John Henry Redwood’s people have unusual names like Lou Bessie and Bucket and Husband, and they hail from places with even stranger names, like Frogmore. In Redwood’s beautifully written The Old Settler, these people all end up in Harlem, where they change their names and attempt to alter their identities…
Some people really are crazy, but then, “crazy” is a relative term. Does it apply to someone who feels he might spin off into outer space and never be able to get back down to Earth? Or is it only crazy when you have to cling to the nearest table…
The 1995 film Friday is best remembered as the film that brought actor Chris Tucker to audiences’ attention. A modest hit, it would seem an odd choice for a sequel, but Ice Cube — who co-wrote the original with DJ Pooh, as well as produced and starred — is back…
This state came late to the national observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day — Monday, January 17, this year — but now that we participate, there’s no shortage of events. Here are a few of the Valley’s celebrations: In Phoenix: • ASU West hosts its annual MLK Celebration Week…
Have you ever stood on a street corner or maybe sat on a bus and “eavesdropped” on a signed conversation? It’s a remarkable sight, watching the flying hands and fingers combined with animated facial gestures that are the defining characteristics of this language. Properly known as American Sign Language but…
Bob Sorenson, left, and R. Hamilton Wright in The Mystery of Irma Vep.Those who have encountered playwright Charles Ludlam’s work know that it is juvenile and silly and displays a fond appreciation for theatrical classicism. Those who haven’t are in for a delightful baptism in farce at Arizona Theatre Company’s…
You hope for Dorothy Lamour, reclining against a palm tree in her sarong, when you hear the title The Hurricane. Instead, you get well more than two hours of Denzel Washington huddled in a cell. In the poster art, Washington glowers out, one bandaged fist cocked for a right to…
Sixty years after Walt Disney’s original plans to expand on the original Fantasia, Disney has finally gotten around to making new musical segments for a reprise of the film’s classical-music-cum-animation concept. Cleverly timed and titled to open on the first day of the new millennium — and, regardless of any…
When Paul Thomas Anderson’s second feature, Boogie Nights, was released in 1997, critics and film industry types fell over themselves to designate Anderson the next big thing, an auteur in the footsteps of Scorsese and Coppola. His film turned Mark Wahlberg from a has-been underwear model and rapper into a…
“Feast your eyes, glut your soul, on my accursed ugliness!” So howled Erik, the disfigured denizen of the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera, when the heroine Christine Daae couldn’t resist snatching away his mask, in Gaston Leroux’s Le Fantome de l’Opera, the penny dreadful that served as the basis for…
Daah . . . daaaah . . . daaaaah . . . DAH-DUM!! (boom-boom boom-boom boom-boom boom-boom) . . . Yeah, get used to it. Just as the recent new year’s celebration got us plenty sick of the Artist Who Back When He Still Had Some Vestige of Sanity Was…
Let’s hear it for sports movies! The most avid sports fan can occasionally be bored by lackluster games, but even the casual spectator can appreciate what the big screen can do for an athletic contest, even one played by actors rather than athletes: the closer-than-life close-ups, the dramatic use of…
East Valley party-heads have the Fiesta Bowl Block Party (see Snafu 2000). For the downtowners, there’s the City of Phoenix’s big and controversial Phoenix Celebration 2000, slated from 4 p.m. Friday, December 31, through 1 a.m. Saturday, January 1, 2000, or through the End of Civilization As We Know It,…
It’s the 29th time around for the Valley’s own football classic, the Fiesta Bowl, and as usual it’s the pretext for a slate of fun stuff around the Valley, including the East Valley’s major New Year’s celebration. Here are a few of the weekend’s other diversions: Downtown Scottsdale’s Fiesta Bowl…
Writer-director Anthony Minghella has chosen to follow up his Oscar-laden The English Patient with another literary adaptation — this time, of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. Highsmith is best known to film buffs as the author of Strangers on a Train, the basis for one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best…
Ah, what a miracle that Andy Kaufman was. So sublime his wit, so pioneering his spirit. Astonishing! A hero to be loved, adored and emulated by all artists and performers for the rest of eternity. An opener of doors; a smasher down of barriers; a glorious, luminous, intrepid spirit without…
During my pre-matinee nap last Sunday afternoon, my Jewish playwright friend left me a voice mail message: “Hey, I’m in town, let’s get together for lunch. But don’t try to drag me to the theater, I saw The California Kid yesterday and I’m still recovering. What a bag of crap…
The last half-decade has been very good to Jane Austen: Besides Ang Lee’s estimable 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility, we’ve been given film or TV adaptations of Emma, Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice, not to mention Clueless, Amy Heckerling’s remarkably apt updating of Emma. Now Miramax and the BBC…
I sincerely hope that Jodie Foster gets a chance to relax and unwind this holiday season, because the lady has obviously worked like a horse to instill her latest role with humanity and significance. As intrepid British widow Anna Leonowens, in the huge and poetic new Anna and the King,…
At first glance, Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother seems uncharacteristically grim for a filmmaker with such a demonic sense of humor. Within 10 minutes, the heroine’s 17-year-old son is hit and killed by a car, which propels her and the events of the film into motion. In the next…
Every year at this time, the media devote some of their attention to the subject of where one can go to gawk at the most elaborately decorated homes in the Valley. Why should we be any different? My own favorite, year in and year out, has been the row of…
I stand before the racks of merchandise, overwhelmed by the endless possibilities: aisles of enticing edibles followed by rows of delightful diversions and festive finery. But where to begin when holiday shopping for the most discriminating and highly exacting name on my list? No, it’s not my husband. It’s my…
