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OFF AND RUNNIN’
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Nov. 17 Joe Williams UNLV Jazz Scholarship Fundraising Concert (PAC.UNLV.edu) Nov. 23 Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation’s Profiles in Courage Gala (NVCCF.org)
PHOTOS BY JOSH METZ
November 14–20, 2013
It’s our favorite changing of the seasons in Las Vegas: the start of basketball. UNLV tipped off its 2013-14 campaign Nov. 8 with a 67-48 win over Portland State before a crowd of 13,148—including those wacky students from the Rebellion (bottom left)—at the Thomas & Mack Center. Junior forwards Roscoe Smith and Khem Birch (below) dominated inside for the Runnin’ Rebels, combining for 29 points and 27 rebounds, while senior transfer and Las Vegas native Kevin Olekaibe added 14 points from the perimeter. UNLV returns to the T&M for games on Nov. 15 and Nov. 19.
BP L O C K A R T Y P A R T Y THEOFFI CI ALAFTERPARTYOFTHE
SUNDAY
7THSTREET& CARSONAVE
NOV.17/ /49PM
FREEEVENT WI TH LI VEDJENTERTAI NMENT,GOODSFROM LOCALRETAI LERS, ANDTHEMI CHELOBULTRABEERGARDEN.
MUSI C DJAURAJI N
FOODTRUCKS
ART& RETAI LVENDORS
JOJO’ SJERKY
SLI DI N’THRU
THEJEWELER’ SDAUGHTER
JAMMYPACK
LOBSTERME
STRONGERTHAN YESTERDAY
HOTMESS
SI N CI TYWI NGS
LASVEGASCYCLERY
DOTERRA
AGI RL’ SGLI TTER
VEGASTHREAD
HI PPOE
DEADGI RLS& ROBOTS
MANBAKE
WRC4CHAI RMASSAGE
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Best Bottle Service There’s bottle service, then there are bottle experiences. For $250,000, big spenders at Hyde get a 30-liter bottle of Armand de Brignac “Ace of Spades” Brut Champagne (40 bottles worth) and the opportunity to control the Bellagio fountains. Just choose the song, open the gold box and press the red button to cue the 4,500 lights, 1,200 nozzles and 460-foothigh streams of dancing water. Can’t afford it? Don’t worry, cheapskate, the individual bottle-presentation packages are still rad, such as “I’m on a Boat” in which a bottle-bearing babe rides a golden sailboat to your table. HydeBellagio.com.
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Not poppin’ bottles tonight? No worries. Surrender Nightclub, Encore’s second expansive indoor/ outdoor club, has 60,000 square feet of space that includes a 48-foot-long bar for easy drink access, lavish furnishings, gorgeous pools, a gaming pavilion and—postsummer—a dome for outdoor partying year round. Throw in a world-class DJ lineup that brings celebrities such as Porter Robinson, Diplo and Steve Angello right on top of the dance foor, and you’ve got a recipe for an epic night out, table or not. SurrenderLasVegas.com.
HYDE BY TONY TRAN; SURRENDER COURTESY WYNN L AS VEGAS
November 14–20, 2013
Best Club When You Don’t Have Bottle Service
November 14–20, 2013
2 0 1 3 N R I G H T C L U B A W A D S
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24 DJ Michael Woods at Hakkasan.
Best VIP Experience In a city that’s very see and be seen, there’s one scene where the most powerful players play. At the base of the super-swank Encore, XS compels the world’s wealthiest and most infuential to spend their money and infuence. If you’ve got that, grab a plush dance-foor table for $7,000-$10,000, up to $20,000 on major holidays. But if you’ve got both in excess, and some friends in high places, you could be one of the über-exclusive few to rub elbows with the DJ while enjoying on-stage bottle service. That’s the owner’s area, complete with celebs, DJs and their entourages. Price range: unlisted and unavailable to the general public. You’re either in, or you’re out. In Encore, XSLasVegas.com.
HAKK ASAN BY AL POWERS
Best After-Hours After more than a yearlong hiatus, Body English returned with a bang. Descend into the dark Hard Rock Hotel basement for a bass-heavy party that routinely bumps until 8 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Sorry, Drai’s,
Best Future Redesign The Playboy Club yielded to the View. Ghostbar was reborn amid a sea of purple and candles. Rain is undergoing a refresh. That leaves just one N9NE Group club left to be overhauled: Moon. Renderings have surfaced online that could point to the droptop megaclub getting a fresh coat of paint, moving it away from its vaguely scif pinnings into a sophisticated, dark-hued, more adult space. However, with the recent shakeups at the Palms, a timetable is anyone’s guess. Palms.com/ Nightlife/Moon.
