Monday, September 29, 2014
Black Cat Vintage at 41 N. Tucson Blvd. has done some great/fun window displays in the past, but store owner Claudine Villardito has gone above and beyond this time, recreating the look from the grand opening of Jacome's downtown department store in 1951 as part of the third year of Tucson Modernism Week, which kicks off on Friday.
A beloved destination for locals, ranchers and tourists, Jacome’s Department Store made history when it opened a three-level retail complex directly across from competitor Steinfeld’s Department Store in 1951. The grand opening was so eagerly awaited that customers filled the streets of downtown and brought traffic to a standstill. The display window will recreate the moment the doors were opened and throngs of Tucsonans flooded the building.“My goal is to give onlookers the feeling that they are among the crowds in the store on opening day,” said Villardito, who used original Jacome’s display fixtures, mannequins, photos and ephemera to populate the window. “People have been so generous in lending me their keepsakes for this project; it reminds me what a big heart Tucson still has, just like in 1951.”
Tags: black cat vintage , tucson nostalgia , tucson modernism week , Jacome’s Department Store , tucson vintage , jacome's tucson , Claudine Villardito
Last night, Republican Doug Ducey and Democrat Fred DuVal met for a debate on education. The Arizona Republic rounds up the basic differences between the candidates here (and there are a lot of differences).
One key split between the candidates: Ducey wants to allow more state tax dollars to fund private schools:
Ducey said he supports allowing students at failing schools to use the per-student assistance the state provides at a private school of their choice.DuVal opposes the idea, saying the answer is to improve the failing schools. Arizona already has laws on the books to do just that, such as by allowing outside entities to come in and run poorly performing schools.
The penultimate gubernatorial debate, sponsored by Clean Elections, is tonight. It will air on KAET-TV, the Phoenix PBS affiliate, from 5 to 6 p.m.
Saint Pepsi, a.k.a. songwriter/producer Ryan DeRobertis, is coming to Congress' Thursday night cool-kids fest Opti Club on November 13 (a while away, but mark your calendars) with his upbeat, light funk take on summery pop sounds, but while you wait, why not listen to his 35 minute disco mix for The Fader? A little Klique is bound to make your afternoon move by a little faster.
Tags: saint pepsi , saint pepsi tucson , stuff to listen to , opti club
Still figuring out who you are going to vote for in the upcoming Tucson Unified School District governing board election? There's a second candidates forum tonight, Monday, Sept. 29, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Palo Verde High School in the auditorium, 1302 S. Avenida Vega. The forum is sponsored by the Dietz Neighborhood Association and Retired Educators.
The candidates:
Rene Bernal
Debe Campos-Fleenor
Don Cotton
Miguel Cuevas
Jen Darland
Adelita Grijalva
Michael Hicks
Betts Putnam-Hidalgo
Francis Saitta
Tags: TUSD , Tucson Unified School District , governing board , candidates , election , Rene Bernal , Debe Campos-Fleenor Don Cotton , Miguel Cuevas , Jen Darland , Adelita Grijalva , Michael Hicks , Betts Putnam-Hidalgo , Francis Saitta
The Loft Cinema is back with the fifth annual Loft Film Fest in just a few weeks. In additional to dozens of films over four days—you can find a complete program for the festival here—the Loft will bring a lot of filmmakers to discuss their work between Thursday, Oct. 16, and Sunday, Oct. 19.
This year's special guests include Bruce Dern, who will receive the Lee Marvin Maverick Award; Stacy Keach, who will receive the Bob Shelton Award; and novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry, who will receive the Lofty Lifetime Achievement Award. McMurtry will be on hand opening night, Thursday, Oct. 16, for a screening of The Last Picture Show, while Keach and Dern will attend a screening of Nebraska on Saturday, Oct. 18, and a talk about their careers on Sunday, Oct. 19.
A few that I'm looking forward to include Fort Tilden, an indie flick that took home the Grand Jury Award winner at this year’s SXSW Film Festival; Dinosaur 13, a documentary about the strange legal struggle that followed the discovery of a 65-million-old T Rex fossil discovered in South Dakota; and The Babadook, a low-budget horror flick that has been getting great buzz online. And TW editor Dan Gibson has been talking up The Winding Stream, a documentary about the Carter family's remarkable career in country-western music. Check out the whole list. If you like movies, there's something in there for you. And a big round of applause for the crew at the Loft for giving Tucson this gift every year.
