The lights go down, and the puzzlement begins. Ensemble cast of superstars? Check. Loose remake of amusing curiosity? Check. Built-in, prefab sense of cool? Check. A little something for wistful fans of Dino and Sammy? Check. So . . . wait a minute. Is this The Cannonball Run Redux?With his…
Of all the Japanese-made animated films to get a theatrical release in the United States in recent years, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is by far the most cinematic. It has a particular penchant for scenes that involve a major character being utterly dwarfed by some kind of fantastical building or…
The idea behind The Monkey Show Movie Theater — a place “to watch a really strange movie with a small and intimate audience” — is not a new one. But unless one considers X-rated theaters (where “intimate” is understood much differently), it is one that has been largely sidelined in…
Polish up your “La Bamba.” For the 10th year in a row, some of the top mariachi groups in the country are coming to Phoenix to help ring in the holiday season.The Christmas Mariachi Festival is “an explosion of music and color and pageantry,” reports Lorenzo Lucas, production manager for…
In 1978, I received an F on a high school English composition in which I wrote that the characters in the film Rebel Without a Cause were all losers. John, I wrote, was a babyish invert, too stupid to hide his crush on Jim, a loser whose idea of fun…
Though Behind Enemy Lines, set in Bosnia, was originally due for release next year, already it feels antiquated; that conflict is already a distant memory, a ghost lost in the shadow of the war on terrorism. The film tested so well that 20th Century Fox pushed up its release date,…
This is the true story of seven people (Tommy! Annie! Ashley! Maria! Griffin! Carpo! And Benjamin!) picked to live in a city and have their lives changed. Find out what happens when people stop being polite, and start being real. The Real World: Sidewalks of New York.If you came across…
Modern-day “high fashion” is presented with all the trimmings — modeled by Amazons in stilettos, sent down the catwalk to a throbbing beat. It’s certainly glamorous, but it’s still ready-to-wear, available off the rack to anyone with a titanium card. While the term haute couture is often used interchangeably with…
Natalie Merchant — blues singer? Maybe it’s a little premature for that kind of label, but for those who remember Merchant solely as the socially conscious lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs, her latest project, Motherland, might be a bit of a surprise. For the first time on record, she tries…
It is difficult to imagine a more timely film than Focus; certainly, its message about intolerance resonates in a post-September 11 world in ways the filmmakers never anticipated. Adapted from Arthur Miller’s little-known 1945 novel of the same title, Focus looks at what happens to a society when basically decent…
David Grisman and Jerry Garcia met as young folk-roots fans-cum-musicians attending a Bill Monroe concert in 1964. Garcia, as you may have heard, went on to form the Grateful Dead; when the Dead began to incorporate more country elements into their music, they used mandolin ace Grisman memorably on their…
Are you ready to testify?Even if you aren’t, the Joyous Voices Band and Choir are, and by the end of Oh Holy Night: A Gospel Christmas, chances are they’ll have you up on your feet, clapping and singing along to “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” That’s just what happens…
They’re tied for second in the toughest division in the country. Their rushing game plays out on the field like a fixed-bayonet charge. And their uniforms are flat-out bitchin’. But of all the immediate and inherently cool things that the Arizona Caliente have going for them, undoubtedly the coolest is…
Only a couple of months ago, it looked as though Donald Miller had a publishing home run on his hands–a thoughtful, exhilarating, inclusive book about World War II scheduled to hit stores just as Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ Band of Brothers was finishing its critically lauded run on HBO…
Whenever folks gripe about the dreary state of theater in our town — which happens as often as you’d imagine — I always point out that stage legends live and work here every day. I’m especially boastful about the fact that theater luminary Marshall Mason teaches at the local university,…
Lovely magic, this. An enchanting family classic. If you believe in magic, you’ll love Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. And if you don’t, you will, and you will. True, the hype has been a bit much. And, yes, a mad, desperate world choked with reproduction and reprobation could hardly…
It takes a nimble mind to mix light and dark, to wed humor with treachery, and in Novocaine newcomer David Atkins is not always up to the task. Neither is Steve Martin, who wants to be taken seriously while reserving the right to produce the occasional sick yuk. If you…
Consider the career options for a person with Legg-Calf Perthese disease. This rare form of arthritis affects the ball-and-socket joints of the hips, resulting in an inability to put any weight on your legs for anything but the briefest periods of time. Surely, work as a dancer and choreographer doesn’t…
The fliers for the art show “Quixotic,” which opens this Sunday, thoughtfully provide a definition of the show’s title, to aid the less-bookish of us: “adj. Extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary; impractical.” The dictionary adds a term, as well: “idealistic.” It’s those qualities that curator Matt Dickson says drive the…
An artist usually has to be stone cold dead before his work is ever shown in the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Photographer Joel-Peter Witkin, however, has managed to escape the bureaucratic guillotine and now stands among the handful of living artists whose work has been deemed important enough to…
Despite its somewhat labored Actors Theatre of Phoenix production, there’s plenty to recommend Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing. There’s the richness of its writing, the allure of its subject, and the astonishing range of emotions its people endure. This is the kind of play that used to be dubbed “a…
Natalie Merchant finished recording her third solo album, Motherland, on September 9, so by no means should anyone listen to the disc’s first song, “This House Is On Fire,” and think it has anything to do with hijacked airplanes, collapsed skyscrapers and the thousands buried beneath the rubble. The song…
