There are too many damn games coming out this month. It is a constant avalanche of quality gaming that is taxing the budget of even the most financially solvent players. Take, for example, the forthcoming "Mirror's Edge" ($59.99). This game sells itself just through the short demo that was released on Xbox Live and PSN.
Video by Michael Demko Interview by Xochitl Campos Production by: Joseph Trisolini Xochitl Campos
Self-proclaimed rap nerd Slug, of the music group Atmosphere, said going to a hip-hop show is similar to going to church or Alcoholics Anonymous. "In a weird way, when you can get a room full of people to laugh together or throw their hands and wave them around together, that's as close as some of these people get to church," Slug said.
Radio producer Debra West likened the Saturday night show "The Director's Cut" to a Thanksgiving meal. "The movie is the turkey of the radio show. Boobs are the cranberry sauce - we talk about those a lot," she said. "Davenport's 'Pick of the Week' would be the pumpkin pie.
The world has now seen far more of Jason Mewes than necessary. "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" is the least-restrained Kevin Smith movie ever made. If he had made this in 2001, when he had to cut bits out of the relatively tame "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" to avoid an NC-17 rating, there is no way he could have made this movie without removing so much of the plot as to make it incomprehensible.
The 999 Eyes Freak Show will blow your mind without making a mess. It's the first vaudevillian freak show to tour in more than 45 years. Samantha X and accordionist Dylan Blackthorn created 999 Eyes four years ago. Based out of Austin, Texas, their first tour featured more than 30 acts and included a zombie rock opera, a puppet show and people hanging from hooks pierced through their flesh.
UNM theater major and senior Shannon Flynn wonders if he's found his true calling in playwriting, and he said he might stay extra years to study it. He'll showcase his two plays, "The Burglar" and "Slice," at Full Frontal Poetry this fall and at Words Afire in the spring.
Old western nostalgia is making a comeback in the form of musical theater thanks to the performing arts group ArcTisTics. ArcTisTics is made up of actors with developmental disabilities, the only organization of its kind in Taos. "It brings a fresher way of expression, and in the context of theater it is amazing," director Cristina Masoliver said.
Photos by Gabbi Campos, Production by Xochitl Campos & Joseph Trisolini Interviews by Xochitl Campos
An American classic is coming to Albuquerque. "Death of a Salesman," Arthur Miller's Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning play, opens today at the Cell Theatre at 700 First Street N.W. The play is produced by Fusion Theatre Co. and directed by Jacqueline Reid, Fusion's co-founder.
Q-Staff Theatre is transforming its space into an indoor Halloween carnival Friday. Simultaneous hour-long performances will take place throughout the theater, including a magician, a demonic dance, a bone pile, a dream machine, a scary-story reading and a projected stop-motion animation piece with dancing skeletons bursting forth from hellfire.
Halloween spooks will roam local neighborhoods Friday to remind people to vote early. Members of New Mexico Youth Organized will sponsor the first Trick or Vote to encourage early voting, especially among young voters. "We'll be reminding people to vote early, because the following day is the last day to vote early, and it's the perfect chance to remind them of their polling location in case they can't vote early," said lead volunteer recruiter Cyrus Gould.
Author Tony Hillerman stepped on a land mine in WWII and recuperated in a hospital in France, and he received a Purple Heart for it. "While he was up in the air, he was thinking, 'This is really going to hurt when I hit the ground,'" said Luther Wilson, UNM Press president and Hillerman's friend.
Second Day Red Gallery of Strangers Available now 2.5/5 The sound of Second Day Red is highly original and highly derivative at the same time. It blurs genre lines. At one moment the band sounds like ordinary alternative rock - albeit, whiny alternative rock.
Brett Bakker, editor of local zine Wig Wam Bam, has written about every music show he's seen in the past 10 years. "I think there's an amazing amount of local talent here in a lot of different styles," said Bakker, who writes under the name Captain America.
Oliver Stone once told us that gay anti-communists killed JFK and that Jim Morrison was more than a cretin with a beard. Now he takes on President Bush with "W.," half of which is a boozy, half-cocked oedipal drama and the rest of which is an episode of "The West Wing" written by an eighth grader.
Saturday brings a West African song and dance performance to the Outpost Performance Space. Assane Kouyate, a West African dance teacher who will perform in the show, said the group is trying to bring people together to have a good time and enjoy traditional dance.
The San Francisco band Leopold and his Fiction sounds like the White Stripes meets Bob Dylan. Lead singer and songwriter Daniel James has a gravelly speaking voice, which sounds clearer when he sings but adds depth to his onstage vocals. "I smoked for a really long time like seven years ago," he said.
Ayren Valer moves her two-titled piece "Death: The Great Illusion" and "Reincarnation: the Kaleidoscopey Adventure." Skulls made of sugar displayed at the OFFCenter Community Arts Project on Tuesday. OFFCenter's Dia de los Muertos art show includes a black, triangle-shaped painting, a Mexican shrine filled with sugar skulls and two collages mounted on a vertical rack covered with black leaves and ravens.
Gypsy jazz music dates back to the swing days of the '30s and '40s and in some cases as far back as the impressionist art period. And the late French guitarist Django Reinhardt was the first to fuse Eastern European sounds with American jazz. "Although gypsy jazz isn't heard by everybody, there is now a revival for this unique style of music," said Archtop Eddy, a guitarist for Mango fan Django, a band scheduled to play at Albuquerque's DjangoFest The festival runs from Thursday to Sunday at venues throughout the city.
Solutions by The State News
