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Red, White & BReW
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[ upcoming ]
July 14: Las Vegas Cupcake Bakeoff at Suncoast Grand Ballroom (BakeLV.com) July 18-21: Las Vegas Film Festival at LVH (LVFilmFest.com)
Photos by Hew Burney
July 4–10, 2013
Even though the mercury rose to 114 on June 29, hundreds of thirsty patriots still made their way to the Clark County Amphitheater for KXTE-FM’s Red Wine and Brew Fest. The crowd of about 1,500 kept cool in the searing heat thanks to samples of more than 65 varieties of craft beer, as well as wine and cocktails. Memphis Championship Barbecue provided the bites to accompany the brews, while local acts American Cream, Beau Hodges Band and Parade of Lights rocked the stage. Befitting the patriotic theme, the funds raised at this inaugural event benefited American Legion Department of Nevada.
THE LATEST
THOUGHT
The Zipline Of Demarcation We’ve got a big, hideous tower clotting the path from Fremont East to the Fremont Street Experience. Hooray for connectivity!
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I HAVE DRIVEN a car on Fremont Street, from Las Vegas Boulevard down to Main, in the way of Hunter S. Thompson and James Bond. There was a time, believe it or not, when you could do such a thing— drive your car west through Glitter Gulch, with the casinos leaning in close to spill their illuminated promises through your windshield. You could do this without having to swerve around throngs of tourists, kiosks selling needless things and feral Smurfs. It was a wonderful experience, even if you were tempted to roll up your windows. The modern-day Fremont Street Experience is a different animal. On the one hand, tourists seem to love its light canopy and outdoor mall, and I’m happy that they do; I want the resorts of Glitter Gulch to stay in business. I’m less fond of the Experience, but that’s fine; if I want a more localized Fremont experience, there’s always the Fremont East Entertainment District—Commonwealth, Insert Coin(s) and so on—ready to serve. In a way, Fremont East is what Glitter Gulch once was; it’s even become home to the tech inspection for the Mint 400 auto race, once a Glitter Gulch tradition. Until recently, I was fne with the Fremont Street Experience being what it is and Fremont East being what it is. And then, like a bad dream, rose Slotzilla. I don’t think I can begin to tell you how much I dislike this six-story, slot machine-shaped tower, built for the purpose of dispatching zipline riders through the airspace of the canopy to a smaller, equally unsightly tower deeper inside the Experience. But I’ll give it a try. Slotzilla is the nail in the coffn, the one last thing we needed to completely destroy
one of America’s great scenic byways. I guess I’ve been holding onto some vague hope that Fremont, the street, would return—or at the least, that the canopy would come down and leave the pedestrian plaza, or vice versa. Slotzilla means no, uh-uh, not so much. And I’m not sure I’d feel differently if I didn’t hate the size and shape of the thing (but I do) or if it weren’t a monument to a trend that will almost certainly peak and begin to
decline in the near future. My problem with Slotzilla is … well, let’s just say it’s kind of a feng shui thing. Let’s say you’re a tourist at the Fremont Street Experience. You’ve got your bubblegum-favored yard marg in hand and you’re ready to do some exploring. You look to the east and see Slotzilla, wedged between Neonopolis and the Fremont Street Experience. Maybe you beat your chest, scream “YOLO!”
in a manner not unlike that of an idiot, and decide to ride the thing. Or maybe you had a bad experience once—like your girlfriend left you for a zipline, or something—and you walk in the other direction. Either way, Fremont Street ended for you, right there. As far as you’re concerned, Fremont East doesn’t exist. Now, say you’re a young hipster standing on Fremont East, holding the leash on the llama or whatever you kids do.
You look at the back of Slotzilla and nod approvingly, knowing that this great wall is keeping the zombies corralled. But then you look around you at the clip-art-style neon signs in the middle of the street, the jaundiced banners showing some model drinking a martini and the palm trees that afford absolutely no daytime shade, and you say, “Hey, if we’re no longer an extension of the Fremont Street Experience brand, why is all this crap still up?” Seriously, I’m looking at Slotzilla every way I know how, and I can’t see it as anything but a spite wall between the Experience and the street of bar and restaurants that is, like it or not, quickly becoming Vegas’ hottest entertainment block. Slotzilla is, plainly and simply, a self-created (zip)line of demarcation to keep tourists in and locals out. But if that’s what the Experience wants to do, I guess I wish them well. I have friends under that canopy: The D, the Nugget, the Golden Gate and others. I’ll keep patronizing those establishments as if they were part of Downtown Las Vegas, and not just storefronts inside some hermetically sealed, jury-rigged Adventuredome. And if I ever steal a wistful look up the street and imagine what it’d be like to drive Fremont one last time, I’ll just, I dunno, jam a ballpoint pen into my leg or something. Negative reinforcement. And I look forward to seeing what happens when I’m walking the other way and a tourist asks me what lies beyond the mighty Slotzilla. I’ll describe a place with rooftop bars and espresso bars, lined with shady trees growing into unrestricted airspace. “And best of all,” I’ll say, “it’s got some nice neon signs, and you can check them out from your car. Both directions.”
