06.17.09 · 7:02 PM
Podcast: Wrapping up CineVegas
Las Vegas Weekly contributor Julie Seabaugh joins Josh to wrap up the 2009 CineVegas film festival, including award winners, local films and festival highlights. Click here for full coverage of the festival, the CineVegas Blog and six days worth of movie reviews from the 11th annual CineVegas film festival at the Palms and Brenden Theatres. Read more...
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Facebook06.16.09 · 5:06 PM
It’s not goodbye, it’s see you next year
It could be a warm summer night in 1958. A black-and-white sci-fi thriller is playing on the drive-in screen and a few cherry red vintage cars are parked in back while cute girls in roller skates (the Sin City roller girls) glide around, offering popcorn. I don’t have a date to put my arm around but that doesn’t stop me from sitting in one of the few empty seats and trying to figure out the ludicrous plot of the 1958 ... Read more...
06.15.09 · 10:55 PM
Spilling secrets, Pt. 2
The 45-minute conversation preceding the screening of The Loveless—Vanguard Actor award winner Willem Dafoe’s first feature film—delved into facing fear and the need to alternately hide behind and take off masks, but it was early on that Dafoe made his most outspoken confession. Moderator Elvis Mitchell: When I first met you—I’m gonna betray some confidences here—you said something to me: “You know, a lot of my life’s been about just rebelling against being, like, a middle-class white kid from Milwaukee.” ... Read more...
06.15.09 · 12:25 PM
Welcome to Las Vegas, Willem Dafoe
Willem Dafoe has had plenty of opportunities to come to Las Vegas over the years, but nothing ever convinced the actor to visit our city - until last night. It wasn’t a luxurious nightclub, extravagant pool party or opulent dinner on a casino’s dime that got the actor to come to town. It was CineVegas. Dafoe arrived in Las Vegas yesterday, just in time to catch the tail end of the 11th annual film festival. The trip was the 53-year-old ... Read more...
06.15.09 · 10:51 AM
Jon Voight’s red carpet Obama bash
Jon Voight may have come to CineVegas last night to accept an award, but that didn’t stop the outspoken actor from sharing some of his partisan political views on the red carpet. “Right now we’re in a real bad mess,” Voight said when asked about the current state nation’s politics. “So many things are changing, we don’t realize that we’re losing ground almost every day.” It’s no secret that the actor isn’t a fan of the President. “Obama is a ... Read more...
06.15.09 · 3:51 AM
Jon Voight: “Now this is just between us, okay?”
A pair of doornail-dead AAA audio-recorder batteries prevent the story from being related verbatim, but during Sunday’s post-Lookin’ to Get Out discussion, Marquee Award winner Jon Voight shared a doozy of a behind-the-scenes tale for a packed, rapt audience. Seems that while filming on location in the early ‘80s at the MGM Grand (the first film crew ever granted permission to do so), co-star Burt Young, seated front row at Siegfried and Roy, startled one of the tigers when light ... Read more...
06.14.09 · 5:08 PM
The thrill of thrillers
The typical movie you expect to find at a film festival is concerned with art first and commerce second, often more interested in evoking a feeling or creating a particular aesthetic mood than in telling an exciting story. CineVegas has always been willing to program slightly more mainstream Indiewood fare in its Sure Bets section, and the occasional genre film in its Area 52 section, but the meat of the festival, the Jackpot Premieres, is usually filled with serious, artistic ... Read more...
06.14.09 · 5:07 PM
“Found” is a great find
“Sometimes, you just find the eighth page of a letter and you wonder what happened to the other seven pages,” says Davy Rothbart drawing a battered sheet of paper from a stack of documents. Rothbart is the creator and editor of Found magazine an annual collection of letters, receipts, sketches, notes, to-do lists and other miscellanea stumbled upon by people across the country and sent in to Rothbart and co-creator Jason Bitner for publication in the journal. Standing on the ... Read more...
06.14.09 · 12:54 PM
All’s fair in film and PR
With so many films on the 2009 CineVegas docket, choosing which films to go and see can be a daunting task for attendees, industry representatives and working media. Credit goes to Asylum Seekers for the festival’s most unusual public relations stunt. Not only did the film about a group of people fighting to get the last spot at a mental institution get a place on the Palms’ marquee on Flamingo Road, the film’s tenacious public relations representatives arranged for a ... Read more...
