It was to have been a routine stop on a routine press tour, yet another town in which the actress was to show up, chit and chat with the local media about her movie, then move on — the traveling salesman getting the word out, moving The Product. Denver, Dallas,…
In Ira Levin’s stage mystery Deathtrap, a playwright glumly declares a rival’s play so good that a talented director couldn’t hurt it. That’s how good the best works of Gilbert and Sullivan are. Take, for instance, The Gondoliers, or The King of Barataria. Not, perhaps, on the level of The…
It’s almost impossible to know what to make of Monkeybone after one viewing; there’s so much going on in this dreamland of stop-motion and computer-generated animation and celebrity cameos that you have trouble keeping up with it. Indeed, like a half-remembered dream, the movie’s often so overwhelming that even its…
Every year that I’ve gone to Spike & Mike’s Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation, I’ve done so with less enthusiasm, not because the fest that discovered Beavis and Butthead and South Park has gotten any worse, or any more shocking, but because I’ve become more acutely aware of the…
Because nothing says “unlimited potential” quite like a cold, dead fish, it is perhaps not obvious that your best option, when confronted with one, is to bury it in cat litter.Such practical advice is the subject of “Mummify a Fish,” which, although it would be a great name for a…
The opening reception for “For Adults Only” at Eleven East Ashland looks like a house party, with people mingling on the porch drinking cheap Chardonnay from plastic cups. I slide through the front door without pausing to drop a donation, somehow convinced that everything’s going to be perverted, maybe even…
Early last November, in a vacant area of the Glendale swap mart, the most important underground hip-hop event of the year kicked off, and chances are you heard nothing about it. The fourth annual Styles Crew Anniversary Show didn’t attract crowds of Power 92 listeners, DMX fans, club kids or…
The parade of classic characters from the pen of William Shakespeare is seemingly endless. During the relatively brief span of 24 years (roughly 1589 to 1613), he gave the world an entire universe of unforgettable creations. The list of well-loved characters includes the conflicted Prince of Denmark named Hamlet, the…
Sometimes, usually out on the golf course near his home in upstate New York, Dan DeCarlo feels terrific, far younger than his 81 years. He’ll thwack the ball, reflect upon his 55 years of marriage to the same beautiful woman, and occasionally contemplate a life spent drawing and creating some…
To look at her, Phoenix painter Sue Chenoweth — an indefatigably cheerful 47-year-old married mother of two teenagers — doesn’t strike you as a stereotypically introspective, visionary artist type. But the frenzied mixed-media paintings of this Valley artist, now on exhibit through February 27 at Modified in central Phoenix, underscore…
“Craft” has proven to be a remarkably elastic term. Once a relatively taut label for useful objects made by hand, it has been stretched by artists in the past half-century to cover an ever-widening array of things made mostly to be seen. Just how wide an array is apparent in…
Those of us foolish enough to have left our handkerchiefs at home exited last week’s matinee of Wit wet-faced and weary. Arizona Theatre Company’s production of this extraordinary play, which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1999, is an emotionally exhausting hour and a half.Both entertaining and intellectually challenging,…
Sara is quirky and free-spirited. That, at least, is the premise of the hilariously wretched new weepie Sweet November, of which Sara, embodied by the breathtaking Charlize Theron, is the heroine.But if you’re smart enough to run in terror at the threat of a movie character who’s quirky and free-spirited,…
Lance Barton, thin as paper and frail as fine china, is such a horrific standup that during an amateur-night performance at the Apollo Theater, he is booed with so much force — the audience whips up its own whirlwind — he’s literally knocked off the stage. Lance’s manager insists he’s…
February film festival fever forges forward. So, am I ready for Variety?This week it’s the fifth annual Out Far! Phoenix International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, running Thursday, February 15, through Sunday, February 18, at AMC Arizona Center, 565 North Third Street. Here’s a day-by-day rundown: Thursday, February 15: The…
There he is, his eyes and body language as unmistakable as the flattened hat perched perfectly on his head. This little man in the shabby suit looks older than his 66 years — he looks ageless, actually — yet he performs physical feats beyond the capability of most people 40…
When the lights finally came up in the Washington, D.C., movie theater, Leonard Nimoy sat still, silent and a bit shaken. He could scarcely believe what he had seen — and what he had not seen. The movie was beautiful, but beneath the surface sheen, there was no heart, no…
Deep in hyperspace, there’s a climactic battle brewing with damning implications for the rest of the universe. The insidious space pirate Red Worm, on orders from the evil High Lord Ook-Nod-Zeek-Oot, is fighting to take possession of the Wave Twister, a powerful scratch weapon from ancient times. The Inner Space…
I’ve been dodging invitations to see the Oxymoron’Z improvisational troupe for nearly a decade. The materials, faxed or sometimes mailed to me by the group’s founder and guru, Louis Anthony Russo, promised “great big laughs” and “spontaneous fun.” It sounded to me like quite the opposite, and year after year…
Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, with a screenplay by David Mamet and Steven Zaillian, is being released exactly 10 years after The Silence of the Lambs, the film that established Hannibal Lecter as an iconic villain in our culture, right up there with A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, Friday the…
The man who made Problem Child, Beverly Hills Ninja and Brain Donors — movies that are to humor what Robert Downey Jr. is to clean living — has, perhaps all too explicably, become Hollywood’s most coveted and celebrated comedic director. “From the director of Big Daddy” — so blares the…
Once again, February is proving to be film-festival season here in the Valley — contained in this shortest month in the calendar are six, count ’em, six, highly diverse cinema smorgasbords. Last weekend was New Times’ very own Flashback Filmfest, year two, and this week marks the inaugural of an…