Photo by Geoff Carter
July 4–10, 2013
By Geoff Carter
Game of Drones
Does New York City have an ‘unmanned aerial vehicle’ problem?
July 4–10, 2013
By Jordan Valinsky The New York Observer
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iN late 2011, a slender Brooklyn resident named Tim Pool roamed downtown Manhattan, seemingly recording every minute of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Pool, an independent journalist, would use his smartphone to live-stream the demonstrations, sometimes for as long as 19 continuous hours, earning himself the nickname “The
Media Messenger of Zuccotti Park” in Time. As the protests escalated, it became increasingly diffcult for Pool to capture the civil disobedience from eye level. He yearned for an unhindered view—a higher vantage point, like from the sky. “The fact that police would obstruct cameras just sort of put in our minds that we might
be in a situation where you can’t get a good shot because there’s a wall or a fence or something,” said Pool, now 27. Enter the “occucopter”— a modifed drone of Pool’s creation, built from a Parrot AR, one of the frst consumeroriented drones, which hit the marketplace in 2010 and was available for purchase on Amazon for $299.
Drones, also commonly called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), differ from the remote-controlled toy helicopters of childhood in that they operate via onboard computers under the direction of a pilot, who is on the ground. The Parrot AR Drone has onboard technology to follow preprogrammed instructions and automatically stabilize itself against wind. A lightweight quad-rotor, Pool’s drone resembled nothing so much as a bike seat, and, with its palette of neon colors, it looked like it had been plucked straight from the pages of SkyMall. Unlike the junk found in an in-fight magazine, however, it actually worked— and with the addition of a cam-
era, the occucopter was given further functionality. Shooting 50 feet into the air and zipping around at speeds of up to 10 mph, the occucopter buzzed above the heads of the protesters. For many, both within and beyond Zuccotti Park, this marked their frstever encounter with a drone. Even the mainstream media was fascinated, focusing on the device’s nonmilitary capabilities, as Pool earned press mentions across the globe in outlets such as The Guardian and Wired magazine. “Being a drone, it’s got a huge novelty factor, and a lot of people are really excited,” Pool said. “They think that this is like the game-changer, it’s this great revolutionary thing.”
Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
The LaTesT
NatioNal
Nightlife
He Could Be the One
Wherefore art Romero? Why, he’s backstage with Vegas Seven at EDC By Sam Glaser
DJ/proDucer Nicky romero stunned many in 2012 when he debuted at No. 17 as one of DJ Mag’s highest new entries ever. The latest in a proud line of great Dutchmen, Romero is currently riding arguably the most impressive sequence of collaborations in the industry. He spoke with Vegas Seven backstage right after his main-stage set June 21 at the Electric Daisy Carnival.
July 4–10, 2013
You were one of 2012’s breakthrough artists. Who’s your pick for breakthrough artist of 2013? I think it must be either Dyro or Krewella.