David Fincher's Gone Girl looks pretty great, mostly because David Fincher is generally awesome, and opens this Friday nationwide, but if you don't mind coughing up a few extra bucks, you can see the film Thursday night at the Loft and enjoy a few extra bonuses in the process:
Acclaimed filmmaker David Fincher’s highly-anticipated new thriller Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck, comes to The Loft Cinema prior its national theatrical release at this special New York Film Critics Series preview screening featuring a captured-live post-film discussion with best-selling Gone Girl novelist and screenwriter Gillian Flynn, moderated by Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers! The New York Film Critics Series, broadcast from Manhattan to 50 selected major markets, takes place exclusively in cinemas and is never available on TV or online. The Loft Cinema is the EXCLUSIVE Southern Arizona venue for the series.The much-buzzed-about film version of Gillian Flynn’s phenomenally successful best-seller Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher (The Social Network, Fight Club), is one wild cinematic ride — a perfectly cast and intensely compressed portrait of a recession-era marriage contained within a devastating depiction of celebrity/media culture, shifting gears as smoothly as a Maserati 250F.
Ben Affleck is Nick Dunne, whose wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing on the day of their fifth anniversary. Things only get worse when the intense media circus surrounding the case casts a spotlight on Nick as a prime suspect in the case. Neil Patrick Harris is Amy’s old boyfriend Desi, Carrie Coon is Nick’s sister Margo, Kim Dickens is Detective Rhonda Boney, and Tyler Perry is Nick’s superstar lawyer Tanner Bolt. At once a grand panoramic vision of middle America, a uniquely disturbing exploration of the fault lines in a marriage, and a comedy that starts black and keeps getting blacker, Gone Girl is a gripping work of popular art by one of our best filmmakers.
Tickets for the preview screening are $12 for general admission, $10 for Loft members and will almost certainly sell out, so it would probably be worth your time to get them in advance. More info at the Loft's website.
Tags: gone girl , gone girl tucson , tucson movies , loft cinema , Video
Friday, September 26, 2014
When Ethan Orr supported Governor Brewer's Medicaid plan, she promised to help him win reelection in Legislative District 9. Early in the primary season, her independent expenditure committee, Arizona's Legacy, bought a bunch of Ethan Orr for State Representative signs and stuck them around the Tucson area. At the top, they read, "Supported by Governor Brewer."
A new batch of Arizona's Legacy signs has sprouted up more recently. As you can see in the image above, they're identical to the original signs, except for one important change. Governor Brewer is no longer mentioned. Both signs have the required "Paid for by Arizona's Legacy" information in small letters at the bottom.
Why the change? The answer is, Orr's strategy for winning the election is to belong to the Moderate party, not the Republican party. A moderate has a chance of drawing enough votes from Democrats and middle-of-the-road Independents to pull off a win in a top-two field which includes him and two Democrats, Randy Friese and Victoria Steele. A Republican, especially one whose name is linked to Brewer's, will have far more trouble peeling off the necessary votes.
The fact is, Orr is a Jan Brewer Republican — which is to say he's a Jan Brewer conservative — but he's better off keeping that quiet on the campaign trail. He's not an Al Melvin Republican. He's not a Russell Pearce Republican. He's a Jan Brewer Republican. Brewer is not as far right as the wing-nuttiest members of her party, but you have to move the "Moderate Meter" way, way to the right to include Brewer under that label.
So Brewer's IE, either on its own or at a veiled suggestion from the Orr campaign (which, of course, can't coordinate directly with an IE), decided to remove the overt Brewer endorsement from its more recent campaign signs.
Tags: Ethan Orr , Jan Brewer , Randy Friese , Victoria Steele , NRA , Planned Parenthood , Fetal personhood proclamation
Five teams of architects, designers and engineers go "food can to food can" in the fifth annual Canstruction event as part of Architecture Week 2014 and Hunger Action Month. All the cans used in the building competition at Park Mall, tomorrow, Saturday, Sept. 27, will go to the Community Food Bank. The can-tivity takes place at Sears Court, center court and the space beside Abercrombie & Fitch starting at 9 a.m. Judging takes place on Sunday, Sept. 28 at 10 a.m.
