The quiet crusade against cutting down live Christmas trees has reached the point when it can be declared a full-fledged social movement–Saturday Night Live has done a sketch about it. On a recent episode, ultra-PC Lilith Fair troubadour “Cinder Calhoun” (Ana Gasteyer) sang a song called “Christmas Chainsaw Massacre.” Even…
As if to say “We’ve got your number,” record moguls seem hell-bent on selling music as if it were a badge. Pick one station, any station, and you’re guaranteed to hear the same sort of thing, over and over. A new artist with a flair for the unique inevitably faces…
Thursday December 24 Since Christmas Eve is generally a day of ease and relaxation, when we do all those little things that we’ve been meaning to get around to the rest of the year, why not stop by the Burton Barr Central Library Thursday, December 24, both to catch up…
If there were any real justice in the world, Larry Shue would be considered the greatest comedy writer of the American theater, and Neil Simon would be a ribbon clerk. Instead, professional stages the world over continue to groan under the weight of Simon’s comedies, while Shue is–well, he’s dead…
On May 30, 1957, the Los Angeles Times reported that the body of “the distinguished film producer and director James Whale” had been found floating in the swimming pool at his home in Pacific Palisades. Fully clothed, Whale’s corpse exhibited a head wound. “Whale,” the Times went on to point…
DreamWorks’ grandiose attempt at an animated feature for adults is a flimsy musical about Moses–a Sunday-school film strip writ ultralarge and decked out with the spectacle of Hollywood Bible epics. Slender sermons nestle among flashy action sequences and diaphanous fashion statements from the more tasteful pages of the Nefertiti’s Secret…
Old-fashioned romantic comedies are an endangered species, and in these generally unromantic days it’s always a pleasant surprise to find a decent one like Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail. Ephron, of course, made her bones five and a half years ago with the huge hit Sleepless in Seattle, but since…
In his best book, All the Trouble in the World, P.J. O’Rourke describes traveling up an Amazon tributary in Peru with a boatload of eco-tourists, the lot of them trying to attract the attention of a pod of estuarine dolphins by singing to them. Rather grudgingly, O’Rourke admits: “. …
thursday december 17 Who is that masked man? Say that line in this area, and there’s a good chance that you’re asking about Zarco Guerrero, local mask-maker and performance artist. Guerrero takes the plum role of the Devil in La Pastorela, a “teatro”-style Christmas pageant presented by El Teatro de…
The best news about the Christmas pageants playing professional stages this holiday season is that not one of them features a fat guy in a red suit. The bad news is that they’re all the same shows as last year, and the year before that. What’s more, the companies producing…
There’s no synopsizing Gus Edwards’ new play. Four Walls’ brief, unformed trio of scenes whizzes by like the trailer for a bad movie–one with no budget or much of a story. And the fact that this wan one-act is playing in repertory with Michael Grady’s passionate The Raising of the…
First of all, if you’re among the benighted who’ve never seen Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 shocker Psycho, stop reading at the end of this paragraph. A movie review, even one as incisive and elegant as this, is no way to be introduced to Hitchcock’s horror masterpiece. Your assignment is to rush…
The relentless charm of Kirk Jones’ Waking Ned Devine lies in its embrace of two lovable Irish geezers who manage to work beautiful mischief on the world, in the raw beauty of their sun-splashed coastal village, and in the general notion that Ireland is the land of poetic conversations, enduring…
thursday december 10 Following film appearances in Speed 2: Cruise Control and the upcoming My Favorite Martian, and TV appearances everywhere from Letterman to The Jon Stewart Show, Canadian funnyman Jeremy Hotz takes the stage at 8 p.m. Thursday, December 10; 8 and 10 p.m. Friday, December 11; the same…
Once upon a time, when the world was different, there were such things as pockets of popularity and regional stars. Contemporary radio and the monolithic record companies have made that concept a memory, but as recently as the mid-Seventies, Phoenix had its very own local hero in the person of…
Hang around long enough, and just about everything has a chance to be polished up for another shot at the spotlight. It was about 50 years ago when big-band music faded from the public’s fancy. The current revival of all things “swing” has brought several bands to prominence, including the…
Someone asked me the other day what I want for Christmas, and I didn’t have to think very long before replying that I want no one in Arizona–no one in the world–to make the mistake of attending the horrible play I sat through the other night in Mesa. I had…
If Brecht had ever written a kiddy movie, it might have come out something like Chris Noonan’s Babe. Co-adapted by its producer, George Miller, from a book by Dick King-Smith, the 1995 Australian film about a runty but purehearted little pig who takes it into his head to work herding…
Here we go again. Enemy of the State is Fascism in America 1998, Chapter Four . . . or Five . . . or whatever we’re up to. It readily invites comparison to The Siege, but, for better or worse, its goals are more mundane. While The Siege seems like…
Clark Griswold, the hapless fool played by Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, is just a hair too familiar. Clark’s house-lighting ceremony is a hilarious and well-targeted send-up of how real revelers attempt to best each other–in wattage–during the holidays. But it doesn’t exactly warm the Yuletide spirit. This…
To describe the Hall of Flame Museum of Firefighting as a big building full of old fire trucks is accurate enough, but nowhere near complete. It may sound like a tourist trap or a collector’s vanity showplace, and probably for this reason, if Valleyites are aware of the facility’s existence…
1998 DECEMBER 3-9 december 3 thursday Does the phrase “A river of liver and an ocean of fish” ring a bell? If so, then you’re probably a rerun junkie–it’s from the “Adam’s Ribs” episode of M*A*S*H, in which Hawkeye Pierce starts raving about the wretched cuisine dished up by company…
