Making the Streets Sing | Vegas Seven | June 6-12

RODNEY

CARRINGTON Laughter’s Good

DON’T M AKE ME COME DOWN THERE!

June 6 –12 For tickets, call 866.740.7711 or visit mgmgrand.com

www.RodneyCarrington.com

Beck • Imagine Dragons • Pretty Lights Empire of the Sun • Passion Pit • Jurassic 5

childish gambino • STS9 • Purity Ring • Big Gigantic • Portugal. The Man AndrewMcMahon earlsweatshirt TheJoyFormidable Danny Brown • Dawes Dawes•• Andrew McMahon • earl sweatshirt • The Joy Formidable CharliXCX LivingColour AllenStone CapitalCities XCX•• Living Cities•• Haim Haim•• Youngblood Hawke Charli XCX Colour • Allen Stone • Capital Cities Twenty One Pilots • ZZ Ward • Poolside • Family of the Year Robert DeLong • wallpaper. • Five Knives • Cayucas • Cosmic Suckerpunch Knocked Up Kids • Moondog matinee • Shalvoy Music • Most Thieves • Rusty Maples • Kid Meets Cougar • Same Sex Mary Beau Hodges Band • DJ 88 • The Dirty Hooks • American Cream • Sabriel • Crazy Chief • Supra • HaleAmanO A crowD of small adventures • Jordan Kate Mitchell • DJ ZO • JOEY PERO AND HIS BAND • Albi Loves Chicken Tenders Food

Bruce & Eric Bromberg • Scott Conant • Jonathan Waxman • Hubert Keller • Cat Cora • Michael Mina • Chris Cosentino • Rick Moonen • Kim Canteenwalla • Jet Tila • Donald Link • TTom om Colicchio Michael Symon • Aaron • David Burke • Charlie Palmer Mary Sue Milliken • Susan Feniger Paul Bartolottaa Sanchez • David Myers • Todd English • Kerry Simon • Carla Pellegrino André RochatSven • SVEN Mede • Marcel Vigneron • Mike Minor • Megan Romano t Elias Cairo • Josh Graves • Jason Tuley • Rebecca Wilcomb • Ben Hammond Grant MacPherson • Michael Kornick • Natalie Young • Dan Coughlin • ean Kinoshita Massimiliano Campanari • Carlos Buscaglia • Vinod-Ahuja • Manuel Hinojosa Cirque du Soleil

The Beatles Love • Michael Jackson One • Mystére • “o” • Zarkana • Kà • Zumanity • CRISS ANGEL Believe

www.lifeisbeautifulfestival.com

EvEnt

Shopping Spree

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[ upcoming ]

June 15-16 Health, Healing and Happiness Conference at Springs Preserve (Health-Healing-Happiness.com) June 21 Sundown in Downtown at Las Vegas Natural History Museum (LVNHM.org)

Photos by Hew Burney

June 6-12, 2013

The Neon Bazaar pop-up market lit up Downtown on June 1 with a showcase of homegrown vendors and their handcrafted goods. El Cortez’s Jackie Gaughan Plaza served as host, with 50 small businesses displaying items ranging from beef jerky to custom jewelry, with shops such as Coterie, Artifact and Gaia Flowers among the participants. An estimated 1,500 locals stopped by to shop, including Zappos honcho Tony Hsieh and Life Is Beautiful festival founder (and this week’s cover subject) Rehan Choudhry. Insert Coin(s) owner Christopher LaPorte, food critic Al Mancini and artist Jerry Misko all took a dip in the dunk tank, which raised nearly $1,000 for the Keep Memory Alive foundation.

Gastro Fare. Nurtured Ales. Jukebox Gold.

the latest June 6-12, 2013

Community Feeling, Down to the Bones

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nOt lOng aFter UNLV held a program called Game Change about “how Brookings Mountain West and the Lincy Institute are Reframing Policy in Southern Nevada,” I learned that the Tony Roma’s on East Sahara Avenue had closed.

The confuence of these events got me thinking of how a think tank is like a rib joint. Stay with me, now …

Brookings and Lincy are research centers designed, as Brookings says, to “serve as a platform to bring ideas and expertise together and facilitate … discussions about the West’s future.” Lincy “conducts and supports research that focuses on improving Nevada’s health, education and social services.”

Brookings presents frequent lectures and publications by national scholars on important issues, and gives space and institutional heft to support faculty and others in their research. It promotes economic diversifcation and collaboration with other experts and regions to improve life in the Southwest. Director Rob Lang has become a valuable resource of information and ideas.

The institute has also backed bipartisan legislation—some of which gets bottled up because of opposition from Northern Nevada—and has provided data for the Legislature’s Southern Nevada caucus, which might vote together someday.

Lincy has several initiatives in research and action. Nevada has the nation’s highest percentage of 3- to 5-year-olds not in preschool or kindergarten, and Lincy is working with public and private institutions

to try to fx that. It had another program to determine the gaps in mental health services (the gap that comes to mind is the Grand Canyon) and improve child welfare.

In other words, Brookings and Lincy provide a place for members of the community to share knowledge and ideas—an enlightened public square of the sort we long needed.

These organizations provide what Bill Clinton had in mind when he told a local group that any community would beneft from gathering locals at round tables and requiring them to sit next to people of opposing views. They just might solve some problems.

OK, so what does this have to do with Tony Roma’s?

Tony Roma’s had tables. It served food. What better way to bring communities, ideas and expertise together than over some tasty barbecue?

Alas, Tony Roma’s at Sahara and Sixth long ago stopped bringing together anything like a critical mass of movers and shakers. But the neighborhood used to be one of the Valley’s most important spots. It seems strange to say in the age of celebrity chefs, but the nearby Sizzler (now gone), Marie Callender’s and Tony Roma’s were literally where the elite would meet to eat. Neighbors knew one another and talked there.

They even hatched some projects, political and social.

Tony Roma’s also became a mob hangout, though less noted than some others. While perhaps unworthy of being on the National Register of Historic Places, it is where Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal had gone to pick up food when his car blew up on October 4, 1982, an event depicted—with some embellishment—in the flm Casino.

The mob as we knew it is gone, as is the surrounding neighborhood, which changed economically (less upper-middle-class) and demographically (more diverse).

Committed locals are trying to preserve, promote and revive a sense of community in the vicinity through events that bring them together and being active in the greater Downtown area. Sometimes it’s as simple as seeing each other in neighborhood hangouts. These days, Downtown areas such as Fremont East provide hope for those kinds of discussions and connections.

So do Brookings and Lincy. They don’t do coffee klatsches, but Southern Nevada is blessed to have respected, legitimate research centers that connect people and generate new ideas. They refect great progress in the local life of the mind.

