Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Tags: John Oliver , Last Week Tonight , Charter schools , Video
An improv group called the Commune faces an uncertain future when their theater is closing and members of their team are faced with life changing events. Writer-director-actor Mike Birbiglia plays Miles, an improvisational actor in his mid-thirties who feels passed over, while Jack (Keegan-Michael Key) finds himself in line for a role on The Weekend (the film’s less copyright infringed stand-in for Saturday Night Live). Gillian Jacobs (who is having a nice year with this and her role in the excellent Netflix series, Love) plays Jack’s girlfriend Samantha, who also has a chance to advance her career. They, and other members of the troupe, must decide between real money-paying gigs and doing what they actually love, that being getting up on stage and making stuff up for free.
I personally, can’t stand watching comedy improv, so that perhaps knocks the film down a peg for me, because there’s a lot of bad improv in this movie. Balancing things out for the better would be the performances from all involved, especially Key and Jacobs, who should do more projects together. Birbiglia does a nice job of portraying that artistic need to do one’s art in the face of all adversity.
Tags: Mike Birbiglia , Keegan-Michael Key , Gillian Jacobs , Kate Micucci , Chris Gethard , Tami Sagher , don't think twice , Video
Beer, food and friends. Three things that dissolve worries and leave one warm, hoppy and ready to take on another day.
Now it's one thing to go to the local bar for a drink and a bite and it's another to go to a place where the menu and the people making the food change from night to night. The Tucson Hop Shop at 3230 N. Dodge Boulevard offers such an opportunity.
The wine and beer bar (they also fill growlers), located within the Metal Arts Village, has a mouthwatering line-up of different food trucks that will be there through the end of the year. Check out the calendar here.
The bar also encourages patrons to bring their own food, or to order in and dine in the urban beer garden. Get to it!
More on Tucson Hop Shop, including a list of the beers on tap, is over here.
Tags: Tucson Hop Shop , Dinner Plans , Food Trucks , Metal Arts Village , Chow , Beer
Monday, August 22, 2016
Tucson brewer Benjamin Vernon is pretty sure it would be his Dwarvish Ale, an earthy brew with a hefty oak finish that will be one of the debut beers when his Crooked Tooth Brewing Co. opens Downtown this fall.
Vernon has been working overtime—as in, every spare moment he has—to get the place cranking. First was the renovation of an old auto-service shop at 228 E. Sixth Street, near the corner of Sixth Street and Sixth Avenue. Then brewing tanks came in. Then kegs.
Vernon has 15 years of brewing experience and beer is kind of elemental to his existence. He and his wife plan vacations around breweries—they visited 16 on a recent trip—and the guy is generally gonzo about beer in a variety of ways.
"I just love beer, man," said Vernon on a recent evening, popping a beer while power tools roared in the background. "Crooked Tooth is going to relish in what makes us different, in what makes a person unique and not a clone. We're going to make good beer and we're doing it our way."
Having talked to many Tucson beer people over the years I must say his approach to beer, and life in general, is equal parts thoughtfulness and intensity. This could get interesting.
The Tucson Weekly will have a full story on the brewery just before the opening, but for the time being you can keep up with the progress here.
Tags: Crooked Tooth Brewing Co. , Benjamin Vernon , Tucson Beer , Dwarves , Beer , More Beer
Remember me? I'm Jazzy!
I'm a 2.5-year-old girl and I've been looking for a home since April! I'm very scared in the shelter, so I can't wait to for my new family to find me and take me home!
I really need a home where I can be an indoor-only dog and get a lot of love. I'm hoping that I can also get daily exercise and maybe some fun doggy brain games!
If you're looking to rescue a dog I might be the perfect fit. Please come meet me at Humane Society of Southern Arizona Main Campus at 3450 N. Kelvin Blvd. or give them a call at 327-6088 ext. 173 for more information and to check on my availability!
Lots of love,
Jazzy (823242)
Tags: pets , adopt don't shop , bring home someone to love
Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine and Ben Foster all destroy their parts in this absolutely terrific modern western from director David Mackenzie.
