Molly Sweeney is blind. And she’s married to a windbag, a dorky bore who’s convinced her to undergo surgery to restore her eyesight. She’s lived a full, happy life in her native Ireland — at least until her meddlesome husband takes her on as his latest cause. The operation restores…
“Better than I thought it’d be,” was the refrain repeated by those exiting the preview screening of Guess Who, which doesn’t mean much — freebie audiences expect nothing and usually receive it. But in this case, it neatly summed up the experience of catching Ashton Kutcher in a part once…
Damian Cunningham has the face of an angel — calm and cool blue eyes perched above freckled cheeks and a benevolent grin — which is only appropriate for a 7-year-old boy who speaks with the late, great saints, among them Peter, Joseph, Claire, and, of course, Francis of Assisi. Damian…
Call it the naked truth. Although depictions of the bare-assed male form throughout history have always had more than a hint of homosexuality — from Grecian urns to the works of Michelangelo and Raphael — Wim Griffith rebukes the stigma that only the swishy set is interested in peeping paintings…
A Canadian lass once wrote a song that millions starving for a catchy melody thought was solid gold. But mostly, her ode to occasions she thought were ironic was really a tune about things that just kinda suck, plain and simple. So how’s this for irony? An artsy rock trio,…
SAT 3/26 Little girls love their fairy tales of Prince Charmings, glass slippers and magic wands. But Erin Smith wasn’t a typical little girl. When her elementary school teachers wanted her to read “Cinderella,” she read the “twisted” version from Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes instead. Now 17, the senior at…
SAT 3/26 If your heart goes fluttery at the scent of dusty blue chalk, and beats to the cracking sound of a cue ball barreling through a triangle of solids and stripes, then you need to see how it’s done “Sledgehammer” and “Assassin”-style at the Women’s Pro Shootout, Saturday, March…
SAT 3/26 How do you make a guy think about horses while watching nude cabaret? “Well, that’s not really the point,” says Janie Wiseman, a manager at Christie’s Cabaret, 44 North 32nd Street, which is hosting “Girls! Girls! Girls!”, a benefit for Wildhorse Ranch Rescue, on Saturday, March 26, starting…
THU 3/24 Arthur Edwards, the ex-Refreshments’ bassist turned novelist, provides a diversion for summer-scorned Phoenicians in his book Stuck Outside of Phoenix. With triple-digit temperatures quickly approaching our soon-to-be-burning hell, escape sounds like heaven on Earth. Sadly, though, engaged readers who participate in Edwards’ intricate plot will be taken far,…
Punk rock, baby. It’s been one of those weeks where nothing seems to be getting my joystick hard. It’s probably because I’m still down from this surgery I had, but, well, I just can’t get my mojo working. As Elvis would say, “my stuff.” It’s just kinda flaccid. The biggest…
“Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life”: Designers get stereotyped as unexciting pragmatists, but this exhibition of fashion, architecture and product design from around the world shows that sly social commentary can be slipped into ordinary objects. Works in the 45-piece show range from Constantin and Laurene Leon Boym’s Buildings of…
THU 17 Believe it or not, we capitalist pigs get it right once in a while. For example: a little thing called electricity, the assembly line, and, uh, belly-dancing. True, belly-dancing was originally a gift from the Turks, but it took American innovation in the form of Hollywood know-how to…
About one week out of major abdomen surgery, it starts. Not the pain, or my clock-watching hours of when I could take my next pain pill. No, that would have been easy. A week after they gutted me like a pig, Nick, my visiting 74-year-old stepdad, starts in with the…
You shouldn’t know from Sunday morning AM radio — with maybe one exception. Too Jewish With Rabbi Sam Cohon and Friends, which debuted here last month, is fast becoming a guilty pleasure among Jews and gentiles alike. The 3-year-old Tucson-based program, which can be heard Sunday mornings at 7 on…
John Nelson, 48, renowned outsider artist, creates primitive acrylic and collage-on-wood-panel works inspired by puns and word play that strike his fancy. Nelson’s new show, “VACANCY (at the Madson Hotel),” is a collaboration with writer Eric Susser about a metaphorical transient hotel where sad, sick people (representing you and me…
Perhaps in honor of the fourth anniversary of Cher’s farewell tour, MGM recently released a DVD edition of Chastity, the 1969 stink bomb featuring the singer’s first dramatic role. Shot entirely in Phoenix, this long-lost indie (for which Cher’s daughter is named) was written, produced, scored, and some claim directed…
A cynic might describe movies as the most depraved and fantastic system of exploitation ever devised. After all, they trade on the greed and hubris of financiers, the beauty and allure of stars, and the trust (or, if you prefer, gullibility) of the audience. No one involved in the process…
Rated R.
Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s Steamboy will be released nationwide in both subtitled and dubbed versions. At the press screening, both were shown simultaneously in neighboring theaters, leaving the reviewer to choose which one to see. Your critic went with the subtitled cut, not purely for reasons of cinematic snobbery, but mostly because…
The Upside of Anger belongs to Joan Allen, who plays Terry Wolfmeyer, a wife abandoned by her husband and left to pick up the pieces and collect them in a giant bottle of vodka. Terry’s is the cold, composed visage of a woman struggling to keep it together; through her…
The Ring, Gore Verbinski’s 2002 remake of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, offered sufficient closure that it didn’t exactly demand a sequel. The horror lay in wondering why a mysterious videotape kills viewers seven days after they watch it; to a lesser extent, there was the mystery of the creepy girl, face…
You’d think your own brother wouldn’t bust your watermelon. Produce-pulverizing comedian Gallagher didn’t have a problem with his younger brother, Ron, touring as a Gallagher impersonator, as long as Ron didn’t perform Gallagher’s signature move: smashing watermelons with a sledgehammer at the end of the show. But things got messy…
