Ah, November. November in the Valley of the Sun is the time when the devastating summer heat has receded to a balmy 75 degrees, flocks of snowbirds putter down the interstates at a breakneck pace of 35 mph, and a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of dinner and a…
Before others could reject him, Michael Chabon had convinced himself no one wanted to read an epic novel about comic-book creators, mythical Jewish monsters called golems, New York in the 1930s, daring escapes from Lithuania, Nazis, and the Empire State Building’s elevator system. He wanted to write the book–desperately, one…
Liliana Porter’s exhibition, “Secret Lives of Toys,” slipped into the Phoenix Art Museum in early September when most of the bright lights were still shining on Annie Leibovitz’s portraits of women. It overlapped the Leibovitz extravaganza for only a few weeks. But that was long enough for Porter’s quiet images…
Maybe it’s because I’m an atheist. Or perhaps I’m tired of cheap, humorless rehashes of last year’s big moneymaker. Then again, it might have been the dimwitted material and unsubtle setups. Whatever the reason, I loathed nearly every moment of The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged). Chances are,…
Although it must have been a no-brainer to make a sequel to The Blair Witch Project, it was hard to imagine an intelligent follow-up to a film that culminated in the apparent death of all the principals. Romeo and Juliet 2, anyone? Hamlet Returns? But given the inevitability of Book…
Somewhere near the halfway mark of The Broken Hearts Club, the latest gay romantic comedy (they really seem to be piling up these days), comes a not-unexpected scene in which a rock-solidly avuncular/maternal older man (John Mahoney) tells a tremulously insecure younger one (Ben Weber) the “message” that’s at this…
Any moviemaker who ventures into the sewers of New York City corruption will find Sidney Lumet’s wet footprints. In classics like The Pawnbroker, Serpico and Q&A, this streetwise film master has explored, among other things, individual morality in the face of big-city vice, and individual transcendence of ethnic conflict. Other…
Zap. Zowie. Zut Alors! That’s what you might have been saying if you visited Scottsdale Center for the Arts on October 25 when Actionheroes hurtled into town on its own high-octane power. It’s a new show by Elizabeth Streb and her eight-member dance company, Ringside. The group has been called…
Back in the day, when I was 17, I loved the Arizona State Fair — hanging out waiting for Tesla to come on stage, riding the Zipper on lunch money I’d starved myself for five days to accumulate. It wasn’t until we’d flipped around in the tiny cage and passed…
The sky to the north flashed with white lightning as I pulled off the 101 onto McDowell and turned into the rutted driveway. It was after 10 on a school night, so parking was easy and the crowd was sparse. The perfect time to check out Arizona’s Original Scream Park.Scaring…
It has often been written of Chris Guest–or, if you prefer, Fifth Baron Christopher Haden-Guest, son of diplomat Peter Haden-Guest, who could once vote in Parliament–that he has the demeanor of cold stone and the temperament of the dead. He possesses, one often hears, an impenetrable façade, that of the…
Western tradition, in all its romanticized glory, has always appealed most intensely to the urban dwellers of the East Coast. From their cries of gold on the leftmost shore, through pulp magazines, to serialized television shows and onto New York fashion runways, the West has always been about the ideal…
If I am ever forced at samurai swordpoint to come up with solid truisms about art at the beginning of the second millennium, I would have to say there are but two I could bet on to save my life. The first is that the genuinely beautiful will never go…
Grace and Glorie
To put it mildly, it is uncomfortable and embarrassing to have one’s cynical ass whipped by a huge, hulking Hallmark card, and this is exactly the sensation one takes away from Mimi Leder’s Pay It Forward. Not that the near-total emotional submission isn’t preceded by a knock-down, drag-out battle for…
The setting of Stephen Daldry’s uplifting comedy Billy Elliot, which is about a working-class boy who wants to be a ballet dancer, is a beleaguered coal-mining town in the north of England, circa 1984. A coat of grime covers the squat brick row houses, laundry flaps sadly in the breeze…
The first thing to know about The Legend of Drunken Master is that there is no Legend of Drunken Master, not really. Miramax/Dimension’s new Jackie Chan release is a repackaging of the star’s 1994 Drunken Master II.This is not inherently a bad thing. Nearly all Jackie Chan buffs — count…
Onscreen, the giant lips appear and begin to sing a catalogue of monster-movie references. In front of the screen, illuminated by hand-held lights from the audience, stands an incredibly thin, pale young woman — she looks like a more spectral Winona Ryder. She begins to sing along with the lips…
Many a tear is shed on the docks of the Old World as loved ones board ships for the new. Spurred on by the hope of a land of equal opportunity, most find only hostility and prejudice. But are these the mean streets of New York in the 1860s, or…
Poor hapless Renfield, wonderfully played by poor hapless Dwight Frye, climbs into the carriage that picks him up at the Borgo Pass. The ride is rough, so the real estate agent leans out of the window to complain to the driver. Then he freezes. Are his eyes deceiving him –…
A cold breeze blows through an open window, and a football game silently unfolds on the television screen. The old man sitting on the couch regards the game with mild interest, though not long ago, football was his passion, a way of pocketing a little scratch during those long stretches…
Unless you’re a scratch-music aficionado, you’ve probably never heard of DJ Focus. He doesn’t battle, doesn’t rock house parties, have a weekly residency or play raves. Although he regularly releases records, his material is less an expression of personal creativity than a tool for other DJs to use and learn…