The closing of that old Tony Roma’s, then, is an occasion to think about the underappreciated political and cultural role played by simple spots where people of different persuasions can meet and cut a deal. And perhaps the heir to Roma’s isn’t a restaurant at all, but a pair of think tanks dedicated to the discussion of what ails us—and how to heal it.

In Las Vegas we can get an all-you-can-eat deal by hitting one of about 50 casino buffets any day of the week, but there are some strong plays outside the casinos, too. One of the best is an unlimited sushi deal at Sushi Mon (9770 S. Maryland Pkwy.). This is a powerhouse at $21.95 for lunch and $26.95 for dinner, with a big window of availability from 11:45 a.m. to 1 a.m., and a huge selection and high-grade fish.

Anyone who’s done the typical all-you-can-eat sushi deal knows that there’s almost always at least one of these elements missing from the equation, but not here. Remember it’s the eastside Sushi Mon; the one on the west has higher prices.

• On Tuesday nights, Rhythm Kitchen (6435 S. Decatur Blvd.) has all-you-can-eat snow crab legs for $32. Set up in the dining room or the bar and go to work—you keep eatin’ and they keep bringin’. The legs are a little bigger than average for snow, and they’re prepared perfectly. So you can put a serious dent into any crab-leg cravings you may be fostering.

The special comes with bread and one side dish from a choice of about a dozen.

• How about an oyster? Better yet, how about an oyster for under a dollar? The city’s best oyster deals usually come in at a buck-a-pop, but you can do even better Mondays through Thursdays from noon to 4 p.m. at South Point, where raw oysters and clams are half price in the Big Sur Oyster Bar. The normal price for a dozen oysters on the half shell there is $21, which is $1.75 per. At half off it’s just $10.50, or 88 cents apiece, which is the best per-oyster price Las Vegas has seen in a long time. A dozen littleneck clams on the half shell are $8.50 (71 cents apiece). Or get half and half for $9.50.

• Speaking of South Point, it’s hosting a new, free, late-night, R-rated comedy show presented by Ralphie May and Gabe Lopez called The Dirty. The show features different guest comics weekly, performing at 12:30 a.m. every Saturday (in other words, 30 minutes after midnight on Fridays).

• Through July 14, play six hours of live poker Sunday through Thursday at the Riviera and get a free room for the night. On Fridays and Saturdays, get a reduced rate of $45. Play can be split between two room occupants, and hours can be banked.

• Are you holding any Canadian dollars?

The best place to exchange them is the Golden Gate, where you get a 5 percent bonus in slot free-play or table-game match play, up to a limit of $200 per day. Not packing any Loonies? Just get one of those great shrimp cocktails.

Anthony Curtis is the publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor and LasVegasAdvisor.com.

Illustration by Jesse Sutherland

SuShi, 88 Cent OySterS and Free dirty COmedy

The LaTesT

ThoughT

The Return of Sprawl Thinking Will Las Vegas overbuild again?

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FirsT, The good news: Home and land prices have hit the bottom and bounced. There is plenty of buyer demand, and even condos are hot again. Banks seem more willing to lend.

And even with the sobering subtext of scant inventory tied to housing appreciation, we can’t help but think things are getting better.

Meanwhile, we’re working to reinvigorate Downtown.

Heck, our biggest local celebrity over the past two years isn’t an entertainer or casino mogul, but a shoes-and-technology guy who seems to like the erstwhile Glitter Gulch for its potential as a place to live. As for the suburbs, we’ve entered a phase of helpful infill, with developers finishing off abandoned subdivisions and bringing a dose of optimism.

Now the bad news: There could be some 60,000 to 80,000 distressed homes coming through the pipeline again. Notices of default are booming, and real estate analysis firm SalesTraq shows more than 60,000 homeowners are either past due on their mortgage payments or already in foreclosure right now. This comes at a time when homebuilders are enjoying solid demand for new homes, to the point that they are saying we’ve got an affordable-land drought in the market.

Land prices have climbed from just north of $100,000 an acre in the first quarter of 2011 to more than $170,000 today, and builders, while still far off from their boomyear production, say there’s a need for more land to meet demand. The Bureau of Land Management has about 30,000 acres it could auction in Clark County, according to a recent Las Vegas ReviewJournal report, and another 110,000 acres outside of metro Las Vegas.

The agency also recently announced that it was considering selling 134 acres, after a public comment period ending June 13. It’s important to note that the BLM does not make the decision to release land; it is a mere facilitator.

Under the division’s jointselection process, it releases parcels after being approached by a city, which in most cases already has an investor wanting to buy a particular parcel

by the time it calls the BLM, says BLM spokeswoman Hillerie Patton. So it’s safe to say these 134 acres have an investor tied to them—most likely one of your friendly neighborhood mega-homebuilding corporations.

The sprawl conversation, long dormant because of the Great Recession, may be awakening. The economic downturn forced this entrepreneurial city to look inward on

matters of economic growth and development; to think about building real walkable, work-live-play environments in its urban core instead of in fringe destinations.

Undoubtedly, one reason to get the traditional suburban new-home market growing again is to provide jobs. New homes have also helped real estate agents and home-buyers tired of competing against cash investors in a tight exist-

ing-home market. The sprawl solution, though, is overly simplistic and sadly familiar.

Buy another chunk of land and pack as many homes onto it as possible to grind out a proft—a “build it and Realtors will come” formula that seems to be working again.

These “solutions” to our immediate challenges are a mere facade of economic activity—moving paper and money around to serve the short-term needs of the few.

If the real estate industry wants a robust local economy not just for a few years, but for decades to come, it may have to start working on its long game instead. In any case, before we start deciding that we don’t have enough homes, let’s also consider the impact of those 60,00080,000 homes still making their way through the resale market as foreclosures or short sales.

Today’s rising new-home prices are infated. Median resale-home prices climbed to $161,000 as of March; the new-home median price is now $235,000. In a stable market, the rule of thumb is that resales should be between 80 and 90 percent of newhome prices. If the market slumps with a dump of resale inventory, there’s plenty of room for a new-home price hit—and, yes, today’s fresh new communities could indeed be home to tomorrow’s fresh new foreclosure casualties.

In this context, questioning our sprawl-for-economicgood mindset is less an environmental concern than it is the fear of another economic smoke screen. Then again, Las Vegas has always been about image. Maybe what’s happening is just fne—until some very natural economic forces tell us differently.

Then we’ll just have to learn the same lessons all over again.

If we choose to, of course.

Photo illustration by Thomas Speak

June 6-12, 2013

By Brian Sodoma

the latest

style

Angela Edgeworth with her daughters Caroline (left) and Lauren at the grand opening of pediped in Town Square.

