Hardcore fantasy geeks will relish role-playing every enemy of The Last Mimzy, a family-style sci-fi adventure whose director Bob Shaye is better known to them as the evil wizard — the alien executive who peed all over the Fellowship. Shaye, in his other job as New Line Cinema topper, has…
In the same week that sees Adam Sandler playing a grieving 9/11 widower in Reign Over Me, another lone figure reeling from post-traumatic stress fills the central role in the new Antoine Fuqua-directed thriller, Shooter. Named Bob Lee Swagger and played with appropriately gruff machismo by Mark Wahlberg, he’s a…
On paper, Richard Dresser’s Augusta sounds a whole lot more dreary than it turns out to be. Thanks to some fine acting and smooth direction, this comedy about the travails of the lower-income working class not only entertains, but reveals subtleties about the diminished power of blue-collar workers in Dresser’s…
I suppose it could happen to anyone: You spend a good chunk of your professional life getting paid to pretend you’re Christ, and after awhile you start believing you can part the Red Sea. At least that’s what I’m hoping is behind the Christ complex implied in Ted Neeley’s “Interview…
There’s one similarity between Ghost Rider and most videogame movie tie-ins: Get too close to either, and your ass will probably get burnt. Though it stars goofy Nic Cage and Sam Elliott sound-alikes, Ghost Rider claims only to be an offshoot of this year’s soul-sucking blockbuster — not a direct…
Blood Diamond (Warner Bros.) Ed Zwick’s Blood Diamond, about the civil war over diamonds that devastated Sierra Leone in the late 1990s, plays like a guilt-ridden Jerry Bruckheimer movie. It’s little more than action-adventure pulp drenched in someone else’s blood — which it tries to wash off by proselytizing to…
Previews and reviews by Robrt L. Pela Frozen: Bryony Laverys dark, thoughtful drama about a pedophile serial killer won Londons prestigious Barclay Award for Best New Play of 1998, then went on to pile up accolades in New York the following year. Lavery is so skilled a scriptwriter, she manages…
Batman Beyond: Season Three (Warner Bros.) The Bridge on the River Kwai (Sony) Burning Annie (Warner Bros.) The Caine Mutiny (Sony) The Care Bears Movie: 25th Anniversary Limited Edition (MGM) Come Early Morning (Weinstein) Eragon (Fox) The Guns of Navarone (Sony) JAG: The Third Season (Paramount) Justice League Unlimited: Season…
American Cousins (BFS) Appetite for Deconstruction: A Punk Rockumentary (MVD) Barbie Fairytopia: Magic of the Rainbow (Universal) Bloody Reunion (Tartan) Blood Trails (Lions Gate) The Ed Wood Collection: A Salute to Incompetence (Passport) Favela Rising (Netflix) Fires on the Plain: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) The Gene Autry 100th Anniversary Collection…
The space-time continuum smacks the shit out of Sandra Bullock in Premonition, the latest in nonlinear nonsense, but the fun really gets going when she starts to smack back. As Linda Hanson, humdrum mom of Anywhere, U.S.A., Bullock sets things up by doing her thing, effortlessly establishing the girl next…
On January 1, one day after his 27th birthday and fresh from his honeymoon, James McAvoy slips into a coffee shop in the fashionably scruffy North London borough of Crouch End, where he’s bought a house with his bride, the actress Anne-Marie Duff. Rumpled in baggy jeans and carrying a…
To get an idea of why I was so deeply frustrated by Black Theatre Troupe’s excellent production of Fabulation or the Re-Education of Undine, try this: Put a DVD of your favorite movie on, turn the volume way up, then go out onto your front porch and watch the film…
Whether it’s slaying dragons in Zelda, zapping aliens in Halo, or inserting foot A into ass B in Virtua Fighter, the best games are the ones that offer some level of wish fulfillment. Grand Theft Auto added “Help yourself to a car” and “Drive it on the sidewalk” to the…
Casino Royale (Sony) James Bond gets a stirring shake-up in the best — yeah, Goldfinger fans, the best — film in the series’ 44-year history. Daniel Craig’s 007 has more going on above the neck and below the waist than even Sean Connery’s. He’s a genuinely compelling character — a…
Green Day is coming, and we ain’t talking about the punk band, brah. Nope, it’s the annual alcoholic extravaganza known as St. Patrick’s Day, where liquor and leprechauns collide in one clamorous Celtic craic. Everyone can have a wee bit of Irish in them, especially after pounding a few pints…
Fortunately for the folks in the audience at Phoenix Theatre, Black Theatre Troupe executive director David Hemphill is appearing in PT’s current production of Guys and Dolls. That’s bad luck for the rest of us, because it means Hemphill wasn’t there to give his usual charming curtain speech on opening…
My Fair Lady: The rain in Spain will, these next several weeks, be falling mainly on the theatrical plain of Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre, which brings us this famed Lerner-Loewe musical through mid-April. Based on George Bernard Shaws Pygmalion, My Fair Lady contains more classic tunes in its first act…
It’s obvious by now that we Phoenicians have fully embraced Cinco de Mayo. Not only does the blowout “holiday” provide a much-needed excuse to get completely hosed, but the traditional event always makes for one hell of a party. While Latin festivities don’t necessarily need improvement, leave it to one…
“Don’t Eat Tuna More Than Two Times a Week” was the unforgettable advice you may have received while driving north on Mill Avenue past Gammage Auditorium last spring. The posted chalkboard-style signs bearing wacky wisdom at the side of the road were part of Arizona State University’s first “Shared Terrain”…
“IN-CRIMI-NATION” at The Icehouse: If you think the Iraq War is our countrys low point, wait until you see The Icehouses latest sniper shot at America. Artist Mona Higuchis 12-foot-high woven paper reprint of a vintage photograph depicting Japanese girls stitching camouflage cargo nets at an internment camp is a…
A few years ago, a friend of mine had a great idea for a Halloween costume. His plan was to find a framed painting of a woman’s portrait, cut out the eyes, and peek through the holes. He would be the mysterious shifty-eyed spy seen in horror movies or the…
Long ago, there reigned a clan of Speedo-wearing militaristic psychopaths called the Spartans. They lived beneath a copper-colored sky, on a copper-colored land, amidst copper-colored fields, in copper-colored homes made from copper-colored stone. Legend has it they would outline their copper-colored pecs and abs with ash to enhance their manly…