Pine and Foster play two brothers who come up with a bank-robbing scheme to save the family farm, and Bridges is the soon-to-be-retired sheriff trying to stop them. Pine takes his career into all new territories with his work here, making you forget he’s Captain Kirk and totally disappearing into his part. Foster, an actor I couldn’t stand when he was younger, just gets better and better with each film, with this being his best work yet. Pine’s brother is supposedly the more sensible one, while Foster’s is the nut. What’s great about the writing here is how those roles sometime switch, and the acting by both makes it mesmerizing to watch.
What else can you say about Bridges at this point? He’s one of the best actors to have ever walked the Earth, and this further cements that fact. Mackenzie, whose most notorious prior film was the underrated Starred Up, takes a step into the elite class with this one. His staging of car chases and manhunts is nerve shredding. It’s simply a movie without a bad frame in in it.
It’s a masterpiece, one of only a few to be released so far this year.
Tags: Jeff Bridges , Chris Pine , Ben Foster , David Mackenzie , Video
Friday, August 19, 2016
Here's the week's top 10 most rented DVD's from Casa Video:
- Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Tags: casa video , shop local , rent movies , video store , Image , Video
This time of year, merely hearing that enthusiastic utterance may exhaust you. Which means you’ve likely already been on a road trip or two this summer.
But good news: There’s another kind of trip that takes absolutely no packing and only enough gas to get to East Grant Road. During the Kingfisher’s “Road Trip 2016,” this top-notch seafood restaurant’s Chef Jeff Azersky takes diners to various U.S. regions using only food (mostly seafood, natch).
If you fancy traveling “Back East,” head to Kingfisher: An American Bar & Grill (2564 E. Grant Road), by Tuesday, Aug. 23, for first courses like “East Coast Oysters on the Half Shell” (the restaurant is renowned for its awesome oysters), entrées like steamed Maine lobster and desserts like Boston cream pie. Wash it all down with something off the region-specific drink menu, like Finger Lakes chardonnay or cocktails with berries and apples. From Aug. 24 through Sept. 4, the Kingfisher will bring you “Down South”—though it hasn’t released that road trip’s menu yet (but keeping checking the website).
Tags: back east eats , east coast oysters , down south chow , Image
When Jones got sick, she just shaved her head and kept on performing. The film shows her appearances on stage, in church services, on shows like Ellen and Jimmy Fallon, and her energy never dissipates. In the stretch between her diagnosis and now, she performed, released a Grammy nominated album (Give the People What They Want), and, unfortunately, her cancer returned (She informed people at the premiere of the film in Toronto in 2015 that she was starting another round of chemo that Wednesday). The film offers a convincing argument that a good, positive, strong attitude qualifies as one of the better weapons against disease. While the film is mostly about her personal struggles, the moments showing her performing will certainly inspire soul lovers to dig deeper into her catalogue and seek out filmed performances. She’s definitely one of a kind.
Tags: documentary , sharon jones , chemo , Video
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Friendships when you are younger are a big deal. Writer-director Ira Sachs is very much clued into this reality with this beautiful little movie about a family moving to Brooklyn after a relative has left them a home.
Greg Kinnear, in his best role in years, plays Brian, an actor on the downside of his career, who moves with wife Kathy (Jennifer Ehle) and son Jake (Theo Tapiltz) to the new Brooklyn home, where Jake instantly befriends the charismatic Tony (Michael Barbieri). They go to the same school together, play video games, and aspire to become artists. Tony’s mom (Paulina Garcia) operates a business in the home Brian has inherited, and her rent is too low. When he tries to raise the rent, problems ensue and despite the best of intentions, relationships are affected. Everybody is terrific in this movie, especially Tapiltz and Barbieri, who come off as real kids. Kinnear, looking world-weary and just a little beat up, is a testament to how tough his chosen profession can be. Garcia has a few moments that are appropriately scary, while Ehle continues to be one of those actresses that quietly amazes.
Sachs is a director with amazing power of observation; his film is full of moments that are deeply moving and strike chords. This is one of the year’s more wonderful under-the-radar films.
Tags: movies , little men , Ira Sachs , Video
