Except when they’ve been busy defeating the Nazis or something like that, every generation of young adults has whined. Usually it’s about their poverty and their crappy prospects and the failure of the world to recognize their innate value and reward them accordingly with money, praise and sex. But it’s…
So a guy goes into a bar, and he sees another guy sitting there nursing a beer, looking incredibly depressed. The two strike up a conversation, and finally the first guy asks the second guy why he’s so down. “I hate my job,” the second guy says. “Where do you…
thursday june 25 The vast screens and marrow-shaking sound systems of IMAX Theatres have been put to use taking armchair travelers to the wreck of the Titanic and to the Great Barrier Reef, up Everest and over the Grand Canyon, into space stations and beaver lodges–in short, to places we…
One of the more frequently occurring adjectives in reviews of The Truman Show, which continues to chug away at the box office, is “original.” Well, The Truman Show may be clever, may be touching, may be visually elegant, but it’s not original. The film is, indeed, a virtual amalgam of…
Summer. ‘Tis the season of iced tea by the tankard and bikinis and baseball, of soaring electric bills and movies with numbers after the titles–and of reruns. NBC is making a game attempt to market its off-season with the line “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you.” But…
Thursday June 18 Those Czars of Rock ‘n’ Roll, that Politburo of Pop, those Bolsheviks of Boogie The Red Elvises hail from the former Soviet Union and bill themselves as “the legendary legends of Siberian surf music and the highest-payed [sic] wedding band of the Kamchatka Peninsula.” The L.A.-based act,…
In 1993, the acclaimed husband-and-wife documentary team of Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker released The War Room, an intimate study of the first Clinton/Gore campaign. That done, they turned their cameras on the mounting of a less successful comedy: Ken Ludwig’s Broadway farce Moon Over Buffalo, which opened at the…
thursday june 11 Bay Area soul diva E.C. Scott belts out straightforward, deliciously lewd blues tunes, many self-written, with authority, a gospel backbone and a contemporary groove. Touring behind her splendid new Blind Pig CD Hard Act to Follow–which includes 10 of her own songs, plus a snaky cover of…
A bird’s-eye view of the Brooklyn bridge opened John Badham’s Saturday Night Fever in 1977, when disco was in full swing. It was the route the working-class hero took to travel from where he lived and worked to the disco in Manhattan where he danced and partied. Then the titles…
Though Lilies was shot in Quebec with a French-Canadian cast, the actors don’t speak French. Based on the play Les Feluettes ou la Repetition d’un Drame Romantique (The Lilies, or the Revival of a Romantic Drama) by Michel Marc Bouchard, the script was adapted into English by Inda Gaboriau, probably…
Be nice to your mailman. That’s the cautionary message of the Norwegian film Junk Mail. Near the beginning of this hilariously clammy comedy-thriller, the–for lack of a better term–hero, an Oslo mail carrier named Roy (Robert Skjaerstad), is filling the boxes in an apartment building when a middle-aged man who’s…
Jeff Buckley Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk (Columbia Records) When singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley drowned in the Mississippi River last May, the media treated it like a pop-culture footnote, of little interest to anyone but his rabid cult. Years from now, when the dust finally clears, informed music fans may…
A twitch, a scratch, maybe a yawn–that’s the extent of the activity you’re likely to see at the zoo from those among God’s creatures that don’t keep bankers’ hours. For adults, that’s just the way things are, but for kids from grades four to eight, there is an alternative during…
thursday june 4 Touring in a VW van in the company of her cat, Tosca, Seattle-based thrush Jill Cohn plays two free shows this week in the Valley. Supported by her delicate piano playing, Cohn’s Lilith Fair-bait voice–soft yet rich and soulful–is a great vehicle for the self-composed laments of…
Richard Wagner had a way with a saga. Take, for instance, his famed Ring opera cycle, which is slated for performances in Flagstaff this week and next. Here’s what you get: treachery and intrigue among the gods, an evil dwarf, stolen gold, a magic ring, a magic sword, giants, warrior…
thursday may 28 He cranked out one American classic after another throughout the ’50s. But after 1962’s Night of the Iguana, Tennessee Williams turned from personal expressionism to experimental surrealism, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a single title by the great Mississippian that anyone other than a theater scholar…
Danny and Anna, the hero and heroine of Music From Another Room, meet portentously: Danny, at the age of 6, is pressed into service helping his father deliver Anna when her mother (wonderful Brenda Blethyn) goes into labor unexpectedly at a party. The umbilical cord wraps around Anna’s neck, and…
According to the movies, Godzilla takes its name from a legendary Japanese sea monster. But according to the man who made those movies, the name’s source was more mundane. Tomoyuki Tanaka, producer of the classic Godzilla films, claims that back in the 1950s, there was a fat, hulking press agent…
thursday may 21 It’s a safe bet that NBC honcho Don Olmeyer won’t be catching comedian Norm MacDonald’s special show at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 21, at the Celebrity Theatre, 440 North 32nd Street. He’s the guy who supposedly was behind firing MacDonald from SNL’s “Weekend Update” for the comic’s…
Before trying his hand as a novelist, before winning four Emmys and a variety of other awards for his broadcast journalism, Mark Nykanen was a prep basketball star–one of the state’s leading scorers, he claims–at McClintock High in Tempe. “I got kicked off the team two-thirds of the way through…
Where was the montage? About halfway through the Brit caper comedy Shooting Fish, lovely young heroine Georgie (Kate Beckinsale) and sensitive young hero Jez (Stuart Townsend) meet outside a club. In the next scene, we see them sitting on the roof of a huge gas tank, talking, as the dawn…
thursday may 14 Can you handle cowboy charm first thing in the morning? My hat’s off to you, pardner. You’ll probably want to check out Marshall Trimble at the Scottsdale Mayor and City Council Breakfast. The “Will Rogers of Arizona” spins yarns following a continental breakfast at 7:30 a.m. Thursday,…
