“Crime Jazz” — remember those words. Local filmmaker Marco “Polo” Saldana hopes to establish the term as the name for the genre in which he makes movies. The style he employs in ultra-low-budget thrillers like The Ghetto Was Never Enough derives from the ultra-hip spy and private-eye movies of the…
Sure, the bohemian artsy hipsters and gallery rats may have laid claim to First Fridays, but there’s no reason Goths and horror geeks shouldn’t have some end-of-the-week fun, too. Thus, MADCAP Theaters’ Black Friday, an evening of bizarre and eerie festivities (including various performances and horror-movie screenings) that continues on…
Traveling from town to town, sleeping in fleabag accommodations, eating greasy fast food, entering into anonymous liaisons with people you’ve just met — why should rock musicians have all the fun? The indie filmmakers of the Range Life Fall Film Tour want a piece of that action. Rather than plead…
Official biographers always run the risk of coming across like cheerleaders, but Sam Weller doesn’t seem to mind. He’s an unembarrassed fanboy for his subject: legendary sci-fi/fantasy author Ray Bradbury. Weller trumpets his passionate geekdom in the first lines of the 2005 book The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray…
Official biographers always run the risk of coming across like cheerleaders, but Sam Weller doesn’t seem to mind. He’s an unembarrassed fanboy for his subject: legendary sci-fi/fantasy author Ray Bradbury. Weller trumpets his passionate geekdom in the first lines of the 2005 book The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray…
Among the macabre must-sees at this weekend’s fifth annual International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival are showings of Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with personal appearances by Living Dead’s Judith (“They’re coming to get you, Barbara”) O’Dea and Chainsaw star Marilyn Burns, respectively. The hyped…
For a small but dedicated cult of fanatics, the real highlight of this year’s fest will be Embodiment of Evil (Encarnacao do Demonio), the latest shocker from ’60s-era Brazilian-horror icon Jose Mojica Marins, a.k.a. Ze do Caixao, a.k.a. Coffin Joe. If you’re a horror connoisseur and have never sampled this…
Would that we lived in a world in which Plan 9 From Outer Space truly was, either aesthetically or morally, the Worst Movie Ever Made. Alas, countless films, some from big studios and featuring big stars, are both less entertaining and more despicable than Ed Wood’s grandly inept 1959 sci-fi/horror…
“The opener, the closer, the French film, the Italian film.” According to Amy Ettinger, director of the Scottsdale International Film Festival, these movie types are the bread-and-butter in an international fest. Even audience members who loathe subtitles, Ettinger explains, will usually turn out for a French or Italian flick. Ettinger…
For more than 20 years, from Revenge of the Nerds through Napoleon Dynamite, the movies have been trying to turn dorky-dweeb style into a recognized form of glamour. The discerning among us have never needed convincing on this point, but the latest attempt, Negin Farsad’s documentary Nerdcore Rising, could be…
Sure, the bohemian artsy hipsters and gallery rats may have laid claim to First Fridays, but there’s no reason Goths and horror geeks shouldn’t have some end-of-the-week fun, too. Thus, MADCAP Theaters’ launch of Black Friday, an evening of bizarre and eerie festivities that starts at 6 p.m. Friday, September…
Though British landscape painter Tony Foster is sometimes referred to as the “Warhol of the Wilderness,” it’s not because, say, he paints Mount Rainier as a giant Campbell’s soup can, or works the face of Jackie Onassis into the crags of the Rockies. Rather, the Cornwall resident, now in his…
If you crossed the Elvis Presley movie Paradise, Hawaiian Style with Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, you’d get . . . well, a film absolutely nothing like Paradise Now. Hany Abu-Assad’s tense, well-acted 2005 drama concerns two young men from the West Bank struggling with whether to carry out a suicide bombing…
It’s been said that the only reason American businesses don’t outsource janitorial services is that they haven’t invented a broom handle that reaches to the Third World. In a sense, Alex Rivera’s 2008 movie Sleep Dealer shows us a world in which that broom handle has been invented. “It’s a…
Would that we lived in a world in which Plan 9 From Outer Space truly was, either aesthetically or morally, the Worst Movie Ever Made. Alas, countless films, some from big studios and featuring big stars, are both less entertaining and more despicable than Ed Wood’s grandly inept 1959 sci-fi/horror…
Compared to the Japanese movie House (Hausu), Evil Dead 2 seems about as frenzied, surreal, and blackly comic as an episode of The Brady Bunch. Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 feature has seven adorable Japanese girls spending their school break at a haunted house presided over by the imposing aunt of one…
Did you roll your eyes at the by-the-numbers triteness of Being John Malkovich? Did you yawn and squirm in your seat at the formulaic banality of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Did you mutter “same old, same old” as you walked out of Synecdoche, New York? Well, Charlie Kaufman…
The 1978 Italian film Quel maledetto treno blindato has had several other titles in English. According to imdb, it has been known at one time or another as Counterfeit Commandos, Deadly Mission, Hell’s Heroes, The Dirty Bastard, and, because of the presence in the cast of Fred “The Hammer” Williamson,…
It’s a road movie, but it isn’t your typical road movie. In fact, it makes Easy Rider look like a spin around the block. Directed by Arturo Perez Torres, Wetback: The Undocumented Documentary traces the trek of two determined immigrants across Latin America and the North American continent, all in…
“Monsters from the Id!” cries a supporting player, as he dies. But isn’t that where all good monsters come from? The poor man has figured out whence cometh the peril in Forbidden Planet, which closes the Horror Movie Nights series at Paisley Violin. One of the most entertaining of Hollywood…
Though British landscape painter Tony Foster is sometimes referred to as the “Warhol of the Wilderness,” it’s not because, say, he paints Mount Rainier as a giant Campbell’s soup can, or works the face of Jackie Onassis into the crags of the Rockies. Rather, the Cornwall resident, now in his…
Since her departure from Chandler Cinemas, and the subsequent, though reportedly unrelated, closing of that fine indie venue, Valley movie maven Midnite Movie Mamacita has became a wandering spirit, taking her schlock-cinema shows on the road. Having already played the Glendale 9 Drive-In and the Frontier Village in Prescott, the…
