A More Cultured Corridor

S at u r d ay, M ay 4 t h

•

P a r t y S ta r t S at 2 : 0 0 P M

all woMen wearing derby hatS will be entered into a drawing to win the winning ticket of the derby.

Special brunch menu includes chicken and waffes and a cornbread Skillet.

www.HeraeaLV.com • 702.701.0201 •

HeraeaLasVegas •

@HeraeaLV

EvEnt

A GrAnd AffAir

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[ upcoming ]

may 4-5 California Hotel and Casino hosts the 16th annual Lei Day Polynesian Festival (TamaevaArii.com) may 8-12 34th annual San Gennaro Feast (SanGennaroFeast.com)

Photos by Josh Metz

April 25-May 1, 2013

The grande dame of Las Vegas epicurean festivals—UNLVino—stretched over four days this year. The biggest bash at the 39th annual event was, as always, the Grand Tasting, which took place at Paris Las Vegas and featured more than 500 international wine selections, as well as food prepared by UNLV culinary students and an extravagant auction, whose grand prize was a World Whiskey Tour for 10. Influential Las Vegas restaurateur Elizabeth Blau (right) was honored with the Dom Pérignon Award of Excellence. Once again, UNLVino raised scholarship money for the university’s William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration.

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LocaLs InvIted to dIve Into PooL season

April 25-May 1, 2013

The Meaning of MGM’s Park

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It dIdn’t take a genius to fgure out that the last thing MGM Resorts International was going to build was more hotel rooms; it already has plenty of them. Condos, meanwhile, didn’t pan out at CityCenter (to put it mildly), so it’s no surprise that MGM shelved its plans to build a condo tower in front of Mandalay Bay. And room renovations and improvements at existing resorts— as necessary as they are—won’t give the company the wow factor it will need to compete.

So what’s a casino mega-conglomerate to do for its next big move? With the recent announcement of The Park, MGM decided to go back to urban basics and plan a street-level experience. The project is comprised of retail/dining development between New York-New York and Monte Carlo, a renovation of the Strip-front facades of both resorts and a 20,000-seat arena operated by sports and entertainment giant AEG. Cynics will say that MGM is just copying Caesars Entertainment’s Linq, which also features dining and retail on underutilized space between two casinos. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is whether this is a smart move—in particular because it’s the antithesis of CityCenter.

CityCenter was pitched as an urban development that would remake the way people interacted with space along the Strip. But it had severe—and I mean severe—design faws that made it impossible to make it truly urban and walkable.

Some people thought CityCenter was too bold a project for Las

Vegas—that visitors couldn’t handle a development that wasn’t a large Y-shaped tower. But in truth, CityCenter was too conservative; it had too limited a vision.

Instead of master-planning just the 76 acres that ultimately became CityCenter, the visionary move would have been to master-plan the entire span of Las Vegas Boulevard from Tropicana to Flamingo on both sides, taking into account the pieces that MGM controlled as well as the ones it didn’t. In other words, the smart move would have been to fgure out how to maximize the value not only of those 76 acres, but also of the entire block. Instead, CityCenter is aloof from the surrounding Strip-scape.

The Park appears to be a move to do just what MGM should have done at CityCenter: use undeveloped space not just to create new revenue streams, but to enhance the value of what the company already has. With more action along the Monte Carlo/New York-New York nexus, MGM will give visitors a reason to spend the afternoon around a stretch of the Boulevard they currently hurry past on their way to see the Bellagio fountains.

Even without the arena, this would re-energize that stretch.

It will also likely have a spillover

effect for both the Tropicana and MGM’s Mandalay Mile properties.

But is that good for Las Vegas?

Will it just siphon visitors away from Caesars’ Linq?

I say ‘yes’ to the frst question and ‘no’ to the second. If you look at the history of casinos in Las Vegas, they’ve really only thrived when they compete against each other. Going back to the neon explosion of the 1960s, progress has come when one resort builds the biggest neon sign in town, and then another tops it by 10 feet, and does something more elaborate to boot. At the end of the day, Las Vegas gets the Stardust and Dunes signs, and puts new international icons on the map.

Strip casinos have been doing this for years, with neon, pools, buffets, entertainers and nightclubs (but, unfortunately for serious gamblers, not table-game odds). Competition made the city a better attraction—and a better value for visitors.

During the Great Recession, thanks in part to overconcentration, Las Vegas lost some of that.

Now it appears to be back.

Along with Linq and Resorts World Las Vegas, The Park will broaden the possibilities for visitors to Las Vegas, which is only going to help the city as economic uncertainty continues and the travel market becomes more competitive.

That’s why The Park will likely be a positive, not just for MGM Resorts, but for the whole city.

David G. Schwartz is the director of UNLV’s Center for Gaming Research.

As another Memorial Day approaches, so, too, does another summer of “daylife,” the poolside answer to Las Vegas’ powerhouse nightclub scene. This year brings a lot of positive change for locals, with hotel pools seemingly going the way of most everything else in town and looking to offer deals that appeal to the city’s captive resident market. In this case, the deal is free entry.

Whether or not attending a pool party is your idea of a good time—it can get really … let’s call it stupid at some of these booze-n-skinfests— well, that’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself. My sole purpose here is to give you the season’s first comprehensive list of potential targets. The rest is up to you.

The list below identifies pools that grant free entry with a Nevada ID. Trust me: Everything has been checked and verified, so it’s valid as of … right now. Trust me again: Many of these policies will change, some more than once, so try to call ahead or have a backup plan in case you get denied.

A resort often has multiple pools, some of which have outside operators, so when a specific pool is mentioned, the stated policy is for that pool only. A good example is Caesars Palace, where there are seven different pools that make up the resort’s Garden of the Gods, but only the Venus Pool Club—which is the actual name of Caesars’ topless pool—has free admission Monday through Thursday. Here’s the rest of the list: Free for All: Locals are welcome to hit the pool at Hooters free of charge any day of the week. The same is true at the Rio’s Voodoo Beach and the Voo (no longer topless); the Stratosphere; the Pond at Green Valley Ranch (which previously was only open on weekends); and Planet Hollywood (though the powers that be are reconsidering this one).

Free for All ... Kind of: Want to check out the Palms’ pool scene gratis? You can ... but only until the end of April. Among the other resorts that have asterisks afixed to their free-for-locals pool policies are the Cosmopolitan (free with a players card, availability permitting); the Cosmo’s Marquee Dayclub (free Monday-Thursday only); Hard Rock (Monday-Friday); Palms Place (MondayThursday); Rumor’s Gossip Pool (free daily unless there’s a special event with a cover charge); Silverton’s Sway Pool Lounge (Monday-Friday, with a $5 charge on weekends); The Mirage’s Bare Pool Lounge (Mondays only); Tropicana’s Bagatelle Beach Club (open weekends only); and Venetian’s Tao Beach (Monday-Thursday).

And then there’s Mandalay Bay’s topless Moorea Beach, which is always free for women. Ditto for men ... on Thursdays ... from 11 a.m. to noon. (Yep, that’s a one-hour entry window.)

