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…
Early on in Mission: Impossible 2 (or M:I-2, as the confident Paramount now calls it), hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) complains to his boss about his new assignment: “It’s going to be difficult.””It’s not mission difficult, Mr. Hunt,” the boss icily replies, “it’s mission impossible. “Difficult’ should be a walk…
Shanghai Noon is hardly as enervating as its trailer, which has such dreary sight gags and woeful jokes that it begs you to stay far away from any theater in which this film is screening. (Sample: A horse that stays by sitting . . . just like a dog.)But don’t…
“Industrial-strength boredom” is a vicious term to unload on anybody — friend, foe or former actress. Considering the lingering discomfort it inspires, one must beware of its impact, even around a seemingly invulnerable producer returning to the screen to melt our hearts in yet another variation on the emotional doppelgänger…
Hey! What’re you doing sitting there at home watching TV, when you could go to the library and . . . watch TV? Tempe Public Library is hosting a bimonthly program that presents the “White House Millennium Lectures,” a series on videotape of talks on a wide array of subjects…
You’ve got to hand it to Variety. Very often, while critics walk on eggshells around cultural generalities, the show-business trade publication cuts through it with an admirable bluntness. Here’s what the paper had to say about producer Ken Gentry’s new traveling version of the Frank Wildhorn musical The Civil War:…
