We’ve come to know an Annie Leibovitz photograph not by any particular style or photographic technique but by the combination of two relatively simple characteristics — if the photo is of a celebrity and said celebrity is doing something unusual or rather un-celebrity-like, then it must have come from the…
Besides the obvious mind alteration and outright brainwash inflicted upon all the video game-obsessed minions who populate the elementary schools and high schools across our country, a less virulent but sad phenomenon awaits them in adulthood. It has nothing to do with the usual criticisms of overhyped sex and violence…
Crumbs From the Table of Joy is far more insightful and entertaining than the archetypal African-American history play. I expected a wistful, nostalgic comedy, but Lynn Nottage’s rarely sentimental story — which Arizona Theatre Company opened at the Herberger last week — is a complex memory play that overcomes its…
Refreshingly, the biggest wonder about the new Arnold Schwarzenegger ride is not that human cloning has become a reality, or that the America of the future (“sooner than you think,” as an opening caption ominously suggests) very closely resembles present-day Vancouver, Canada. It’s not even that technological advances appear to…
No one likes to be seen as the roadblock to a revolution. The unfortunate soul–or the dumb bastard–who chooses to impede progress is likely to be mowed down by those charging toward tomorrow. He will become a thing to be wiped off the shoes of those who march, march, march…
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea. — Dylan Thomas, “Fern Hill”Dylan Thomas knew the harsh truth that childhood is nothing but a myth. No matter how much we…
It’s 1942, the final year of John Barrymore’s life, and we’ve joined the once-great actor in a tiny playhouse, where he’s come to recapture his former glory. Instead, he delivers a sodden recitation of his days as the clown prince of Broadway’s Royal Family, recalling many of his famous friends…
After kicking off with a cheerily conventional, highly entertaining Barber of Seville, Arizona Opera kicks its season into high gear with a superb, much less conventional staging of Carmen. Maybe because of its lurid tabloid plot, Bizet’s masterpiece, regarded as scandalous when it premièred just months before the composer’s death…
The soon-to-be-talked-about sensations in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream include three or four flashing, near-subliminal montages that combine an eye’s iris and dilating pupil; an extreme close-up of heroin cooking in a teaspoon, and a sucking hypodermic needle; a surpassingly frightening sequence in which Ellen Burstyn, in the midst…
November may mean Thanksgiving to most of you, but in the film biz it means a rush of “serious” films trying to gouge an impression into the short memories of Oscar voters. This shouldn’t be a bad thing, but since the relationship between “Oscar” and “actual interesting filmmaking” is nearly…
Early in Spanish director Carlos Saura’s stunning new film, the 82-year-old protagonist, the great 19th-century painter Francisco de Goya, awakens from a disturbing dream and rises to see an apparition of his lost love, the Duchess of Alba. Following her down a surrealistically white hallway, he suddenly finds himself outdoors…
The wonder of Solas, the latest in a growing list of remarkable Spanish films that have recently made their way to the U.S. (Butterfly and Goya in Bordeaux are also well worth seeing), is a courtly old gentleman referred to simply as “Neighbor.” Played to absolute perfection by Carlos Álvarez-Novoa,…
It’s a complicated — but worthwhile — weekend at the Tempe Improv. First of all, it’s truly improvisational: Sketch comedian Wayne Brady appears Thursday, November 9; Friday, November 10; and Sunday, November 12, at the Tempe Improv Comedy Theater.Brady has emerged as the most acclaimed of the performers on ABC’s…
Look up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Adriel Heisey, famed aerial photographer whose spreads have appeared in National Geographic, Arizona Highways and the Smithsonian. His unique method: He takes his Kolb Twinstar — a fold-up airplane that nestles nicely into his trailer, leaving no space…
Let’s get this out of the way right now, because so many of you will find this hard to believe: Yes, Mad magazine still exists. It is still being published 48 years after it was created by Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines, neither of whom lived long enough to see…
Rotting bodies, leering skulls, flickering candles, droopy roses — not one of these creaky, well-worn symbols for death and the passage of time makes an appearance in “Memento Mori,” the latest national juried exhibition organized by Mesa Contemporary Arts. Formerly operating under the name of Galeria Mesa, Mesa Contemporary Arts…
I stopped attending certain of our “little” theaters some years back. After seeing my share of creaky standards wrecked by bad acting and inept direction, I figured I’d done my duty and deserved a reprieve. But Phoenix Theatre has ended my respite with its current production of Arsenic and Old…
The Legend of Bagger Vance
Charlie’s Angels
Urbania
The Opportunists
Jackie Martling has a joke to tell you. Well, actually, he’s got a million of ’em. But none that we can actually tell you the punch line of. At least not in print. So as a public service, here are the setups to some of Jackie The Joke Man’s greatest…
