“It’s a serious subject, and people tend to put it in this sort of serious shelf,” says Rodrigo Duarte Clark. “But life doesn’t stop being humorous just because people are dying. There’s a lot of humor in the play. You don’t want to immerse people so much in their emotions…
So you’ve seen all the Oscar winners and also-rans, and you’ve caught up with whatever might vaguely be interesting among current releases. Don’t panic, you needn’t resort to Wing Commander yet–there’s a surprisingly rich assortment of festival films from which to choose in the Valley this week. The most notable…
Imagine a bunch of kids watching the classic 1956 film musical The King and I on television, then going outside and spending the rest of the afternoon acting it out in the backyard. Apart from a lack of hired-gun Broadway voices performing the songs, their re-creation might not be too…
Ginger and Fred. Shirley Temple and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds. To the list of unforgettable movie dance partnerships, we may now add Omar Epps, the trim, handsome young man who stars as one third of The Mod Squad, and Michael Lerner, the heavyset middle-aged actor who…
In homage to a half-dozen of the most formidable women in the history of 20th-century art, a half-dozen of the Phoenix area’s more formidable performing artists and arts educators will assume their personas for an unusual interactive performance-art role-playing piece titled “Women Who Do!” Confused? Okay, it works like this…
thursday march 18 Some time ago, the nice folks at Mesa Southwest Museum sent this reporter a chocolate coin with a roasted cricket in it, and invited me to join the “I Ate a Bug Club.” I did–it tasted not unlike a Nestle’s Crunch–and, as a proud member of that…
There’s no faulting Tango where technique is concerned. This collaboration between the Spanish writer-director Carlos Saura, the great Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and the Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin is a dazzling fusion of color and composition, movement and music. There’s some strong acting, too. But the film, reputedly the most…
DGeneration Through the Darkness (C2/Columbia Records) Produced by famed glam hag Tony Visconti (T. Rex, Bowie, etc.), Through the Darkness differs little from DGen’s last Ric Ocasek-knobbed No Lunch. There’s a torrent of jumbo, sperm-filled Clash chords, soaring Mick Jones harmonies and ersatz-Clash topical politicizing atop an invented street hustle…
thursday march 11 For the second year in a row, the Phoenix Art and Antique Show offers a staggering array of bric-a-brac, objets, macguffins and other assorted knickknacks from 43 galleries around the U.S. and Europe, which are exhibited and sold for the benefit of Phoenix Art Museum. The goodies…
When you think of actors well-suited to the role of Teddy Roosevelt, John Davidson isn’t likely to be the first name that springs to mind. Or the second, or the eighth. But the ’70s-era Cosmo centerfold, Carson guest host and star of Broadway and short-lived sitcoms like The Girl With…
thursday march 4 It’s a big week for the Phoenix Symphony: In addition to a performance by the Concorda Trio (see Sunday), an ensemble made up of PS players, and a PS Close-Up at Borders (see Monday), there’s also a concert by the whole outfit, fronted by two guest artists,…
thursday february 25 Hermann Michael conducts the Phoenix Symphony in an all-Mozart program, including the “Three German Dances K. 605”; Ch’io mi scordi di te?; Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major; Exsultate jubilate; and Symphony No. 35 in D Major, a.k.a. “Haffner.” Soprano Patrice Michaels Bedi and Naumberg Competition-winning…
Under the opening titles of 200 Cigarettes, we hear Bow Wow Wow’s near-peerless bubblegum anthem “I Want Candy.” The movie that follows seems designed to satisfy that craving–it’s sweet, tart, brightly colored, insubstantial and utterly lacking in nutritional value. It’s also fun to consume, and harmless enough as long as…
thursday february 18 Karate demonstrations, children’s singing and dancing groups, strolling clowns, face painters, live music and radio remotes, a carnival midway with 25 rides and 20 games; arts-and-crafts exhibits; and photo opportunities with a live 400-pound tiger, along with an international food festival and beer garden, are among the…
The Best Actor nomination which Nick Nolte garnered last week for his superb star turn in Paul Schrader’s Affliction (see page 63 for review) is a boon not only to his career, but to the career of Mel Weiser. The Valley-based writer’s new tome Nick Nolte: Caught in the Act…
Those of us who believe that had Beavis and Butt-Head and the South Park gang never made the scene, American culture would be worse off, not better, owe Spike & Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation a debt of gratitude. The 1999 edition of this cult-fave fest, conceived by…
Thursday February 11 The area dance music weekly Kind celebrates six months with guest DJ Lady Kier of Deee-Lite fame. The songstress turned mixologist captured a worldwide audience with the early ’90s hit “Groove Is in the Heart,” and has remained a dance-culture icon throughout the decade. Her latest project…
“When I was in film school, I was the guy who was gonna resurrect screwball comedy,” says filmmaker James Moll. It was an odd ambition for the man who would go on to make his feature directorial debut with The Last Days, a documentary about five Jewish survivors of the…
In Hungary, the Holocaust lasted only for a year. But the word only is deceptive in this context. The Nazis, who entered the country in March of 1944, had been in the genocide business for a few years by then, and they’d gotten good at it. They were efficient, and…
thursday february 4 Probably the single greatest American contribution to the canon of world opera, George Gershwin’s 1935 Porgy and Bess, is presented in a full concert version by Phoenix Symphony, with the ASU Choral Union and several distinguished soloists: James Butler as Porgy, Priscilla Baskerville as Bess, Theresa Hamm-Smith…
Last week a friend gave me a long distance phone number and insisted that I call it. It turned out to be the recorded information line for a movie theater in the presumably Mayberryesque town of Graham, North Carolina (my friend’s wife had found the number after hearing about the…
Thursday January 28 The Valley’s only public high school with a “magnet” program for the performing arts presents Once on This Island, a musical by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty based on Trinidadian author Rosa Guy’s allegorical tale My Love, My Love. Directed and choreographed by Susan St. John, the…