Happy (and HealtHy) Feet

Pediped toddles into Town Square

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the Henderson-based mother researched the structure and needs of kids’ feet. She became inspired enough to make a career of what she learned. In 2004 she founded pediped and began designing leather-soled shoes that met her standards.

Along the way, pediped was awarded the American Podiatric Medical Association Seal of Acceptance for the promotion of healthy foot development.

Today, the company makes

120 shoe designs for kids, from newborn to 8 years old.

Since its inception, pediped has sold its shoes in 2,000 retailers nationwide and online through the likes of Amazon and Zappos, but the Town Square store (6593 Las Vegas Blvd., South, 564-2246) is the frst shopping-mall outpost (pediped also sells from its website, pediped.com, and a space next to the company’s headquarters in Henderson).

[ designs For all ]

FashionForward and FootFriendly Original Grace, $19.

Original Jett, $37.

Original Piers, $37.

Flex Giselle. $49.

Photo by Andrew James

June 6-12, 2013

By Jessi C. Acuña

AngelA edgeworth isn’t your typical shoe saleswoman. Don’t look for stylishly uncomfortable footwear in her pediped store, which opened June 1 in Town Square. Oh, Edgeworth is all for style—pediped shoes are nothing if not cute. But the real emphasis is on the health of the small feet that fll those shoes.

After Edgeworth saw a gap in the market when searching for orthopedic-friendly shoes for her newborn daughter,

The LaTesT

NatioNal

Space, Man

From a new Cosmos to galaxy-print leggings, the heavens are having a moment

By Kelly Faircloth

June 6-12, 2013

The New York Observer

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EvEry wEEk, wEathEr permitting, a crew of starstruck earthlings sets up camp on that agora of Bloomberg New York, the High Line, parking their telescopes just south of the Chelsea Market. “People like looking up,” said David Kauffman, one of the event’s organizers, sporting a blue windbreaker from a Long Island astronomical society at a recent gathering. “I think that’s a natural human thing.”

Even passersby slowed down to investigate.

The Observer watched three college-age women creep up to the telescopes. “That’s so cool,” one gushed as a stargazer explained that, if it weren’t so cloudy, she’d be able to see Jupiter. One of her companions rattled off the mnemonic “My Very Educated Mother” and tried to puzzle out why she couldn’t see Mars, prompting an

explanation of planetary orbits.

“You’re here every Tuesday?” asked the ringleader. “OK, we’ll be back.”

Space, if you haven’t heard, is having a moment. Both the New York Post and New York magazine have tackled the topic in the last month (with an NYC stargazing guide and a space tourism deep dive, respectively). It wasn’t long ago that shuttle launches were

buried deep in the science section—unless something went wrong—but these days, when astronaut Chris Hadfeld records a version of “Space Oddity” on the International Space Station, it warrants a Today mention and a bit of armchair philosophizing from Matt Lauer: “Kids these days don’t care about space exploration like we did. Maybe this will light a fre under these kids.”

Lauer is mistaken.

“There has been an incredible resurgence of interest in space exploration,” said Bert Ulrich, NASA’s multimedia liaison.

The Mars Curiosity rover is a viral sensation, and NASA has amassed 1.3 million followers for the little tweeting robot.

Hollywood, meanwhile, can’t sweep science fction epics into theaters fast enough. This year alone has brought, or will bring,

Oblivion, another Star Trek, After Earth, Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity and Ender’s Game. The Big Bang Theory chugs proftably along on CBS, and there’s talk of a drama about space race-era journalists by the creators of Mad Men. Even apparel makers are cashing in. In 2011, designer Christopher Kane debuted a line of expensive galaxy-print items. Since then, the trend has fltered down to the most massmarket price points. In the past few weeks, this reporter has spotted galaxy-print leggings in the plus-size section of Forever 21 and in the window of a fastfashion store in Queens.

It’s not an isolated cultural current, either. The superhero of the moment is Iron Man, a.k.a. Tony Stark, a billionaire industrialist inventor often compared to Elon Musk, the founder

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June 6-12, 2013

the market that you’re operating in sees it as a point of pride. That’s what dictates long-term success and long-term impact.”

Among many other lessons, Choudhry learned that he wasn’t ready to run a festival. He continued working in marketing development for Caesars in Atlantic City. “I spent a lot of time learning what the landscape was like, what the history was like, what was unique to that city. I just started from there, and it changed what my festival looked like.”

BOOKING THE BOOK & STAGE Choudhry took that hard-earned wisdom with him to his new job as the Cosmopolitan’s frst entertainment director for the resort’s 2010 opening.

When he arrived in Las Vegas, he scoured the local scene, looking for any cultural gaps in the “Entertainment Capital of the World.” He says that fnding and flling a niche for the Cosmo would provoke “the larger, stronger, emotional and social response than you would [get] just by replicating something that already exists.”

One of the few things the Vegas scene didn’t offer, Choudhry realized, was breakout music acts. These are the unknowns who will be famous by the time they are on their next tour, bands that elevate your cool factor just by being able to say you heard them

the effort of fostering creativity. “And they wouldn’t,” Choudhry says of his employees’ response. “You know how companies go from startup to very corporate—my entire team revolted.”

At a friend’s recommendation, Choudhry took his Cosmo entertainment managers on a tour of the famously whimsical Zappos headquarters in January 2012. The team happened to arrive in the middle of a crisis for the online shoe retailer. Zappos had just been hacked and 24 million accounts had been put at risk, and yet everybody seemed to be so happy.

Choudhry asked an employee what was with all the joy, and she answered that it was Pajama Day. “What the—Pajama Day?” Choudhry mimics his fabbergasted reaction. “She looks at me like I’m an idiot and points around, and everyone is in pajamas.”

It struck a chord with Choudhry that Zappos’ worst day was better than a traditional company’s best day. “I left [the tour], and I called my mother and I told her I need to quit my job,” he says.

Choudhry put in his notice within a week, exchanging what he describes as “the best job in the entertainment industry” for “the best job in the world.”

THE SOUNDS OF SERENDIPITY It was a long process for Choudhry to realize the goals he made during his illness. “I tried to do it at

Marketing (owned by First Friday’s Joey Vanas).

“I have never been a ‘stars align’ kind of person,” he says. “But I told people recently that I’ve become one. [The Downtown Project] didn’t pick me. I didn’t pick them. We just kind of came together. They will tell you that they weren’t actively seeking a festival producer. I wasn’t looking for a reason to stay in Vegas, nor was I looking for a reason to produce this festival.”

BIRTH OF A FESTIVAL “It started out as an idea,” Choudhry says of Life Is Beautiful, “but more so as a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to do anything that didn’t matter again.”

As such, Life Is Beautiful is the culmination of a years-long journey that started in a hospital bed.

