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…
When you enter the nondescript, two-story complex in the industrial hinterlands near 27th Avenue and Osborn, you’re assaulted by a fierce squall of amplified noise. It’s impossible to tell if it’s one band or 30 responsible for the offending skronk; there are close to 100 practice spaces located in this…
There’s a trio of duets in Duets. The film is set in the world of karaoke singing, but the title really refers to three sets of paired-off actors, performing pas de deux to the tune of John Byrum’s Golden-Age-of-Television-ish dialogue. Only one of the three duos shakes fully to life,…
Although not nearly as well-known as Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger — to say nothing of Bob Dylan — Ramblin’ Jack Elliott was a key figure in the American folk movement of the 1950s and ’60s. Unlike his more celebrated contemporaries, Elliott wrote relatively few songs himself but was a…
It’s unfortunate the title Being John Malkovich has already been taken, as it’s a far better one than Bait — and far more appropriate, to boot. As Bristol, a computer expert, wily thief and cold-blooded killer, Doug Hutchison is the human sampling machine. His is a routine cobbled together from…
A half-hour before the opening-night curtain rises on Dale Wasserman’s new show, the man himself is nowhere to be found. The producer of the show and several of Wasserman’s biggest fans are scouring the lobby of tiny Stagebrush Theatre, hoping to wish him well and congratulate him on his celebrated…
A few years back, Billboard magazine compiled its list of the 100 top-selling albums of all time. Right up there among The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Pink Floyd and Garth Brooks was . . . Bob Newhart. Yup, that Bob Newhart. He was the only comedy artist on the entire list…
How cool would it be if a film lover could go back in time and experience the golden days of the silent screen? Just imagine a trip to an ornate ’20s-era movie palace to enjoy the latest Clara Bow or Buster Keaton classic on the big screen accompanied, best of…
A month ago, R.J. Cutler thought he found a home for his child, one that would coddle and nurture his baby until it was ready to stand on its own two legs without wobbling or falling. A month ago, it all seemed so simple to the Oscar-nominated producer-director, who was…
The title of Planet Earth Theatre’s most recent show proved to be prophetic. Only a few days after the final performance of In Heat, the 15-year-old company was in hot water with its landlord, who served notice to evict the troupe from its downtown warehouse home after a complaint was…
Humans and their stories, my oh my. Somehow, the familiar themes just keep coming around, again and again, ad infinitum. Of course, most of them have already been captured and processed by Shakespeare. From the bitter young man to the crazy old king, from the flirty young thing to the…
This is the beginning of The Way of the Gun you will not see, because it was written but never filmed: Two men, Parker and Longbaugh, urinate in an open grave in front of mourners, beat up a priest, steal organs meant for transplant and shoot a dog. The introduction,…
Murphy and Pryor. Skywalker and Kenobi. Amos and Zeppelin. Regardless of the creative universe, the maverick apprentice tends to stride off into territory beyond the edges of the master’s map. So it is with Alan Rudolph, whose career blossomed after serving as assistant director to Robert Altman on Nashville in…
The title is Killing Coyote, and that’s quite literally the subject. But as Hollywood’s own Wile E. has taught us, that’s easier said than done.The documentary, directed by Doug Hawes-Davis, is a chronicle of the brutal and little-publicized “predator control” policy toward the ubiquitous canines in the contemporary American West…
Another year of musical flesh-pressing kicks off when the popular Phoenix Symphony Close-Up returns to Borders Books & Music. The opening speaker in this monthly series is Robert Moody, the symphony’s associate conductor.Most of the musicians who appear at the Close-Ups bring their instruments and play a bit. But since…
“Oz never did give nothin’ to the Tin Man/That he didn’t, didn’t already have . . .”It doesn’t seem accidental that these wise lines come from a band called America. A hundred years ago this month, a children’s book by a frustrated playwright and businessman named L. Frank Baum, a…
Success is relative in Hollywood, like a third cousin twice-removed who doesn’t recognize you at family reunions, and doesn’t care to. Fame is so fleeting it has a month-by-month lease. Six years ago, Christopher McQuarrie was as famous as any screenwriter on the backlot known as Los Angeles. He had…
Amanda Peet has some really large teeth. Seriously. Even given the fact that it’s in vogue for hot, young, would-be sex symbols to have a set of brightly polished choppers prominent for all to see (think Neve Campbell, Casper Van Dien or Denise Richards), Amanda’s impressive ivories take the cake…
“Be cool, get chicks.” While that’s paraphrased and boiled down, it’s nonetheless the essential creed of Dex (Donal Logue), the corpulent connoisseur of carnality who lumbers through this debut feature from Jenniphr Goodman as if he’s Paul Bunyan and every woman in sight is a tree. Overweight and underemployed, Dex…
According to Patrice Leconte, women live to be vulnerable, men thrive when they are in command, and the two genders can only find happy fusion once they’ve tasted one another’s fates . . . unless they capriciously kill each other. At least, this seems to be the director’s thesis in…
