The Darwinian theory that schlocksploitation must tighten its twist of the nuts with each new release will be tested strenuously for years — or at least several weeks — by Hard Candy. A pointedly s(l)ick cross between Oleanna and I Spit on Your Grave, thrown like raw meat to Lions…
Criticizing an action movie for being empty-headed is like calling out Brokeback Mountain for its lack of car chases. Likewise, when a teen gymnastics movie is derided as formulaic and dumb, one might logically wonder compared to what? Very well: Stick It sucks it compared to the modestly charming Kirsten…
Every year, when ESPN broadcasts the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a tiny flutter of hope rises in anyone who cherishes the life of the mind. Spelling is a sport? Sweet Jesus! For the duration of the competition, the brainy kid who gets his glasses stomped by knuckle-draggers on the playground…
If you’re a regular moviegoer with a gift for remembering unusual names, chances are you’ve started paying attention to Chiwetel Ejiofor, the black English actor with a chameleon’s talent for disappearing into a role. You may not have caught his breakthrough performance in Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things, but you…
When Hillary Carlip refers to herself as a “multi-mediaist,” she’s not spinning dross. The award-winning author of Girl Power: Young Women Speak Out appears to be leading seven lives at once, all of them artful. Carlip is the creator of the acclaimed literary Web site Fresh Yarn: The Online Salon…
I suppose I arrived at Phoenix Theatre last weekend with expectations too high. But considering the talented cast that director D. Scott Withers — no slouch himself — assembled for the company’s update of Clare Boothe Luce’s famously funny The Women, I couldn’t have guessed at the mess I’d find…
Bob Adams, 45, hasn’t stopped making art. True, Adams — who made a name for himself more than a decade ago with thoughtful pen-and-ink drawings, paintings, and portrait silhouettes — hasn’t mounted a gallery show in a while. But he hasn’t given up on art, either; he’s lately been teaching…
Boys are oiling their mitts, men have started playing hooky, and Dick Cheney just one-hopped it like a pussy. Yes, baseball season is in full swing, and our dip-juice cup runneth over. Normally, this is cause for heavy titillation — perhaps a strong lather or a well-intentioned fistfight. But 2006…
Aeon Flux (Paramount) Many things about this surreal sci-fi flick defy explanation, but nothing more so than the mystery of how it got made in the first place. On paper, it’s an archetypal setup for a bomb: a mostly forgotten cartoon, notable for its visual style and incomprehensibility, revived as…
Vast legions embrace the thing as gospel. Skeptics dismiss it as ecstatic nonsense. In any event, James Redfield’s peculiar novel The Celestine Prophecy has been a bulwark of New Age metaphysics since it first hit the best-seller lists back in 1993. By recent estimates, there are 14 million copies in…
¡Odelay! Cinco de Mayo is right around the corner, so you’d better dust off your sombrero and bust out your rusty knowledge of Spanglish, because there are plenty of phat fetes going down in P-town from Wednesday, May 3, through Sunday, May 7. Wanna celebrate Latino culture? You’re in the…
My friend Neil e-mailed me the other day. “I can’t take another day of this,” he wrote. “If I hear about one more ‘Junior’ production being staged in Phoenix, I’m going to throw myself under the wheels of a bus.” Like me, Neil is a theater critic who’s troubled by…
Epic Proportions: This comedy by playwrights Larry Coen and David Crane came about after the pair noticed an extra in a biblical epic they were watching on television being crushed by a falling column. Coen and Crane (who’s best known as co-creator and executive producer of TV’s Friends) began to…
Casanova (Disney) Dr. Dolittle 3 (Fox) Elevator to the Gallows (Criterion) 50 Greatest Kid Concoctions (Time Life) Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (Sony) The Heirloom (Tartan) Inspector Gadget: 4-Disc Set (Shout Factory) The Intruder (Fox Lorber) Magic (Dark Sky) Match Point (DreamWorks) The Passenger (Sony) The Patriot: Extended Cut (Sony)…
The Valley’s favorite spoof metal band does covers of songs from bands like Skid Row, Warrant, Poison and Cinderella, complete with heavy metal wigs. Sundays, 10 p.m., 2008…
A Bigger Splash (First Run) Breakfast on Pluto (Sony) Cross of Iron (Henstooth) Event Horizon: Collector’s Edition (Paramount) Games of Love and Chance (New Yorker) Herbie Hancock: Possibilities (Magnolia) Hostel (Sony) I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (Plexifilm) Kickboxer: Five-Disc Collector’s Set (Lions Gate) The Killing Time (Anchor Bay)…
What does it mean to be an American? I have a hunch it’s a question many U.S. citizens rarely consider. Sometimes, it is not until others define us that we gain clarity about ourselves — and our nation. Heidi Hesse — born in Germany and raised in South Africa –…
Wanna knock the prez? Let’s make a show . . . preferably on television. Paul Weitz’s new satire American Dreamz imagines the Bush regime as an episode in the history of American entertainment and American Idol as the quintessence of U.S. democracy. So what else is new? The vision of…
Calling Rian Johnson’s teen indie drama Brick a piece of stuntwork might seem tantamount to hitting it with a pie, but it’s a high-speed wheelie of a strangely daring variety. Try this thumbnail definition on for size: a high school noir, complete with a Dashiell Hammett-derived plot line and a…
For most of January 2005, Michael Keaton was on the road pimping White Noise, the psychological thriller during which he stared at TV screens and pretended to be scared of static. Little wonder, then, that Keaton spent most of that couch time selling not his big-studio comeback, but his tiny-budgeted…
Roy Wasson Valle, 30, has been showing his colorful prints and sculptures of cartoonish beasts at 515 Gallery for a couple of years now, but you don’t have to be a First Friday regular to see his work. Just keep an eye on torsos across town – Valle’s surreal animal…
Marlon Brando sleeps with the fishes. But before the legendary actor died, he worked one last job. Curiously, it was for a videogame. In The Godfather: The Game, Brando attempts to relive his Oscar-winning role as Don Vito Corleone. From the raspy voice to the drooping jowls, it’s Vito, all…
