It’s a shame to give away the one thoroughly bone-chilling scare in Zombie Strippers, but it’s right at the beginning, anyway: The movie is set in the near future, during the fourth term of President George W. Bush. As one might expect in such a world, strip clubs have been…
If you’re grappling with what to do on Saturday night, if you can’t quite pin down your plans, if indecision has you in a full nelson . . . well, here’s a suggestion: Go to Chandler Cinemas for some Mexican-wrestling madness. Starting at 8pm, tireless B-picture maven Midnite Movie Mamacita…
It’s sort of like when SCTV’s Count Floyd showed an Ingmar Bergman movie, then asked the kiddies: “You think it’s not scary to be depressed?” Thoughout September, Valley movie maven Fred Linch has covered everything from bloodsuckers to zombies to the sci-fi visions of Steven Spielberg in his weekly cinema-discussion…
Arguably the King of the Monsters, Godzilla is unquestionably one of the all-time Kings of the Summer Movie. What better way, then, to observe the last day of August than by watching the titanic reptile throw down and put his gigantic taloned feet in the asses of a couple of…
9/22-9/25There probably isn’t a musician in town who can command the weekly live audience that Bobby Freeman can — during the summer, at least. You’ve heard him yourself if you’ve ever been to an Arizona Diamondbacks home game, pounding out the Mexican Hat Dance, the Hungarian czardas, or the opening…
The indie Let It Snow was originally titled Snow Days. Both titles are terrible — they suggest either a schmaltzy ’40s-era holiday musical or else a kiddy comedy from Nickelodeon. The movie is, rather, a derivative but likable romantic comedy, sort of a bus-and-truck When Harry Met Sally . …
For a while, it rivaled Star Trek as an obsession among geeko preadolescent boys (like me) of the ’60s and ’70s: Planet of the Apes, the sci-fi franchise that started in this country with a 1968 film and eventually spawned four sequels, a TV series, a cartoon, comics, board games,…
When he walks into Pizzeria Uno at the Arizona Center, it’s not hard to believe that Lenny Kohm just came in from the Arctic wilds. With his grizzled beard and plain work clothes, this slight, thin man might have wandered in from a Jack London story, or maybe a Robert…
Flattened plant stems.The phrase might sound sort of dispirited to you or me, but it makes Linda Moulton Howe’s heart beat just a little more quickly. Listen to her for a while, and yours might, too. This journalist has spent the last couple of years studying the phenomenon, which she…
One of Gary Larson’s Far Side comic’s many versions of the Divine Comedy was subtitled thusly: “Welcome to Heaven. Here’s your harp . . . Welcome to Hell. Here’s your accordion.”It’s against this general attitude that Nick Ariondo works. Ariondo, a virtuoso on the instrument most associated with Myron Floren…
Easily the best performance in the last year’s wheezy The Legend of Bagger Vance was by the drawly, plainspoken J. Michael Moncrief, a boy with an old man’s face, as the local kid who idolized Matt Damon and helped Will Smith caddy. The same character, as an adult, also narrated…
There’s plenty of French star power in The Closet (Le Placard). This comedy must have been a fairly big deal in the Land of the Heavy Sauce; it stars Daniel Auteuil, Gérard Depardieu and Thierry Lhermitte, and was written and directed by Francis Veber. In U.S. terms, this is roughly…
It’s just after noon, and I’m waiting outside a cafe for a French blonde. I’ve been told she has a scar on her cheek. Needless to say, I’m feeling rather Graham Greene-ish.A few minutes later, Michèle Laroque shows up, wearing an elegant pantsuit and sneakers. As we shake hands, I…
As painful as it can be, there’s no getting around one of the basic truths: Size Does Matter.Formidable rotundity is the most obvious physical trait of comic John Pinette, and it’s the source of his claim to TV fame. Pinette, who performs this weekend at the Tempe Improv, is most…
If you had to pick the professional ice cream taster out of the lunch crowd at Claim Jumper in Tempe, there’s a good chance that John Harrison is the one you’d pick. He strides into the prodigious-portion eatery wearing half the colors you’ll see under the glass at an ice…
Having recently stolen Shrek as a talking donkey, Eddie Murphy is back in the multiplexes again this summer, this time as a man who can, presumably, talk to donkeys. In the course of Dr. Dolittle 2, in which he plays a veterinarian who can, you know, Talk To The Animals,…
If internal combustion ever becomes obsolete — that is, if the auto industry ever allows internal combustion to become obsolete — whatever will the movies do? Hoofbeats are dramatic, the chug of a steam engine is suspenseful, and the roar of a gasoline-powered vehicle stirs the blood of the self-respecting…
“There are probably three internationally famous novelists who lived in Arizona for long periods of time: Zane Grey, Edward Abbey and Glendon Swarthout.”In case the international fame of the last of those three scribes — rattled off by his son, Miles Hood Swarthout — has bypassed you, here’s the skinny…
More than half of the time I sit down to lunch, probably, it’s with someone who would consider himself or herself a film lover. I’m a film lover myself. But when you sit down to lunch with Ron Walker, you’re sitting down with a film lover of a different league…
How’s this for a Hollywood pitch:”Y’see, Harry, there’s this Roman general — right, like in Gladiator, exactly — and he comes back from a war against the Goths, with . . . what? No, Harry, not the teenage kids who dress in black, the ancient tribe. Right, those Goths, ya…
Lakeboat is a film adaptation of one of David Mamet’s earliest plays. It’s set on one of the title vessels, the broad, flat-bottomed freighters that traverse the Great Lakes, and the characters are the tough-talking crewmen. But it’s not a sailing adventure. It’s the opposite of a sailing adventure.There’s no…
With true summer upon us, and seasons wrapping up, the theater options start to dwindle severely in the Valley. This is the time when hard-core first-nighters have to search for some off-the-beaten-track stage action. Here are a few such options: Once on This Island: Black Theatre Troupe closes out its…