Anthony Curtis is the publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor and LasVegasAdvisor.com, a monthly newsletter and website dedicated to finding the best deals in town.

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national

Many offices are now much more than just places where people work.

April 25-May 1, 2013

Amusement Perks

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How the cult of cool ofces took over the cubicle world

By Kim Velsey The New York Observer

last winter, BuzzFeed got a pony.

Well, technically it was a miniature horse named Mystic, and she came by for a visit one morning—a surprise treat for hitting a Web-traffc goal. Sure, a cash bonus might have been more practical, but a little pony with pink ribbons in her mane and a tiny gold party hat that stuck up like a unicorn’s horn?

So much cooler. And judging by the photos that employees quickly posted on Facebook and Twitter, Mystic’s visit was basically the best day ever. At least until the time Grumpy Cat—the famous cranky-looking feline—stopped by.

It was enough to make even a Google employee jealous. Not that Google’s New York offces don’t have their own enviably

cool visitors—Stephen Colbert, Lang Lang and Toni Morrison, to name just a few. Employees also get razor scooters. And pool tables. And arcade games. And subsidized massages. And free gourmet meals. And a full-service dessert truck permanently parked on the eighth foor.

These days, visitors to a New York offce are as likely to stumble into a game of pingpong as they are to fnd suited workers shuffing through a grim landscape of carpet tile and cubicles. Thrillist has a kegerator; building-mate Foursquare has shuffeboard and a beer of the week. Etsy’s Dumbo headquarters blends homemade coziness and high-end design so masterfully it could make an Urban Outftters executive weep.

Until quite recently, such perks were considered the eccentric luxuries of twentysomething tech prodigies, edgy advertising frms and cash-fush startups. Corporate America dismissed the cool offce as a feeting phenomenon. But the wild successes of companies such as Google and Facebook have made even the stodgiest CEOs contemplate the potential benefts of video-game consoles and French-press coffee. A pingpong table in the middle of your offce used to imply that you were run by a 24-year-old. Now a lot of companies want to imply that they’re run by a 24-year-old.

Indeed, the cool offce has become a national fxation. And in the country’s collective imagination—an imagination fed by countless magazines, blogs

and secondhand stories—it is a utopia of lofted ceilings and abundant natural light, where no one ever seems bored or blocked or fatigued (how could anyone be tired with both a nap room and an espresso machine?), where workers always appear to be seriously having fun, furiously exchanging ideas or seriously having fun as they furiously exchange ideas. Even the after-work hours are better.

Rather than rushing home to drown their sorrows in drink, workers hang out in their hip, bar-like lounges, knocking back craft brews in celebration of yet another ridiculously productive day of creative cathexis.

In this way, the cool offce goes so far as to suggest that the inherent tensions of the workplace— between labor and management, between our authentic selves and our professional selves, between working for love and working for money—can be overcome. It’s a paradise wrought by the Protestant work ethic, where creativity and massive profts can be merged painlessly, a delightful feedback loop in which greater happiness yields greater productivity yields greater happiness— salvation by way of pingpong and Stumptown coffee.

Last October, French beverage conglomerate Pernod Ricard moved into an 82,000-squarefoot space at 250 Park Avenue—a buttoned-up 20-story tower in Midtown that has traditionally been a great favorite of whiteshoe law frms. While the location and the building seemed an obvious choice for a huge

tive solution to the problems of the modern offce when it frst debuted in the 1960s.)

“Now innovation is all about what’s cool,” said Lenny Beaudoin, a senior managing director of CBRE’s global corporate services. Beaudoin, a workplace strategist who helps the real estate company’s clients revamp their workplaces to enhance productivity, is working with a number of traditional companies that want to create “cooler,” less traditional offces in happening neighborhoods.

“The new offce is part hospitality, part retail. People work 24/7, and they want their workplaces to appeal to their lifestyles,” he said. “The idea of going into a high-rise and sitting in a cubicle all day,

April 25-May 1, 2013

“Cool has conquered all,” Spector said.

A decade ago, workplace innovation revolved primarily around where people worked. Working remotely was all the rage, and “being able to work in your pajamas” was talked about as though it were one of the great hopes of humanity that could fnally now, through the miracle of technology, be achieved. Companies contemplated the cost-saving potential of vastly reduced work spaces, and workers welcomed the end of commuting and simpler child-care arrangements.

But like other work-space panaceas before it, telecommuting proved less than revolutionary. (It’s worth noting that the cubicle, maligned though it is today, was seen as an innova-

The cool offce sells not only an image of a creative hotbed to clients, but perhaps more importantly, to employees. It invites them to see their job as a form of self-expression rather than rote labor, granting fexibility in exchange for loyalty and long hours.

There is something vaguely unsettling, though, something overwrought about the descriptions of all the fun being had: the Tuesday-night runs that “take off from the offce and end at a local pub,” the spontaneous exercise breaks, the craft nights with wine and cheese where everyone makes “holiday-themed cards, or mugs, or whatever strikes our fancy!”

There is a cult-like undertone in this all-encompassing existence, in the blurring of lines between home and offce, between personal time and work time, between employee and self. The cool offce works to disguise the very basis of the relationship between company and employee: the exchange of money for work.

Work is a lot of things, but this is its fundamental essence.

As architect Sam Jacob recently wrote in Dezeen, the rise of the fun offce can be seen “as a denial of the very real power structures inherent in labor relations.”

And “even more fundamentally sinister is the idea of work colonizing the real spaces of intimacy and freedom: When your offce resembles all the places that you go to escape work, maybe there is no escape from work itself.”

But for better or worse, Americans have always embraced that “you are what you do.” The idea that “you are where you work— literally” is new. For many of us, the cool offce ministers not only to our immediate needs, but also to our fantasies: fantasies about the kind of people we would like to be, the jobs we wish we had, the lives we wish we were leading. We might not land that dream job, but the dream offce could be within reach!

And yet, as much as the cool offce can seem to matter, it can also matter very little. Of the many conversations that The Observer had with the haves and the have-nots of the offce world, our thoughts returned frequently to what a Google engineer said to us after describing a Vermont ski weekend the company had taken him on, Lang Lang’s visit, and a lunch of expertly prepared salmon and roasted Brussels sprouts: “At the end of the day, whether you enjoy your job or not is more important than getting roasted Brussels sprouts.”

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international corporation, the distillery-chic space was not: exposed 14-foot ceilings, concrete foors, vast walls of brick and glass, plus a massive bar, a game room and huge terraces.

“They all want some kind of cool vibe,” said Scott Spector, a principal at the Spector Group, the architectural frm that designed Pernod’s space, adding that even law frms and hedge funds are requesting the “factory-meets-art-gallery look.”

While the frst cool offces started appearing more than a decade ago, there’s now been a fundamental shift in offce design. What were once features found mostly at tech companies—open, collaborative areas, kitchens, game rooms—are becoming standard.

the tyranny of the traditional offce, that’s going away. It’s about lifestyle integration.”