Best Thing in a Small Package If Goldilocks tested nightclubs like she once tested porridge, she’d assuredly select The Bank for her fairy-tale evening. The compact club in Bellagio marries opulence and intimacy within its 8,000 square feet. The walls hug you within a warm embrace, and the inverted pyramid of booths boosts your odds of rubbing elbows with VIP partygoers and celebrities. It may be small when compared with the megaclubs, but in this case, less really is more. TheBankLasVegas.com.
Hottest Makeover Perched on the 55th foor of the Palms, GBDC carved out a successful niche for Ghostbar as the “it” costumed pool-less, coldweather dayclub. So when
the Palms announced a $50 million renovation that would include a facelift to the already cool Ghostbar, anticipation was high. The top-to-bottom makeover turned the venue into a black, white and fuchsia adult funhouse complete with oversize chandeliers, leather banquettes, wooden accents and 14-foot-tall windows that accentuate the panoramic Las Vegas views. Apart from the visuals, Ghostbar introduced a rosé Champagne cocktail menu and seasonal hookah offerings. Palms.com.
Best Buyout Are you ready for the holiday party of the century? No, no you’re not. And a deli platter won’t cut it this year, Chief. Las Vegas is bouncing back in a big way and so is your corporate expense account. So you’d be a hero to your cubi mates if you were to, say, buy out 1 Oak for the night. And you actually can. Book like a boss this season and instantly become the master of this sexy nightclub’s two distinct rooms—each with their own DJ booths and bars—state-of-theart lighting and sound system by Avalon Sound and performance stage. You can secure the entire place for as few as 100 VIPs (very important personnel) or appreciate as many as 1,581. Sure beats the hell out of the break room! 1OakLasVegas.com.
Best Place to Pick Up a Tourist If you’re hoping to hook an out-of-towner, look no further than LAX. Bouncers here have been checking out-of-state IDs since it opened in 2007. And while most locals have since moved on to newer haunts, the McCarranadjacent gem at Luxor still draws droves of tourists. (See Yelp.) Plus, for the visitors stuck without a club at the nearby Excalibur, this weekend destination is just a shuttle ride away. AngelMG.com.
November 14–20, 2013
In April, Hakkasan opened as one of the largest and fnest additions to Las Vegas’ collection of clubs. The $100 million, 80,000-square-foot multiroom labyrinth—including a top-notch restaurant— occupies fve stories on the most visible corner of the MGM Grand. The brand’s global ambitions include creating boutique hotels beyond its alreadycelebrated nightclubs and Michelin-starred restaurants. For the moment, Hakkasan earns this award for being the Strip’s top supper club, and for having one of the most celebrated DJ lineups anywhere, with A-listers that include Steve Aoki, Calvin Harris and Tiësto. HakkasanLV.com.
we can’t wait to see you in full effect soon enough, but this year, Body English has been the spot to keep the party pulsating through the night. With diverse music programming that bridges indie, electro, dubstep and rock, the nightclub has reasserted itself as a go-to venue for both up-and-comers and established DJs. HardRockHotel.com.
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Best New Club
2 0 1 3 N R I G H T C L U B A W A D S
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While there are great hosts all over Las Vegas, top to bottom it doesn’t get better than the elite crew at Marquee in the Cosmopolitan. We’re looking at you, Justen Crews, Larson Legris, Derrick Runtas (pictured from left to right) and the entire host team. From their “offce” at the velvet ropes, they reliably answer texts, happily accommodate large groups, escort you through the entrance, write up your table slip and have you on your way to the party in relatively short order. Moreover, the stylish and sociable team flls Marquee nightly with beautiful people and big spenders, helping make it one of the top nightclubs anywhere. MarqueeLasVegas.com.
MARQUEE HOSTS BY ANTHONY MAIR
November 14–20, 2013
Best VIP Host Team
Most Innovative Nightclub The Light Group, the nightclub brand that helped establish bottle service as the VIP standard 12 years ago at Bellagio, changed the game again this year at Mandalay Bay. Now that bottle service is ubiquitous, Light is again taking the nightclub experience to new heights—literally. By collaborating with Cirque du Soleil, Light fies its top DJs from the mezzanine over the dance foor into the DJ booth. There are also acrobats zooming overhead throughout the night to create a theatrical atmosphere. The “acrowall,” an acrobatfriendly installation, visually adapts as performers glide around. TheLightVegas.com.
