Elizabeth Egloff’s The Swan is a terrible play. Poorly written and stuffed with repetitive dialogue, it stands stock-still, flapping its wings but never taking off. And in its Ensemble Theatre production, the program is — with one important exception — inexpertly acted. That exception, Ken Matthews’ remarkable performance in the…
The title of the 1971 Gordon Parks detective movie Shaft worked as a double-entendre — when it presented Richard Roundtree’s “black private dick” John Shaft as a superstud at whom women of every race threw themselves, it wasn’t hard to believe. The joke changes when the name is given to…
So, when was the last time you shared a woman with your dad? No, not your mom — don’t be gross. You know, just some woman that you and your dad both dug, who perked you up a bit. It’s probably been a while, huh? What? Never? Really? Well, that…
It’s the year 3028, and man . . . is an endangered species! (Haven’t we heard that somewhere before, like last month?)But this time around, the threat is a little more intimidating than those effeminate, Xenu-worshiping Conehead psychologists in platform boots. The villains in Fox’s new animated spectacular Titan A.E…
Ah, summer — everywhere else in the country, it’s the sweet season of iced tea and bikinis and electric floor fans. But in central Arizona, iced tea is perennial, bikinis equal melanoma and electric floor fans are roughly as effective as they would be on the equator of the planet…
It is nearly 30 years ago. As the movie begins, we see Richard Roundtree walk along New York City streets while Isaac Hayes asks some female backing singers a series of questions that all have the same answer. “Who’s the black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the…
Before we see anything in Croupier, the new film from director Mike Hodges and screenwriter Paul Mayersberg, we hear the grainy whir of the ball spinning around the rim of a roulette wheel. When the image of the wheel appears, the sound drops out, to be replaced by the affectless…
Blink — or, more likely, doze — and you will miss it, this tiny, beautiful oasis in the middle of an otherwise barren wasteland. For a moment — a precious, frustrating moment to be treasured in a movie that flaunts its disposability — Nicolas Cage reminds us how good an…
For years, there has been a hole in the cultural landscape of the Valley of the Sun. We have nationally recognized art museums, history museums, children’s museums, science centers, theaters and symphonies, as well as every professional team sport, but we have never had a natural history museum. Where can…
It’s not like those intrepid theatergoers here in the desert don’t have plenty of chances to brush up on their Shakespeare. Season after season, they can choose from a dozen productions of timeless goodies penned by the fellow from that Gwyneth Paltrow flick, but unfortunately, it seems that local copies…
His name appears in almost every book written about Groucho Marx, so much so, he has been given the appropriate appellation by members of the Marx family: Wesso. But Paul Wesolowski is of no relation to the famous clan. He’s a man in his 40s who lives outside Philadelphia and,…
Summer comes with the cultural expectation that the farther you travel, the better the art gets. Mexico City, New York, Europe and Asia prove that equation. But cultural tourism in Phoenix’s west side remains a mystifying exception.That’s partly why “Three Generations of Great Masters of Mexican Painting,” at ASU West,…
First it was competition from the new sports arena downtown. Then it was the general lack of cultural sophistication that reportedly plagues all Phoenicians. Lately, it’s been the “risky” material chosen by artistic directors.Every season, our local theater companies offer a different reason for their diminishing returns. And several local…
Merchant/Ivory Productions has long been America’s quintessential purveyor of classy “literary” films. At its best, the team of director James Ivory and Ismail Merchant has given us A Room With a View (1986) and The Remains of the Day (1993); at its worst, Slaves of New York (1989) and Jefferson…
For a moment or two, David Lowery — front man for the band Cracker, and before that, beloved college-radio revolutionary sweethearts Camper Van Beethoven — found himself enjoying the book. He laughed in the right places, winced in the appropriate spots and thought, for a moment, the book wasn’t half…
Scottsdale gallery owners don’t often coo about competitors the way they do about Kraig Foote. They say he’s a quiet saint in a racket filled with gossipy sinners. “He really is pretty special,” says Lisa Sette, who owns the Lisa Sette Gallery a few doors away from Foote’s Art One…
The moody, feverish images that fill Running Free are so exquisite they almost make up for the film’s disastrous auditory misstep: the decision to cast Lukas Haas as the voice of Lucky, the chestnut foal that narrates this unusual adventure story. A cross between Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s…
I’ve heard ex-smokers talk about the after-dinner jones, how they hunger for that ritual cigarette, the sweet inhalation of tar and nicotine that tops off a great meal in a way nothing else can. So they settle for the other half of their ritual, a fine brandy or the slight…
There pretty much couldn’t be a cooler show-business story than the amazing tale of Wallace and Ladmo. Think about it: a cheapo local kids’ TV program that somehow lasted for a solid three and a half decades. Few, if any, similar shows ever came close to that kind of longevity…
So why ain’t this guy a star? David Shepherd Grossman has been the definition of a working musician for going on 20 years now. The guy literally plays 30 shows a month; there’s hardly a night of the week you can’t catch him gigging somewhere around the Valley. His song…
Michael Moore often worries about being seen–and worse, dismissed–as the plump, ball-cap-wearing windbag who barges into company headquarters, demands to see the chairman of the board, then gets kicked out or even arrested. He frets about being reduced to a stuntman of shtick, Captain Ambush, the guy called upon whenever…
The Boomer-inspired version of entertainment, in which a portion of pop culture is regurgitated in two tidy hours, has run amok. This scary subgenre has resulted in no fewer than six network specials about the making of The Brady Bunch, and a slew of musical revues that attempt to recap…
