Sean Penn began 2001 by directing one of the year’s most deeply felt films, The Pledge, in which a frazzled, disconnected Jack Nicholson played a retired cop obsessed with solving the rape and murder of a young girl. A year later, he’s acting in one of the most woefully manipulative…
For all of their soaring, daredevilish feats, motocross racers sure have a way of getting down and dirty when it comes to scrambling around the track. Watch the dust fly on Saturday, January 26, when the 2002 EA Sports Supercross Series brings 125cc and 250cc cycle action to Bank One…
Quick. Name the five top dance companies in the United States today. Personally, it would be difficult to choose only five, but if pressed, I’d say the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, White Oak Dance Project, Paul Taylor Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre, and Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG). If your…
Talk long enough with any television exec over 55, and sooner or later he’ll get around to mentioning the La Brea Tar Pits, that enormous shimmering stinkhole in Los Angeles where the liquefied remains of some 660 species of organisms still burble. These old-timers, with skin light brown and pockets…
Frank Kopyc’s performance as Eliza Doolittle’s loutish father is one of many treats in Arizona Theater Company’s production of My Fair Lady. His rousing “With a Little Bit of Luck” and comical “Get Me to the Church on Time” are both showstoppers, played with such joyous oomph that it’s almost…
It should be so easy to hate this man sitting on a couch in a high-priced hotel suite, this man sharing his bottle of Evian. He is, after all, a demon dressed head to toe (or tail?) in slate gray, the Satan of Cinema. Attacking him has long been regular…
Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, based on reporter Mark Bowden’s factual account of a 1993 U.S. Army operation gone dreadfully awry in Somalia, doesn’t just kick your ass. It pummels your entire body; it leaves you trembling. Once the premise and setting are established, this brutal combat adventure doesn’t catch…
Attended by a rather sexy air of intrigue, the hit French film Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte Des Loups) arrives upon our shores, and, refreshingly, it’s left up to us to figure out just what the hell it is. Monster movie? Costume drama? Martial-arts extravaganza? To say the least,…
Screw the Duff — when Groundskeeper Willie is lookin’ to get his swerve on, he’s likely to be sipping one of the arse-kickin’ brews featured at the second annual Strong Beer & Ale Festival, put on by the Arizona Craft Brewers Guild at Papago Brewing Company in Scottsdale. The libations…
People assume that big spenders head to Las Vegas for high-rolling, hedonistic pleasure. That may be true some of the time, but for four frenzied days every January, Scottsdale becomes the planet’s prime destination for elite car connoisseurs prepared to duel it out to purchase amazing autos. The Barrett-Jackson Classic…
It’s a good thing you’ve found your way here, because not only will you be informed of much to anticipate in the cinematic year ahead, you’ll be kept safe from those nincompoop mainstream critics who have already pre-mailed their annual comment cards to the studios, arbitrarily checking off words like…
Cate Blanchett can do no wrong, but even she can’t save Charlotte Gray, a World War II drama that never rises above the level of a 1950s-era adolescent romance novel. The Australian-born actress, who should have won an Academy Award for her performance in 1998’s Elizabeth, plays the titular character,…
There’s no need to suffer from cabin fever in January in the Valley of the Sun. This weekend, you can get out of the house and satisfy your cultural curiosity at the 10th annual West Valley Invitational Native American Arts Festival in Litchfield Park.More than 200 Native American artists will…
Can you think of a better way to spend a winter Arizona afternoon than by taking a leisurely stroll through a park? It sounds picturesque enough, but there sure is one way to top it — if the park is bustling with festival activities and if it’s an official pit…
You might be tempted to give Ugandan-born Namu Lwanga one of those trendy hyphenated career titles, like “singer-dancer-actress-musician.” But that kind of job description still isn’t enough to sum up her accomplishments.Perhaps “Renaissance woman” is the most accurate label for Lwanga, who is the founder and director of the Kayaga!…
Normally, these year-in-TV columns are a breezy, easy write–a plea for good shows buried somewhere in an embittered litany of bad ones. In recent years, it has felt as though the proliferation of channels and choices has given us only more of the wretched and less of the watchable; satellite…
In time, 2001 might well be remembered as the year of the overhyped and undercooked, the year storybook wizards cast spells to eradicate critical good judgment, the year from which there was so much detritus to choose that much of the good stuff makes a best-of list only by default…
Got a New Year’s resolution to get out a little more in 2002? Here’s your chance to get a hefty dose of schmoozing, courtesy of ArtLink’s monthly First Fridays. The year’s inaugural event will showcase about 30 downtown Phoenix galleries for a roving night of art and adventure.ArtLink insiders recommend…
When he first auditioned for Any Given Sunday director Oliver Stone to play quarterback Willie Beamen, an embittered bench-warmer prone to fits of vomiting before each snap, Jamie Foxx was sure he’d blown it. Stone, as subtle as an ice pick to the cornea, said as much–loud enough so Foxx,…
Appropriately, A Beautiful Mind does not offer a literal translation of the life of John Forbes Nash Jr., the mathematician whose work on game theories won him a Nobel prize in 1994. The film leaves out significant events, people and places; it amalgamates central figures, disguises prominent locations and hides…
College football’s bowl days are here, those glorious excuses to sit on your ass in front of the tube and drink beer through game after game after game. But since you’re in the Valley of the Sun, you can get off your duff and go catch a bowl game firsthand…