November 14–20, 2013
Before Tao, XS, Marquee, Hakkasan and (the new) Light, Pure Nightclub ruled the Strip from the moment of its New Year’s Eve 2004 opening. Celebrities including Shaquille O’Neal and Celine Dion invested in the 40,000 square feet at Caesars that includes three rooms and a grand rooftop terrace. Pure was the frst to pack 2,500 partygoers into one epic venue, and was a leader in the celebrity appearance trend that welcomed the likes of Pharrell (pictured), Justin Timberlake, Rihanna and Britney Spears. The result: countless awards, including Las Vegas Mega-Club of the Year by Nightclub & Bar Magazine and No. 1 Club in the Country by E! Entertainment. AngelMG.com.
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LIGHT BY AL POWERS; PHARRELL AT PURE BY DENISE TRUSCELLO
Lifetime Achievement Award
NIGHTLIFE
stages. Following up on YouTube, reading magazines and articles, being on the Web and constantly searching. Another thing that’s important is feedback from other people. I’ll be on Facebook and someone will link a new track and I’ll go, “Wow, I’ve never heard of this guy.” What’s the key to maintaining strong artist relationships? First, I never try to cross the line when it comes to management. There are artists, managers and agents for a reason. I try to never get involved on the business side of things with the actual artist, and a lot of people nowadays do cross that line. Second, I treat every artist the same and they respect that. Third, I’ve had some of my best friends sign deals with other companies. It’s important to respect peoples’ judgment on where they choose to go—people can always end up working together again.
Nightlife tastemaker Zee Zandi refects on a career spent booking the world’s top DJs for Las Vegas’ most prominent clubs By Sam Glaser
November 14–20, 2013
ZARNAZ ZANDI, better known as “Zee,” is one of the Strip’s pre-eminent house music infuencers. Almost 20 years ago, she moved from Seattle to attend UNLV and open a coffee bar near the Metz Nightclub (later the Roxbury and Utopia) that became a popular DJ-caffeinating grounds. That was the start of a long relationship with electronic music that’s catapulted Zee to the top of Las Vegas’ talent-booking food chain, and beyond, as vice president of brand development and entertainment for ATM Artists.
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What served as your entrée to DJ culture? The DJs always used to come get coffee. We would go to Utopia, but I didn’t know what it was about—I was a very innocent, sheltered young girl. I just fell in love with the music. My mom had gone to Europe and brought me back a Robert Miles CD; it was the most amazing thing I’d ever heard. I started working at Utopia as a cocktail waitress, and I always got in trouble with my manager, Pauly Freeman [now director of operations for Surrender, Encore Beach Club and Andrea’s], for dancing instead of
actually serving drinks. I was the waitress in the area for the DJs at that point, before becoming a bartender and VIP host. I became really good friends with the DJs and I’ve kept a lot of my friendships from back then. When did you start booking those DJs? [Downtown Cocktail Room and The Beat owner] Michael Cornthwaite at Risqué hired me as the marketing manager, and that was the frst time I ever booked DJs on my own: DJ Colette, Richard Humpty Vission, Christopher Lawrence. Around 2004, Light
Group was opening Jet and I got an offer to run the house room. It got so good, Andy Massy gave me opportunities to book shows in the main room. We did this Halloween show once with Roger Sanchez, John Digweed, Benny Benassi and Armand van Helden. I did a show with Tiësto, Sharam … like the best artists in the world. What booking makes you most proud in retrospect? My biggest highlight booking was Swedish House Mafia. I was the first person to play them in Vegas. I put my job on the line, because
What are the indicators that somebody’s about to blow up? No. 1 is production, putting music out. No. 2, I think, is just the connection, being able to read and vibe with a crowd. If it’s a small house room in Jet, or if it’s a big room like The Joint, or a festival site, being able to creatively adjust to the crowd. Where do you discover and scout the next big producer? I’m always on Beatport and going to festivals, not necessarily going to the main stage, but going to some of the side
What are the biggest trends you’re seeing in house music? All I see is more and more collaborations happening. At frst it was just Kanye West and Daft Punk on a track. Rihanna and Calvin—look at what a mega hit that became, it changed Calvin’s entire career. It’s great music on the radio. I see more and more and more collaborations. And it’s not just the DJ anymore; the production level is now a key factor with the artist, the visuals. They’re performers, there’s a show that’s going on around them.
What other DJs owe their Las Vegas household-name status to Zandi? Find out at VegasSeven.com/Zee-Zandi.
PHOTO BY JULIAN MURRAY
Long Live the Queen
it was expensive. There was one show at Wet Republic and one show Halloween at the Hard Rock at The Joint. The show at The Joint was the best show I’ve ever done: the introduction, to the build out, to the marketing, to the billboards. It was really the start of that whole boom, and that was my baby.
