Color me surprised. An upstart theater company has kicked off the new season with a real long shot: an out-of-the-box smash delivered by a stageful of amateurs and first-timers. Is What It Is Theater’s production of Studs Terkel’s Working shouldn’t work at all. This company had never produced a musical,…
Andrew Niccol keeps making the same movie over and over again, dressing it in slightly different clothes: the sleek charcoal Hugo Boss grays of Gattaca, the crisp Crayola hues of The Truman Show and, now, the silk-and-satin Hollywood resplendency of Simone. Niccol, writer and director, is obsessed with a single…
Written and directed by. With .
Citizen-soldiers eager to renew hostilities in the American culture wars can shoot a couple of spitballs at each other this week over Little Secrets, a teen-anxiety movie that leaves no doubt where it stands on “family values” and moral absolutes: It approves. The shock troops of the Cinema Without Limits…
What Latin phenomenon combines sex appeal with cultural tradition, gets parties grooving, and makes your thighs burn? No, not Ricky Martin. It’s the salsa, and it’s spicing up Sunday nights in Tempe — and proving that the Valley’s club scene isn’t as segregated as is commonly thought. Hundreds of young…
Moviegoers wanting to see the latest summer blockbuster will have no trouble finding a giant local multiplex offering dozens of Hollywood hits — they’re liberally scattered across the Valley. But for those who seek out independent, foreign and classic films — cinema that doesn’t have to be obscure — options…
Deborah Hopkins, curator of exhibitions at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, likes art that “gets out of the frame and jumps off the pedestal” — an apt way to describe the works in “Thin Skin” (known to many of us as “the bubble show”), on view at the museum…
I nearly drive my car straight into Portland’s, the downtown bar and restaurant where I’ve arranged to meet local craftsman Jim Bell. My near crash is caused by the scary tangle of life-size mannequins hanging out of an oddball vehicle (Bell tells me later it’s a three-quarter-ton 1952 Dodge M-27…
Up to a certain point, Paul Marino’s story is a familiar one, especially to any single guy in his 20s who likes playing with his joystick. Four years ago, Marino and his pals would leave their offices on a Friday night and go to another friend’s workplace, where they’d play…
LYT: Don’t you find it interesting that Blue Crush director John Stockwell is on this whole girl-power kick, going off on the “sexist” guys who’d rather “appreciate a cute girl in a bikini, but ain’t gonna give up a wave for them,” yet the movie’s marketing is all about appreciating…
Sometimes when a director shoots at a barn, the satisfaction comes in simply watching him hit it dead center. So it is with The Good Girl, wherein Miguel Arteta (Star Maps) targets middle American ennui with wit, compassion and no shortage of ornery malaise. Like Arteta’s second feature, Chuck &…
Hey, Mom and Dad, is your teenage son exhibiting any of the following behavioral symptoms: showing a sullen and angry demeanor, bottle-bleaching his hair, excessively utilizing headphones, mumbling epithets about Tipper Gore and Lynne Cheney? Yeah? Blame it on Marshall Mathers, a.k.a. Eminem — he’s dying to take credit for…
When 17 life-size fiber-glass horses clopped into downtown Scottsdale in late 2000, lovers of animals and art took to the streets to admire the stallions. This summer, another curious collection of creatures has made its way into the city’s gallery district, and though it lacks the noise of the Scottsdale…
Every high-energy minute counts with Jeff Barthold. He’s already networking when I arrive at Maloney’s, one of several Valley bars that carry Liquid X, the “euphoric party energy drink” that Barthold invented. He’s here to tell me about the caffeine-infused beverage, which he hopes will give Red Bull, the energy…
A press pass, reporter-turned-novelist Gregory McDonald once said, is good for one thing: It allows the journalist to ask very smart people very stupid questions. Certainly, that’s how it feels after this 45-minute drive from downtown Dallas to the Allen home of Stan Liebowitz, professor of economics at the University…
In case you didn’t happen to read the tag line on the ubiquitous poster, Xander Cage, also known as xXx because he’s tattooed his first initial three times on the back of his neck, is “a new breed of secret agent.” The old breed, we learn pretty quickly, is Bond,…
Blood Work, Clint Eastwood’s 23rd directorial effort, is a crime thriller in the mode of, but better than, True Crime (1999) and Absolute Power (1997), two of his last three films. More than these, however, it resembles In the Line of Fire (1993), the Eastwood vehicle directed by Wolfgang Petersen…
Ever since she opened reZurrection Gallery with her husband Damian in December 2000, Darci Johnson has been hosting monthly openings for the artists who exhibit their work there. To keep things unpredictable, she alternates the media in the shows, bringing in sculptures one month, paintings the next, and then perhaps…
The man who is perhaps the most unlikely pop star of our time is returning to Phoenix. Morrissey — son of librarians, celibate singer of sexual songs, violent vegetarian, bundle of endless contradiction and controversy — graces Celebrity Theatre with his presence on Friday, August 9. The question is: Why?…
This time around, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan puts the surprise at the beginning of his film, and it’s a subtle, shimmering clue — one easily missed and, frankly, one that might not even be there at all. Such are the temptations offered by the maker of The Sixth Sense and…
It’s daunting to hear that John Sayles’ new film Sunshine State is almost two and a half hours long and consists mostly of calm conversations. But don’t be deterred, or you’ll miss out on a study of character, class and changing times that puts Robert Altman’s stodgy Gosford Park to…
“I am Deke Dickerson,” he says, “entertainer, musician, singer, guitar player . . . Renaissance man.” What’s more, Dickerson has made it his personal mission to drag folks from the moribund monoverse of Friends reruns and out to his traveling road show, a 200- to 300-day-per-year tour of musical duty…