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You teased your Krewella collaboration “Legacy” at Coachella. How’s that coming? I met the Krewella team in Hawaii last year, and I thought they played an amazing set. I was really impressed with the way they did the vocals, and how everything came together with the three of them. I sent them the “Legacy” instrumental and they wrote a top line right on it in just a few days and it seemed to merge just perfect. I’m really happy with how it sounds right now, we have good hype around the song. We got more than
100,000 plays in just one day! You started as a drummer. How does that affect your approach to music today? It kind of developed my interest for music in general. The drumming background showed itself when I did the remix for Green Velvet’s “Flash,” because that was all about the drums and percussion. The platform that I created right now for protocol and for my own brand, really everything is based on the interest that started at a young age. Your single with Avicii, “I Could Be the One,” has been a massive crossover success with sustained hype. What’s special about this record? I think we are lucky that it got so big and it got to No. 1 in
the U.K. I think that helps a lot. It was on the Billboard charts as well. So, like you mentioned, it keeps the hype a little bit longer. Actually, we produced it in 2011, so it’s out there for two years already, but people just only know it for like a year, not even. So, it’s kind of funny, for me, it’s a really old track, it’s a classic for me already. What was it like to work on “Right Now” with Rihanna? I think it’s a dream of every producer to work with an artist of that profle. When I met her, I was really impressed by her presence. She was really kind to everyone, friendly and so professional. Everyone I met after who showed up a little arrogant, I kind of ignored. At this moment, the Queen of Pop is not arrogant,
not at all. I saw that everyone who is huge in the industry is not arrogant; they are the most humble people. So whenever someone is arrogant, they have to make up for something. You also worked with Nervo on “Like Home.” Who’s hotter: Rihanna or the Nervo sisters? It’s actually comparing white bread with nine-grain. [Laughing] One is dark and one is white, you know? If I really had to choose, Nervo is more a family to me. So, I would choose Rihanna. You were playing “Symphonica” in DJ sets for a year before you decided to release it. How do you know when it’s time to release a new track? It’s not like that we do that on purpose. Most of the time we have such a full schedule that we have to move things up. But sometimes you play the single already for a year. That’s what happens with a lot of artists. A lot of people don’t know, either, that the song was produced for a year already before it actually releases. It’s just a process, and
sometimes you just want to keep changing things and fnalizing things until you’re really happy. Between the hits, the chart success and the collaborations, what’s been the highlight of your young career? Working with Rihanna was huge for me. Playing Tomorrowland was a really, really cool thing for me and also a highlight. EDC, once again, I have to mention. Playing Light yesterday was a new highlight of my career. I’ve never experienced a club like that. It was just insane. They few me—literally—to the DJ booth. It was next-level stuff, so that made a big impact on me. You’ve said that your favorite part of DJing is when you release a new track and it “goes off” in the club. What is the biggest challenge? To have a track sound good everywhere—on the small speakers, big speakers, your car radio, that’s something that’s really hard to do. And it always will be, because the mixing is the hardest part of making a song.
For the complete interview with Nicky Romero backstage at EDC, visit VegasSeven.com/NickyRomero.
nightlife
parties
palms pool The palms
[ Upcoming ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com
Photography by Joe Fury
July 4–10, 2013
July 4 Industry Barbecue July 8 Cabanas for a Cause July 12 Wale performs
NIGHTLIFE
PARTIES
WET REPUBLIC MGM Grand [ UPCOMING ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com
Photography by Teddy Fujimoto, Toby Acuna and Tony Tran
July 4–10, 2013
July 4 Steve Aoki spins July 5 Tommy Trash spins July 6 Tiësto spins
NIGHTLIFE
PARTIES
THE ACT The Palazzo [ UPCOMING ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com
Photography by Bobby Jameidar, and Mario Garcia
July 4–10, 2013
July 4 Presto One spins July 17 End of the World Party July 18 Rebel Bingo
NIGHTLIFE
PARTIES
LAVO
The Palazzo [ UPCOMING ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com
Photography by Bobby Jameidar and Al Powers
July 4–10, 2013
July 5 DJ Skratchy spins July 6 DJ Gusto spins July 7 DJ Vice spins
NIGHTLIFE
PARTIES
GALLERY
Planet Hollywood [ UPCOMING ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com
Photography by Teddy Fujimoto
July 4–10, 2013
July 6 Official GSP after-fight party July 8 Perfect 12 July 13 DJ Felli Fel spins
DINING
TRENDSPOTTING
Something Bold, Something New Wedding cakes are tiny, just for you at Alizé By Kate Stowell
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why the cupcake trend has found love in the wedding circuit? With the surge of cupcake shops opening all over the country, it was only a matter of time before brides swooned. And for good reason: Cupcakes give brides and grooms the ability to personalize the experience with different cake favors, frostings and embellishments, allows for dietary considerations (glutenfree, vegan, nondairy) and offers portability and versatility without sacrifcing the aesthetics. And creative couples can make just as much of a statement as the traditional tiered wedding cake. No one knows this better than recently engaged executive pastry chef Tammy Alana at the Palms’ French restaurant, Alizé. Alana offers brides who hold their receptions at Alizé her own version of the wedding cupcake: the “Cakelet,” a dainty, delicate, 3-inchby-3-inch “miniature version of your dream wedding cake—or cakes,” Alana says with an air of whimsy. Delicious as they are precious, Cakelets can come in vanilla, chocolate, lemon or red velvet favors with fllings such as chocolate mousse, lemon curd or Bavarian custard, covered in chocolate-caramel glaze, buttercream, white or dark chocolate velvet … Pick one, or pick them all—the options and combinations are almost endless. Sometimes big dreams come in small, cream cheese-frosted packages. Speak to Alize’s wedding specialist at 951-7000.
