A&E
Concert Review: Kendrick Lamar
May 24th, 2013
"He said one day I'd be on tour," Kendrick Lamar recounts about his uncle in the big hit "Money Trees," and boy, was he right. The Compton-bred rapper had scores of people in line around the third floor of the Cosmopolitan Wednesday awaiting his Boulevard Pool performance. Read more »
Movies
Fast and Fantastic
The sixth times the charm for this frenzied car-chase franchise
May 24th, 2013
Fast & Furious 6, which surely maxed out Universal’s tank-top budget for the year, and sustains its joyful, unpretentious ridiculousness so perfectly that I secretly hoped the “6” meant “hours long,” ends with a disclaimer, the sort of legalese that typically arrives at the tail end of the closing credits. To paraphrase: On the way out of this theater, should you get the urge to drive your tank into traffic across a towering bridge in Spain, or feel the need to race a Dodge Charger down a runway and bring down a military transport with harpoons, Universal Pictures will not be held responsible. Read more »
Movies
'The Hangover Part III' is Forgettable
The trilogy that spawned a thousand bachelor parties has lost steam with its final installment
May 24th, 2013
Slow, sentimental and somewhat sedated, the third Hangover movie isn’t so much exhausted of outrageous “Oh no, they didn’t!” ideas as it is spent of energy. And they knew it, too. The only raunchy moment is stuffed into the closing credits, a “we forgot to do that” afterthought. Read more »
Showstopper
Retitled '80s Show' Improves but Should Adjust Mockery Quotient
May 21st, 2013
Hand me my dictionary … Let’s see … “Determined.” Adjective. See “Sirc Michaels.” Read more »
Movies
Third Time’s the Charm
The Hangover’s hilarious Ken Jeong opens up about the Tao of Chow
May 21st, 2013
Not many people can say that jumping naked out of the trunk of a car changed their life forever. Even fewer people can claim that they jumped naked out of the trunk of a car onto Bradley Cooper’s face. And yet for Ken Jeong, whose breakout role in The Hangover series (the anticipated third and final installment of which hits theaters May 24) as the flamboyant, drug-addled gangster Leslie Chow has earned him a not-so-cult following as the funniest character actor in Hollywood—both of these things are true. Read more »
Reading
SPF 50 Shades of Good Writing
Put your e-reader in your beach bag—the summer book season is full of hot, familiar hits and free of cheesy S&M romances
May 21st, 2013
Summer is right around the corner, which means bookstore shelves will be crowded with the usual mix of serious fiction and lightweight entertainment. The next few months will bring readers some hotly anticipated sequels, a number of auspicious literary debuts, three new James Patterson novels with a combined print run of more than 2 million copies, and a showdown between Dan Brown and Khaled Hosseini that will make the 2013 best-seller list look a whole lot like 2003. Read more »
Pop Culture
Liberace and His Rhinestone Rappers
On the eve of a Soderbergh biopic, looking back to the OG of ghetto glitter
May 21st, 2013
When Macklemore raps, Yo, that’s $50 for a T-shirt, of his Gucci-sporting contemporaries in newfound cultural touchstone “Thrift Shop,” he just sounds so damn sad. Read more »
Soundscraper
Bowling for Bands
May 21st, 2013
Punk Rock Bowling is back again, and the musical lineup looks superb. There’s plenty of classic testosterone-fueled punk on hand (Agnostic Front, The Damned, D.R.I.), sure. But there’s also more diverse, quirkier fare this time around. Read more »
Music
Your Rock ’n’ Roll Poolside Concert Primer
May 21st, 2013
I love the smell of chlorine in the evening, along with the sound of amplified guitars and pounding drums. Which means it must be summer in Las Vegas, where the best concerts occur near bodies of water. Here’s a cool list of musical options in the coming months. Boulevard Pool at the Cosmopolitan corners the indie-rock market by pouring the sonic equivalent of a bottomless, punked-up piña colada. Mandalay Bay Beach and Paradise Beach at the Hard Rock offer rad events, too. Other oases to keep an eye on for live music as the season grows hotter: the pool at South Point, M Resort’s DayDream Day Pool (with DJs spinning on weekends), and the pool at Red Rock Resort: Read more »
The Silenced Stage
Anthony Del Valle was the dean of Las Vegas theater criticism—and the best friend local theater had
May 21st, 2013
Anthony Del Valle was the dean of Las Vegas theater criticism—and the best friend local theater had Read more »