Apart from crossing the artist/management line, what’s the biggest challenge facing talent buyers today? The biggest challenge right now is fnancial. Some are not making the best decisions because they have a big check; talent buyers in this market are overpaying. There are a lot of venues out here that can give artists an amazing show or production who are struggling to pick up artists.
VEGAS SEVEN
See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com
November 14–20, 2013
PHOTOS BY TEDDY FUJIMOTO
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NIGHTLIFE
DESERT HOPS INTERNATIONAL BEER EXPERIENCE
November 14–20, 2013
Boulevard Pool at the Cosmopolitan
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NIGHTLIFE
PARTIES
XS
Encore [ UPCOMING ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com
PHOTOS BY DANNY MAHONEY
November 14–20, 2013
Nov. 15 Wolfgang Gartner spins Nov. 16 Porter Robinson spins Nov. 17 Etc! Etc! Spins
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PARTIES
GHOSTBAR The Palms
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com
PHOTOS BY TOBY ACUNA
November 14–20, 2013
Nov. 15 DJ Exodus and Lisa Pittman spin Nov. 16 GBDC Mad Hatter Tea Party Nov. 20 For the Ladies with BollyDoll gifting suite
NIGHTLIFE
PARTIES
THE BANK Bellagio
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See more photos from this gallery at SPYONVegas.com
PHOTOS BY TONY TRAN
November 14–20, 2013
Nov. 15 DJ Ikon spins Nov. 17 Twelve Reasons to Visit Las Vegas calendarrelease party Dec. 6 Mrs. Carter Show Tour after-party
DINING DINING
Hakkasan’s fruit plate, Mongolian-style beef tenderloin and steamed dim sum platter.
EVERY NOOK & CRANNY Does hearing “Hakkasan” make you think world-renowned club or Michelin-caliber food? We’re not making you choose, but Hakkasan’s distinctive mod-Cantonese dining and craft cocktailing are served in some surprising atmospheres amid five floors of Asian splendor. Since the space behind those mammoth DJ-face signs on Las Vegas Boulevard can intimidate the uninitiated, here’s where to eat, sip and sit at Las Vegas’ latest, most all-inclusive dining and nightlife experience. DATE NIGHT OR LADIES NIGHT The first-floor dining room is sectioned off by floor-to-ceiling latticed woodwork that makes you feel like you’re eating in an elegant chinoiserie birdcage. It’s really just one big space, but each table feels a lot more secluded thanks to this intricate web of woodwork. FOR A HIP SIP The bar on the first level (behind the dining room) is long and narrow, and reminiscent of a secret back room at a swank hotel. Great for an after-work or a pre- or post-dinner drink with pals, but be the master of your own destiny and don’t wait to be invited out.
At Hakkasan, the action starts at frst bite
November 14–20, 2013
By Grace Bascos
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➧ IN ASIAN CULTURE, the feng shui of a space has everything to do with creating a positive energy fow, from the way a building is situated to the way furniture is arranged in a room. And the same goes for Asian cuisine, which Hakkasan (in MGM Grand, 891-3838, HakkasanLV.com) does immensely well under executive chef Ho Chee Boon. The upscale Chinese fare is elevated not only by high-end ingredients and innovative favors, but the presentation is also meticulously taken into consideration. You may think you know Mongolian beef, but this is a far cry from your neighborhood Chinese takeout joint. Large slices of beef tenderloin marinate in a chili garlic sauce, imparting a little heat and punch to the dish. After the beef is cooked, coated with savory, peppery jus, the pieces are stacked upon one another with smoky, sliced green poblano peppers. Forget the pile of fried noodles that usually serve as the base for Mongolian beef—Hakkasan elegantly presents its stacked creation on a yel-
low edible basket made of rice four, potato starch and custard powder to resemble the cross section of a lotus root. You still get the spicy, meaty favors and the crunchy texture you love from the noodles. Another important element of Asian culture is numerology. Eight is the luckiest number out there, and in Las Vegas, we need all the luck we can get. That’s why there are eight dumplings in Hakkasan’s dim sum platter: two carefully crafted pieces each of har gow, scallop shumai, perch dumpling and black pepper duck. A well-trained dim sum chef, who understands the proper balance of ingredients that goes into a dumpling wrapper, painstakingly assembles each. But it’s not only the food that is well structured and balanced. Hakkasan’s mixology team created two new cocktails for fall, playing with the favors of the season. Blood and Sand is a classic drink from the 1920s, which Hakkasan turns on its head. Typically what makes a Blood and Sand is red-hued blood orange juice
and Scotch. Instead, this Asian-infuenced version is made with umeshu plum liqueur and Dalmore 12-year single malt Scotch. The orange fnally comes in with orange wood smoke and dehydrated blood orange slices, which adds brightness, but enhances the smokiness of the Scotch. After dinner, if you’re looking for something exotic and a little sweet, the Cantonese Flip is what should touch your lips. Rhum Clément VSOP carries typical fall notes of caramel and dried fruit, while Dancing Pines chai liqueur gives off fve spice and black tea notes. It gets more autumnal with pumpkin juice, while Rhumchata and egg whites add creamy body to the drink. If fall could be embodied in a glass, this would be it. Hakkasan is a stunning space, no question about that. But there is method to the madness, even in the cuisine. Every ingredient has its place and its purpose, built to not only be architecturally and visually pleasing, but to create harmony on the palate as well.
