There are countless ways to understand a foreign culture, such as through the language, food or religion. But François Diene, translator for the West African dance troupe Le Ballet National du Senegal, sums up his homeland very directly: “Africa is dance.” While the young performers working with Diene represent the…
Two years ago, Wayne Brady and I shared a moment. During a Friday-night gig at the Tempe Improv, he pulled me onstage, asked me a handful of questions and performed an impromptu song about my so-called life. As viewers of ABC’s Whose Line Is It Anyway? know, Brady can sing…
“If the public’s not interested, they don’t have to buy!” sneers aging spoiled brat Amber (Madonna) to her uber-wealthy, idiotic friends in Swept Away — and for a few minutes, it’s tempting to use the line against both her and this seemingly noxious vanity project. Advance buzz for this remake…
In the last few years — more or less since the failure of his embarrassing Joan of Arc epic The Messenger — former wunderkind director Luc Besson has become a fantastically prolific writer/producer. (The IMDB claims he has nine projects lined up for next year.) His latest, The Transporter –…
So every dog really does have his day — we had no idea the expression would prove so literal. On the local level, that day is Saturday, October 12, when some of the Valley’s most enthusiastic party animals are unleashed in Mesa’s Cooley Park for Barktoberfest 2002. A celebration of…
His business card reads “Gil Gordon-Hall, Intuitive,” but the one-time restaurateur is better known these days for finessing the spiritual energy of local businessmen. Gordon-Hall is a feng shui master who specializes in tweaking the yin and yang of corporate types who believe that where they park their Rolodex will…
This is a season of big ideas at the ASU Art Museum. Sex, self, gender, time — take your pick. If you don’t walk out of these shows thinking, you might need a box of mental floss. Begin with Janis Lewin’s “The Aftermath (9/11).” You may feel as if you’ve…
Bell, Book and Candle is a fusty perennial of high school drama clubs and community playhouses, a ’50s parlor comedy that’s not particularly funny. Theater Works, for unfathomable reasons, has mounted a production of this programmer that’s every bit as phony as the stuffed cat the lead actress drags around…
Good Lord, there hasn’t been this much blond hair on screen since the Von Trapp children sang and danced their way across the Alps in The Sound of Music. The fact that these latest golden locks belong to the likes of Michelle Pfeiffer, Robin Wright Penn and Renée Zellweger suggests…
Like a celluloid black sheep in a world of fluffy white feature films, the unsung short film tends to flirt with disaster — taking more risks, breaking more rules, and often deliberately throwing viewers off guard in ways that features rarely do. With so much to prove in five minutes…
I figured I wouldn’t like Nova Gyna. I confess to being creeped out by the whole he/she thing, which Nova Gyna (pronounced “no vagina,” and Latin for “new woman”) writes about in her new book, The Occasional Woman. I expected to find a scary drag queen, maybe even one of…
I’ve begun to wonder how it would be to see a mediocre production of Angels in America. Somehow, I’ve only seen resplendent, near-perfect stagings of this new American classic, most recently Actors Theatre’s current production of both halves of the eight-hour play. Angels in America, for the uninitiated, is two…
Brad Silberling’s instincts are right about half the time, which means that, depending upon your point of view, his films are either half-empty or half-full. His last picture, 1998’s City of Angels, an American remake of Wim Wender’s poetic Wings of Desire, tried to marry European art house cinema with…
Ordinarily, it would seem pretty odious to put so fine a point on this, but what the hey: Gather up your gay friends, because here’s a movie they’re going to dig, dig, dig. Probably, anyway. That general demographic seems to be the target audience of the radical, whimsical French import…
I might as well just come out and say it: Spirited Away is the best movie I’ve seen all year. Though it would be a masterpiece in any language, Hayao Miyazaki’s animated spectacular (and Japan’s highest-grossing film ever) is being released by Disney simultaneously in two versions — one in…
Blackalicious is a hip-hop group for people who don’t necessarily like hip-hop, as well as for people who do. Their new CD, Blazing Arrow, is, among other things, melodic, funny, clever, creative and spirited, with nary a hint of the puffed-up rancor that plagues so much of the genre. It…
At a time when skateboarding godfather Tony Hawk is as much a celebrity as pro baseball player Tony Womack, all things “extreme” seem to be taking over 21st-century sports, and the once narrow definition of “athlete” is being expanded to include anyone willing to go faster, higher and harder, with…
After 21 years in the business of printing art, Joe Segura has moved his inventory and his presses from Tempe, where they occupied a small, relatively isolated cinder-block building, into an airy, surprisingly quiet space along Mesa’s Main Street. Sandwiched between Shanghai Express on one side and the temporary home…
In a dark bar, two men are conversing. One of them, a politician, is telling the other, his campaign manager, about a recent rendezvous with a third man, a sexy but unscrupulous fellow with whom the politician is smitten. Suddenly, the politician says to his companion, “Let me show you…
I dreamed I was in a nude cabaret with a married couple I didn’t know. They wanted to tell me about a new book they’d written, but it was hard to communicate because the music was loud and we were distracted by the naked lady who was rubbing her crotch…
Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is released from a mental institution the day of her older sister’s wedding. One afternoon with her dysfunctional family and she’s ready for rehab again. No such luck, however, so instead, Lee turns — or returns — to her favorite pastime: self-mutilation. Based on a short…
So there’s no confusion, the star of Sweet Home Alabama is Reese Witherspoon, who graces the film’s poster in full-body pout and appears on the press kit in close-up mug-shot smirk; any closer, and we’d shoot up her nostrils and exit through her pores. Of course, there’s a great deal…