Google has been criticized in the past for using its admittedly amazing amenities to lure workers into longer and longer days at the offce. But its offces remain the envy of workers everywhere, because many Americans aren’t offered any trade-offs for their devotion to their desks, let alone a package of extravagant ones.

The modern offce is transforming into a worker’s everything— the place where someone not only works, but eats, exercises, relaxes and socializes.

Just the prospect of moving to a cool offce is enough to make some workers giddy. Ryan Alovis, the CEO and founder of ArkNet Media, a midsize Long Island startup, was surprised at how psyched his 16 employees were when he told them they’d be ditching their traditional offce in Valley Stream for a hip, college-campus-like complex in Garden City.

“They’re so hyped up, everyone’s freaking out,” he said. “I walked by my VP of operations and he showed me a pool table that they have at L.A.’s Hard Rock Cafe that he wanted us to get—every time you hit a ball, it either reveals a girl in a bikini or it looks like a ball of fre.”

There will not be the bikini/ fame pool table at the new offce, but there will be a bar, a ftness center, a “coffee center, not just coffee,” a juicer and pizza parties. “You have to wow people,” Alovis said. “A juicer, a ftness center, a cafeteria—people expect this now. Tech workers are the new rock stars.”

It should not come as a surprise that corporate America— its once-promised fnancial security and career stability having vanished—would be drawn to the cultural blueprint and anti-status ethos provided by tech. While tech’s DNA is fundamentally capitalist, the industry proved that it could not only make money and be cool at the same time, but that it could make money by being cool.

By following the path that tech forged, companies have an opportunity to remake their images along with their offces.

Now companies talk endlessly of creating interactions, of CEOs getting right into the mix of things, of ideas circulating and fourishing in their open foor plans. As though we could wipe out the thankless, unglamorous tasks that make up the entirety of some jobs right along with bad fuorescent lighting.

April 25-May 1, 2013

What’s the future of space tourism in Las Vegas?

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By David G. Schwartz

Could las Vegas become a launching pad for a new type of tourist—the kind who’s looking for a thrill ride that can’t be found behind the velvet rope?

In the past fve years, ideas that once seemed outlandish— medical tourism, a tech corridor, green energy—have been seriously considered as viable tools

for our economic development.

Why not space tourism?

For its frst 40 years, spacefight was limited to those chosen as part of a national astronaut selection process; mostly Soviet (later Russian) cosmonauts and American astronauts. For a while, it looked like the space shuttle was going to open up space to

civilians; politicians Jake Garn and Bill Nelson few on shuttle missions, but plans to have regular fights of educators in space and more trips by civilians were scrapped when teacher Christa McAuliffe perished in the 1986 Challenger disaster.

That tragedy, and the subsequent loss of Columbia in

nonprofessional who could pay millions for the privilege.

In 2001, the frst space tourist, engineer and investment manager Dennis Tito, few on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station. He trained for several months before the mission (which pales in comparison to the years regular astronauts log before liftoff, but still shows dedication) and conducted a variety of experiments in his nearly eight days in space.

He reportedly paid $20 million for the journey.

But he got to know the thrill of foating weightless; of seeing the curvature of the Earth; of witnessing a sunrise every 90

Photo illustration by Thomas Speak

The LaTesT

Vegas to the Moon!

2003, highlighted the dangers of spacefight, but leaving the green hills of Earth for the depths of space—even if it’s just a couple of days in low-earth orbit, roughly 200 miles up— remains a dream for many. Of course, only the elite of the elite can become astronauts. Lacking extensive piloting experience or advanced degrees in the sciences—and the dedication to be at the top of your feld for most of your adult life—you don’t have much of a chance to become a professional cosmic explorer.

But space tourism may make orbit available to the nonprofessional—though for the past decade that’s meant the kind of

How the reborn Light is raising the stakes in a hypercompetitive business—and what that says about the future of Las Vegas nightlife

April 25-May 1, 2013

By David G. Schwartz

Photo by TK

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Photo by TK

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April 25-May 1, 2013

April 25-May 1, 2013

When Light opened at Bellagio in December 2001, it pointed the way to the next wave of nightclub development in Las Vegas. It was the frst casino nightclub designed around the then-novel concept of bottle service, and as the club’s success became apparent, it inspired more than its share of imitators.

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By the time the club closed in 2007, it had been surpassed by several bigger venues: Pure (2004), Tao (2005) and Tryst (2005). Since then, Wynn Las Vegas has tripled-down, following Tryst with XS (2008) and Surrender (2010). And there are more megaclubs on the way: Hakkasan—the recently opened $100 million, 75,000-square-foot Londonvia-San Francisco import at the MGM Grand—is expected to become the next big thing, which will probably lead to an even bigger club opening sometime next year.

The nightclub arms race will always be about what’s next, which makes it somehow endearing that the biggest non-Hakkasan nightclub news of the moment is the rebirth of the club that started the race in the first place. The namesake of the Las Vegasbased Light Group will soon return to the Strip at Mandalay Bay, where it is taking over the space that used to be Rumjungle.

The fate of the previous tenant speaks volumes about how fckle nightlife can be. At one point, Rumjungle was one of the top 20 highest-grossing venues in the country. In 2006, it pulled in more than $16 million in gross revenues.

But changing public tastes, new competition (including from MGM-owned outlets in Mandalay Bay) led to a quick dropoff—in 2009, Rumjungle’s last full year of operation, it earned $6.6 million—a nearly $10 million decline in just three years.

But, in the mid-2000s, $16 million was no longer enough.

When Rumjungle was at its peak, Tao at the Venetian

dwarfed its numbers, bringing in more than $55 million.

The frst clubs had proven that there was money to be made in the nightlife business. And in the time-honored logic of Las Vegas, if “X” is good, the obvious next step is to multiply it by 10. So along came the megaclubs: bigger, louder and more proftable. By applying economies of scale to a proven model, they made nightlife more than an amenity—it became a lifeline for casinos facing the recession.

In 2012, seven out of the top 10 nightclubs in the country were in Las Vegas.

The leader was XS at Encore, which grossed more than $80 million—that’s more than $1.5 million per weekend.

Even a smaller venue, like the Ghostbar at the Palms or The Bank (which replaced Light at Bellagio) can pull in $20 million in the course of a year.

With all that success, it’s no wonder today’s nightclub scene is crowded. Meanwhile, clubs are working themselves more deeply into the weft of resort fabric, with dayclubs and vibe dining carrying them into new areas. At the turn of the millennium, nightlife started going Vegas. Now Vegas has gone nightlife.

••• So thE LiGht thAt opENS on Memorial Day Weekend will do so in a very different Las Vegas from the original, and it’s going to be a markedly different venue. For one, Light will be joined by Daylight, and it’s going to be part of a bigger interest that Light Group parent Morgans has in Mandalay Bay: THEhotel is being rebranded the Delano and will be run by Morgans, and

it’s also managing Red Square and Citizens Kitchen & Bar— both within steps of Light.

