Few phenomena are as hugely popular and bitterly mocked as the Dance Dance Revolution series. That’s probably because humanity falls into two camps: fleet-footed whiz kids and rhythm-impaired klutzes. This reviewer falls into the latter category, despite having seen Riverdance an unhealthy number of times. For a game that’s mainly…
Mission: Impossible III: Special Edition (Paramount) On the commentary track, director J.J. Abrams and star Tom Cruise sound like they’ve fallen in love; you might say they complete each other’s sentences, except that’s just Cruise interrupting the Alias creator, who rescued a franchise by streamlining it, lightening it, brightening it,…
Fat Pig: Tom is surprised to find himself falling in love with Helen, an intelligent, witty, and very overweight librarian. His friends and colleagues don’t approve, and rather than forging ahead with a post-PC “love is love, darn it” attitude, he hides his romance with Helen in Neil LaBute’s sassy,…
Baywatch: Season 1 (First Look) The Benny Hill Collection (Music Video Dist.) CSI: Miami — The Complete Fourth Season (Paramount) Down to the Bone (Hart Sharp) Future-Kill: Limited Collector’s Edition (Subversive) Ghost in the Shell SAC: Complete Collection (Manga) The Ghost Whisperer: The Complete First Season (Paramount) Hardcastle and McCormick:…
There’s a new weekly Live Visual Art series, and it’s happenin’ at one of our favorite Roosevelt Row hangs: Carly’s Bistro. Enjoy the $3-glass-of-wine special, Trappist Monk brewskis, live painting by Lalo, and acoustic jams by singer-songwriter Doug Bale. Tuesdays, 9 p.m., 2006…
In early October, the Paper Heart announced its impending demise, and the country’s third-longest-running poetry slam folded after its longtime home, an independent coffee house in Mesa, went under. That same week, Phoenix City Council members approved a $900 million deal to build a mega-shopping district with condos, hotels and…
“I guess it doesn’t matter where I begin,” reasons the adult narrator of Running With Scissors, the inevitable Oscar contender adapted from Augusten Burroughs’ wacky memoir of coming out as a gay teen in his adoptive guru’s carnivalesque commune. “No one is gonna believe me anyway.” No one? In fact,…
There’s a scene about halfway through Catch a Fire during which freedom fighters — men and women, each boasting such nicknames as “Pete My Baby” and “Hot Stuff” — are being trained at an African National Congress safe house in Mozambique. Their ranks consist of South Africans who’ve been politicized…
The sex is real in John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus; only the setting — an animated New York cityscape, benignly watched over by a fluorescent Statue of Liberty — is fake. To an extent, that describes the movie: a sexually daring, dramatically timid roundelay that employs unsimulated twosomes, threesomes, and even…
Melissa McGurgan, 24, is a consummate perfectionist with OCD tendencies and a perky, polite façade she attributes to her upbringing in rural Georgia. Like most Southern girls, she likes bluegrass and soul food. But the bold, graphic installations she crafts speak more of urban design and liberal politics than country…
Viewed from an airplane high over the islands of San Esperito, the land seems to stretch out endlessly. The sun slowly rises over the ocean, bathing the clouds in ochre and throwing stark shadows on the lush jungle below. If only there were something worth doing down there. Welcome to…
Reservoir Dogs: 15th Anniversary (Lions Gate) Quentin Tarantino’s first film shows its age these days, mostly because we’ve seen all its tricks done far better by now. From the nonlinear storytelling to the pop-culture gabfests to the shameless cribbing from obscure films, everything that once seemed so shockingly fresh has…
The Addams Family: Season One (MGM) An American Haunting (Lions Gate) Astaire and Rogers: The Complete Film Collection (Warner Bros.) Freak-Out (Anchor Bay) Greg the Bunny: Best of the Film Parodies (Shout!) Justice League Unlimited: Season One (Warner Bros.) La Commune (Paris, 1871) (First Run) Looking for Kitty (Velocity/ThinkFilm) The…
“Artists of the Black Community” at West Valley Art Museum: Arizona’s African-American community offers a collection of paintings and sculptures as colorful as its members, eschewing muted Southwest pastels in favor of unconventional shades like amethyst and chartreuse. Every piece radiates with uninhibited energy, from Belinda Wilson’s stained-glass woman to…
David Salcido is big on titles. As a flack for Artists’ Theatre Project, the smallish local troupe he co-founded, he’s known as the Master of Hoopla and Revelries. At the underground zine Blue Food, he’s called the Chaos Coordinator. And in all seriousness, Salcido’s playbill bio refers to him as…
The Queen is more fun than any movie about the violent death of a 36-year-old woman has a right to be. It’s also as exotic an English-language picture as the season is likely to bring. Directed by Stephen Frears from Peter Morgan’s script, The Queen is set in the peculiar…
If the greatest magicians never reveal their tricks, then Christopher Nolan wouldn’t make it past the children’s birthday party circuit. It’s not that Nolan has anything against the old hocus-pocus, but it’s the practical side of magic that appeals to him most — the nuts-and-bolts explanation behind the seemingly “impossible”…
A single photograph, we’re told early on in Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, can win or lose a war. But sometimes, that photo shows us only part of the story, whether it’s the part we don’t want to see — slaughtered villagers at My Lai, tortured prisoners at Abu…
Drop-dead hip or cluelessly clueless? Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, a candy-colored portrait of France’s infamous teen queen, is a graceful, charming, and sometimes witty confection — at least for its first hour. The famously shy Coppola may be an inscrutable personality, but her bold exposé of backstage royalty opens with…
Front-loaded with family discord, terminal cancer, prodigal jailbait, a cute kiddy looking for love, and other accessories of the ready-to-wear soap opera, Zhang Yimou’s Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles is as heartfelt, sincere, and soggy with nostalgia as some of his other periodic homages to the virtues of peasant…
Thirty years ago, it was considered clever to spoof obscure science-fiction films. Stage musicals like The Rocky Horror Show and movies like Phantom of the Paradise were all the rage, and movie nerds who knew our George Pal and our Herschell Gordon Lewis felt vindicated in our passion for cheesy…
Listen up, P-Town peeps. When it comes to holidays, Halloween is the shizzle. What other day on the calendar allows you to transform yourself into a pimp, priest, or politician without getting glares from onlookers? Back during your juvie delinquent days, you spent most of the year agonizing over which…