With this festival, Choudhry is able to apply all that he’s learned over his years working in the entertainment industry. The first thing he did when he began work on Life Is Beautiful was identify what the Las Vegas community lacked. He discovered two basic needs: 1) a tentpole event in which locals could take pride, and 2) a growth engine for the underdeveloped Downtown region. By taking up 15 city blocks and offering national-caliber chefs and musicians, Life Is Beautiful hopes to

A PAJAMA-CLAD REVOLUTION After two years of unmitigated success at the Cosmopolitan, Choudhry wanted to set up a more creative environment for his team. He planned to tear down the offces and replace them with a collaborative open space. He also wanted to add a recording studio, a gym, a yoga studio and a quiet room—all in

Caesars. I tried to do it again at Cosmo, but I didn’t fnd what I was looking for. After Cosmo, I found that I needed to completely get out of working for other people.”

After spending years in the safe embrace of large, proft-centric corporations, Choudhry wanted to create a company that elevated the human experience. So he started Aurelian Marketing Group, a “marketing-strategy agency that specializes in entertainment and event development,” out of his apartment at Panorama Towers, which had foorto-ceiling views of, what else, the Cosmopolitan. It didn’t quite work.

“I realized it wasn’t the most creative environment,” Choudhry says. “And it wasn’t a really great place for inspiration.”

He decided to work at The Beat Coffeehouse at Emergency Arts, a hotbed for people associated with the Downtown Project (a massive community development effort led by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh).

As much as Hsieh and his co-conspirators sing the praises of forced serendipitous encounters, one actually did happen for Choudhry, when he connected with the Downtown Project through a mutual friend. The friend is Tom Ellingson of Fandeavor, a ticketing company that sells VIP experiences for sporting events, which happens to be funded by the Downtown Project. Ellingson introduced Choudhry to Zappos co-founder Fred Mosler in July 2012. A month later Life Is Beautiful was green-lit, a product of a partnership between Aurelian Marketing, the Downtown Project, Another Planet Entertainment and Maktub

achieve both. Choudhry points to the spectacular rise of Austin, Texas, as an example of the growth potential created by a popular festival, such as South by Southwest.

Choudhry’s vision for the perfect moment in the upcoming festival is serendipitous encounters on a large scale. He would like the festival’s four unique categories (music, food, art and learning) to facilitate a cross-pollination of ideas. “If a person who’s just there for the food—who’s just there to see the 80 chefs and the demos and the lessons, the tastings—if they choose to step out of the culinary experience and go check out music, they’re not just going to a culinary event with stages—they’re stepping into a Lollapalooza. The perfect moment for me is the moment where somebody who only wanted to go for music is now at the culinary village and being served food by [celebrity chef] Scott Conant.”

Choudhry hopes that these moments of discovery radiate out into overlapping epiphanies, echoes of the one that he experienced so many years ago. He envisions a home cook being inspired by the culinary fest to pursue a formal career, and an aspiring singer to see hope beyond a hobby by the presence of so many up-and-coming bands. The art and learning legs of the festival, whose lineup will be announced in the coming months, will only add to the energy and serendipity. “What I’d like to be able to do with the festival is teach people on a basic level to do what you’re passionate about,” he says. “Identify your dreams and go chase them.”

And why not? Choudhry’s life is an example of such dreams chased and duly captured.

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back when. Choudhry had such acts perform for no admission charge in Book & Stage, a small sports book/music venue right off the Cosmopolitan’s casino foor. The bands—such as Foster the People, Aloe Blacc, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Fitz and the Tantrums—would play two-to-four-night residencies with two shows a night. The format harkened back to the glory days of Old Vegas lounges, but with up-tothe-moment entertainment. During its two-year run (from the casino’s December 2010 opening through 2012), Book & Stage was the coolest place in town, a free, musical utopia that brought locals back again and again, and drew in tourist passersby. Now that Book & Stage has stopped hosting acts, nothing has replaced the magic that was, and its absence is still felt.

“Book & Stage at Cosmo was largely my showpiece,” Choudhry says. “It gave the market a way to compete with other major music markets with insight, knowledge and experience with artists. That led to a tremendous amount of loyalty and brand stability. They created a solid foundation to continue to innovate off of. We had a base; we had people waving our fag.”

June 6-12, 2013

IT STARTED OUT AS A PROMISE TO MYSELF THAT I WASN’T GOING TO DO ANYTHING THAT DIDN’T MATTER AGAIN.

Nightlife

Bingo Is Their Name

The Bingo Players’ Maarten Hoogstraten and Paul Bäumer cover the board with back-to-back gigs at Hakkasan and Wet Republic before returning for Electric Daisy Carnival

By David Morris

June 6-12, 2013

MaaRten HooGstRaten and Paul Bäumer frst caught our attention two years ago when they released “Cry,” but their no-holds-bar set at this year’s Ultra Music Festival cemented this Dutch duo known as the Bingo Players as an act to watch. Since Ultra, they’ve put out one major banger after the next—frst “Buzzcut” and then “Fuck What You Heard.” We caught up with the pair to chat about their road to success, starting a label and what’s to come. They play Hakkasan on June 14, Wet Republic on June 15 and Electric Daisy Carnival.

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When “Cry” was released in 2011, it got huge pick-up in the States. Any thoughts on why “Get Up (Rattle)” did a bit better in the U.K. than here?

Paul: In the clubs and at festivals “Rattle” is huge. Whenever we play that song it’s the highlight of our set, even though it was released in 2012. In Europe it became a mainstream song,

No. 1 in the U.K. and Top 10 in several other European countries. I guess the main reason is that dance music has been played on the radio in Europe and not in the U.S. In the U.S., it is very diffcult to get dance music on the radio. You have your exceptions like Calvin Harris and Swedish House Mafa, but it was only [Swedish House Mafa’s] last track that

got on the radio; a lot of their earlier songs weren’t played.

It’s still at the beginning point, so I really hope mainstream radio will embrace EDM a little bit more.

From Miami’s Ultra right into Coachella, then playing the second night of operation at Hakkasan Las Vegas—you guys have had a crazy spring.

How do you keep up?

Maarten: [Paul’s] grabbing a beer right now!

Paul: I always say that you have to work hard for it. You can never get lazy or comfortable with the success. We try to put out great songs, do our best when we perform live and I think in the end that pays off. Our latest single came out May 20, and we have almost fnished the song that’s coming out after that. That’s another really important part of the job as well: to keep putting good music out.

How do your club sets differ from what you’re doing at these festivals?

Maarten: When you play a festival, you always have to take into consideration which other DJs are playing. For instance, if the Swedes are playing, you can’t play any of their songs.

We try to look at that frst, but we also try to do something different than what we do in clubs. Festivals have a different vibe than a club. A club is more intimate, and festivals have larger crowds. So we play more mash-ups to get those bigger crowds moving.