FOR THE VIP TREATMENT The club’s most exclusive real estate, Level 5 has four skyboxes overlooking the dance platform and its massive LED screens. Here, guests get bottle service, a model cocktail server, TVs and private bathroom access (worth its weight in gold). Reserve these as you would a VIP table for the ultimate in private luxury. – Jen Chase
PHOTOS BY ANTHONY MAIR
An Affair to Remember
WHEN MONEY’S NO OBJECT The second-level private dining room mimics Hakkasan’s first-floor decor with its “Hakkasan blue” walls and latticework leading to the entrance. The dim space seats up to 20 at a long, well-dressed table while a posh couch and a few comfy chairs round out the all-inone lounge-and-dine experience. For drinking and clubbing minus the craze, the Ling Ling Club and Ling Ling Lounge on Level 3 are all about drink and vibe. The 10,000-square-foot club has rich turquoise bottle-serving booths, a main dance floor, two fly dancers and a bar at each end. For something a little sexier, the crimson-hued Lounge holds 120, has its own DJ booth and offers tasty mixology similar to the dining room bar and restaurant.
Naked Vegas’ Kelly “Red” Belmonte creates a zombie groom, but the real magic happens when local Jay Farber wins second place on live TV.
“Holy shit! Something fun is happening here!” B-roll shots of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange? “Holy shit! This is the modern legacy of a town’s historical, vaguely depressing locus of an extraordinary amount of cow-murder.” But it’s a lazy thing to lean on at this point. Especially when Pawn Stars got there years ago. That seems to be as far as many of them are willing to go, and almost none of it has anything to do with the city in and of itself. I know it’s unfair to compare a sports event (OK, “sports” event) to reality TV, but when the World Series of Poker’s Final Table was broadcast live-ish (on a 15-minute delay) November 4-5, it was everything that was good and right about Vegas-based television that reality has been mostly trying and failing to capture. In a nearly 13-hour stretch over two nights, Las Vegas local Jay Farber fought his way to a $5.17 million
If Vegas Is so crItIcal to the realIty phenomenon, then why are so many of the shows kInd of borIng? second-place prize in the blue-drenched Penn & Teller Theater while a frothing cheering section of industry workers, poker pros and
resolute nightlife fixtures egged him on—complete with one guy in a panda costume charging the rail and earning himself an escort
through the Rio’s finer hallways and slammingest-shut doors the resort had to offer. The spectacle was the gambling culture and the party culture in one furious collision, Vegas’ fnest example of small-town syndrome in a big city, with high dollars fying around waiting to be redeposited in the nightclub coffers. That’s the reality show we could be getting on a regular basis. Airbrushed nudity is a fine start, but it could be so much more. Like maybe distracting Champagneguzzling high-rollers with naked, airbrushed dealers, for one.