Photograph by Anthony Mair
July 4–10, 2013
➧ IS IT REALLY any wonder
drinking Dining
[ Scene StirS ]
July 4–10, 2013
For Patricia Richards’ recipe for Bringing Sexy Back, check out VegasSeven.com/Cocktail-Culture.
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Bringing Sexy Back
low on calories, but big on favor. That’s what Wynn Resorts property mixologist Patricia Richards had in mind when she combined citrus and cucumber to create one of the most refreshing cocktails of summer. One of her core principles at Wynn Resorts is to know her clientele and what they will like. And what they like is to party day and night. Situated next to Surrender and Encore Beach Club, Wynn’s hip Asian hot spot Andrea’s is keenly aware of those needs, and especially the desires of its female clientele to look good in both bikinis and party dresses. With that party aesthetic in mind, Richards uses Skinny Girl tangerine vodka, Solerno blood orange liqueur and fresh lime juice and tops it with Mr. Q Cumber soda for a full-favored-but-lower-calorie long drink. A native of Vancouver, British Columbia, Richards celebrates her 10th Las Vegas summer in August, and is bringing sexy back one skinny, sexy little cocktail at a time.
If you heard an animal-like howl ring through the Valley last week, it was probably just me nursing a wicked hangover after the five rounds of the Las Vegas’ Best Bartender Competition held June 25 in the Alchemy Room at Wirtz Beverage Nevada. The daylong gauntlet kicked off with a 40-question exam. Then came the speed round, which tested the bartenders on the accuracy of six cocktails made against the clock and evaluated right down to the straw. During the pour test, their freepours were measured for volume accuracy. Points were also awarded and docked for hygiene, composure, neatness and style. Six contestants moved forward into the mixology round, where they could choose anything from behind the bar to create and name a great cocktail on the spot. Then came the hangover-inducing part, when the final four took turns bartending for we judges—who, incidentally, made complete asses of ourselves, behaving as would only the worst possible customers ever—to see who could stand the heat. And now it’s time to celebrate and crown one bartender the victor! Come to Commonwealth on July 10 to cheer on Downtown Cocktail Room’s Kevin Gorham, Central’s Michael Przydzial, Vesper’s Roger Gross and Hakkasan’s Tim Weigel, all of whom will be guest-tending their hearts out from 7-10 p.m.. At 9:30 p.m., we’ll not only announce Las Vegas’ Best Bartender, but also the People’s Choice for that evening. In other news, patrons of nine local bars—Steiner’s Pub, T-Bird Lounge, Rum Runner, Bogey’s, Boulevard Bar & Grill, Rocky’s, Torrey Pines Pub, Bentley’s and Gilligan’s Hideaway—will go head to head for $5,000 cash on Battle of the Bars, a new locally produced TV quiz show hosted by KLUC’s Chet Buchanan. The 4-week show will air on KVVU-TV Channel 5 late Friday nights, from 12:30 a.m.–1:00 a.m. July 6, July 13, July 20 and the finals on July 27. If all goes well, executive producer Mark Richards hopes to add nine bars to the mix for a total of 18. Now, clear your evening, pop the cork on something delicious and absolutely freak out in your seat while you watch four Master Sommelier candidates grind out their last precious days of study time with flash cards and so, so much swirling, sniffing and spitting in Somm, the 2012 documentary directed by Jason Wise. I attended an industry screening at South Point on June 24, courtesy of Southern Wine & Spirits, in a theater filled with somms and wine industry professionals, many of whom have attempted the exam, some more than once. After watching the tears (both of joy and crushing defeat) I have a renewed respect for sommeliers. Cheers to all the cork dorks, winos, oenophiles and grape nuts! You make the wine world go ’round. — X.W.
Photo by Lucky Wenzel
The Final Four, BaTTle oF The Bars and somm, The Film
Gastro Fare. Nurtured Ales. Jukebox Gold.
