John Wesley Hall believes justice is a myth taught in classrooms, a fable found in law books, as imaginary as the unicorn and the mermaid. The Arkansas attorney mentions case after case in which he represented an innocent who wound up imprisoned or, worse, executed; in the course of a…
Going to the airport for reasons other than the usual provides an entirely new perspective on the place: Suited beings traverse the empty corridors looking nowhere but ahead; strange desert-themed gift shops offer the best in plastic souvenir ware such as rattlesnake heads encased in glass, while other “high end”…
Meet the Parents has just enough class to make for prestige pop: Robert De Niro as star, Randy Newman as composer, Blythe Danner as wallpaper, Ben Stiller as schmuck. It has just enough “comedy” to qualify as crowd-pleaser: sight gags (Stiller chasing a cat across a roof before setting fire…
There’s plenty of campaign rhetoric about working families, but who ever talks about one of the biggest problems of the working man today — massive corporate downsizing? In the era of record profits and welfare “reform,” all that matters is having any kind of job, regardless of whether it’s the…
“We’re going to get silly, and at the same time find our way through this mire of romantic hell that we often find ourselves in,” promises Mark Anderson, describing his show “Crazy Love: A Laughing Look at Romance,” which plays this weekend at the Tempe Improv. Anderson himself has, he…
As any well-meaning parent who has tried it will tell you, dragging the kids to an art museum can be a real disaster. To start with, everywhere you look is a sign saying “Don’t Touch.” There’s nothing for them to do but just look at stuff. The little ones want…
As yet another theater season gets under way, publicists are doing their annual best to tempt us with their ticketed entertainments. But no one is heralding the amusing performances presented by those in attendance; while the cast and crew of every production are acknowledged in the program, those of us…
Remember the Titans — based on a true story about how a football team brought together the segregated town of Alexandria, Virginia, in the early 1970s — is the first film from producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s Technical Black production company, which is meant to offer more contemplative and slower-paced films than…
House sitters are always trouble. In the movies, this is a rule with few exceptions, and the house sitter in Cleopatra’s Second Husband isn’t among them. This elliptically nasty little psychological thriller from writer/director Jon Reiss features possibly the most odious house sitter in movie history, then serves him a…
It takes a special kind of mindset to celebrate castration, and audiences confusing feminine empowerment with the crude hacking off of seemingly oppressive huevos are certain to get a bang out of Girlfight, the gritty debut feature from writer-director Karyn Kusama.Metaphorical or otherwise, there’s already a movie about deballing to…
It’s a sorry fact that what everybody in Hollywood really wants to do — writer, actor, best boy and caterer alike — is direct. This has led, over the years, to some embarrassing debuts and some unexpected triumphs. For many, the notion that Sally Field — after Gidget and Sister…
Not ready to give up on baseball yet? It’s understandable. Back East, the start of the season in the spring is a sweet harbinger of good weather. That effect is reproduced here by the approach of the Arizona Fall League. The 2000 season gets rolling on Tuesday, October 3. Regarded…
“Ae Men o’ Plaid” (with copious apologies to Robert Burns) See the marching souls before us! Mark their stirrin’, righteous sound. Hear the pipers ring out glorious, As the drums boom all around! The mighty Black Watch o’ song, With Highland Dancers who’ve seen nae collision. Pipes, Drums, Choir …
In astrophysics parlance, the term “chaos theory” refers to the hypothesis that even a simple system can manifest unpredictable and highly complicated behavior. In other words, even the tiniest uncertainty in initial conditions within a system can have far-ranging, sometimes unforeseeable effects down the line. The flap of a butterfly’s…
Phoenix Theatre is celebrating its 80th anniversary by resuscitating a lot of tried-and-true favorites — the sort of popular fare normally confined to community theater and junior-college companies that cater to a “neighborhood” crowd. But this Equity house’s current production of Man of La Mancha is so perfectly realized and…
At first, you don’t want to admit it, because it seems somehow wrong–just too easy. After all, the woman on the other end of the phone line is not that woman seen every Sunday night on HBO, lamenting the sad, sorry state of her love affairs. She’s not an actress…
“This song explains why I’m leaving home and becoming a stewardess,” says Anita Miller (Zooey Deschanel) to her well-meaning, overbearing mother, as the soundtrack begins to swell with the low hums of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Just a few seconds earlier, Elaine Miller (Frances McDormand) had insisted she wouldn’t…
Some may find reason to embrace the romantic comedy Woman on Top as the nonsensical but sweet-tempered fantasy of two South American filmmakers who don’t understand life in this country very well but grasp all the magical powers of Brazil. After all, Brazil ranks second only to fashionable Tibet on…
Whatever one might believe about the past centuries of English oppression of the Irish, one thing is sure: The Irish haven’t been shortchanged on the screen. From the Easter Rising to the more recent Troubles, the conflict has been a film staple, with sympathies heavily, though not universally, aligned on…
Brett Butler’s career could serve as a template for what passes as current-day show-business success. Humble beginnings leading to big-time popularity leading to tabloid exploits leading to a quick fall from grace. Now we come full circle to the triumphal clean-and-sober comeback tour. The former star of ABC’s Grace Under…
We alerted you a while back to the Maricopa County Library District’s monthlong celebration of the centennial of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books. And we told you the 1939 Judy Garland Wizard of Oz is to be screened at 1 p.m. Saturday, September 23, at Southeast Regional Library, 775 North…
Almost Famous is the movie Cameron Crowe always wanted to make–and the movie he tried to keep from making as long as he could. The writer-director insists he didn’t want to make a film about his wonder years as a Rolling Stone writer in the 1970s, because he didn’t want…
