In an age when televised car chases are a staple on the local news — edging out coverage of murders and the latest political bungle — Phoenix is proud to own perhaps the most sensational footage ever broadcast. It’s a chase so spectacular that it made an international celebrity of…
Five years ago, this interview would have been such the big deal—the coup of the year, the elusive great white at last wriggling on the hook. At least, that’s how she was treated back then, when she still took her meals in that velvet closet. She attracted the spotlight (some…
When I first reviewed Joe Marshall’s Dirty Secrets three years ago, I was wowed by the smart story but lamented the second-rate acting of that particular production. Little has changed on either front with this show, which Alternative Theater Company has remounted at On the Spot playhouse, the scene of…
The plot of The Bourne Identity is astonishingly straightforward. It is bereft of twists (instead, we’re offered tangible explanations), free of the gaping plot holes that swallow confused viewers, and absent the cynical machinations of filmmakers who believe that, to entertain, it’s necessary to also bamboozle. This adaptation of Robert…
The opening credit sequence of Windtalkers — a montage of Monument Valley — instantly invokes memories of the opening of John Woo’s immediately previous film, Mission: Impossible 2, in which Tom Cruise was dangling off a rock. It is the last moment of similarity between the two. Windtalkers is a…
There’s more than meets the eye in the thought-provoking artworks included in one of Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art’s current exhibitions, “Quartet,” a collection of works by four Arizona-based artists. Although their styles differ, these artists share an intimate role in the subtle revelation of nature’s mysteries. Kate Breakey’s four…
When warehouse manager Patrick Kellum got married, he did so dressed as “Wild Bill” Hickok, with his wife Chris done up as Sally Jensen. When a friend “objected” to the marriage, they gunned him down during the ceremony. Such is life for a gunfighter. Since 1993, The Arizona Gunfighters, who…
It’s one of the great ironies of the modern-day smut biz that it took a boob burglar like Joe Francis to shake Hugh Hefner’s once-mighty empire to its creaky knees. Francis is all of 28, which means he wasn’t born the first time Hef bagged triplets on the merry-go-round bed…
Pity Rico Burton: She’s working double-time to keep Black Theatre Troupe’s new show afloat. If Cookin’ at the Cookery were a one-woman tribute to Alberta Hunter, and not a musical biography of the legendary blues singer-songwriter, it might qualify as a success. But a ponderous script and deadly direction doom…
It’s no surprise that Louisiana-born novelist Rebecca Wells has seen her wildly popular books translated into 18 languages, with no less than 6 million copies in print. She’s no deep-thinking stylist, but she has an unfailing gift for injecting Southern sentimentality, low-grade neurosis and mischievous charm into stories that deftly…
So this is what it’s come to: another week, another terrorist-with-a-suitcase-nuke movie. Last Friday, it was up to Ben Affleck to save the world from nuclear annihilation, an unsavory proposition. He succeeded, but not before the Super Bowl disappeared in a holocaust flash. This Friday, it’s Chris Rock’s turn to…
When English playwright Harold Pinter wrote his dark comedy Hothouse in the winter of 1958, he shelved it as a “fantasy.” But in 1980, he pulled it off the shelf, as the newly exposed reality of the mental health system made it suddenly relevant. Twenty-two years later, it’s being offered…
It’s going to be a banner season for comic characters, and if the pun in that phrase eludes you, you have a lot of catching up to do. But those who are familiar with Bruce Banner, a.k.a. The Incredible Hulk, might want to attend the first Phoenix Cactus Comicon on…
There has always been something infuriating, if not appalling, about killing thousands of people in the name of blockbuster entertainment. Before September 11, no one thought much about it. Audiences accepted wholesale slaughter on the big screen because they knew there would be some sort of payoff — revenge, redemption,…
Quick! Name a brilliant mathematician at one of the country’s leading academic institutions who, despite obvious emotional problems that keep him on the edge of a nervous breakdown, is enlisted by his government to decipher seemingly impenetrable military communications that the enemy sends to its operatives around the world. If…
The plot of The Importance of Being Earnest, for those unfortunates who’ve missed it these past 109 years, goes something like this: A dandified London wastrel by the name of Algernon (Algy) Moncrieff (portrayed in this adaptation by Rupert Everett) welcomes into his chambers his friend and ally, Ernest (Colin…
Russel Simmons is hip-hop’s O.G. mogul — he was running the game before P. Diddy and Master P were outta diapers. Twenty-five years ago, Simmons began his extremely lucrative relationship with rap music, managing, producing, and releasing records by artists like Run-D.M.C. (of which baby brother Joseph “Reverend Run” Simmons…
You would think that in a sprawling megatropolis like the Valley of the Sun, with its high concentration of Chicano residents, some elements of modern Chicano popular music — alternative, punk rock, metal — would filter into the public consciousness at least to a nominal degree. Doesn’t seem to be…
With some effort, I remained awake throughout Theater Works’ production of Triumph of Love the other night. The lucky ladies on my left, who snoozed all through Act One, were spared the two head-splitting hours of “entertainment” that have haunted me ever since. Triumph of Love is a translation of…
When this column began at the beginning of 2000, readers and editors scoffed at its occasional subject matter, the comic book. Kids’ stuff, they growled, junk food for adults who still live in their parents’ basements. And maybe they were right back then. The industry was dying; the art form…
Thirty-four years later, Carson has returned to the school to deliver a series of lectures on the power of fable and film as metaphor, and he asked Coppola, whose film was partially inspired by David Holzman, to join him. Carson—who appears in Coppola’s feature debut, CQ, and who helped Roman…
Idon’t know that I’ve seen a show all season that I’ve enjoyed as much as Sophisticated Ladies, which is currently whirling its way flawlessly across Phoenix Theatre’s main stage. I confess to being surprised. I’ve seen more musicals upended on this company’s stage than I care to remember — but…