And there’s more. This time, Light isn’t just a nightclub; it’s a nightclub with a twist. That twist is Cirque du Soleil, the Montreal-based performance troupe that has become as inextricable a part of the Vegas tourist experience as all-youcan-eat buffets and Elvis impersonators. Think Cirque performers on poles. Think Cirque performers bouncing off a two-story “acrowall” behind the DJ booth. Think Cirque performers literally fying through the air on tethers.

This, Light’s builders promise, will make the club one-of-akind, and the most revolutionary thing to hit Las Vegas since

… the last revolutionary thing.

The Cirque twist speaks to the evolution of Las Vegas nightlife, which parallels the changes that began taking place on the gaming foor 20 years ago. It once was enough for a casino to simply be a gambling hall, with plenty of games and free drinks. Then competition heated up and casinos started playing dress-up, pretending to be medieval castles, pirate islands and even refned Italianate lakesides. Gambling ceased to be a compelling gimmick, and the answer was to pile gimmicks on top of gimmicks. It worked for a few years, but in 2005 Wynn Las Vegas frmly rejected a theme in favor of a more nuanced ambience of customer service

and delicious design surprises, and designers across the Strip throttled back on theming.

Looking at Light, it seems that Vegas nightlife is now where casinos were around 1993. There was a time when clubs just needed booze and beats. Now, they need something else to stand out. Enter the nightlife gimmick.

And if Cirque-meets-clublife is successful, that might make Light the frst Vegas nightclub, version 3.0.

••• AS uSuAL iN LAS VEGAS, the hype machine is pushing the redline with Light. The group has invested a great deal in the Mandalay makeover, and expectations are high.

The designers were asked to

A rendering of a big night at Light (left), and a photo of the bar awaiting its first patrons (below).

VIP check-in, guests will ascend a red-and-black carpeted staircase; at the top, they’ll come out onto the mezzanine level. To the left is the main bar; to the right, the massive open space that contains three tiers of tables and, oh yeah, the dance foor.

Flush against the foor is the DJ booth, with a massive LED display above it; you’ve also got a catwalk and the acrowall back there for the Cirque acrobats.

The new Light is deeper than the old Rumjungle space, since there’s no restaurant (the club is bucking the vibe-dining trend, with hungry clubbers presumably directed to Red Square or Citizens). It’s taller too, with the drop ceiling ripped out and several tiers of tables and the mezzanine level

packaged here isn’t just a night out, but an evening of immersion in the crafted spectacle of a night out. The club itself is a performance of “nightlife.”

The real challenge is how the space will fow when it’s flled with clubgoers, waitresses, bouncers and acrobats. With what’s touted as the loudest sound system on the Strip, it will be intense, to say the least. But will the room stand up to the rigors of the modern night-lifestyle?

Josh Held, the architect behind the new Light, has planned for that. “I always tell my team to design as if we are designing the interior of a zoo full of wild animals,” he says.

“Any type of abuse you can imagine will happen, and the design has to look fantastic regardless. Special linings were used in the upholstery to prevent punctures. Floor and wall materials are of a different grade than one would usually specify. Every surface that

can be stood on or jumped on will be, so we over-design those surfaces to withstand the abuse.”

••• With A prActicEd dESiGN and an ambitious goal—to remake the Vegas club experience—will Light do its forebear proud? All signs point to yes, but you never know for sure in Vegas. When he opened Circus Circus back in 1968, Jay Sarno was sure that the acrobats spinning over the heads of the craps tables would enhance the experience for gamblers. Turns out, most players weren’t as absorbed by the game as he was, and the idea fopped.

Light is banking that Cirque fantasy will heighten the otherworldly party vibe for which people come to Las Vegas. If it is successful, there will be imitators, who will scale up the formula even more. If not, there will be no shortage of people explaining, in hindsight, why this couldn’t have worked.

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deliver something that was both entirely different from the once-successful, now-passe Rumjungle, and suffciently wild to impress an increasingly jaded target audience.

It delivers without dispute on the frst count. Unlike Rumjungle, which was partially open to public view, Light presents a blank face to those who aren’t inside: Most of the frontage is taken up by bamboo facade with more than a passing resemblance to a stylized sun’s rays, two sets of nondescript black doors and the Light marquee.

Walking by, you might hear the muffed sounds of a great time inside, but make no mistake about it: This is a private party.

After passing a hostess stand/

in the newly acquired airspace.

That means more tables, which means more bottle service, which means more money. As it will be confgured on opening night, the new Light will have nearly 100 tables. The original Light, by comparison, had 33 tables at its biggest build-out.

Even with the club empty, one thing is certain: This isn’t just a place to have a good time; it’s a place to be seen having a good time. Those moneymaking tables are stacked in levels, stadium-like, around the dance foor, which becomes—along with the DJ booth, the LED wall and every square foot between foor and ceiling—a performance space.

That’s where the twist comes in. With Cirque artists fipping and slipping through the air, there’s going to be plenty of visual energy. Each DJ, according to a Light spokesperson, will meet with Cirque and get a customized show. What’s being

April 25-May 1, 2013

What’s being packaged here isn’t just a night out, but an evening of immersion in the crafted spectacle of a night out.

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nightlife

parties

paradise Beach Hard Rock Hotel [ Upcoming ]

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Hew Burney

April 25-May 1, 2013

April 27 Crazibiza and Sex Panther May 4 The Disco Fries May 25 Juicy Beach with Robbie Rivera

nightlife

parties

marquee dayclub The Cosmopolitan [ Upcoming ]

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Powers Imagery

April 25-May 1, 2013

April 26 Keidy spins April 27 Avicii kicks off Wet Wonderland April 28 EDX spins

nightlife

parties

Moon The palms

[ Upcoming ]

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Bobby Jameidar and Amit Dadlaney

April 25-May 1, 2013

April 25 Exodus with Seany Mac April 26 Mark Stylz and Exodus spin April 27 Taboo of the Black Eyed Peas spins

nightlife

parties

Lavo

The palazzo [ Upcoming ]

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Al Powers

April 25-May 1, 2013

April 26 Sounds by DJ Cheapshot April 27 Stereo Saturdays with sounds by Gusto April 28 Vice Sundays with guest DJ Mr. Mauricio

nightlife

parties

LaX Luxor

[ Upcoming ]

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Teddy Fujimoto and Roman Mendez

April 25-May 1, 2013

April 26 Fridays at LAX with DJ Gusto April 27 Saturdays at LAX with DJ Gusto May 4 Fat Joe performs

Gastro Fare. Nurtured Ales. Jukebox Gold.

drinking Dining

[ Scene StirS ]

April 25-May 1, 2013

Get Luna’s Poppy Sling recipe at VegasSeven.com/Cocktail-Culture.com.

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Slinging Praises

as cocktails traVel through time and space, they tend to change and evolve—sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. One of the cocktails most approximated for convenience and skewed to refect the current contents of the liquor room is the Singapore Sling, which was created at the start of the 20th century at the Raffes Hotel in Singapore. Although originally based on dry gin, cherry brandy and lemon juice, an ever-changing cast of supporting liqueurs, syrups, bitters and other citrus juices (most notably pineapple) has jumped on and off board over in the nearly 100 years since. But it almost doesn’t matter which

recipe you use—if the ingredients are fresh and the products top-notch, the resulting vaguely Southeast Asian gin punch should be a hit.

