Even though it’s a weekday, Phoenix Art Museum is packed. I’m there with an artist, and an internationally acclaimed artist at that, but the crowds aren’t there to see his work. They’ve turned out in the thousands to see the works of Norman Rockwell. Sculptor Larry McLaughlin and I haven’t…
Let it not be said that See Spot Run is without its distinctions. For instance, it is, in all likelihood, the first movie for kids featuring comic castration. It’s also probably the first movie of any kind that subjects its leading lady to explosively ignited zebra flatulence. And then there’s…
In recent years, a theory has gained currency in paleontological circles that, basically, dinosaurs didn’t really become extinct — they just grew feathers, and a few of them learned to fly. Modern-day birds, the theory holds, are not just distant evolutionary cousins of the bad boys of the Jurassic, but…
Back East, and elsewhere in the world, Arizona is thought not to have seasons. Or, rather, we’re thought to have two seasons — really hot and really, really hot.Once you’ve lived here a couple of years, however, you recognize that there are very distinctive seasons here, and few are as…
He doesn’t seem like a guy who’d use the I Ching to make life decisions.Then again, if you saw Phil Strassberg on the street, you might not immediately recognize him as a guy who’s seen Babe Ruth play baseball, had his ear bent by Walter Winchell, managed Little Anthony and…
Having given us opera’s all-time greatest bad girl earlier this season with Carmen, Arizona Opera has been taking pains to compensate, with two heroines in a row so goody-goody that Jeanette MacDonald might find them square. First there was Minnie, The Girl of the Golden West, holding Bible study for…
Every year that I’ve gone to Spike & Mike’s Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation, I’ve done so with less enthusiasm, not because the fest that discovered Beavis and Butthead and South Park has gotten any worse, or any more shocking, but because I’ve become more acutely aware of the…
To watch Frankie Manning at work is to learn humility anew. I’m leaning against the doors at one of the big rooms at Mesa Centennial Hall, waiting for Manning to finish one of the morning classes he’s teaching at a weekendlong workshop presented by the Arizona Lindy Hop Society. There…
In Ira Levin’s stage mystery Deathtrap, a playwright glumly declares a rival’s play so good that a talented director couldn’t hurt it. That’s how good the best works of Gilbert and Sullivan are. Take, for instance, The Gondoliers, or The King of Barataria. Not, perhaps, on the level of The…
There he is, his eyes and body language as unmistakable as the flattened hat perched perfectly on his head. This little man in the shabby suit looks older than his 66 years — he looks ageless, actually — yet he performs physical feats beyond the capability of most people 40…
February film festival fever forges forward. So, am I ready for Variety?This week it’s the fifth annual Out Far! Phoenix International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, running Thursday, February 15, through Sunday, February 18, at AMC Arizona Center, 565 North Third Street. Here’s a day-by-day rundown: Thursday, February 15: The…
Sara is quirky and free-spirited. That, at least, is the premise of the hilariously wretched new weepie Sweet November, of which Sara, embodied by the breathtaking Charlize Theron, is the heroine.But if you’re smart enough to run in terror at the threat of a movie character who’s quirky and free-spirited,…
Lunch with a Bosnian, if you don’t know any Bosnians, isn’t the easiest thing to arrange. I wanted someone to guide me through the cuisine at Bosnian Cafe Sarajevo, just east of 35th Avenue on the south side of Northern, and also to tell me what life is like here…
Once again, February is proving to be film-festival season here in the Valley — contained in this shortest month in the calendar are six, count ’em, six, highly diverse cinema smorgasbords. Last weekend was New Times’ very own Flashback Filmfest, year two, and this week marks the inaugural of an…
If it’s true that some guys have it and some guys don’t, then these guys unquestionably have it. Ladies are all around them in the lobby of the Scottsdale Center for the Arts, gazing at them as if they were the Rolling Stones. Indeed, some of these very women –…
Polish sausage covered with bright-yellow mustard, melted Swiss cheese and onions, with eggs, potatoes and an English muffin on the side — that’s the composition of the dish called the “Saint John” on the menu at First Watch in Scottsdale. It sounds very Chicago, and very Catholic, so that’s what…
“Comedy workshop,” said the marquee outside the Tempe Improv. The comedian working in the shop wasn’t named, but the crowd was lined up hours before showtime even so. The Unknown Comic it wasn’t. No, 13 years after he christened the venue, Jerry Seinfeld, quite probably the biggest star in American…
The big art talk in the Valley these days is about an iconic American presence, Norman Rockwell. But you can also find explorations of the African world with two shows on the gallery scene this week.A show of works by artist William Kentridge, “Ubu Tells the Truth and Other Stories,”…
The reviewers are in agreement on Shadow of the Vampire: The 1922 German movie of which it’s a takeoff is great, a masterpiece. You won’t read different here — F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, on the set of which the rather roguishly conceived premise of Shadow unfolds, is a must-see. If you’ve…
Her hair is exactly the color of copper electrical wire, freshly stripped of its insulation. Her jacket is decorated with little cutouts of puppy dogs. And then, of course, there are the trademark eyes — gazing at me, girlish and mirthful, through harlequin ovals of mascara and eye shadow. Tammy…
It is, one might argue, the original Spaghetti Western. Especially considering that it’s the work’s Arizona Opera première, the company’s current staging of La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West) is an irony-rich experience — sitting in Tucson, the heart of six-shooter country, listening to cowboy-hatted lawmen…
The history of 3-D in the movies is half a century long now — the first major 3-D feature, Bwana Devil, was released in 1952, and there were experiments with the concept earlier than that. There have been dozens of other attempts scattered throughout the decades since, and although some…
