Ones to watch: Perris Aquino | Brittany McKay | Sarah OConnell | Chris Ramirez | Javier SanchezThis accidental cinephile is building a homegrown film industry, one frame at a timeThe Motel Life is set in Northern Nevada. Based on the novel by Willy Vlautin, it’s a film about two orphan brothers fleeing Reno after a tragic hit-and-run accident.

As First Friday achieved rumbling liftoff in 2002, the art, music and spontaneous street scene beguiled me, but something else bemused. It was who showed up.

A conversation with acerbic comedian Doug Stanhope as he returns to where he began Straight from the American id, it’s Doug Stanhope — trampler of pieties, smasher of taboos, peddler of dangerous ideas (such as, it’s okay to stop caring about 9/11). Also, crucially: a comedian.

The 2014 Fall Culture Guide: Visual Art | Music | Lit and ideas | Family food and festivals | Theater and danceSo, how's your schedule look next week? And the week after that? And the week after that? Whether you're an art-lover, a dance aficionado, a foodie or a live music fan, our culture guide's got the goods for one very busy fall. And we mean busy in a good way - this year's calendar is brimming with sights, sounds and tastes to engage, inspire and entertain you.

The 2014 Fall Culture Guide: Visual Art | Music | Lit and ideas | Family food and festivals | Theater and danceSo, how's your schedule look next week? And the week after that? And the week after that? Whether you're an art-lover, a dance aficionado, a foodie or a live music fan, our culture guide's got the goods for one very busy fall. And we mean busy in a good way - this year's calendar is brimming with sights, sounds and tastes to engage, inspire and entertain you.

Trendsetters: Ashley Grondel and Kristen Laidlaw, Publishers of The Allure Avenue style and fashion blog Your personal style?Kristen: A little bit of everything, I would say.Ashley: A blend between classic and trendy.

Omens, writers and stars — one man's behind-the-scenes memories of Siegfried and Roy’s animated Father of the Pride Omens don’t beg for attention in Las Vegas. Everyone’s on the lookout for them.

An excerpt from this month's new Vegas-set novel, Gangsterland The setup: It’s 1998 and Sal Cupertine, hitman for the Chicago mob, has been dispatched to Las Vegas after a botched job ends with three FBI agents dead. Six months of surgeries and rabbinical studies have turned him into another person altogether: Rabbi David Cohen, youth rabbi at a thriving Summerlin temple run by Rabbi Cy Kales, father-in-law of local gangster Bennie Savone.

A terrific new bio of Benny Binion tells the whole, unvarnished storySomehow, Doug Swanson, in his new biography of Benny Binion, successfully conveys two seemingly discordant messages: (1) that Binion was a gangster as cold-blooded as a Mafia hitman; and (2) that he was one of the nicest fellas who ever walked the planet.In other words, Blood Aces: The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, the Texas Gangster Who Invented Vegas Poker (Viking, 310 pages) aims to tell the whole story of Benny Binion, because, indeed, he was both an organized crime kingpin and a community treasure.

Grab your clipboards, kids, for the zany,complex game of citizen law-making! You’ll probably lose, but boy, will you have fun!So, you want to pass an initiative?If you’ve reached this point, you’re frustrated. You’ve spotted a problem, and you think you’ve got a solution.