And at EDC Vegas?

Paul: We are going to do a completely new set. It will be very different from our Ultra set, which was one of our best sets in regard to audience acceptance. It’s diffcult to top that, but we love the challenge. We work hard, and we really prepare and will spend a month preparing for EDC Vegas. It’s not only the day itself, but you also have the podcast that we record and give away for free, so it lasts a long time.

We do not want it to be a copy of the Ultra set.

For more on the duo’s love for Daft Punk, their connection to Michael Jackson’s ghost and what’s to come, visit VegasSeven.com/BingoPlayers.

nightlife

parties

palms pool The palms

[ Upcoming ]

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Teddy Fujimoto and Bobby Jameidar

June 6-12, 2013

June 7 Ditch Fridays feat. Ludacris June 8 Ditch Saturdays feat. Taboo June 10 Cabanas for a Cause

nightlife

parties

Wet republic MGM Grand [ Upcoming ]

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Josh Metz

June 6-12, 2013

June 7 SpyOn Hot 100 June 8 Dada Life spins June 9 Calvin Harris spins

nightlife

parties

Daylight Mandalay Bay [ Upcoming ]

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Teddy Fujimoto

June 6-12, 2013

June 7 Peach Fridays with DJ Stellar June 8 Thomas Gold spins June 9 Eric D-Lux spins

nightlife

parties

pure

Caesars palace [ Upcoming ]

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Amit Dadlaney, Teddy Fujimoto, and Toby Acuna

June 6-12, 2013

June 14 World Series of Fighting After-Party June 16 La Martina hosts Fashion Show Sundays June 18 Dream Team Industry Night

nightlife

parties

Body english Hard Rock Hotel [ Upcoming ]

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Hew Burney

June 6-12, 2013

June 7 Lazy Rich spins June 9 Richard Beynon spins June 14 Posso spins

nightlife

parties

tHe aCt The palazzo [ Upcoming ]

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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com

Photography by Amit Dadlaney and Joe Fury

June 6-12, 2013

June 6 Nubase Agency Night feat. Geisha Twins June 7 Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz perform June 12 Working Stiff Wednesdays: Food & Beverage Edition

dining

drinking The Thairish Carbomb at Le Thai (left) and Willy Wonka’s Hangover at Commonwealth (below)

Let’s Get Weird

Move over, Jägerbomb. ‘Depth charges’ have never looked (or tasted) so good!

By Xania Woodman

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The Vesper Bomb The menu at Vesper bar places classics alongside their modern counterparts. But locals and insiders know: The Vesper Bomb ($5) has no peer. A 2-ounce shot of Fernet-Branca sits inverted in 1 ounce of ginger beer … until you remove the shot glass, mixing the two, and away you go. “Fernet Branca is the cocktail connoisseur’s secret handshake,” says property mixologist and Vesper GM Christopher Hopkins. “By ordering it, you alert the bartender that you like avantgarde flavors, and are not scared to push the envelope with your drinking choices.”

Hopkins first tried Fernet in San Francisco, where it is typically served with a ginger- ale back. “Seeing as how the ginger profile matches so well to the herbaceous nature of Fernet-Branca, the substi-

tution of ginger beer further enhances it by increasing the ginger notes.” You’ll never order a Jägerbomb again. In the Cosmopolitan, 698-7000, CosmopolitanLasVegas.com.

The Thairish Carbomb “We don’t take ourselves too seriously,” Le Thai co-owner Daniel Coughlin says. He takes a less-is-more approach to a lot of things at his popular hipster enclave, which serves up a small but well-prepared hit list of noodle dishes, soups and stir-fries—Thai street food that echoes Coughlin’s culinary

upbringing by his mother and grandmother. Tricky Thai dishes are renamed for approachability, such as the Awesome Noodles. And when he does shots with his regulars, the Thai Coughlin ($7) pays homage to his halfThai, half-Irish heritage: ¾ ounce Jameson Irish Whiskey and ¾ ounce Mekhong Spirit of Thailand. Wanna go over to the dark side? Dropped into 6 ounces of PBR, the Thai Coughlin becomes a Thairish Carbomb ($10), “a simple classic,” Coughlin says, “meant to get you where you need to

go.” 523 Fremont St., 778-0888, LeThaiVegas.com.

Willy Wonka’s Hangover Even cocktail girls get the brews. Beer cocktails are increasing in popularity, so when mixologist Juyoung Kang was working on the beer and cocktail programs for Downtown’s Commonwealth cocktail bar, it was inevitable that the two could intersect in a bomb shot with a little attitude. Invert a shot glass of 1 ounce Absolut and ½ ounce Licor 43 into 3 ounces of Young’s Double Chocolate Stout for

Willy Wonka’s Hangover ($10), an off-menu special. “I’m known as a classic cocktail bartender,” Kang explains.

“Perhaps this shows a fun side of me … I’m just serious about my medicine, as a doctor of spirits should be.” 525 Fremont St., 445-6400, CommonwealthLV.com.

Le Thai photo by Kin Lui; Willy Wonka photo by Zack W

June 6-12, 2013

➧ There’s a beer in your shot!

There’s a shot in your beer!

Whether it’s a sake bomb, Irish car bomb or a good oldfashioned boilermaker, “depth charges”—for the uninitiated, that’s any shot dropped into another beverage—are being buoyed by the same rising tide that’s reinvigorating cocktail culture in America. Here are three you should try right now.

June 6-12, 2013

A&E

Art

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But that’s exactly what Jesse Carson Smigel, 29, who physically resembles a lumberjack, is doing on a Wednesday afternoon. He yanks staples from a curved wall to smooth out the wrinkles in his massive, 24-feet-by-8-feet bannerprinted digital rendering, “Kitty Cat Borg Attack: A War Tribute Memorial.”

“We knew what we were getting into when we invited Jesse Smigel to do a show,” Patrick Gaffey, cultural program supervisor for the Winchester Cultural Center, had told me minutes earlier with bemusement. “We realized things would be … unusual.”

There’s another unusual aspect of Smigel’s show apart from its title, The Perfect Future Is Sanitary … The Sanitary Future Is PURRRfect. It had been up for more than a week without being fully installed. It could be Smigel’s obvious perfectionism that is thwarting his show’s completion. Or maybe it’s the fact that he simply couldn’t secure the right paint to apply to “Starship Enterpaws: Prototype Bio-Engineered Living Fleet War Vessel.” It’s a foam space vehicle with a 5-foot wingspan that now hangs from the ceiling in the gallery’s center.

