Anybody with siblings knows that, while birth order isn’t the determining factor in how we develop, it certainly provides a convenient excuse for any number of undesirable character traits. The eldest child can be insufferably responsible and bossy, lording it over his or her younger siblings, or wild and crazy,…
Woody Allen’s latest romp through Old New York combines (among other things) a skirt-chasing insurance investigator with the charm of a rodent, a wisecracking Vassar grad who takes no guff and a nightclub hypnotist in a sequined turban who doubles as a major jewel thief. The year is 1940. The…
Beware the filmmaker who looks through the camera’s lens and sees only himself on the other side, blowing kisses. He’s the fool who confuses “personal vision” with “jacking off,” and he’ll try every time to convince you there’s something meaningful and imaginative in the shallow and hackneyed. He is so…
Joe Rogan, who as a standup comedian works more or less the same hours that strippers do, is not a 9-to-5 kind of guy. He is, however, an 18-to-34. That’s the demographic group from which Rogan, a NewsRadio veteran and the host of NBC’s Fear Factor, draws most of his…
How many times must I tell you kids Before you shut your yaps? Yes, ‘n’ how many ways must I say the same thing Before I can get my nap? Yes, ‘n’ how many times must your parents be called Before they make you cut the crap? The answer, you…
The cowboy, that icon of the American West, proves to be more than the strong silent type at the 14th annual Arizona Cowboy Poets Gathering. Sponsored by the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, the gathering brings together some of the West’s best cowboy poets. Wanna-bes in shiny boots and 10-gallon…
Nothing provokes a visceral response quite like, well, viscera — the smooth muscle stuff that younger generations of Americans, whose meat comes plastic-wrapped, find hard to stomach. It is possible to buy pig’s uterus in Phoenix, but not at Safeway, and it is unlikely that the salesperson could explain, in…
Having been born and raised 15 minutes from the Mexican border, it’s no surprise that I have a deep and abiding love for Mexican folk arts, crafts and culture. I’ve spent years traveling through Mexico’s interior, boarding buses, hiring drivers, renting cars, all in the ongoing quest to root out…
There is something fairly amusing about this title, Apocalypse Now Redux. Think about it: Prophetic Disclosure Presently Shows Up Again Newfangled. Of course, in the 10 years since the release of the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, we’ve been taught to revere the legend of Francis Ford Coppola…
Times certainly have changed. Twenty years ago, a musical about an East German transsexual rock singer would have premièred in one of New York’s off-off Broadway theaters or cabarets, run for a couple of weeks and remained the pleasant memory of a select few. But when John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig…
Ten years ago, Robert Harris picked up the phone to find on the other end a relative stranger bearing extraordinary news. This man was at a film exchange in Toronto, where movies are housed and rented out to exhibitors, and he was holding in his hands canisters of film containing…
What a difference almost a decade makes in the ever-morphing world of contemporary art. I can really appreciate this fact when I think about the very first article I wrote for New Times. It was a review of “Alternative Identities,” the 1993 Triennial at Phoenix Art Museum curated by Bruce…
“I hate the idea that I’ve been resurrected,” says actress Jacqueline Gaston. “I hear people say I’ve inspired them, that if I can come back after what I’ve been through, they can do anything. It all makes me sound so noble, like I’m a much better person than I actually…
During this cinematic Summer of Dumb, it would be all too easy to celebrate half-assed cleverness as a virtue, especially when proffered by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, who elevated the gross-out to an art form (or, more likely, fart form) in Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary. Osmosis Jones, one…
It was about two years ago that there was real hope for the horror movie coming once again due for a decent revival. The Blair Witch Project made people remember how to fear the unknown, and remakes of The Haunting and House on Haunted Hill promised a return to the…
Their music has been called passionate, distinctive, deeply honest, old school and soulful. Maze, featuring Frankie Beverly, has been making its own style of simultaneously mellow and funky sounds for close to 30 years now. Since 1976, the group, which started life under the name Raw Soul, has been playing…
If there is a common thread connecting past and present throughout the course of fashion history, it’s made of gold. That’s the idea behind “Gold Fever,” the current exhibit at Phoenix Art Museum’s Fashion Design Gallery. Just by a casual flip through the pages of Vogue, dedicated followers of 21st-century…
The most telling scene in Rush Hour 2 comes during the closing-credits montage of outtakes that have become the most enjoyable part of Jackie Chan’s Hollywood outings. Chris Tucker — the poor man’s Eddie Murphy, who now pockets more than the real thing per picture — and Chan have just…
There is only one reason Jon Favreau’s new film is called Made. Not too long ago, his old friend and co-star Vince Vaughn called him up and told him, in no uncertain terms, “You gotta write something that can get made.” It was less a demand than it was a…
You don’t notice the powder-blue hat at first. Its hue is too cool to steal your eye from the surrounding candy-wrapper yellows, oranges and reds. Yet once you see it, rising almost headless above a candy aisle in Andreas Gursky’s large photographic mural 99 Cent, the hat becomes one of…
After winning five separate audience awards and other honors at various gay and lesbian film festivals over the past year, Thomas Bezucha’s Big Eden has finally opened in general release. You don’t have to be an expert on the history of gay cinema to see why — or even to…
There are scenes in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes redo that are so hysterical they drown out minutes’ worth of dialogue that follows, which is hardly a knock. Indeed, the film is often so comical, so ridiculous in that self-aware, wink-wink sort of way, that it plays like a…