July 4–10, 2013
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rooms, an attendant stationed at the entrance to each. You enter the frst room as a lighting program, taking 20 minutes to complete, puts each room through a continuous sequence. Two colors always play against the other. In the frst room, the walls might be green, but the colors evolve. You’re in the belly of a well of light, swallowed whole. You are not allowed to touch the walls, denying you a tactile experience. The disorientation is stirring, emotional. You might even cry. Part of the dislocation is due to the room’s modifcations. There are no right angles; the joints connecting foor and wall are curved. Standing in the space, you feel like you’re foating inside a cumulus of color. Perception is thwarted; you can’t discern where walls begin and end. Physically untethered, spatially unmoored, you don’t know the limits of the area, or if you’re supposed to draw them yourself. You walk forward a pace or two or three, and step onto the edge of the second room. Here things are more dramatic because of an additional drop-off that you are tempted to take. Before you can, the attendant stands near the edge to let you know where the edge is so that you don’t step off. Like Las Vegas, the environment is controlled, policed, giving the illusion of complete sensory freedom, when in fact every move you make, every gesture you offer, is monitored, keeping you in check. You have pierced the veil of heaven, but your name is not yet on God’s list. You have no sense of whether the room ends 1,000 feet or 10 feet in front of you. Sure, you can perceive that the foor eventually stops, but just how far is it to the other side? It will remain a mystery. Meanwhile, a cloud of green or pink hovers before you. You look back into the previous space and feel lost, locked inside one of Mark Rothko’s Color Field paintings, all fatness, with no central focus. Colors change, then stay fxed, then change again. It’s time to leave. Dazed, you seem to coast toward the exit, drifting through dream waters to return to the real world of concrete and steel. Like the ancient Greek mythological fgure of Orpheus, you steal a glance back at the illuminated rooms, but there is no Eurydice to banish to the gloam. Only smiling attendants, expressing hope that you enjoyed “Akhob.” Turrell takes the concept of the Las Vegas application of light—to dazzle tourists with neon— and transforms it into an epic if minimalist meditation, a sensory-depriving isolation tank, a science-fction zero-gravity chamber, where we are forced to confront our nearing extinction and the fnite beauty of our lives. Instead of using light and color to distract for the purpose of entertainment, Turrell employs them to sharpen our interior concentration, to remind us that we are born into radiance and that we will likely expire into it, too. Shutting out the world and succumbing to pure perception is its own reward. What Turrell offers is a gift, really—the realization that private perception is superior to shared external reality. It is also alienating, sure. After all, grasping the world as a personal perceptual fction rather than a shared social feld is the very defnition of an existential crisis. Or psychosis. Turrell extends a powerful, if somewhat problematic, souvenir. But it is one that, should you get an opportunity to experience it, you will keep inside you long after the tourist trinkets of the Strip are trashed and forgotten. And taken together with his public artwork at Crystals station, you have an opportunity to bask in two major works in Las Vegas by a major artist. Both are gratifying, but one is transcendent.
stAge
Such was the tragically surreal night in the otherwise entertainingly surreal world of Cirque du Soleil, which on June 29 offcially unveiled its new Michael Jackson ONE at Mandalay Bay while over at the MGM Grand’s Kà, acrobat Sarah Guyard-Guillot lost her life in a horrifc fall in front of an audience. Authorities will investigate and Cirque has pledged cooperation into the frst onstage fatality in its 29-year-history, an incredible beat-the-odds statistic—even though Guyard-Guillot was not a statistic, but a person, an artist and a 31-year-old mother of two children, ages 8 and 5. (Earlier in the week, on June 26, Cirque experienced a bad omen when an airborne performer in ONE crashed to the stage, fortunately suffering only a mild concussion. Show offcials said he is expected to return.) Reportedly, the French-born Guyard-Guillot (nicknamed Sasoun), a veteran Kà cast member, was suspended from the show’s elevated vertical stage near the end of the production when she slipped out of her safety wire and plunged 50 feet into a pit under the performers. Death so young is a tragedy on the most basic levels. Tragic that she lost her life. Tragic that her family and friends lost someone they cherished. Especially tragic that her children will grow up without her love. Nothing mitigates that. Yet the death of an artist in pursuit of art is a more complex idea. It speaks to the quality of your life, rather than the quantity of your years, and why, depending on your outlook, the former is a better measurement of satisfaction and accomplishment than the latter.