A professional carpenter and scenic artist, Smigel studied art at UNLV. (His bachelor of fne arts degree is nearly done.) He has a reputation for work that is eccentric. He has been called an outlaw yard sculptor. He has been called an asshole. He has carved giant gnome lawn ornaments from blocks of Styrofoam. He has been commissioned by the National Atomic Testing Museum to render the foam likeness of a mushroom cloud. He has attended dinner parties wearing mechanical bunny ears that respond to body temperature, wiggling whenever the conversation turns toward sexual matters. Years ago, over beers, he boasted to me that he was the art curator at Huntridge Tavern, the bar in which we were drinking. There was, in fact, very interesting art hanging on the walls.

Despite an impish attitude, Smigel strives to make art that people like. Last year he began painting cats on ice cream cones. He learned how attractive and in-demand his cats were from participating in lo-

“Kitty Cat Borg Attack: A War Tribute Memorial” (above) and “Cat Stationed Aboard the Fleet Mining and Resource Vessel Nevada: ‘Snowball’” (right).

cal group exhibits. Eventually he hit on the idea of pitting his cats against Borg cubes. (The Borg are a villainous alien race from Star Trek that pilot spacefaring, death-dealing cubes.)

He completed a rendering, and the response was so good he decided to base a show on the concept. Inspired by comical sci-f writers such as Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), Smigel imagined a future he wanted to inhabit.

A world that revolved around kitties and advanced technology.

“It went wrong somewhere,” he says. “After thinking about it, I realized the future I wanted to live in wasn’t a world I could control.”

••• The only entity demonstrating authority in Smigel’s ruined Earth in the year 4013 is an all-powerful, monolithic corporation known as The Fleet. Humankind is being relegated to transport ships fueled by Catonium. This resource is derived from giant, genetically modifed space cats, which protect the ships from Borg assaults.

Life aboard these vessels isn’t easy for humans. They require special facial creams to generate emotional responses.

Cleverly, a two-minute video advertisement for “Smi-Gel

Brand Smile Gel”—get it?— loops on a fat-screen on the gallery wall. In it, a rictusgrimacing, lab-coated Fleet scientist grotesquely and inordinately applies green goo to a Fleet soldier’s mirthless visage. In seconds, his frown turns upside down.

There are propaganda posters urging people to be hygienic and report genetic experiments. “Unclean?

Sanitize!” screams one poster.

“Keep Clean If You Want To Live” warns another. “I Can Haz Face Hugger?” asks an H.R. Giger-dreamed LOLcat 2,000 years from the future.

More disturbingly, there’s a 7-foot hairless white bear with an oversize human ear sprouting from its back. The plastic sculpture is called “Fuzzy Wuzzy Was a Bear: Cloned Primitive Earth Predator Hunt Taxidermy,” and it, too, offers a piece of a larger narrative puzzle. Apparently, in the

future, there is a human elite class that still relishes the thrill of real hunting, made possible thanks to cloning technology.

With its emphasis on artifcially induced emotions, scary genetic mods and military corporatism, Sanitary Future makes it seem like Smigel might have a serious message lurking beneath the humor. He doesn’t rule out the idea that his show serves as a commentary on our present-day lives. But he also refuses to embrace any committed satirical impulse.

“This isn’t a politically charged show,” Smigel says.

“It’s a hypothetical situation.

It’s science fction.”

As an example, he makes a comparison between films: Al Gore’s global-warming doc An Inconvenient Truth and Pixar’s WALL-E. Both movies deal with shared issues, but no one would ever evaluate one against the other. It’s the animated film Smigel prefers,

since its message is deeply embedded into a larger fictional narrative.

“This is my cute story about a little robot,” he says. “But with cats.”

There’s a robotic cat.

An adorable, fuffy-white animatronic feline named Snowball whirrs and purrs inside a Fleet mining resource compartment. Tap on the acrylic sphere and watch her respond.

But the show’s centerpiece is “Kitty Cat Borg Attack.” Photoshopped images of various cats—some actually cared for

by Smigel—show them digging their claws into the cubes as if they were scratching posts.

The cat empire-crushing cubes strike back by emitting green lasers, causing the kitties to look surprised, their ears laying fat.

••• Those of us who had the distinctly odd pleasure of

June 6-12, 2013

87 VEGAS SEVEN

attending Smigel’s opening reception on May 31 might have shared a similar expression of astonishment. Especially as a full-on laser-tag battle erupted between costumed Fleet soldiers and the rebel alliance led by Smigel himself.

A food riot was under way.

“I’m not used to stretching Jesse Carson out one of my puns or jokes smigel’s The PerfeCT this long,” said Smigel a few fuTure is saniTary… days before the performance The saniTary fuTure component of his show was is PurrrfeCT conducted. It marked the frst time he incorporated a 10 a.m.-8 performance piece into an art p.m. Tue-Fri, show. Before the event, he had 9 a.m.-6 p.m. spent a $1,000 Internet-orderSat through July ing a complete 1986 set of vin12, Winchester tage, Worlds of Wonder-brand Cultural Center Lazer Tag game kits replete Gallery, 3130 with blasters and sensor vests McLeod Dr., and helmets. Then he invited 455-7340. the kids from the Winchester skateboard team to dress up as Fleet soldiers. There was a rehearsal, maybe two.

Smigel certainly explored his theatrical side. On the night of the reception, each guest was offered one small cup of water and one small cup containing two Good & Plenty candies—and nothing else. This would be the only food and drink offered at the event.

Smigel played the role of resistance leader, entering the gallery with his gang of rebel fighters. Lazer-tagging commenced, a physical flurry of beeping and blinking and shoes squeaking. He grabbed the giant container of licorice from the Fleet enforcers, half of which scattered on the floor in the pandemonium, and ran out of the gallery and into the Winchester lobby.

Smigel and his liberation force escaped outside, fnding refuge in Winchester’s desert gardens. It was a small victory in an otherwise hilariously dystopian show that defes easy, um, CATegorization.

A&E

Music

Unlikely Broadway babies: Green Day’s Mike Dirnt, Billie Joe Armstrong and Tré Cool.

June 6-12, 2013

Pop’s Not Dead

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middle school street cred with the fannel-wearing, black-lipstick set— the same kids to whom I sold handmade clay psychedelic mushroom Why I’m looking forward to Green Day’s American necklaces without having any idea why they dug them so much.

Idiot, even if it means we’ve all sold out Interestingly enough, it was not my peers who frst exposed me

By Deanna Rilling to Green Day, but my father who was nearly 40 years my senior.

Dad had an ear for the next hot thing in tunes before the masses noThing says “punk rock” like a fuzzy nostalgia when I recall listening did (maybe he listened to a lot of Broadway show. OK, not really, to “She” on my Walkman while riding college radio). Dad would record but the whole “Are they punk or the school bus, or screaming out the music videos from MTV, turnnot?” argument no longer applies lyrics to “Basket Case” while rollering them into sweet VHS mixes of to Green Day, which has long been blading around the concrete founda- everything from Billy Idol to Jane’s chastised by elitist music critics for tions of my half-completed neighAddiction. He told me to check out being more pop than punk. After borhood, which was then way out in Green Day performing live on TV. more than 25 years of rocking, the middle of nowhere at Cheyenne “Those guys have a lot of pep,” he the band now transcends labels.