farber photo by Joe GIroN/WSop
VEGAS SEVEN
November 14–20, 2013
A&E
chest is to inspect some kind of artistic handiwork. I suppose that when you call your show Naked Vegas, it’s only because Spray Painted Boobs Vegas was too long for a Twitter handle. And it’s pretty clear early on that the bait on the hook is going to be as much near-nudity as deep cable can get away with. Which is fne and all, and it will possibly get you to stop fipping through the dial on your way to MTV’s My Super Sweet 16 and Pregnant or Andrew Zimmern eating live scorpions, or whatever it is you watch, you weirdo. But that probably isn’t enough of a hook to keep you around through another workplace-related reality show. Owner and show centerpiece Kelly “Red” Belmonte seems like she’s muddling through some dialogue assistance on the pilot. (She at one point says with obligatory realityshow bravado, “When Naked I was a kid and you Vegas told me to color in the lines, I said, ‘What on Syfy at lines?’”) 10 p.m. There doesn’t seem Tuesdays, to be enough natural Syfy.com/ NakedVespark there to carry gas. a show, and her supporting cast of artists (plus business manager Drew Marvick) don’t separate themselves as distinct enough to deliver the necessary reality-show quirkiness that drives an enterprise like this. I get that it takes time to learn to live with the cameras, but you can’t get a whole show out of people trying to do their work while simultaneously not being comfortable with each other. Unless that show is local news, in which case it’s an institution. The ongoing dialogue between Las Vegas and reality television shows no sign of slowing. If anything, Cake Boss Buddy Valastro’s new restaurant at Palazzo shows the phenomenon metastasizing into uncharted territory. If Vegas is so critical to the reality phenomenon, then why are so many of the shows kind of boring? Part of it has to do with the nature of reality TV—cheap 70 to produce, easy to get off the ground—and part of it has to do with the city’s function as visual shorthand for excitement. B-roll shots of the Bellagio fountains?
Music
Black Rose Phantoms play Beauty Bar on Nov. 15.
November 14–20, 2013
Bunkhouse helD uP, GuiTar cenTer unionizes anD The coMinG of Qui
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The DownTown ProjecT’s Bunkhouse Saloon renovation hit a snag. If you remember, the live-music venue closed on July 1 for remodeling. The idea was to reopen the bar 60 days later. Well, it’s been more than 120 days, and still no beautifed Bunkhouse—and no kickass underground punk and metal shows for me to enjoy in the urban core. According to a Downtown Project rep, once renovations got under way, it became increasingly obvious that the old building needed a lot more work, mainly a new roof. The reopening date has been pushed to February. Who knew the musical instrument-hawking folks in Las Vegas were so collective-minded? The sales staff at Guitar Center in Town Square voted to unionize last month, joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). This particular Vegas store follows the lead set by a Manhattan and a Chicago Guitar Center shop, which voted in favor of union representation by RWDSU earlier this year. Much to my amusement, Guitar Center is owned by Bain Capital, the venture capital firm founded by 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the least rock ’n’ roll person on the planet. So I’m buying myself a guitar for Christmas at Town Square Guitar Center to show solidarity. Rock on, comrades! Now for live music you need to experience this week: First, Long Beach-born headbanging-psychobilly trio the Black Rose Phantoms
haunt Beauty Bar at 10 p.m. November 15. These dark-souled troubadours deal in grim, metal-edged rockabilly tunes such as “Evil Never Dies” and “The Witching Hour.” Hearing the insanely syncopated and rapid-fre clacking of singer-bassist St. Ozzy Sixx slapping his standup four-string is completely awesome. I can’t wait to see it happen live. Wait, Qui is coming? Christmas is arriving early for me! The avantpunk duo from L.A. released its third album—Life, Water, Living—earlier this year on Warner Bros. punk imprint Org Music. Produced by the Melvins’ Dale Crover, the album features Jesus Lizard lead-shrieker David Yow. Sadly, Yow won’t be appearing, but drummer Paul Christensen and guitarist Matt Cronk will provide plenty of vocal terror at 10 p.m. November 16 at Double Down Saloon. Crushing as Qui is, they run the risk of being upstaged by two of Vegas’ most intensely experimental live acts—the Bitters and the Fat Dukes of Fuck. I fully expect my eardrums to be singed at this show. Finally, California roots-reggae jam band Groundation digs into LVCS at 10 p.m. November 21. The nine-piece, classically trained ensemble continues to tour in support of 2012’s Building an Ark, which is heavy on jazz, funk and R&B infuences. If you love doing the hippierasta dance in the presence of a killer band, here’s your chance. Your Vegas band releasing a CD soon? Email Jarret_Keene@Yahoo.com.
Gastro Fare. Nurtured Ales. Jukebox Gold.