Upon hearing the sad news, I thought of the results of a Gallup survey released last week that said 70 percent of Americans were “disengaged” from their jobs—i.e., at best they are bored by them, at worst they loathe them. Given that this artist spent 22 of her 31 years as an acrobat it’s fair to assume she was among the fortunate 30 percent. Who, after all, would devote their life to an art form so beautiful, so creative, and so dangerous, if not out of genuine passion? At the risk of over-dramatizing and overstatement, I’d suggest that the staggering 70 percent of people who mentally and emotionally disconnect from what they do for 40, 60, even 80 hours a week die a tiny bit each day, while this dedicated artist lived every minute of those same hours, days, months and years. Surely she had problems and sorrows like we all do. Yet when you recalibrate the math along those lines, her life likely reads as longer and fuller than the facts in an obituary can convey. Strange as the reference seems, I fashed back to Patrick Swayze’s daredevil/criminal surfer character in Point Break, who said: “It’s not tragic to die doing what you love.” And then does. Hopefully for those who loved her, and for the millions who loved watching her though they didn’t know her name, it will ease the grief just a little to think that Sarah Guyard-Guillot died doing what she loved. Thank you for the joy of your artistry, Sarah. Rest in peace, dear lady. To make donations for Guyard-Guillot’s children and to share memories, visit ForSasoun.com.
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Photo by David Fox
A show begins. A life ends.
July 4–10, 2013
RemembeRing the joy of ARtistRy in the news of deAth
Movies A&E
Hot Cops
Bullock and McCarthy snap and crackle in The Heat
July 4–10, 2013
By Michael Phillips Tribune Media Services
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McCarthy and Bullock turn the male buddy-cop genre upside down.
With so feW women afforded the opportunity to steer the course of a movie—any movie, onscreen or off—even a formulaic vehicle such as The Heat arrives as a surprise and a relief. At its sharpest, The Heat actually moves and banters like a comedy, with sharply timed and edited dialogue sequences driven by a couple of pros ensuring a purposeful sense of momentum. The story places Sandra Bullock, playing a fastidious FBI agent, as an opposing force to Melissa McCarthy’s brazen Boston cop. Mostly they’re funny because of the material; elsewhere, they’re funny in spite of it. The good stuff’s in the frst 80 minutes. Screenwriter Katie Dippold (MADtv, Parks and Recreation) and director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids and plenty of good television series before that) eventually settle for actionmovie clichés and locales (oh, that old abandoned warehouse full of venal criminal scum) without a fresh take. The violence in the fnal third becomes a drag. One of these days, we’ll get a buddycop lark with the nerve to tone down the sadism; here, it’s a threatened-torture scene, following an emergency tracheotomy performed at a Denny’s. And product placement has gotten pretty strange at the movies lately. Between the pulverized IHOP in Man of Steel and the blood-spattered Denny’s in The Heat, it’s like: How ’bout eating in tonight? But we must appreciate the payoffs where we fnd them. Bullock has been hereabouts before in Miss Congeniality, but this is one of her best recent performances, full of pinpoint details and quirks. McCarthy, already an audience favorite thanks to Bridesmaids and Identity Thief, is learning to modulate her act and fnd variations on the theme of volcanic bully. She was born, in all probability, with the ability to slay an audience and detonate a punch line. But she’s actress enough to learn
the value of variety within a comfortable persona. In The Heat we’re closer to full-on action mode, akin to 48 Hrs. or Lethal Weapon territory than a spoofy affair on the order of the Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg movie The Other Guys. Bullock’s New York-based agent is bucking for a promotion. She travels to Boston to nail a drug lord. (We’re done with the plot now, even if the flm takes a full two hours to deal with it.) McCarthy’s the tetchy local blowhard with a badge, a woman tough enough to put her own brother behind bars. As this odd couple learns to work together, the audience learns to forgive the scenes that don’t quite work (an undercover assignment in a nightclub, where Bullock’s character must fake skankiness) and swing with those that do (typically the offplot riffs, allowing the actresses some breathing room). A couple of examples of scenes that work? At one point, McCarthy bounces a little plastic Tic Tac box off her police chief’s noggin, and the way director Feig flms it—calmly, without undue emphasis—makes the gag even more successful. At another point, Bullock and McCarthy are in the frenemy stage of their working relationship, and McCarthy caps some fb or another with the line: “America thanks you.” Bullock’s reply: “And I it.” Most buddy-cop movies, whether their focus is on explosions and stabbings or, in this case, explosions and stabbings plus some jokes, have zero facility when it comes to verbal fourishes along these lines. The Heat may overstay its welcome (a contractual obligation in Hollywood comedies these days), but I suspect audiences will take to it. There. That takes care of the industry’s semiannual investment in the “other” gender. Now we can get back to The Hangover 4: Whatever. The Heat (R) ★★★✩✩
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