At Poppy Den in Tivoli Village, mixologist Julian Luna does his Poppy Sling Caribbean-style, with Pusser’s Rum (favored over gin by one of the owners), Heering cherry liqueur, Bénédictine, house-made grenadine, lime and pineapple juices, plus Bittermens ’Elemakule Tiki cocktail bitters. While sipping a cocktail may not be enough to transport you to Singapore, you can at the very least feel whisked away to Summerlin.

RM Seafood’s second floor will close May 3 for a reconceptualization that will mesh nicely with Mandalay Bay’s other new draws: Light Nightclub, Daylight Beach Club and Cirque du Soleil’s new Michael Jackson show. When it reopens in late June as “Rx Boiler Room” (pronounced “Rick’s”), the more casual venue will reflect Moonen’s taste for all things Thomas Edison, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and steampunk.

Encouraged by the property to reinvent, Moonen says ideas ran from steakhouse (“but that’s not fun, that’s not me”) to a so-called “gastrolab.” But while avant-garde techniques would surely be a part of any new Moonen project, he felt the term “gastro” is overused. So, the chef looked inward for inspiration: “When I was growing up, I was kind of a geek. But back then being a geek wasn’t cool. Now it’s hip!” The Boiler Room will be both geeky and hip, celebrating the “alchemy of food and drink.”

Re-envisioned in tandem by Cleo Design and the chef’s wife, Roni, this will be Moonen’s clubhouse, “where things happen, where things get cooked up.” In the dining room, booths will become intimate, robed in velvet curtains beneath a stamped-metal ceiling. Tables of reclaimed wood will include communal dining options and no white linen in sight. The new menu will rely less on structure and more on seasonality.

Service could include small plates, large platters, pairings and chalkboard specials.

Plus: a great sound system? Yes. A killer brunch? Yep. Local crooners slinking in for impromptu performances on a Lucite piano? “It could happen,” Moonen says.

Moonen’s core value of sustainable seafood remains, and will operate alongside this new farm-to-table lineup of redefined comfort foods; think buckets of crisp, fried Cornish game hens, “Steampunk Oysters” and deviled green eggs. Looking for your culinary North Star? “There will always be oysters on the half shell at any Rick Moonen restaurant opened anywhere in the world.”

But the bar is where the fun really starts.

The upstairs entry, formerly easy to overlook, will be wide open and festooned with gears and cogs. Inside the lounge, oddly shaped furniture leads to the bar, where lead bartender Nathan Greene and his team will serve original craft cocktails and classic revisions from beakers, flasks and barrels. Here, your orange peel is flamed by a Bunsen burner. “I’m gonna let these guys just run free,” Moonen says. And when Rx Boiler Room is open, RM’s first floor will get a little update, as well. “I think it has infinite possibilities. It’s certainly more fun than trying to do fine dining in this environment right now. The three-star Michelin chefs have that covered.”

For more scene stirrings and shake-ups, visit VegasSeven.com/Cocktail-Culture.

Photo by Anthony Mair

Jules Verne and rick Moonen haVe your next round

April 25-May 1, 2013

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out of the space, face-offs between Signature supporters and intractable library trustees during the public-comment portions of district meetings became exercises in tension.

“We’d go back every month, and they were hostile—very hostile,” Larsen says. “They’d give us three minutes while they were busy tucking things inside their briefcases and getting ready to leave. They couldn’t have cared less.”

Sanity eventually triumphed.

Credit relentless, passionate pleas by Larsen and Broadway Bound (a youth theater group that also rented the space), plus a petition drive within Signature’s fan base and entreaties to county commissioners and Mayor Goodman, prompting rethinking by library trustees.

In what amounts to a giant phew! the library district relented last fall, slashing the hike to a still-gut-punching 180 percent. Sucking it up, Signature raised ticket prices $5, to an average of $30 for adults and $20 for kids.

“Where can you go to see a Broadway [type of] show for 30 bucks?” Larsen asks. “You can’t.”

Resurrection is onstage right now, the company in the midst of its comeback run of Camelot that began April 15 at … yes, the Summerlin Library theater.

Unsurprisingly, the layoff inficted damage.

“Ticket sales are down some,” Larsen says, noting that by the frst preview, advance sales for the 22 performances were only at 40 percent, though the numbers were climbing last week.

“Our being gone for a whole year and the perception that we had quit performing were probably in play. Only time will tell whether we will be as successful as a year ago.”

Looking back on the whole mess reveals something disturbing: Quietly, we nearly lost something precious even as we gained something momentous, and relatively few Las Vegans knew or cared, exposing a cultural blind spot—even in our new Smith Center world. Fellow local theaters didn’t get it either when it came to Signature.

“I didn’t feel any support from the smaller companies,” Larsen says. “The theater community is really split up in this town. We don’t trust each other. It’s like North and South Korea here.” *** What level of theater were we denied while they battled to keep breathing? Consider

Stage the perspective of the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Anthony Del Valle, the city’s toughest, most respected (and in some quarters, feared) theater critic.

On 2007’s Peter Pan: “a blissful achievement.” On 2010’s All Shook Up: “an orgy of fun” and a “celebration of being alive.” On 2011’s Oh What a Night: “exuberantly performed, excitingly sung and pumped with theatrical pizzazz.” On 2009’s Thoroughly Modern Millie: “You’ll say ‘Wow’ a lot. There’s more musical-comedy talent here per square foot than anyone has the right to ask for in a community production.”

(Not that it’s all warm hugs and sweet kisses. About Signature’s The Sound of Music in 2010, he wrote that “the inevitable tears come dutifully and unimaginatively,” one among other pointed criticisms over the years. Still, you can’t quibble over the consistency of his standards. While Del Valle smiled upon several Broadway tour productions in The Smith Center’s inaugural season in the R-J, he also machinegunned the visiting Anything Goes and The Addams Family.)

Conventional thinking sug-

Community theater royalty: Camelot’s King Arthur (James Claflin) and Guenevere (Lila Harper).

How will HigH-grade loCal tHeater be PerCeived and valued in a PoSt-SmitH Center era? gests that because community theater exists in its own bubble, with its own loyal (if modest) following, The Smith Center’s Broadway series of traditional musicals doesn’t threaten to swipe patrons. Largely that’s true, given that the schedules of the most active local companies—including Las Vegas Little Theatre, the Onyx, Cockroach Theatre, Nevada Conservatory Theatre and CSN’s theater department—are crowded with dramas, comedies, original works, adult-oriented plays, avant-garde pieces and other non-musicals absent from The Smith Center.

Not so Signature. Unlike some other local troupes (PS Productions, Stage Door Entertainment, Huntsman Entertainment) that offer similar musicals sporadically—often merely one-offs on a rotation

at the Super Summer Theatre program at Spring Mountain Ranch State Park—Signature is the steadiest provider, producing three or four annually.

