The film is called Erin Brockovich, but it might as well be titled Julia Roberts. Never before in the actress’s erratic career has a film been so custom-made for her; it’s as though a screenwriter has been replaced by a seamstress who knows Roberts’ every curve. No matter that she…
It’s okay. You can say it. Just five little words. Don’t be shy. “I … am … a … wrestling fan.” You certainly wouldn’t be alone if you said it. Recent surveys show that as many as one in four Americans watch professional wrestling, and the World Wrestling Federation (WWF)…
What if fate has something horrific in store for you, and you can’t escape it? It’s an idea that’s been around for a long time, from Greek myths like Oedipus, to the New Testament, to EC Comics and The Twilight Zone. Cinematically, we tend to prefer the idea that destiny…
“Let’s sell some tickets!” It’s with this enthusiastic cry that comedian and actor Jay Mohr begins, by phone from L.A., an interview. He’s referring to his upcoming weekend of standup at the Tempe Improv. With the subject’s motives firmly established, the interviewer asks Mohr how life is after Action, this…
It’s not her role in the children’s movie Paulie, in which she appeared with actor/comic Jay Mohr (see feature left), that is being used to showcase one of the truly great actresses of American film, Gena Rowlands, Monday night at Scottsdale Center for the Arts. Rather, it’s her acclaimed turn…
“Any time you introduce a large body of water into an art museum, it’s a little hair-raising,” Heather Lineberry, senior curator at ASU Art Museum, confides with a nervous laugh. Lineberry is making uneasy reference to an expansive, 19-by-22-foot reflecting pool brimming with several inches of water, which was recently…
The creationists are going to have a field day with this one. Oh, it’s not as though it’s possible to spoil the plot for you: The trailers for Mission to Mars reveal everything but the end credits. It would be almost impossible to set foot into the theater without knowing…
Three decades after Rosemary’s Baby, two decades after The Tenant, and after a series of five non-horror films, Roman Polanski returns to the supernatural thriller with The Ninth Gate. What could be more promising? Regardless of what one thinks about Polanski’s personal life or legal status, the man is clearly…
Called “The Man Who Listens to Horses” — the title of his best-selling 1996 memoir from Random House — Monty Roberts is almost certainly the most famous horse trainer in the world. Or, rather, to use his own new-agey term, he’s a “horse gentler.” Although already renowned in the equestrian…
Valley resident and standup comic Robert Schimmel’s steadily rising star seems to have accelerated in recent months. Much has happened to him since the knockout performance of his dirty-mouthed, hilarious act on September 18 of last year at the State Theater in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which became an HBO special, Robert…
Someone sent me a Ladmo Bag. It arrived just as I was sitting down to my monthly poker game with a pair of bitter characters I’ve known since high school. Our game usually dissolves quickly into mean-spirited hollering and insults, but on this day, prompted by the arrival of this…
Garry Shandling does not have a face for the big screen. He has a mug that seems to spread to the edges of the theater; it’s like an approaching storm front, a sky full of billowing clouds roaring in from the north. And it’s a face built for two emotions:…
In the closing years of the 20th century, lowbrow white America finally learned to enjoy an ironic laugh at itself, led by Hollywood’s cheerful mockery of the culturally challenged working class. Outside the system, John Waters had this stuff pegged from the get-go, but the American grotesqueries of the original,…
The first thought you have while watching The Next Best Thing is, “Was Madonna always this bad an actress?” It’s a question that soon fades from consciousness to be replaced by, “Was Rupert Everett always this bad an actor?” and, “Was John Schlesinger always this bad a director?” Because the…
The pun “You Gotta Have Art,” as true as it is glib, is the theme of this year’s Scottsdale Arts Festival, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, March 10; the same hours Saturday, March 11; and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, March…
They gathered as they do each week at this time, to relax, unwind and cast off the cares of another busy week. They mill about, cheerfully renewing old acquaintances and making new ones while sampling bonbons and other delicacies made especially for them. They need this time for themselves; you…
When fine woodworker Steve Makin became sufficiently frustrated by the lack of gallery and museum exhibition opportunities available to Arizona woodworkers, he decided to do something about it. The most recent fruits of Makin’s persistence can be seen in “Makin Furniture,” an exhibition of fine wood furniture and functional objects…
We tumbled out into the chilly courtyard of ASU’s Galvin Playhouse, my friends, colleagues and I, where we were quickly joined by the audience for the school’s current horror, a bald misrepresentation of the all-time worst Shakespeare comedy in the Bard’s canon. It was intermission, and my companions’ faces were…
Ah, boxing. Beating and being beaten about the head and torso until one of two bruised and bloodied humans drops. Clever sport, tops even American football for sheer poetic elegance. So it’s not surprising — and this is only half sarcastic — that so many fine films have been made…
If you think the prevailing attitude toward sex in the United States is often somewhat backward, consider that of late-1960s Ireland, as depicted in Agnes Browne, the new movie directed by Anjelica Huston. When asked by her best friend Marion (Marion O’Dwyer) if she misses “it,” the recently widowed Agnes…
Willie Morris’ autobiographical novel, My Dog Skip, is a nearly perfect piece of bedtime reading for kids and their parents. Each chapter is virtually a self-contained anecdote, the descriptions of World War II-era Mississippi are lush and dreamlike, and the escapades of the central canine character, depicted as smarter, faster,…
A couple of years ago, a drunk started a fight with me in a bar in Tempe. The next day, I gleefully told my martial arts teacher about how I’d used a pair of joint locks to subdue the guy. Rather than shake my hand and promote me to a…