06.14.09 · 5:53 AM
Crowd and Cloud wow
Entries on a future “Places I’ve Seen A Crowd of Small Adventures Play” list: Jillians, Beauty Bar times 20, The Bunkhouse times a million, a Starbucks, a few venues I’m probably forgetting, at Neon Reverb, in Weekly arts and entertainment editor Spencer Patterson’s living room, and now at CineVegas headquarters inside the Palms. While most of the credit for fun, funky lark Thor at the Bus Stop will go to and is fully deserved by writing/directing/acting/editing duo Jerry and Mike ... Read more...
06.13.09 · 4:27 PM
The art of self-promotion
At last night’s premiere of Easier With Practice, everyone received one of these promotional socks, a playful little lark tying in to one of the movie’s central activities (draw your own conclusions). It was a cute gesture, but didn’t exactly make me fall in love with the movie, an amusing trifle that loses a bit of momentum during long uncinematic scenes of the main character talking on the phone. Tangible items like socks (printed up with the movie title and ... Read more...
06.13.09 · 4:07 PM
Darker than “Darkness”
It’s virtually impossible not to think of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness while watching Sea of Darkness, a CineVegas documentary that chronicles the lives and demise of members of the 1970s’ elite surfer community. There are good times, of course -– a paradisiacal surf camp in G-Land, a remote region of Java, hash-smoking days on California beaches -– but the story is dark in the extreme, unraveling into an almost unbelievable tangle of drug smuggling, kidnapping, betrayal and addiction as ... Read more...
06.13.09 · 12:48 PM
Coming up shorts
Short films are often the neglected stepchildren of film festivals, but they can be an untapped gold mine of interesting, challenging filmmaking, and I always make an effort to catch the shorts programs at CineVegas to see what so many others are missing. This year, I was a little disappointed with the offerings, which included some decent efforts but nothing that really grabbed my attention. The festival has two regular shorts programs this year, along with a Nevada showcase, plus ... Read more...
06.13.09 · 12:41 PM
To stay or not to stay?
It’s no news flash that post-screening Q&A panels can be hit-and-miss. For every taciturn “artiste” (we’re glaring at you, Redland’s Asiel Norton), there’s a colorful, 13-member posse in varying degrees of formality ranging from director, producer and stars down to the woman who spoke but a single line when she brought her turtle into the vet’s office (Etienne!). Following Friday’s 11 p.m. showing of winning documentary Winnebago Man, director Ben Steinbauer was lobbed a few softballs before being asked what ... Read more...
06.13.09 · 10:51 AM
Off the Strip and into the strip club
“I’m sick of customers asking me for drugs!” whined a tan, blonde stripper in a grating, high-pitched voice to a fellow dancer. “I’m from California; in California, everybody is happy like me!” “Honey, when you’re in a profession like this and you’re happy all the time, people are going to ask you for drugs,” her coworker replied in a soothing and sane tone. “Topless on all three stages, gentlemen!” boomed the emcee. With fog swirling around their breasts and thighs, ... Read more...
06.12.09 · 2:21 PM
I don’t know Jack (Nicholson)
“There’s Jack Nicholson!” noted my sidekick photographer, Allison Duck, as CineVegas’ Jackpot Premieres party was in full swing at Lavo Nightclub last night. With his trademark shades and mischievous grin, a blonde by his side, he still resembled psychopathic killer Jack Torrance, although his hair was concrete gray and a Santa Claus stomach pushed against his shirt. “We just arrived,” he told me as I imagined him jetting in from Hollywood, maybe on a private plane, and shacking up in ... Read more...
06.11.09 · 11:11 AM
“Hey, I remember you…” Festival flashbacks on CineVegas opening night
The first night of CineVegas is like a high school reunion: There are familiar faces and not so familiar ones, a lot of introductions and re-introductions and many rounds of catch up small talk as people jostle for position at the bar, getting friendlier with each glass of Stella Artois. Oh yea, there’s a movie, too. The 11th annual CineVegas Film Festival kicked off Wednesday night at Planet Hollywood with the world premier of Hue Rhodes’ debut film Saint John ... Read more...
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SMS Alerts
Featured Cocktail
May 15, 2013
by
Sabrina Chapman
The Golden Pillar: An architectural cocktail built for XS
This Sunday, XS nightclub celebrates the grand reopening of its after-dark pool party, Night Swim. Along with the bash comes a new offering of signature cocktails served by the pitcher, ...
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