Only Signature, then, is even near the same ballpark with The Smith Center in terms of delivering the same theater genre at quality levels with regularity—creating potential audience overlap. Yet Signature’s promotional resources amount to a fraction of a fraction of Smith’s, and it lacks the Broadway brand sex appeal of a tour production.

Statistics don’t exist (and almost certainly won’t) quantifying whether Signature patrons now save their splurge money on a Broadway tour instead.

Or, conversely, whether some Smith Center attendees, newly turned on to musicals, will check out Signature and be

surprised to discover quality or demerits. Now its image shows—albeit on a smaller scale, issues are akin to Sisyphus and but also at less expense—that are that damn boulder. No longer in no way creatively slumming. can residents claim their city Or whether, frankly, it will lacks culture: The Smith Center make no damn difference. is a mighty rebuke. Some, More importantly, Signahowever, will dismiss local ture’s survival has got to count theater as culturally irrelevant for something. Specifcally, by comparison. how will high-grade local Quaint, but not impactful. Ditheater be perceived and version, but not art. Or worse … valued in a post-Smith Center “[A library offcial] said, era, given its overall exclu‘Now that we have The Smith sion from that gleaming venue Center, we don’t need [library] while locally produced classitheaters,’” Larsen says. cal music (the Las Vegas PhilEmploying a word likely harmonic) and dance (Nevada never uttered at a Signature Ballet Theatre) get to snuggle show: Bullshit. in and call it home?

Let’s not allow the refreshUnreservedly, we say: Glory ing performing-arts awareness be to The Smith Center, that incubating inside The Smith half-a-billion-dollar Center to breed pearl that has elcultural small-mindCamelot by Signature evated our cultural edness toward what’s ProduCtionS cred and widened outside it. our entertainment Signature’s back.

2 and 7:30 p.m. palate. Its enormous We’re better for it. Re(schedule varies) positive impact is fecting on its journey through May 11, undeniable. Yet it through adversity to $25-$30, Sumhas also pushed survival, there is poetmerlin Library back the goalposts, ry in a line from King and Performing perception-wise.

Arthur’s soliloquy in Arts Center, 1771 Once upon a preCamelot, now onstage Inner Circle Dr., Smith time, commuat the home that was 878-7529, Signanity theater left Las nearly lost: tureProductions.

Vegans impressed or “We shall live net. unimpressed based through this togethon their own merits er, Excalibur.”

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concerts

the PostAl service

The Chelsea at the Cosmopolitan, April 19

April 25-May 1, 2013

Alex clAre

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Hard Rock Café on the Strip, April 18 This cat’s got soul. Taking the stage in front of a packed house, U.K. singer-songwriter Alex Clare launched into “Relax My Beloved,” that stirring voice with just the amount of grit shining bright (though the sound in the venue could have been a bit louder). The set included nearly every song from his album The Lateness of the Hour, but Clare also delivered new material as promised. The standout “Three Hearts,” proved that any forthcoming album will be strong.

“This is the first song I learned to play on the guitar,” Clare said, as he presented a cover of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight Irene.” Also throwing it back some in music history, Clare and his band busted out with a dubstep-y version of “When Doves Cry” by Prince, though the majority of the crowd didn’t seem to recognize it—not because it was such a variance from the original but perhaps they were just too young. Enthusiastically applauding after each song, the crowd finally started to dance around during “Up All Night,” and then expectedly went apeshit when Clare saved his most recognizable hit, “Too Close,” for the next-to-last song, ultimately closing out with the song he wrote for his new wife, “I Won’t Let You Down.” ★★★★✩ – Deanna Rilling

Postal Service by Al Powers; Alex Clare by Wayne Posner

The obsession started a decade ago when the nation first heard those three descending chords of “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight.” Few could resist the transcendentally catchy songs on Give Up, which elevated the side project (peopled by Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, Dntel’s Jimmy Tamborello and Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis) into something more. Sadly, that success never led to a second album. But on April 19, fans got the next best thing: a reunited Postal Service celebrating Give Up’s 10-year anniversary.

The show began with the same three descending chords. But instead of going straight into the scattered beats of track two, “Such Great Heights,” the wiser, less predictable Postal Service played “We Will Become Silhouettes.” Lewis stole the show every time she sang, especially during “Nothing Better.” She twirled around Gibbard, harmonizing while staring into his eyes during the sickeningly precious duet.

Since the band doesn’t have much material, the performance felt somewhat contrived. With the exception of an explosive intro to “Natural Anthem” and a few new songs (“Turn Around” and the equally repetitive “A Tattered Line of String”), their music hasn’t changed at all.

Refreshingly, the show didn’t end with the much-anticipated “Such Great Heights,” but instead with the inspiring “Brand New Colony.” The music dropped out as Gibbard, Tamborello and Lewis led the audience in a chant of the last words: Everything will change, ooooooo. That combined with the cascading orange lights emanating from the stage made for a touching moment some would have considered worth the yearslong wait. ★★★✩✩ – Ashley Gates

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movies

Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams and amber waves of grain.

‘Wonder’ to Behold

Terrence Malick delights in picturesque landscapes … and obtuse love triangles

By Michael Phillips

April 25-May 1, 2013

Tribune Media Services

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in the spirit of a Terrence Malick screenplay, certain rhetorical questions to be spoken in hushed voice-over present themselves regarding Malick’s latest, To the Wonder.

Can we ever see enough sunsets as flmed by Malick and his mighty cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki? Is serious spiritual yearning even worth attempting to capture in a series of moving images? And will Malick ever tire of the look of tall grass in the wind, bending this way and that, much as his characters conform themselves to the dictates and gentle yet unmistakable hand of the flmmaker himself?

Shot in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and in France, To the Wonder fnds Malick pursuing a form of

visual storytelling that is closer to chamber music, or symphonic rapture, than conventional flm narrative. It skates along the edge of self-parody every second. Compared even with his previous feature, The Tree of Life, this one’s bound to frustrate the average meat-andpotatoes flmgoer looking for clear outlines and the usual dramatic builds.

Whatever. Minor Malick does not mean To the Wonder is a nothing. It is very much something: supple and a bit mad. What that something is—well, you’re the interpreter, as much as the writer-director in charge.

It depicts an Oklahoma man (Ben Affeck); a Ukrainian woman living in Paris (Olga Kurylenko); another woman

back in Oklahoma (Rachel McAdams); and a fourth character, a Catholic priest stricken by a crisis of faith and purpose (Javier Bardem). Affeck’s Neil, whom we see sampling soil for groundwater contamination in and around his hometown of Bartlesville, has met Marina (Kurylenko) in Paris. Romance has bloomed. “I’ll go wherever you go,” she whispers to us in voice-over, before they explore Mont St. Michel, on an island off the Normandy coast.

