In past years, the theatrical release of the Oscar-nominated live-action and animated shorts has provided a fun peek into intriguing bite-size cinema from across the globe. But for the 2011 edition, the series is at last making room for the five nominated documentary shorts as well. Unfortunately, this year’s nonfiction…
The Super Bowl XLV’s over and we’re just happy our team in yellow pants made it through the halftime show. If you need to catch up on a recap, check out this back and forth on Valley Fever. The game was intense — unexpected touchdowns, a few pathetic incomplete passes…
If you’ve ever watched TLC’s horror-inducing show, My Strange Addiction, or seen the previews and thought about watching it, you might be a little messed up. Not that we can judge — it’s hard to look away from one of television’s largest and most fascinating train wrecks that only supports…
It’s that time of year again: Football fans are flocking to electronic stores around the Valley to pick up the largest HDTV for the Big Game. But if you want to save yourself a few bucks, dishes and lonely victory dances this Sunday, check out a few of these local…
In Mike Cahill’s Another Earth — a multiple prize-winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and one of two titles movies OR titles (to avoid rep of “film”) co-written by and starring the festival’s biggest breakout, Brit Marling — both hope and anxiety follow the discovery of Earth 2, a…
Being Human’s a funny little show that premiered January of last year on BBC and is now on its third season in the United Kingdom. While the original series is still running has 15 episodes under its belt, U.S.-based SyFy pounced on the idea and decided to run a remake…
Tyler: Alright, well, I’m not sure where to start with The Rite …Jackie: How about we start with the best part, Anthony Hopkins who plays Father Lucas Trevant.Tyler: Alright, I can agree with that. Hopkins’ performance was really the best part. He is the only reason that I wanted to…
Capes, top hats, goggles, and plasma cannons may seem like extravagant outerwear for a Sunday morning, but was in fact the standard at the downtown Phoenix filming of the steampunk miniseries Mantecoza. Mantecoza is a steampunk/fantasy miniseries in which an ordinary office worker named Sebastian King comes upon a magic…
The creators of a locally filmed internet miniseries are calling all airship captains, mad scientists, and various other steampunk lords and ladies to help out with their latest shoot on Sunday in downtown Phoenix.The series is called Mantecoza, a steampunk-themed web show that features an average guy thrust into an…
The idiot spy comedy Archer came back with a vengeance on Thursday for its second season premiere, which proved to be just as full of raunchy, underhanded humor as fans remember. After thousands of fans flocked to the likes of Facebook and Twitter to plead with FX to renew the…
The film-making crew of Coyote Requiem will be in town this weekend and they want folks, dressed to the Dia de los Muertos nines, to ham it up for the camera. From 4 to 9 p.m. Sunday, a Dia de Los Muertos procession will be recreated in Guadalupe Town Square,…
The Rite is the latest of at least a dozen widely released American movies in half as many years with demonic possession a major plot point. This doesn’t mean the subject is wrung out — its continuing resonance with audiences hasn’t been effaced by secular pop psychology or modernization within…
The Sundance Film Festival, which ends January 30, self-identifies as a “discovery festival,” meaning that it embraces its own legend of being a place where, over the course of a single screening, an unknown can transform into an industry-redefining star — even as that fantasy seems increasingly out of date…
FilmBar owner Kelly Aubey and Programming Director Steve Weiss announced last night that the downtown film venue is delaying its opening for a week — the first show will run the night of February 10 instead of February 3. Weiss says the program schedule has been adjusted — Red Chapel…
The Arizona-based reality show Desert Car Kings debuts tonight on the Discovery Channel. Soon thereafter, you can be in the spotlight when cameras roll in north Phoenix. As was previously reported, the McClure family, who own Desert Valley Auto Parts, will be the main characters in Desert Car Kings. The…
The Social Network and The King’s Speech would first like to thank the academy for a boatload of nominations for the 83rd Academy Awards (live on February 27). Oscar nominees were released this morning by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and it’s looking like a good year…
Ivan Reitman, master of the high-concept, big-budget Hollywood comedy (Ghostbusters, Dave) would seem an unlikely candidate to direct No Strings Attached, an extremely low-concept, low-key romantic comedy of contemporary sexual mores centered on the dating foibles of attractive nerds. Fully devoid of the fantasy contrivance that often sets a Reitman…
Tracking the parallel trajectories of three employees laid off from cushy corporate jobs at the same Boston-based manufacturing conglomerate, The Company Men is transparent in its ambition to capture The Way We Live Now from a sensitive, equitable — rather than a withering and satiric — point of view. Writer/director…
Any film student in America would probably love to go to the Cannes International Film Festival. And some can through an internship program. Only 20 students in the United States are chosen for the internship every year — and this year, one of them is from Phoenix.Arizona native Rosemary Gee…
Besides doing fun relationship stuff like arguing about how to discipline our dog, New Times blogger Tyler Hughes and his girlfriend, Jackie Cronin, go to the movies. Tyler: I just want to start this off by saying that the only thing I knew about The Green Hornet, besides it’s trailers,…
An hour and a half with Winston Churchill may have been a little intimidating back in the day when he was a leading opposing force to Nazism during WWII, but today you can kick back in a comfy chair with popcorn and a slushy and listen to his story, narrated…
Straight To Hell Returns is one of the films scheduled for FilmBar’s initial run. After months of construction and anticipation, Filmbar owner Kelly Aubey and Programming Director Steve Weiss announce that they’re gearing up to open their downtown Phoenix film joint, complete with digital projection of indie films, comfy seating,…
