Once Were Warriors, a contemporary drama about a Maori family living in an urban New Zealand slum, is the feature debut of director Lee Tamahori. To describe the film with the usual adjectives–“raw,” “powerful,” “hard-hitting”–would be accurate, and then some. The theme of the film is domestic violence, and Tamahori…
Food for Thought: It sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? Restaurant News, an industry trade paper, reports that a New York hunger-relief agency has opened up the city’s first, and only, full-service restaurant that accepts food stamps. One City Cafe, a nonprofit venture operated by the Food and Hunger…
Though it was more than 20 years ago, I’ll never forget my first glimpse of Playboy Mansion West. The lush, green lawns, the exotic birds and animals wandering around, the waterfall cascading into the swimming pool, the stately House That Hef Built. All of which were nothing compared to the…
The sensational story of Medea has fascinated audiences throughout time. Corneille wrote a version in 1635, and Cherubini turned it into an opera in 1797. Broadway has produced this play more often (and more successfully) than any other classic. Dame Judith Anderson won a Tony Award as Best Actress in…
If Marcel Duchamp, Pieter Brueghel and Franz Kafka had somehow been commissioned to build a playroom for disenchanted philosophers, it may have looked a lot like deCompression Satellite Gallery does right now. The Arizona Center gallery is presenting the work of Bay Area sculptor Bella Feldman in an exhibition titled…
Employees fired in the wake of an undercover sting at Phoenix Newspapers Inc. say they have learned that honesty is not the best policy. Although they say they were assured they would not be fired if they were forthcoming about drug or alcohol use, some employees who confessed were terminated…
Woman’s in Tuition “Would you deny this beautiful, bright-eyed child a future education?” That’s the question 200 acquaintances of Valley Art Theatre owner Krista Griffin have been wrestling with recently. Each of them received a flier requesting a $25 donation to put the Tempe moviehouse magnate through another semester of…
For 16 months, Alex Gonzalez of Central Pawn Brokers has been pummeling City Hall with claims of wrongful prosecution, and now he figures he is in a position to say: I told you so. On April 3, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office dropped charges of theft and trafficking in stolen…
Drunkenly scrutinizing the advertising come-on plastered across the front of the side-show attraction, the wino bellows to all within earshot. “Isha fake!” he says, unable to believe that the 40-foot trailer parked outside the shopping center actually contains a giant 20-ton whale captured in the Pacific. “Isha goddamn fake, I…
Gary Giordano is convinced that a decadelong grand conspiracy involving the most powerful business and political interests in the state is finally coming to fruition. Unless it is unmasked, he insists, that sinister plot will destroy the rural community where Giordano lives–New River, Arizona. At a cafe in downtown Phoenix…
If you believe the myths, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” was either a drunk mispronouncing “in the garden of Eden” or else it was very bad Latin for “play as long as you like, I’ve got to take a monstrous dump.” This lumbering, 17-minute-and-five-second Iron Butterfly opus took up the whole of an album…
Cafe Brazil, 3239 East Indian School, Phoenix, 955-0060. Hours: Lunch, Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Dinner, Monday through Wednesday, 5 to 9 p.m.; Thursday, 5 to 9:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5 to 10:30 p.m. Phoenix certainly has no shortage of south-of-the-border restaurants. Most of them, though,…
A Goofy Movie is more-traditional Disney than Priest, but the plot is no less perennial. It’s about being estranged from, and embarrassed by, your parents. Or, in this case, parent–Goofy is a single father here, and the film is a road comedy in which he tries to reconnect with his…
Priest is a movie with a message, and in spite of a complicated–perhaps overly complicated–plot, that message is a simple one: The Catholic Church should give up its doctrine of priestly celibacy. If Church hierarchy refuses to do this, individual priests should ignore the doctrine as they see fit. I’ve…
Life is all about choices, and Ralph Stanley’s first big choice was between a pig and a banjo. At the tender age of 11, Ralph’s mother gave him a $5 bill–no small sum in 1938, especially in the hills of Virginia near the Tennessee border where the Stanleys lived (to…
The best play of 1966 has arrived in Phoenix, and even 29 years later, it is still the most outrageous comedy of the season. It’s also one of the funniest. The play is Joe Orton’s Loot, in a production by Tres Repertory Theatre in Park Central Mall. Now half-deserted, this…
In 1977, a very lean year for drama, The Shadow Box won the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award, but lost the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award to David Mamet’s American Buffalo. “Disease plays” were fashionable then, but about this one, critics were divided. The more intellectual of them…
With Friends Like These . . . If you’re following the state legislative circus, you’re familiar with Senate Bill 1290, the so-called environmental audit bill. Environmentalists and other non-cranks have dubbed 1290 the Polluter Protection Act. It would allow corporations to escape prosecution for polluting, provided they disclose their misdeeds…
Congress is busy scaling back, even getting rid of welfare payments to folks like unemployed teen mothers and hungry schoolkids. But it’s also under pressure to restore benefits to a different class of beleaguered constituents–restaurant owners. Before the mid-1980s, businesses could deduct 100 percent of their meal costs, as long…
Ruben and Concepcion Valencia find that the harder they try to reach for justice, the more elusive it seems. Not only is their son dead, but a man they say pointed a gun at them not long ago was released by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. The Valencias think the…
Debby Kosobucki vividly recalls her first gig as a topless dancer. It was 1984, and she was 28 years old. She had fled a broken marriage, packed up her three daughters and moved to Phoenix from Washington state. She chose Phoenix for her fresh start because she had read there…
Rosalind Hall is a welfare mother. Two months ago, she got a job. It’s nearly caused her to lose everything. She doesn’t make enough to stand on her own, and because she’s employed, she’s lost the assistance that would help to change that. Hall is stuck in “the system.” A…