Where is “wherever”? Oklahoma. It’s a strange new world to Marina and her 10-year-old daughter, no less so than the land Malick presented in his earlier flm, The New World. At one point in To the Wonder, a classically Malickian transition glides from a shot of the shoreline off Normandy into a gliding frame of grasslands and power lines in the USA. The relationship soon sours. Marina, conceived as a twirly force of nature at odds with this land of big-box stores and cowboys, retreats with her daughter to France. Neil takes up with an old fame, a rancher (McAdams) who likewise loves to twirl in the wheat, among the bison.

The relationships come and go; Marina drifts back into

Neil’s life. Since her voice-overs from the start favor the past tense, we sense impermanence throughout. The flm is a reverie, a memory reactivated, in a land of beauty despite the Sonic drive-ins and drab suburban cul-de-sacs.

I admire the picture, though little of To the Wonder gels in the usual way. Bardem’s priest interacts only briefy with the other major characters; he’s a state of troubled mind more than a dimensional being. The women competing for Neil’s conscience and heart are largely nonverbal sprites, endlessly photogenic.

The flm is completely insular yet utterly open to everything in nature: the skies, the breeze, the unspoken connections between one human being and another.

In this universe, when the musings (visual and verbal) are interrupted by a sign of everyday modernity—when Marina Skypes with her faraway daughter, for example, or when someone says something as blunt as “My visa has expired”—it’s a shock to the system.

However elliptical, To the Wonder clearly speaks to, and from, Malick’s own experience. It’s conjecture, of course, but he appears to be atoning for past relational sins with

his story of Neil, described as a taciturn but “incredibly loving” man. (It’s not an unfattering self-portrait, to be sure.) “Weak people never bring anything to an end themselves. They wait for others to do it,” Marina says in voice-over. Is Bardem’s priest too weak to break up with God, or too strong to do so?

So, to get back to the rhetorical questions: Can we ever see enough sunsets as flmed by Malick? The answer is no. Is serious spiritual yearning even worth attempting to capture in a series of moving images? The answer is yes. Malick’s images may run together, gliding in and out of windows, up quiet streets, in ways that induce a trancelike state (or, if you’re not with it, sleepiness). But Malick is a true searcher, true to his preoccupations and defnitions of soulful rhapsody. To the Wonder repeats its central motifs aplenty, yet you may fnd yourself thinking about life, and living, and love, while sorting through the movie.

Even if it drives you nutz.

Oh, and: Will Malick ever tire of the look of tall grass in the wind? The answer is no. He will not.

To the Wonder (R) ★★★✩✩

movies A&E

end of days (and ideas)

Tom Cruise stars in this post-apocalyptic sci-f rehash

By Michael Phillips Tribune Media Services

something’s wrong. tom Cruise, or rather, Jack Harper, his character in the placid new science-fction adventure Oblivion, can’t shake his dreams of a woman giving him the big eyes on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

It’s 2077. Earth has been devastated by a war with invading aliens. Most of the remaining populace has been relocated to a Saturn moon. Jack has recently undergone a “mandatory memory wipe” and now goes about his work, a couple of weeks prior to his own exit from Earth. He’s a security guard and all-around Mr. FixIt living and working high above what’s left of Earth’s surface in Tower 49 with his lover/ colleague Victoria (Andrea Riseborough).

But who is this woman in Jack’s dreams? I mean, it’s Olga Kurylenko, also starring in the new Terrence Malick flm To the Wonder, but who is she?

A sort of Partial Recall, Oblivion gives you a lot to

think about. And too much time to think about it. The script by Karl Gajdusek (an interesting playwright) and Michael Arndt, based on an unpublished graphic novel by the director, Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy), weaves a tale involving governmental conspiracy, a revolutionary underground movement (Morgan Freeman plays the supercool head of the “scavs,” or scavengers) and various pro forma battle scenes that pit Cruise, in his spaceship or on his futuristic motorcycle, against a cadre of scowling, moonfaced mechanical fying drones, equipped with machine guns stolen from Attack of the Clones.

Jack knows something’s up when his HAL-9000-styled boss, Sally (Melissa Leo, seen only on video monitors and oozing the sort of fake charm that spells trouble), orders him to stay away from a crash-landing site. Does Jack follow orders?

No. He follows his instinct, and rescues the surviving member

Kurylenko and Cruise neither crash nor soar in this could-be clunker.

of the downed U.S. spaceship.

She is the woman of his dreams, played by Kurylenko, and from there Oblivion springs a surprise or two.

“Surprise” is a relative term.

Kosinski’s rhythm and visual style are pretty square for such a squirrelly script: Each grave, purposeful exchange of dialogue (some of it pretty thick in terms of expositional backstory) is laid out very

carefully, as if we’re idiots.

The movie’s not bad for a while, but it’s made of spare parts from a lot of other movies, among them Total Recall, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the 2001 riff Moon, a certain recent play

by Caryl Churchill (can’t say; spoiler) and a few others.

What’s interesting about it is its tight focus on a handful of characters. Oblivion is odder and less conventional than

April 25-May 1, 2013

short reviews

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42 (PG-13) ★★★✩✩

This carefully tended portrait of Jackie Robinson, the man who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, settles for too little. Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) endures long odds and societal racism to join the Brooklyn Dodgers. Harrison Ford is fun as the general manager who brought him up, Branch Rickey. The film treads too carefully, a primer, a story that protects and enshrines Robinson. It feels like a production watched very carefully by his survivors. Boseman is highly capable, but the filmmakers failed to ask much of him.

Evil Dead (R) ★★✩✩✩

This remake of Sam Raimi’s 1983 cult classic offers plenty of reasons to jump and turn away. Mia (Jane Levy) has quit drugs, and her withdrawal confuses her senses. Her brother and her friends have brought her to the cabin in the woods to cure her. But is she seeing visions of demonic possession, or is this simply the cold turkey playing tricks on her mind? There’s a demon that jumps from human to human, and more splashing of bodily fluids than one knows what to do with. All in all, it’s OK, and likely a franchise ... again.

The Place Beyond the Pines (R) ★★★★✩

Luke (Ryan Gosling) is a motorcycle stunt performer traveling with a two-bit carnival.

Coming through small-town New York, he learns he has fathered a son with a local waitress (Eva Mendes). Luke turns to bank robbery while also trying to establish a relationship with his son. Then, the story switches to the police officer (Bradley Cooper) who is plagued by becoming known as the hero who pursued the “moto-bandit.” It’s a fine film with really solid actors playing well-written, authentic characters.

your average forgettable star vehicle; at times it feels like a fve-character play taking place in a digital-effects lab.

But there’s not much energy to it. When you go to a futuristic, dystopian, post-apocalyptic barn dance starring Tom Cruise and his space guns, you expect a little zap with your thoughtful pauses.

