Species is a sci-fi horror picture that’s good for a few laughs because, first of all, it’s atrocious, and, secondly, because it has an unbecomingly obvious psychological subtext. This movie made by men is about, to put it crudely, bitches in heat. A la the three Alien films, the monster’s…
Without seeing First Knight again–which I’m in no rush to–I can’t be sure, but I thought I heard King Arthur say, “Nope.” Somebody asks a question of Arthur, played by Sean Connery, and he responds in the negative by saying “nope.” If I heard wrong, then my apologies to Connery,…
“It’s like a Hollywood B-movie,” mutters the main character of A Pure Formality of his situation. Well, it is and it isn’t. Hollywood B-pictures rarely–occasionally, but rarely–have the visual beauty or atmosphere of this Italian production, and very few pictures have actors of the caliber of this film’s leads, Girard…
Class Act: Stung by a negative review, restaurant proprietors react the same way most people do when criticized: They get angry, defensive and hostile. Not Derick Macdonald, general manager at Red Lion’s swanky La Posada resort. After I bashed brunch there, Macdonald wrote me a letter responding to the review…
Isaac Hayes answers the door of his Dallas hotel room, his bald head down and his eyes sagging. By way of introduction, he yawns and apologizes for being so damned tired, and ushers his guest into the room with a limp raising of his left arm. He wears black pants…
If you want to see the state of contemporary art in Arizona, you’ll have to go down to Tucson–and down the stairs at the Tucson Museum of Art. The Arizona Biennial, the only statewide juried exhibition open to all artists and craftspeople from or living in Arizona, and a show…
At Least It Wasn’t Larry Everyone knows GOP supermouth Newt Gingrich and his half-sister, Candace, are politically incompatible. An occasional mention of cyberspace aside, the House speaker generally supports his party’s ultraconservative wing. Candace, of course, is active in gay-rights issues and groups. Despite those differences, the Gingrich siblings had…
A committee of criminal justice and mental health experts met regularly last year as the debate over Ardrey McFarland’s legal fate raged. The sessions did not always go smoothly. “There are so many angles on this,” says Superior Court Judge Robert Myers, who chaired the committee for a time. “We…
It’s Dumpster-diving paradise. And the best thing is you don’t have to dive into a smelly garbage can. Thanks to lax security by the state Department of Transportation, hundreds of condemned homes in the pathway of the Squaw Peak Parkway north of Shea Boulevard sit empty, vulnerable to anyone with…
Ignacio Alvaraz does not know much about the “cross-cultural two-nation vacations” being touted by the newly formed Center for Arizona-Sonora Regional Tourism Development. Then again, Alvaraz, a Yaqui Indian elder, didn’t travel to the United States from his native Mexico to sightsee. He came to inform fellow Yaquis in Arizona…
The Rule Dave Alt faced the prisoner at Madison Street Jail. “You made a mistake, dude, a big, big mistake,” Alt told Jimmy Lee Luman in the fall of 1993. “You won’t beat her. Not in your dreams. You might beat the system. But she’s gonna haunt you until the…
Like organic tomatoes, natural peanut butter and tofu hot dogs, controversy has always been a hot commodity around Tempe’s Gentle Strength Co-op. Let someone suggest anything more substantive than “Have a nice day,” and you can be sure some disgruntled faction inside the member-owned cooperative will squawk that the organization…
It’s 10 a.m. and Terry Garvin of Zen Lunatics is cuckoo. For the munchy, crunchy, chocolatey taste of Cocoa Puffs, that is. It’s an addiction that has reared its sugary head only in recent years. “I didn’t eat breakfast cereals for the longest time because they would depress me. I…
8700, 8700 East Pinnacle Peak Road, Scottsdale, 994-8700. Hours: Dinner, 6 to 10 p.m., seven days a week. It’s not very easy to interest Phoenicians in a July auto trip, unless the car is headed to San Diego. But I just visited a couple of distant north Valley eating spots…
Not too long ago, an employee at the Arizona State Compensation Fund was questioned under oath during legal proceedings against the fund. Some of the questioning dealt with the work atmosphere inside State Fund headquarters. At one point, the questioning turned to The Firm, a film about a seemingly respectable…
While workers begin the $1.7 million renovation of Governor Fife Symington’s office, the state’s historical landmark next door is going to hell in a handbasket. The Old Capitol Building, built in 1900, is in need of some care. There are holes in the domed ceiling where the plaster has fallen…
Another attempt to develop property in the historic Roosevelt neighborhood has been rejected. The proposed project was a new, expanded campus for Magnet Traditional School, the brightest star in the Phoenix Elementary School District, a school whose students score better on national tests than their district counterparts, and better than…
At least 13 times in the last 18 months, Department of Health Services investigators have found one or another of Steve Broe’s American Child Care Centers to have more children per adult caregiver than the law allows. And last fall, Craig Barton’s Camelback Desert School in north Scottsdale, which offers…
It didn’t take long for the investigation of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building to wind its way back to the nation’s 48th state. Within days, federal agents were swooping through Kingman, Mesa and even tiny Oatman, Arizona, in search of evidence and co-conspirators and anything else connected…
The extent to which real life has surpassed the science fiction that many of us read as kids can be quite disorienting. Director Ron Howard’s new film Apollo 13 is an epic true-life space odyssey, and it’s also a period piece. The central character, Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), is one…
In Search and Destroy, Griffin Dunne plays Martin, a wormy little bush-league promoter in Boca Raton, Florida. The town’s name translates as “Mouth of the Rat,” and Martin does seem like something that crawled out of such a place. He owes thousands in back taxes, he’s on the outs with…
Marco Polo Supper Club, 8608 East Shea, Scottsdale, 483-1900. Hours: Dinner, Sunday through Thursday, 5 to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5 to 11 p.m. When it comes to watching summertime television reruns, you know just what you’re going to see: the exact same show you saw the first time…
