It’s Monday night on the Strip and traffic has come to a standstill. This shape-shifting desert city is in the midst of a reinvention that involves big-league sports, Formula 1 and Sphere, a massive LED theater whose asteroid-size cherry on top is set to launch in 2023.
It’s all a little overwhelming. Bos Vegas can wear you out.
It’s a city of signs
Aside from the iconic Las Vegas sign, there are many other signs and symbols that are part of the city’s identity. These signs are an important part of the local culture, and it’s not surprising that there is a museum dedicated to them. This museum is called the Neon Boneyard, and it has a collection of old casino, bar, club, and entertainment business signs. Vegas locals consider these signs to be a source of pride, and they even use them in their logos.
It’s a city of dreams
When message overrides art in storytelling, a strange breed of expensive public service announcements masquerading as moviemaking emerges. That’s the case with Vegas, City of Dreams, a straight-to-DVD quasi-religious erotic thriller with incongruous supernatural undertones. It stars contemporary Christian singer Brenda Epperson, as well as the aforementioned John Taylor as Byron Lord, and I’m duty-bound to Duranalyze the hell out of it. For more details please visit bosvegas
The film’s biggest problem comes in the form of the central character, non-verbal 15-year-old Jesus (Ari Lopez). Captured in Mexico on the pretext of attending a soccer camp, he instead is tortured by cartel-backed traffickers who use his body as a living canvas for their heinous exploits.
Lopez benefits from his lack of lines, embodying the extreme distress that anyone would feel in this sort of harrowing circumstance. And he certainly makes an impact at the end, out of costume and denouncing politicians who don’t do enough to stop these dehumanizing practices.