February film festival fever forges forward. So, am I ready for Variety?This week it’s the fifth annual Out Far! Phoenix International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, running Thursday, February 15, through Sunday, February 18, at AMC Arizona Center, 565 North Third Street. Here’s a day-by-day rundown: Thursday, February 15: The…
There he is, his eyes and body language as unmistakable as the flattened hat perched perfectly on his head. This little man in the shabby suit looks older than his 66 years — he looks ageless, actually — yet he performs physical feats beyond the capability of most people 40…
When the lights finally came up in the Washington, D.C., movie theater, Leonard Nimoy sat still, silent and a bit shaken. He could scarcely believe what he had seen — and what he had not seen. The movie was beautiful, but beneath the surface sheen, there was no heart, no…
Deep in hyperspace, there’s a climactic battle brewing with damning implications for the rest of the universe. The insidious space pirate Red Worm, on orders from the evil High Lord Ook-Nod-Zeek-Oot, is fighting to take possession of the Wave Twister, a powerful scratch weapon from ancient times. The Inner Space…
I’ve been dodging invitations to see the Oxymoron’Z improvisational troupe for nearly a decade. The materials, faxed or sometimes mailed to me by the group’s founder and guru, Louis Anthony Russo, promised “great big laughs” and “spontaneous fun.” It sounded to me like quite the opposite, and year after year…
Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, with a screenplay by David Mamet and Steven Zaillian, is being released exactly 10 years after The Silence of the Lambs, the film that established Hannibal Lecter as an iconic villain in our culture, right up there with A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, Friday the…
The man who made Problem Child, Beverly Hills Ninja and Brain Donors — movies that are to humor what Robert Downey Jr. is to clean living — has, perhaps all too explicably, become Hollywood’s most coveted and celebrated comedic director. “From the director of Big Daddy” — so blares the…
Once again, February is proving to be film-festival season here in the Valley — contained in this shortest month in the calendar are six, count ’em, six, highly diverse cinema smorgasbords. Last weekend was New Times’ very own Flashback Filmfest, year two, and this week marks the inaugural of an…
The audience inhaled sharply as Eiko and Koma began When Nights Were Dark at the American Dance Festival at Duke University last June. Before them an inexplicable otherworld appeared, as if in a shared dream. The Japanese couple, who have made mid-Manhattan home for the past 25 years, had designed…
Whenever I visit one of Arizona’s many natural resources, I always find myself surprised. So, this is what Arizona looks like. I had forgotten. Out there beyond the cracked asphalt, dusty concrete and tinted glass is the reason people started coming here in the first place — a vibrant and…
A heart. A bathrobe. A Greek statue.Pretty simple objects for the large job of redefining the notion of art in the latter half of the 20th century. But Jim Dine is hardly a student of conventional wisdom: The artist once performed in the basement of a New York church by…
It took artist Merrill Mahaffey 20 years to realize that the art he thought he liked painting was actually just the art he thought he was supposed to be painting.”When I was in college and graduate school, the common teaching was that a painter was supposed to end up as…
The enormous pleasure of American Safari begins even before the curtain rings up on this nostalgic pseudo-comedy. As playgoers settle into their seats at the Herberger Theater Center’s Stage West, a picnic table sails dreamily around the stage, attended by a smiling couple who silently toast one another with Kool-Aid…
Linda Eder sounds bored. If what her publicist says is true, Eder would probably rather be out riding one of her horses than yakking long-distance with another journalist about her career as a fabulous Broadway star. Perhaps in the hope of speeding up the interview, Eder quickly mentions her upcoming…
“Comedy workshop,” said the marquee outside the Tempe Improv. The comedian working in the shop wasn’t named, but the crowd was lined up hours before showtime even so. The Unknown Comic it wasn’t. No, 13 years after he christened the venue, Jerry Seinfeld, quite probably the biggest star in American…
That anyone should consider making a film of Reinaldo Arenas’ memoir Before Night Falls is curious. That the person to do it should be painter-turned-film-director Julian Schnabel is truly unusual. And that the results should be as good as they are is most remarkable of all. But it would appear…
Im Kwon Taek has long been the best-known Korean director in America; in fact, it would be fair to say that he’s pretty much the only even vaguely known Korean director, and even then, his renown is strictly among festivalgoers. The general distribution of his latest film, Chunhyang, should be…
At last you can take a deep breath and relax, consumers of American cinema, for our trilogy of virtually unrelated cheerleader movies is now complete. Having reappraised youthful sexuality in But I’m a Cheerleader and celebrated ass-kickingness in Bring It On, we now accomplish both, sort of, in Francine McDougall’s…
Watching this film is like watching a donkey being beaten for 90 minutes, so egregiously is the titular character treated and so powerless does she appear against her offenders. That the abuse is treated in a comedic fashion for a good part of the film makes it even more unacceptable…
If the Native American sport of hoop dancing demands an analogy, the Hula-Hoop is not it. “It’s almost like a house of cards,” offers Rebecca Stenholm of the Heard Museum, “but that’s not it, either.” In fact, the dance combines the speed and agility of professional hockey with the elegance…
There is no need to look west toward Los Angeles or east toward New York for young, emerging literary talent. The only place Arizonans need look is south down the main drag, where this week Tucsonan Lydia Millet, whose latest novel, My Happy Life, will be published by Henry Holt…
Eddie Izzard knows precisely why he wanted to become a performer, be it an actor or standup comedian or, for that matter, a street performer entertaining passers-by for spare change. When he was 6 years old, Izzard was living in South Wales with his parents and older brother. Before that,…