Oblivion (PG-13) ★★★✩✩

[ by tribune media services ]

G.I. Joe: Retaliation (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩

The action is nonstop in this sequel. But do we really want our action to never end? Like, ever? The plot concerns the murder of the Pakistani president, stolen nukes, a frame-up job by COBRA disgracing the Joes. The Joes fight back. Spoiler alert: They win. Sure, there’s Channing Tatum as Duke, Dwayne Johnson as Roadblock and even ole Bruce Willis as the original Joe, but the movie plays out like a video game, and certainly we’ve learned by now that there should be a difference.

movies

The Host (PG-13) ★✩✩✩✩

Olympus Has Fallen (R) ★★✩✩✩

Admission (PG) ★★★✩✩

Spring Breakers (R) ★★★✩✩

The Croods (PG) ★★✩✩✩

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (PG) ★★✩✩✩

It’s Ice Age with humans and less ice. The Croods are a brood of cavepeople; there’s Ugg (Nicolas Cage), Ugga (Catherine Keener), Eep (Emma Stone) and some others. Earthquaked out of their dwelling, the Crood brood embarks on a search for a new home. They come across Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a caveboy who knows about fire and has “ideas.” Guy leads the Croods toward a place he calls “Tomorrow” where survival lies. Not a whole lot here, and like most Dreamworks vehicles, it’s way too much.

Writer-director Harmony Korine is a resolute sleaze monger. This helps Spring Breakers, in which not-so-innocent debauchery turns sociopathic. It’s about four teenage girls, three nasty (Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens and Rachel Korine), one nice (Selena Gomez). Determined to have a memorable vacation, the girls get some spending cash by fake-pistol-waving in a restaurant. But things steadily move into a more dangerous space, with an impressive turn by James Franco as a lively gangsta rapper.

All of the skilled actors on display in this absurd comedy can’t save the film. Las Vegas magicians Burt (Steve Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) have a stale act, and Burt’s become a terrible person.

They can’t stand each other. And there’s a dangerous new kid in town, a Jackass-y performer (Jim Carrey) who gives the bloodthirsty public what it wants. While Alan Arkin and Olivia Wilde manage ably in their scenes, the rest of the movie is poor

April 25-May 1, 2013

In this fraught romantic comedy, Portia (Tina Fey) is a Princeton University admissions officer with a secret. Her live-in boyfriend, a professor played by Michael Sheen, treats her like a dog—literally. But on a road trip, Portia visits a new-age alternative high school, run by John (Paul Rudd). John believes a promising applicant just might be the same boy that Portia gave up for adoption. Fey and Rudd are smooth as silk together, but the film is only half good.

This movie is Die Hard in the White House, where terrorists appear out of nowhere to storm Washington, take over the White House and seize the president (Aaron Eckhart) and most of the cabinet. Their only hope is ex-Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), the only man who knows how to get into the fortified presidential bunker where the hostages are. Banning stabs, shoots and strangles his way through legions of terrorists.

There are much better thrillers out there.

99 VEGAS SEVEN

This movie version of Stephenie Meyer’s departure from the Twilight series is painful to watch. Earth has been invaded by aliens called Souls. Some Souls called Seekers locate humans to serve as hosts for other Souls. Saoirse Ronan plays Melanie, whose body is sublet by a Soul named Wanderer.

Melanie and her Soul become frenemies, and Melanie arm-twists her visitor to return to Melanie’s cave-dwelling survivalist clan.

Then Wanderer falls in love with Ian (Jake Abel). And then ... you get the picture. It’s agonizingly slow and just not very good.

7 questions

Tommy DeVito

The Four Seasons founder on his Jersey Boys depiction, his relationship with his former bandmates and lessons learned doin’ time

By Steve Bornfeld

April 25-May 1, 2013

What was your reaction to Elice’s comment?

When I read Seven, I was like, “What was the statement I said that was bullshit?” I don’t care what they say about me, but I know he’s wrong. I started this thing, so when I hear things, it’s more sensitive to me.

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Publicly, you seemed OK with the musical, even attending the Broadway opening, so what bothers you—an incident that was misrepresented or your overall characterization or Elice’s statement?

I don’t think I was as rough as they wanna make me, and I like to see the truth and only the truth. Yeah, I went to jail seven or eight times. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not ashamed of it.

My neighborhood was rough.

If you come out alive, that’s an achievement. Whatever hap-

pened when I was out there scuffing and getting arrested and doing things I wasn’t supposed to do, that was my life.

I was around mob guys all my life. [Mob boss] Gyp DeCarlo (depicted in Jersey Boys) was a really, really good friend of mine. I didn’t ask him what he did when he woke up in the morning—“How many guys ya gonna kill today?” I still talk to his wife at least once a week. But there was so much bad in there that it turned good. I remember [co-writer] Marshall Brickman said, “I wish I had two Tommy DeVitos to write about.” I guess if it ain’t broke, don’t fx it.

What did prison teach you?

You can learn an awful lot there, especially at a place like Rahway [now East Jersey State Prison]. There should be more places like Rahway. You make your balls, they call it. If you don’t, they’re gonna stab you in the back or hit you with a pipe. I did it in the frst couple of days, just hit somebody with a pipe from the bushes. From that day on, they walked that way instead of walking toward me.

Favorite Seasons song?

I was partial to “Rag Doll,” the way it happened. Gaudio and I came out of the studio in New York. Every time you came out, some little kid would clean your windshield, and you’d give them a buck. This little girl ran up and was cleaning the window. Bob only had fve dollars. I said, “Give her the fve dollars, what’s the difference?”

She was so poor, like a little rag doll. Bob called me about an hour later and said, “You gotta come up here.” He played it for me. It was great.

You’ve had extreme highs and lows in life. What was the highest high?

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was the cream of my life.

We were lucky at the time we [formed the Four Seasons], but

I can’t say we weren’t talented.

Frankie [Valli] and his threeand-a-half octave range—I picked him when he was 15, hangin’ on the corner. And Bob Gaudio with his ingenuity in writing these songs, and Nick Massi was a master of harmony.

Do you still communicate with Valli and Gaudio?

I talked to Frankie two

months ago. Every once in a while he’ll call and say, “How ya doin?” I have to give him a lot of credit. I respect what he accomplished, but he went through a lot with the family, losing his daughter. I lost a son, 26 years old. I thought it was [drugs], but it was bad rhythm in his heart. Frankie’s kind of sick himself. I take up prayers for him, whether I’m

mad at him or not. I call Bob once in a while.

Despite quibbles with the story, has Jersey Boys been a positive in your life?

I thought to myself, what a shot in the arm, after all the stuff I went through. It’s phenomenal. Like, you’re not through with it. It’s a nice feeling at this age.

Photo by Zack W

“Bullshit artist,” you say? Utter … bullshit.

So insists 84-year-old Tommy DeVito, founder of the Four Seasons, who’s itching to answer back after this writer’s oral history of Jersey Boys—the musical based on the group— was published in Vegas Seven earlier this year. Among the comments was this quote from Jersey Boys co-writer Rick Elice, recalling the genesis of the plot and characters: “The audience … [would] recognize that Tommy is a bullshit artist from the frst words out of his mouth.”

While Elice’s comment irked DeVito, a longtime Las Vegan, one senses he’s torn: still disgruntled over his depiction in a show that hit Broadway nearly eight years ago and Vegas fve years ago (now at Paris Las Vegas) but grateful for his revival in the public eye. And unsure how to express that ambivalence.

Nonetheless, he deserves his say about that—and his colorful life.