“The Rock” — formerly known as “Flex Kavana” and, a bit later, as “Rocky Maivia” — was a practicing actor long before he turned to movies and started taking down $12 million paychecks. The happily deluded throngs who used to watch him lay signature moves like the People’s Elbow or…
Among documentary muckrakers, Kirby Dick may not be as righteously indignant as Michael Moore or as brilliantly droll as Nick Broomfield. But say this for the maker and star of This Film Is Not Yet Rated: He’s not afraid to soil his hands to get the story. Rummaging through the…
Usually when indie filmmakers get a little street cred, they head for Hollywood or start scouting a bigger distribution deal. Not Phoenix film writer/director Craig McMahon, who’s made a name for himself in independent horror film circles with straight-to-DVD movies like Creep and Laws of Deception. Despite a defiantly snarky…
What could be more fun than monkeys trapped in plastic hamster balls? That’s the strange philosophy of Super Monkey Ball, a puzzle series that debuted in 2001. Much as with Marble Madness, the goal here is to cross the finish line without falling off a floating platform. Except that this…
I Am a Sex Addict (IFC) Caveh Zahedi has made a movie of our times — a strange mix of self-absorption, shamelessness in the pursuit of fame, and sex. Most shocking of all is that it works. Part fiction and documentary, confessional and comedy, the film traces the history of…
“Safe and Sound” at The Lords of Art Town: Artists Sukhvir Gill and Erika Palomares expand preconceived notions of bondage photography with this exhibition focusing on rope as an instrument of security rather than titillation. In Eternal Life, Palomares captures the hope of an ethereal beauty holding a glass jar,…
Ballets Russes (Zeitgeist) The Batman: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros.) Beavis and Butt-head Do America: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) Bottoms Up (Sony) Disney Princess Stories, Volume 1: A Gift From the Heart (Disney) The Girls (New Yorker) Goal! The Dream Begins (Disney) Grey’s Anatomy: Season 2 Uncut (Buena Vista)…
Tiny fragments of fractured machines, antique medical tools, pill bottles, bleached animal bones. These are some of the ingredients composing the bizarre boxlike found-object sculptures of Chris Caufield, 38. Looking like something outta the Nine Inch Nails music vid “Closer,” these kooky contraptions (frequently lighted with neon tubes) evoke an…
If Superman Returns attempted to resurrect the Man of Steel as mythic hero, the season’s other Superman movie wants to disabuse us of any such childish illusions. Glamorously adult, Hollywoodland purports to part the veil on the circumstances by which George Reeves, the actor who embodied the superhero on ’50s…
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an entire generation of middle-aged men who refuse to believe that the actor who played the original Superman could have killed himself! Okay, so maybe they’re not up in the sky. Mostly they’re on the Internet, swapping conspiracy…
A number of pregnant mysteries arise with the new remake of Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult-remembered genre work The Wicker Man — namely, what’s in this kind of malarkey for gender-combat provocateur Neil LaBute, and why was such a high-profile film tossed into theaters last Friday without letting critics see it…
The good news is that no theater company has announced a production of Cats this season. The bad news is that every single other tired old musical ever written will make its way to local stages over the next several months. Surprise! And welcome to the 2006-2007 theater season, which…
The mall in Dead Rising is pretty much like any other you’ve visited. There’s a bunch of women’s clothing stores, a movie theater, and of course the obligatory food court. The only real difference is that it’s teeming with enough zombies to fill a stadium. Dead Rising opens with freelance…
United 93 (Universal) A suggestion to those who’ve put off watching the year’s most wrenching and essential film: Before rolling the feature, first watch the documentary in which the families of those who died on the plane give the filmmakers their blessing, without reservation. If the mother, father, and sister…
Pearls: Motherhood Unstrung: This tribute to moms and momism is culled from a collection of essays by the students of Mothers Who Write, a creative writing workshop for mothers sponsored by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. The play incorporates pieces both comic and tragic about divorce, finding God, and…
The Abbott and Costello Show: 100th Anniversary Collection, Season One (Passport) Ace Ventura Deluxe Double Feature (Warner Bros.) Amarcord: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) Anne of Avonlea (Koch Vision) Blade Runner: Director’s Cut (Warner Bros.) Broken Trail (Sony) Clive Barker’s The Plague (Sony) Commander in Chief: 2-Disc Inaugural Edition Part 2…
No matter how many camera angles and whiz-bang graphics TV can provide, there’s no better way to get a feel for the life of our professional football players than with a Cardinals Stadium Public Tour. “Attendees [get] a behind-the-scenes look at this world-class facility, and will visit a suite, the…
“A Sense of Place” at Herberger Theater Center: The Herberger’s collection of interior and exterior landscapes is about one thing: location, location, location. Much like the real estate market, it’s a mixed bag. Painter Christine Kierstead transcends ordinary pastel landscapes by illuminating the highlights cast on desert rocks at dusk…
Photographer Michel Sarda began his career as an architect in Paris. He moved to Phoenix in 1984 after attending the New York Institute of Photography, where his artistic focus shifted from towering edifices to the architecture of the human form. After nearly two decades of capturing graceful bodies and dancers…
Paris-based photographer Maurice Sherif is great at showing viewers everything by showing them nothing at the same time. Unlike “Lumière Mètallique,” a Tilt Gallery exhibition in August showcasing Sherif’s large-format silver gelatin images captured in Paris’ architecturally grandiose environment, “Variation Con Intensita” illustrates complex and detailed minimalism. Gone are the…
By the time Trust the Man opens this weekend, it will have been nearly a year since it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was picked up for distribution by Fox Searchlight. Forget that it’s a year old; this thing tastes a good decade past its expiration…
I hate dogs. It’s one of several things about me that people point to as proof that I’m not a human being. But I have my reasons for recoiling at the sight (and smell!) of nearly every canine I’ve ever come across. Like the fact that an especially large, brutish…
