comics Journal, I asked Robert Kirkman a tough question about his Walking Dead comic series, a question that now, after the TV adaptation’s third season finale, is still resonant: Why are all the strong female characters either crazy or dead? His response, from…
Certainly, Phoenix isn’t the biggest of movie towns, but Bird City has served as shooting grounds for such notable flicks as Psycho, Everything Must Go, and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Couple its silver screen history with the annual Phoenix Film Festival, and there’s plenty of fodder for local film…
This month, ASU’s School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning sets the stage for local creative types, academics, and urban planners for a week of discussion and brainstorming. From Thursday, April 4, to Saturday, April 13, Phoenix Urban Design Week will present workshops, lectures, a film screening, a community gathering,…
Unlike those dusty, old monoliths in Washington D.C., the divergent world of hip-hop has long since abandoned two-party partisanship. Thanks to the slow, steady ascendancy of the Dirty South in all its guttural glory, East and West Coasters alike have had no choice but to acknowledge the three-party system that…
Dentists be damned; Chow Bella and Smeeks’ Caramelpalooza is back. In its fourth year, the sweets-centric showdown features wrapped-up goodies from 20 local confectioners. Among a slew of notable names presenting sugary delights at the bonbon bonanza are Muñeca Mexicana’s Minerva Orduño Rincón (who blogs for Chow Bella when she…
When most of the dance you’re exposed to includes grinding and daggering in clubs, it’s tough to remember that dance can be beautiful, too. Oh, sure. Ballet is nice, but it’s just too perfect. Pretty girls in pretty clothes on their tip toes? Come on! Can’t we get something with…
If you’re older than 25 and younger than 50, you remember the Super Off-Road arcade game. Even if you’ve never played it you’ve seen it if you were around in the early 1990s. The off-road truck racing game was an arcade staple. What you may not know is that the…
Indiana Jones, it’s well known, was no fan of snakes. We’d be traumatized, too, if we fell into a boxcar of slithering reptiles.However, we’re pretty sure if Indy had lived in the Valley, he would’ve gotten over it. How can you not love snakes when your home team is the…
Flashy gaming fortresses like Dave & Busters and GameWorks boast almost anything tweens and teenyboppers could want in an amped-up arcade experience, ranging from slick versions of the favorite mobile games like Fruit Ninja to high-end redemption games. As for the older crowd, the ones eager for throwback joystick thrills…
Phoenix might be hosting the Super Bowl in 2015, but we prefer watching the bighearted amateurs of the PHXAM Skateboard Contest risk their bones to seeing multimillionaire athletes shoving around. Cowtown Skateboards presents the 12th annual edition of the Valley’s biggest showdown of the year on Saturday, April 6.The majority…
Society has made major strides when it comes to embracing the LGBT community. Facebook users showed their solidarity about a week ago by changing their profile pictures to red and pink equals signs. While social media is a great tool for raising awareness, it’s only half the battle. The 23rd…
Departing from canon’s a time-honored practice. Pierre Beaumarchais’ 1778 non-musical The Marriage of Figaro was banned in Vienna for licentiousness, so Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto for Mozart’s opera version amped up the emotional content of the sexytimes and also threw in a diatribe against cheating wives. (Oh, patriarchy! How can…
The Scottsdale Culinary Festival’s now old enough to run for president. Its powerhouse six-day campaign kicks off Tuesday, April 9, with the Shaken and Stirred party at Searsucker, 6900 East Camelback Road. For $40 admission, guests get three samples of très chic throwback cocktails, like the Sazerac and Violette, and…
In Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Belle is the perfect girl next door. She loves reading and hates douchebags. Like most princesses in the Mickeyverse, however, she has a major flaw. For the brunette beaut, it’s Stockholm Syndrome. Fortunately she also has a heart of gold, which sort of excuses…
Student artists should be recognized for their work. The artists whose work is displayed in “New Art in Arizona” will be. That’s thanks to a scholarship awards partnership between the Arizona Artist’s Guild and Shemer Art Center, 5005 East Camelback Road, where the exhibition is on view through Wednesday, May…
The foreigner in Larry Shue’s The Foreigner isn’t exactly foreign. Well, at least not in the alluring, exotic sense. Dude’s from England, his name’s Charlie, and he edits sci-fi for a living. But for the sake of preserving an old-lady innkeeper’s feelings and because his friend Froggy fibs (never trust…
We come into this world with a short list of inalienable rights — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness being a few of them. But what we think we deserve often differs from what’s on paper and signed into history, and that is the focal point of work currently…