Along side those big guys is the 13th annual Kidstruction, a design/model competition for middle school students from 18 local schools who've made models out of business cards, toothpicks and glue. Their models will be on display at Sears court. Each year the event is organized by the Society for Design Administration, Southern Arizona Chapter. The theme this year is Reinventing the Past, focusing on four architectural structures and how they might look if they were built today. Judging for Kidstruction takes place Saturday, from 8 to 10 a.m.
Tags: Canstruction , Kidstruction , Park Mall , Architecture Week 2014 , Hunger Action Month , Community Food Bank
A debate over debates has broken out in the race between Democratic Congressman Ron Barber and his Republican challenger, Martha McSally.
On Sept. 4, Team Barber challenged McSally to two debates. Later that day, Team McSally responded with a demand for four debates. Team Barber eventually agreed to three debates and Team McSally has continued to needle Team Barber about a potential fourth debate.
But a representative from the League of Women Voters told the Weekly that one of the three Congressional District 2 debate, scheduled for this Sunday, Sept. 28, had to be called off because Team McSally would not commit to participating.
Bob Richardson said he sent both campaigns a registered letter on Sept. 4 that asked them to commit to a debate on Sept. 28 that would be televised by KVOA-TV by Sept. 12. Team Barber agreed to the debate, but Richardson didn’t hear back from Team McSally by the deadline, so he took the extra step of contacting McSally spokesman Patrick Ptak to try to set up a debate.
Richardson, a former news director and anchor at KVOA News, said that he made multiple efforts to get the McSally campaign to confirm their participation in the debate, but Ptak would not commit to the event.
“I talked to him several times and he never would commit to it,” Richardson said.
Richardson added that KVOA staff also tried to confirm the debate with Team McSally, but could not get an agreement to participate. Last Friday, Sept. 19, a KVOA staffer let Ptak know that he didn’t hear back with a confirmation by the end of the day, KVOA would have to back out of participating in the debate, according to Richardson.
A KVOA producer called Richardson on Monday, Sept. 22, to let him know that they had not heard back from Team McSally and were going to have to back out of the debate, so the League canceled the event, according to Richardson.
The Weekly has reached out to KVOA News Director Cathie Batbie to learn more about KVOA’s role in the debate scheduling.
Richardson said Ptak had said that Team McSally was trying to make sure the Sept. 28 date worked. But he didn’t ask Richardson about alternative dates.
In a statement to the Weekly, Ptak didn’t address Richardson’s account of the negotiations over the debate but said the campaign was “surprised and disappointed to hear news that it was cancelled.”
There are quite a few Tucson-based Kickstarter projects you can support right now, but clearly, the most promising option is Nick Shelby's Johann Sebastian Nickelbach project, which is entirely what it sounds like:
The reality is that Nickelback makes big, bombastic, accessible music and, whether you like it or not, that means they have something in common with U2, The Beatles, Sinatra, Richard Wagner and Johann Sebastian Bach. The Beatles, Bach, and Beethoven were all mainstream and they didn't give a flying f about it... and we don't see anybody doubting their greatness, either....The goal is to fund this project by the time Nickelback's new album drops on November 4th and hopefully we can build on one another's momentum. If this project is successfully funded, everybody wins!!! Nickelback fans hear something that is really good and hipsters lose their minds in their abyss of irony. Nickelback gets paid to keep doing what they love and their fans will be exposed to a kind of music they may have otherwise ignored. Nickelback rocks, Bach rocks, and our orchestra is going to f'ing rock... hence NickelBACH! By naming this project in his honor, we will be compelled to remember that Johann Sebastian Bach, despite being pretty damn popular in his time, wasn't regarded as one of the world's greatest composers until long after his death.
While Shelby is somewhat concerned that the classical community might not embrace this particular project, he hopes the $100,000 he's asking for will " adequately help them overcome any misgivings about participating in this project." Classical folks aren't likely getting rich as it is, so he's probably right.
Sadly, while the project launched on Sept. 5, no one has coughed up a pledge yet, which is surprising since $25 gets your Chad Kroeger-esque growl on the record somehow, but hey, there are 38 days to go, so dreams still can come true.
Tags: johann sebastian nickelbach , nickelback classical , nick shelby , tucson kickstarters , nickelback kickstarter
