thursday february 6 “Art on the Edge of Fashion”: Arizona State University Art Museum curator Heather Lineberry organized this exhibit of unwearable wearables–i.e., clothing as metaphorical medium and jumping-off point for an examination of gender issues and “the nature of identity.” The exhibition, which also includes photos, sculpture, and installation…
There’s nothing worse than bad Shakespeare. A successful mounting of any of the Bard’s plays requires confident acting and a director and cast with a detailed knowledge of the material. Nevertheless, a pair of local stages have been overtaken by comedies of error that provide abundant laughs–both intentional and otherwise–at…
You can bet that at one point or another, some executive wanted the title of this long-awaited nonsequel to A Fish Called Wanda to be A Lemur Called Rollo (for the story does include such a character). While the latter wouldn’t have been the most commercial of titles, neither is…
As with The Crow a few years back, a grim, real-life shadow hangs over Gridlock’d that’s hard to ignore while watching it. Both films are swan songs for stars who died too young and left beautiful corpses: Brandon Lee in the former, and Tupac Shakur in the latter (although Shakur…
thursday january 30 Eugene Chadbourne: “Dr. Chadbourne” is one of the last standing champions of noncommercial alternative music; if gonzo was a sound, it might sound something like his. The absolutely unpredictable and artistically unfettered guitarist has made forays into free jazz, acid rock, avant blues and faux-redneck noise (with…
There are more reasons not to see Shear Madness than there are alternate endings to the play. The device of this senseless shriek fest, which is now playing at Theater League’s New Scottsdale Playhouse, is that it allows its audience to select one of four different wind-ups to its highly…
The first movie Hamlet was played by a woman–Sarah Bernhardt, in a 1900 short of the duel scene. Plainly, Hamlet has been as open to interpretation in the cinema as it has been in the theater. Of the dozens of film versions, ranging from cross-dressing intrigues to psychological case studies…
In Mother, Albert Brooks plays John Henderson, a science-fiction novelist recently divorced from his second wife who decides he can’t risk another relationship until he comes to terms with his mother. So he does the logical thing: He moves in with her. He hauls out of her garage all his…
Playwright Herb Gardner managed to immortalize retirement-age concerns on the American stage with his 1986 Tony Award-winning I’m Not Rappaport, and now his film version–which he also directed–comes along to try to reclaim geriatric humor from the Grumpy Old Men gang. Of course, one of those grumpy old men, Walter…
Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh) is Prince of Denmark. After his father (Brian Blessed) dies, his uncle Claudius (Derek Jacobi) takes the throne and marries Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude (Julie Christie). When the late king’s ghost reveals he was murdered by Claudius, Hamlet must decide which course of action to take. Meanwhile, he…
thursday january 23 Tricky: The so-called “majesty of trip-hop” is an aural explorer, and he seems to have found the Northwest Passage connecting the strange-bedfellow forms of rap and new age–though not the new age of Windham Hill, not by a long shot. As the London-based musician/producer says, referencing the…
When the King of Spain sent Christianity to the New World in the 1500s, he hardly counted on finding heathens living as well as the ones Hernan Cortes, conqueror of Mexico, first met in 1519. Cortes reported the ancient Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan–now Mexico City–to be filled with “large and beautiful…
On opening night of Phoenix Theatre’s production of Chapter Two, when its star Kathy Fitzgerald took her final bows, she received what could only be called conventional first-night applause. One could be excused for having expected a rafter-shaking ovation. This was, after all, Fitzgerald’s first new role since she returned…
It could have been any town in America, and it often was: Athens, Georgia; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Minneapolis; Austin, Texas. Seattle was just another stop on the A&R Express, another destination where the gold-card crowd could run up their expense accounts while they looked for the Next Big Thing…
World governments may topple, stock markets may soar and crash, deadly viruses may mantle the globe, but one constant remains: Woody Allen still hankers for a Cole Porterized New York. You have to be a deep-dish romantic, or else a blinkered snoot–or maybe both–to persist in such a demonstration. We…
For people who grow up loving movies, returning to old favorites can be as jarring and illuminating as blowing the dust off a family photo album. Even if our judgments about the films are identical the second time around, our emotional reactions, if we’ve grown at all, change or deepen…
When an incredulous Jane Campion fan asked what I hated about her version of Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, I immediately responded, “Everything.” Actually, I thought Barbara Hershey, as the subtle villainess, Madame Merle, made a good first impression: I laughed appreciatively when the heroine, Isabel Archer (Nicole…
dream time MLK Breakfast and “PLAY for Peace”: See Friday in Pic Hits. MLK Reading: Borders Books & Music at 7320 West Bell in Glendale hosts a special kid-targeted presentation of speeches by the late social activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at noon Saturday, January 18. Admission is free;…
thursday january 16 Smokin’ Joe Kubek Band featuring Bnois King: A rock-solid blues band; these guys cook. Dual guitarists Kubek and King are the heart and soul, respectively, of the Dallas act, which has been on a steady rise since its 1991 debut for Bullseye/Rounder, Steppin’ Out Texas Style. The…
The king of Seventies comedy still reigns in Phoenix: Rare is the community theater company that each season doesn’t feature one of Neil Simon’s plays. What’s baffling is that they’re about as pertinent as a pet rock. But even more perplexing than the popularity of Simon’s shopworn comedies is the…
The People vs. Larry Flynt is a Hollywood rags-to-riches success story with a twist. The inheritor of the American dream is a pornographer who admits to losing his virginity at 11 to a chicken and is known for saying things such as, “A woman’s vagina has as much personality as…
Robert E. Howard created the sword-and-sorcery genre with his Conan stories. The subject of Dan Ireland’s wonderful debut film The Whole Wide World, Howard had a grand yet coarse-grained consciousness. The Conan stories, set in a fictitious, primordial age full of demons and killers, boasted swift, cartoon-flavored action (“He moved…