A&E
movies
One tOugh texan Matthew McConaughey defly plays a renegade AIDS patient in Dallas Buyers Club By Michael Phillips Tribune Media Services
in Dallas Buyers CluB, we meet Matthew McConaughey’s Ron Woodroof mid-coitus. He’s making love with two women in a rodeo holding pen, seconds before he jumps onto a wild bull for thrills and the promise of a few bucks. The year is 1985, the same year Rock Hudson died of AIDSrelated causes. By contrast Woodroof, a drug-using heterosexual, is just another good ol’ boy with a dangerous edge and zero sense of personal frailty, as quick with a casual homophobic slur as with a come-on to the ladies. How Woodroof became his own brand of AIDS activist is the stuff of Dallas Buyers Club, which does a few things wrong but a lot right, starting right at the top with McConaughey. For a long time Texas native McConaughey got by on looks, charm and some talent, which is one more asset than a lot of movie stars bring to the party. Then, year by year and with a quiet vengeance in the last four or fve years, McCo-
naughey began seeing the light at the end of his conventionalleading-man tunnel and grew exponentially more interesting as an actor. Today he’s one of the most reliably vital of screen performers, and he’s riveting as Woodroof, who scrambled to stay alive after being given a one-month death sentence by his doctors. What he did with his seven extra years was this: Woodroof, an electrician by trade, created an underground pharmaceuticals way station for his fellow HIV and AIDS survivors. He charged a monthly membership fee to thousands, offering a variety of non-FDA-approved medicines. Other so-called buyers clubs sprang up in the U.S., but the Dallas club was considered to be the nerviest, since Woodroof smuggled a lot of the drugs and dietary supplements across the Mexican/American border, or from overseas. “A foul-mouthed outlaw who is as wiry as an ocotillo,” journalist Bill Minutaglio described him in the 1992 magazine article
A homophobic cowboy (McConaughey) finds an unlikely partner in the transgendered Rayon (Leto).
that inspired the movie. McConaughey lost 50 pounds to play Woodroof at his sickliest, and his co-star Jared Leto lost 30 for the role of the transgender character Rayon, who becomes Woodroof’s unlikely business associate and the movie’s secret weapon. Leto is heartbreaking and often wickedly funny, although the part is more like a shipment of standard-issue pathos than a fesh-and-blood creation. Jennifer Garner works well and earnestly as Dr. Saks, the immunologist representing the face of the slow-responding medical establishment in the frst half of the flm, and a renegade heroine in the second.
Woodroof suspects that steady doses of the experimental drug AZT are doing him more harm than good, and at a time when a sluggish (and arguably hostile) Reagan administration did little to help anybody in Woodroof’s condition, he took the bull by the horns and rode it longer than anyone predicted. Dallas Buyers Club carries a full and honest load of inspiration in its story. Directed by JeanMarc Vallée, the script by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack follows the familiar Issue Biopic contours. Vallée’s decision to shoot Dallas Buyers Club with faux-documentary hand-held cameras (in generic parts of
November 14–20, 2013
short reviews
VEGAS SEVEN
82
How I Live Now (R) ★★✩✩✩
Imagine a Judy Blume rewrite of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and you’ll end up somewhere in the ashen yet uplifting vicinity of How I Live Now. Taken from the 2004 young-adult novel by Meg Rosoff, this is a dystopian vision of a near future in the English countryside, with World War III raging just off screen. It’s no time or place for an American teenager (Saoirse Ronan) to spend a summer vacation. Young-adult fiction can’t get enough of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenarios, but some are pretty stubborn about being filmed—like this one.
About Time (R) ★★★✩✩
Already a hit in its native England, writer-director Richard Curtis’ About Time ends up working despite its fantasy element, not because of it. On his 21st birthday, Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) learns from his eccentric father (Bill Nighy) the family secret: The men in this clan are able to time-travel into their pasts, reliving and then restaging key embarrassing moments. It’s Groundhog Day crossed with Love Actually, the latter being a big Curtis hit. The twin poles of Dream Womanhood are represented by Tim’s longtime crush (Margot Robbie) and his equally gorgeous destiny (Rachel McAdams).
Ender’s Game (PG-13) ★★★✩✩
In step with its sensitive, tactically brilliant 12-year-old hero, Ender’s Game is a tweener, neither triumph nor disaster. Its central action scenes unfold in a vast zero-gravity battlesimulation arena, on a space station readying for an alien attack. The preteens and young teenagers being trained to save the world try to impress the authority figures played by Harrison Ford, Viola Davis and Sir Ben Kingsley. Asa Butterfield of Hugo is Ender Wiggin, the bullied boy who becomes Earth’s ultimate military leader. Hailee Steinfeld is Petra, his best friend and training mentor.
