good sports “Games and Sports of the Past”: Kids are introduced to turn-of-the-century pastimes like marbles, shuttlecock, cup and ball, and hoop racing at this old-timey event, slated for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, January 11, at Sirrine House Historic Museum, 160 North Center in Mesa. Admission and participation…
thursday january 9 Swinging on a Star: The Johnny Burke Musical: The late Burke wrote the words to some of our most memorable popular songs–including the title tune, “Pennies From Heaven,” “But Beautiful,” “Moonlight Becomes You” and “Misty”–and most of his career high notes are hit in this Tony-nominated homage…
A famous movie composer once told me a joke: Two songwriters are sitting around, and one of them says to the other, “I just saw the most amazing thing. A man fell off the roof of a building, hit a ledge, fell to the street, got winged by a bus…
My first impulse in considering the top movies of 1996 was to dispense with the new stuff altogether and go for the revival gold. The best films of 1996 were the rereleased restorations: Vertigo and Taxi Driver. The movie business has finally figured out how to turn out new classics–just…
on the stage Disney’s Beauty and the Beast Readings: Cast members from the touring musical (see Thursday in Pic Hits) read from various works at 10:30 a.m. Friday, January 3, at Borders Books & Music at Biltmore Fashion Park, 24th Street and Camelback, Suite 200 (call 957-6660); at 11 a.m…
thursday january 2 Swinging on a Star: The Johnny Burke Musical: The late Burke wrote the words to some of our most memorable popular songs–including the title tune, “Pennies From Heaven” and “Misty”–and most of his career high notes are hit in this Tony-nominated homage by writer/director Michael Leeds. Arizona…
In his critically hailed HBO special that aired in June, Chris Rock joked about how people say what they think other people want to hear. For example, he noted, nobody really wants to be an organ donor–people just say they do. Organ donation is for people with no faith, he…
Wes Craven, creator of the Nightmare on Elm Street series and writer/director of its two best entries (the first and the last), works whispering distance from the commercial Hollywood mainstream, just far enough to allow for more rude wit and less comfortable resolution than most studio product. His films open…
When we first see the character of Australian pianist David Helfgott (Geoffrey Rush) in Shine, he’s middle-aged and standing in the driving rain, tapping at the window of a wine bar after closing time. Let in by a sympathetic waitress, he keeps up a nonstop nonsensical patter that makes him…
good sports Fiesta Bowl National Junior Tennis Championships: United States Tennis Association-ranked players ages 12 to 18 compete in the 24th annual tourney, which has produced big-time competitors like Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Tracy Austin and Michael Chang. Preliminary rounds are scheduled Thursday, December 26; Friday, December 27; Saturday, December…
thursday december 26 “Converging Cultures: Art and Identity in Spanish America”: The installation at Phoenix Art Museum, 1625 North Central, details the new society that arose in the Americas in the 16th through 18th centuries, a byproduct of the shotgun marriage of European colonialism and native culture engendered by Spain’s…
If theater is a microcosm of the universe, then we must be a godforsaken, consumer-driven society, more interested in what’s under the tree than how it came to grow there. I’m not a Christian, but I’m concerned with the low state of holiday plays in our fair city: Not one…
Beavis and Butt-head, the slow-witted, lewd-minded, giggling, teenaged sofa reptiles from MTV, may be the most acquired taste in current pop culture–for adults, at least. At a quick glance, your reaction may be revulsion at the crude animation and the repetitive gags. But let the show’s subtle rhythms work on…
Lots of hearts are in the right place in Rob Reiner’s Ghosts of Mississippi, but none is beating. Scripted by Lewis Colick (who wrote Unlawful Entry) and based on the true story of how the killer of civil rights activist Medgar Evers was finally brought to justice after three trials,…
The stodgy works of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, makers of Howards End and Jefferson in Paris, have encouraged the sad notion that costume dramas must be leaden and respectable. Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility helped rehabilitate the form, and now Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule ventilates it with yet more fresh…
Why a movie of The Crucible now? Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem witchcraft trials was first staged on Broadway in 1953, when McCarthyism was still in flower, and it was not a resounding success. Now, of course, it’s a staple of rep theaters and high school and college stages,…
Western civilization has taken its fair share of direct hits over the ages, but never has it been threatened with destruction by such markedly unempowered foes as Beavis and Butt-head, which debuted on MTV in 1993. How unempowered? Consider that those who most rightfully should be offended by the doltish…
thursday december 19 Baby, It’s Bright Outside: ZooLights; Fiesta of Light and Downtown Holiday Tree Tour; Ahwatukee-Foothills Festival of Lights: Phoenix Zoo, 455 North Galvin Parkway, in Papago Park, is garbed in its usual Technicolor dreamcoat during the facility’s fifth annual ZooLights display. The fun continues from 6 to 9…
’tis the season “Brunch With The Velveteen Rabbit”: Accompanied kids meet and eat with the cast of Childsplay’s “24-carrot” holiday gift to the Valley at this fund raiser. Seatings are scheduled at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday, December 21, in the Terrace Dining Room at the Phoenician resort, 6000…
Theater has been braving the AIDS pandemic for more than a decade. Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart in 1985 was the first of a subgenre of plays that has evolved beyond commentary on the crisis to a more artful form of entertainment. Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz, which is being…
Planet Earth Multi-Cultural Theatre has made a name for itself with overwrought dramas and dark translations of prominent plays. Whether this uncommon company is presenting a contemporary comedy or a Shakespearean tragedy, its productions are distinguished by stacks of video screens and crowds of women in singed nightgowns, stroking potfuls…
Whitney Houston has had a Movie Star Moment–just not in a movie. Near the end of the “Saving All My Love for You” video, she turns toward the camera with a luminous smile that wilts into heartbreak when she realizes she’s been dropped by her, um, boyfriend. It’s a moment…
