The wonder of Solas, the latest in a growing list of remarkable Spanish films that have recently made their way to the U.S. (Butterfly and Goya in Bordeaux are also well worth seeing), is a courtly old gentleman referred to simply as “Neighbor.” Played to absolute perfection by Carlos Álvarez-Novoa,…
It’s a complicated — but worthwhile — weekend at the Tempe Improv. First of all, it’s truly improvisational: Sketch comedian Wayne Brady appears Thursday, November 9; Friday, November 10; and Sunday, November 12, at the Tempe Improv Comedy Theater.Brady has emerged as the most acclaimed of the performers on ABC’s…
Look up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Adriel Heisey, famed aerial photographer whose spreads have appeared in National Geographic, Arizona Highways and the Smithsonian. His unique method: He takes his Kolb Twinstar — a fold-up airplane that nestles nicely into his trailer, leaving no space…
Let’s get this out of the way right now, because so many of you will find this hard to believe: Yes, Mad magazine still exists. It is still being published 48 years after it was created by Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines, neither of whom lived long enough to see…
Rotting bodies, leering skulls, flickering candles, droopy roses — not one of these creaky, well-worn symbols for death and the passage of time makes an appearance in “Memento Mori,” the latest national juried exhibition organized by Mesa Contemporary Arts. Formerly operating under the name of Galeria Mesa, Mesa Contemporary Arts…
I stopped attending certain of our “little” theaters some years back. After seeing my share of creaky standards wrecked by bad acting and inept direction, I figured I’d done my duty and deserved a reprieve. But Phoenix Theatre has ended my respite with its current production of Arsenic and Old…
The Legend of Bagger Vance
Charlie’s Angels
Urbania
The Opportunists
Jackie Martling has a joke to tell you. Well, actually, he’s got a million of ’em. But none that we can actually tell you the punch line of. At least not in print. So as a public service, here are the setups to some of Jackie The Joke Man’s greatest…
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…