New Orleans instead of on location in Dallas) renders the result not ineffective, but stylistically routine. A lot of it goes as you’d expect. But McConaughey is frst-rate throughout, on top of every dramatic and blackly comic situation, even when the character isn’t on top of anything. He and Leto may well fnd themselves with Oscar nominations come the new year. The flm is pretty good; they are very good. You needn’t have attended a lot of AIDS-related funerals in the late ’80s to fnd the movie affecting. Dallas Buyers Club (R) ★★★✩✩
[ by tribune media services ]
Last Vegas (PG-13) ★★★✩✩
A genial Hangover for the AARP set, Last Vegas is roughly what you’d expect, but a little better. The four stars are Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline. The setup: Lifelong Flatbush-born pals reunite for the bachelor party of the Douglas character, a Malibu slicko marrying a much younger woman. Old grudges reignite; new high jinks ensue; a tax attorney turned Vegas lounge singer (Mary Steenburgen) excites the interest of the Douglas character, as well as the grieving widower portrayed by De Niro.
Marketplace
When you look at the Las Vegas nightclub scene in its current state, what makes you cringe? I don’t want to say that it makes me cringe, but I just think that they’ve gotten too big. The intimacy is gone. They’re just gigantic; they’re factories. To me, the smaller it is, the higher quality human being you can have in there, the sexier crowd you can attract. That’s hard to do when you’re doing 7,000 people a night. That’s an incredible business—they’re making an incredible amount of money—but from a quality standpoint, you’ve got to give something up with the more volume that you do.
Michael Morton
November 14–20, 2013
The former nightclub impresario and current restaurateur on why bigger isn’t always better, the power of XS and the artistic legitimacy of the nightclub DJ
VEGAS SEVEN
94
By Matt Jacob
Before opening Drink here in 1995, you operated several bars/nightclubs in the Chicago area. When did you know building a nightclub in Vegas would be a smart investment? Typically, if you own a nightclub—or any business—you want to be in a place that has proven to support many other
clubs. We did that in Chicago … where we knew there was a real solid market. What made it risky to open a big, modern nightclub here was there were none. So when we opened Drink Las Vegas, we knew it was going to be one way or the other: It was going to be a big success or it wasn’t. We thought it was highly likely to
succeed, but whenever something hasn’t been done before at that level, there’s inherent risk involved. Big rewards come with big risk. As you unlocked the doors to Drink on opening night, did you know you’d hit the jackpot or were you nervous?
How will we know we’ve reached the point of nightclub oversaturation—or have we already? The market is oversaturated today, there’s no doubt about it. If you think about Light and Hakkasan and all the other [big clubs] that have come on in the last three or four years … there are a lot of places that are open, but they’re not doing much business. Doesn’t mean they’re going to close, but certainly from a viability standpoint—or from a proftability standpoint—the market is oversaturated. After leaving the Palms, you jumped into the restaurant business with the Morton Group, which owns La Cave at the Wynn, La Comida in the Fremont East district and Crush: eat,
drink, love, which opens next month at MGM Grand. So what’s more stressful: operating a restaurant or a nightclub? Ooh. They’re different types of stresses. Even though I think restaurants are much harder to run—I know they are, because there are so many more moving parts—a nightclub is more stressful. Moving that many bodies in that many spaces when it’s that loud and there’s that much alcohol involved, it presents a whole different host of problems. Although from a technical standpoint, it’s much more diffcult to try to create something on a plate. So, stress: nightclub; diffculty: restaurants. If you had the opportunity and desire to purchase any nightclub on the Strip tomorrow, which would it be? Wow. That’s a great question. [Pause.] You’d have to say XS, because of its power. But I’d have to give a call out to Tryst, a great-looking room with a great feel. But to be at XS at the Wynn, that’s the top of the mountain. True or false: Nightclub DJs have the greatest scam of the 21st century? False. These are modern rock stars. My son listens to electronic music. This is not a fad; it’s not going away. It’s all the more power to these guys that they don’t have all the massive overhead of loading up trucks and going on the road like big bands do. Until you’re in a room with a Tiësto—we had Tiësto up in Ghostbar—to watch what these guys do … it’s like any professional [athlete] or anybody at the top of their artistic game: They rose to that level because they’re better than everybody else. But these are some super, super talented artists. So those of us who think it’s nothing more than pushing a button are dead wrong? Oh, yes. Sorry to say, but yes. Highly wrong.
Michael Morton reminisces about Rain, talks nightclub copycats and assess the future of Fremont East at VegasSeven.com/MichaelMorton.
PHOTO BY ANTHONY MAIR
7 QUESTIONS
Oh, no—that night was explosive. I mean literally, explosive. It’s funny because my brother, Peter, who had opened the Hard Rock [Hotel] in March, was there with his friends from L.A., and he said, “Michael, come here.” He took me outside, and the music was bouncing off the Marie Antoinette building across the street, because we didn’t have a roof in the outdoor area. But people went crazy. It was really a special night. We knew that night we had something.