Avenue and Fort Apache Road. said, and bought me the cassette They’ve earned it.

Green Day rocked my world, even upon our next visit.

When I was in eighth grade in though I didn’t understand that “All Fast-forward to high school, when 1994-95, none of that label stuff

By Myself” (or “The “Good Riddance mattered to me—I had yet to become Secret Song” as we (Time of Your Life)” green day’s aMerican idioT the jaded music snob I am today. My called it) was actually was our graduation prepubescent Green Day fandom re- about masturbation. anthem. Needless to The Smith Center, 7:30 mains, hence why I’m super stoked Hell, I didn’t even say, Green Day was p.m. June 11-14, 2 and to see their Broadway smash, Amerirealize that 1994’s an integral volume in 7:30 p.m. June 15 and 16, can Idiot, when the touring company Dookie was a referthe soundtrack of my $24 and up, 749-2000, makes a stop at The Smith Center on ence to the—ahem— youth. So yeah, rip TheSmithCenter.com.

June 11-16. I’m also curious to check runs, nor did I care on Green Day if you out the musical’s band play Green that the album cover want, but I’m countan evening oF idioTs: The aMerican Day covers on June 13 after the stage depicted assorted ing down the days to idioT band plays green day show at Red Rock Resort. mammals throwing American Idiot. Plus, Admittedly, I haven’t actively their own shit. my dad would have 10:30 p.m. June 13 at Red sought out any Green Day albums When I rocked the dug it. And my dad Rock Resort, 21 and older, since 1997’s Nimrod—with the excepoffcial band shirt was pretty punk in free, SCLV.com/concerts. tion of the musical’s namesake rock procured at Hot his own way, just like opera. Yet, there’s still the warm, Topic, I earned mad Green Day.

The week’s best underground rock shows are crowded on June 7. That night, at 10 p.m., local punk bands the Dirty Panties, the Quitters, the Seriouslys, Tiger Sex and Gigantic gather at Double Down Saloon. All these groups have a loose, garage-y bent that should make them tons of fun to watch.

I haven’t yet caught a set by Tiger Sex, but people tell me they’re great. Sure, their name is intriguing, but not something I’m entirely comfortable Googling right now. I’m still trying to explain to my wife how a site called TheDirtyPanties.com ended up in my browser history. (You’d think being a music writer would get me out of jail.)

Over at LVCS, meanwhile, long-running industrial-metal band Fear Factory punches out its trademark blend of thrash and electronica.

The band’s most recent disc is a concept album called The Industrialist, which relates the dystopian sci-fi story of an automaton who no longer wants to be automated. It doesn’t get any colder, more mechanized or punishing than the Factory. So if you need good music with which to feel very bad, this is your concert. Also on the bill: death-metal band Hate Eternal, power-metal trio Kobra & the Lotus, plus Protest and Bi-Polar.

At Triple B at 7 p.m., classic blues-rock revivalists the Stone Foxes are on the hunt.

This band was supposed to play the venue back in March but had to cancel and made good on their promise to reschedule. The Foxes boast a broad array of influences—gospel, country, R&B. But it all boils down to a rollickin’ approach to delivering songs that sound instantly vintage. I deeply admire their dark, Edgar Allan Poe-referencing “Everybody Knows,” which features amazing harmonicaplaying. Also on the bill are two Vegas bands: psychedelic, sax-powered combo Jack & the B-Fish, and sharper-than-Freddy-Krueger’stackle-box trio The Dirty Hooks.

Local release alert! Coffeehouse-indie group Szabo is set to release their debut EP Get Wasted at Artifice at 9 p.m. June 8. Szabo recorded at the Killers’ own Battle Born Studios, and from what I’ve heard of the results so far, the EP is well produced. (Look for my review in the coming weeks.) Szabo is led by namesake frontman Elliot Szabo, and the songs are folkbased and pretty much built around the acoustic guitar. Which means I’d rather get caffeinated than wasted while spinning this stuff. Still, I can easily imagine fans of, say, Jack Johnson getting into this. I’m eager to find out how Szabo sounds live. Hopefully they rock out a little more onstage. Also on the bill: Black Belt Karate, Leather Bound Crooks and Gorilla Heads.

Your Vegas band releasing a CD soon? Email Jarret_Keene@Yahoo.com.

Photo by Lance Mercer

Tigers, cobras and Foxes

A&E

Movies

Back to Before

More melancholy than its predecessors, Before Midnight answers unresolved questions in the Hawke-Delpy relationship

By MICHAEL PHILLIPS

June 6-12, 2013

TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES

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When Celine, played by Julie Delpy, frst met Ethan Hawke’s Jesse in Before Sunrise back in 1995, on a Budapest-to-Vienna train just made for postcollegiate firtation, one round of small talk led to another, until the talk got a little bigger and phased into bleary-eyed, besotted exchanges about literature and life’s feeting romantic glories.

A lot of the talk was showboating, particularly with Hawke’s aspiring novelist character, whose “act” seemed frequently at odds with the human being underneath the angles and gambits. By the end of director/ co-writer Richard Linklater’s beautiful flm, you knew the performers had gone places most movies disallow their actors because most dialogue sequences—and Before Sunrise, like its sequels, is a single, searching dialogue sequence—cut to the

chase or the resolution.

In the second flm, Before Sunset (2004), Jesse and Celine reunited after their Vienna evening and early morning, when the American visited Paris on a book tour. His novel had a lot to do with the woman, Celine, who got away. Jesse was married with a son by then. By the end of the picture, which (improbably) was just as lovely as the frst, the stars appeared to align these two, though director Linklater’s fadeout was at least a tiny bit ambiguous, enough to provoke one commenter on Internet Movie Database to ask: “Can someone explain the ending of this movie to me?” We’ll all be asking that one someday, as our fnal credits roll.

Before Midnight answers a lot of questions, while adding a distinct element of melancholy.

First things frst: Linklater’s

Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke try the talking (and walking) cure.

reunion with these characters, and these actors, is well worth your time, especially if you’ve already made their acquaintance and you’re interested in catching up. As in the ongoing Michael Apted Up documentary series, there’s new light, different light and shade being cast on the subjects every time.

If Before Midnight is somewhat less special than its predecessors, well, it’s tougher to tease out the allure and charm in the depiction of a long-term relationship (though it’s certainly worth trying) than it is to simply ask the question: Are they going to get together? This one’s set in Greece. A writers’ retreat has brought Jesse to Messinia from Paris with Celine and their twin daughters (a screenful of curls played by Jennifer and Charlotte Prior).

At the start, Jesse’s middle school-age son (Seamus DaveyFitzpatrick), who has just spent a fne summer with his father’s newish family, is at the airport, heading back to the U.S. and his unseen mother, whom we hear is a “drunk” and “abusive psychologically.” The boy we meet, albeit briefy, hides the shellshock well; he’s a calm, easygoing, if somewhat beatendown presence compared to his overeager and insecure father.

At dinner with their hosts, Jesse and Celine talk about everything from the ravages of social media to the challenges of their complicated relationship (“I’m actually surprised we lasted this long,” Celine says).

The chatter becomes somewhat agitated; Celine, between jobs, has grown itchy with her partner’s well-practiced Moderately Famous Novelist routines.

That night their Greek friends babysit the twins so they can get away for a night on their own. And then Before Midnight turns meaner, sadder than the two previous flms. There’s a chill in the air. “Do you ever listen to yourself?” spits an exasperated Jesse in the middle of a plausibly hideous argument.

Though this is his most effective screen work to date, I’ve always found Hawke in the Before flms to be effective in a slightly showier and more calculating way than Delpy, who really does appear to be pulling each moment, each hairpin emotional curve, out of her own experience. Partly it’s a technical matter: Hawke, a very busy performer, indulges himself with a few too many improvisatory conversational place-holders, the “uhs” and the “yeah, but sees” and the verbal windups before the pitch. He

has a way of dominating the talk, the way the character is meant to dominate. But Delpy has always challenged Hawke to fnd a simpler, more direct form of acting in Linklater’s flms, which gives them their unique suspense and rolling tension.

Where does this one end?

I won’t say, and I can’t yet say the ending works for me, let alone how it might work for the IMDB commenter vexed by the warmer resolution of Before Sunset. What Linklater, Delpy and Hawke have achieved with their trilogy is at once fuidly cinematic and novelistic, with stories behind the stories and possible endings beyond the endings we’re given. These two, like so many of us, believe in the talking cure, even when it becomes a momentary, fractious curse. And they really do love each other. Before Midnight doesn’t ask the question directly, thank God, but it encourages you to wonder: Is that enough? When does the knotty business of living outwit the love? Where will these two be in another nine or 10 years?

And can Linklater actually manage a fourth good movie with these two?

Before Midnight (R) ★★★✩✩

A&E

movies

abracadabra Lite

For a ‘magic’ movie, Now You See Me isn’t very bewitching

By Roger Moore

Tribune Media Services the razzle dazzles, but the smoke never quite hides the mirrors in Now You See Me, a super-slick new magicians’ heist picture that demonstrates, once again, how tough it is to make “magic” work as a movie subject.

A medium that is, by defnition, a trick has a very hard time making the illusions real, realistic and anything anyone would be impressed by. Ask The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. Ask The Illusionist.

A quartet of street hustlers and rising stars of the various corners of the magic trade are recruited by a mysterious hoodie-wearing fgure for a series of epic stunts.

Billing themselves as “the Four Horsemen”—misdirection man Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg) and his former assistant Henley (Isla Fisher), “mentalist” Merritt (Woody Harrelson) and cardsharp Jack (Dave Franco)—they proceed to star in magic “events” where they catch the imagination of the world and a superrich promoter (Michael Caine).

“Tonight,” they announce,

“we’re going to rob a bank.”

Which they do, a continent away, raining currency down on an audience that appreciates a bank fnally getting its just desserts.

The impossible, physicsdefying caper? Remember, Atlas has told us in the narration, “the closer you look, the less you see.”

Mark Ruffalo plays the comically hyperventilating FBI agent always a step behind the Four Horsemen. And Morgan Freeman takes the part of the mysterious magic expert who may be helping the feds, explaining to them (and the audience) how tricks work. Or maybe he’s playing another game.

A lot is riding on momentum in this Louis Leterrier (Clash of the Titans, The Transporter) thriller. But it never gets up a good head of steam. Freeman and Ruffalo make strong impressions. But there’s little character development. Pointof-view shifts are willy-nilly between the magicians—who start to feel they’re willing puppets in some larger scheme—and the cops, while

Muted magicians (clockwise from top left): Eisenberg, Fisher, Harrelson and Franco.

Ruffalo works himself into a fne comic fury.

It’s a plot-heavy thriller, with too much explaining and need to explain. And without pacing, the

mind wanders into “Wait, how could any entity other than Hollywood stage a New York bridge crash like that?” and the like.

For all its showmanship, Now

short reviews

June 6-12, 2013

After Earth PG-13 ★★★✩✩

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The latest from M. Night Shyamalan, no longer “Mr. Plot Twist,” is a two-biller showcasing the Smiths, Will and Jaden.

Humanity’s treatment of Earth has led to mass exodus. The planet is overrun by animals and bugs, all genetically evolved to kill humans. Cypher (Will Smith) takes his son, Kitai (Jaden Smith), on security patrol of Earth, but one crash landing later, father and son are stuck. Kitai must locate a beacon and navigate all kinds of danger along the way. Moderately entertaining.

Fast & Furious 6 PG-13 ★★★★✩

The sixth installment of this car-thieveswith-honor franchise is a surprising and unlikely delight. Dom (Vin Diesel) wants to return home to L.A. after stealing $100 million in Brazilian drug money. Federal agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), who had been after Dom and his gang of thieves, actually needs them to catch a British terrorist. The gang comes back together for a slew of incredible chase scenes, ridiculous amounts of downshifting and full exoneration. Director Justin Lin knows what he’s doing here.

The Hangover III R ★★✩✩✩

It won’t take long to sleep off the third, highly forgettable installment of this franchise.

Alan (Zach Galifianakis) buys and accidentally decapitates a (digital) giraffe, giving his dad (Jeffrey Tambor) a heart attack. The Wolf Pack (Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Justin Bartha) drive him to a rehab facility in Arizona. On the way, they’re carjacked by a mobster (John Goodman). And of course, Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) is around as well. There’s hardly a laugh in the entire thing.

You See Me has a lot less up its sleeve than it lets on.

Now You See Me (PG-13) ★★★✩✩

[ by tribune media services ]

Star Trek Into Darkness PG-13 ★★★★✩

Director J.J. Abrams’ second installment in the classic franchise reboot is fantastic. Life on Earth in the 23rd century is eerily familiar: a massively destructive act of terrorism sets into motion a tale that leads, early on, to an attack on Starfleet; a test of leadership for James T. Kirk (Chris Pine); and the introduction of an also-familiar adversary in Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch). The result is tons of fun. The Enterprise and its crew have never looked better.