Fans of Jonathan Richman frequently find themselves answering the question, “Jonathan who?” It’s not a household name, after all. Some will go into an explanation of Richman’s early years when his band, the Modern Lovers, paved the way for the punk-rock explosion of the mid-’70s with angsty beauties like “Pablo…
For those who aren’t film-festivaled out after last weekend’s New Times Flashback Film Festival or the Phoenix Jewish Film Festival, this week there’s the fourth annual Phoenix International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, this year titled “Out Far!” The venue is Harkins Camelview 5, located on Goldwater Boulevard north of…
One quick look at the huge mixed-media paintings of artist William T. Wiley — now on display in “Recent and Relevant” at Scottsdale’s Riva Yares Gallery — and it becomes crystal clear that Wiley is a man who must never sleep. That’s probably because, for 40 years, this consummate artist…
The subject matter is surely the stuff of which can’t-miss movies are made: Jacqueline Susann, author of the best seller Valley of the Dolls and other jerk-off (pardon, “maddeningly sexy,” to quote Helen Gurley Brown) classic lit. There was nothing at all pedestrian about the woman who was regaled in…
Director Chen Kaige is best known in the U.S. for Farewell My Concubine, the most successful Chinese production ever released here. As many pointed out at the time, this Oscar-nominated 1993 epic of modern Chinese history may have been wholly Chinese in both content and viewpoint, but it was still,…
February must be film-festival season here in the Valley. You can’t swing a dead movie geek — though it’s worth a try — without hitting a festival. The first of at least three February fests is the New Times Flashback Film Fest, a blowout of faves, with one obscure curio,…
The three virtuoso musicians who make up Trio Voronezh — that’s “Vo-RO-nesh” to the non-Russian speakers among us — have come a long way in a short time. These graduates of the Classical Conservatory in Voronezh, Russia, began their careers together playing some unusual venues. They worked in small concert…
The computer-animated kiddy feature Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists aspires to nothing more than Saturday-matinee thrills for the preadolescent crowd. The obvious direct source for the content is the cycle of Sinbad the Sailor fantasies — The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974) and…
It’s easy to see how Play It to the Bone, writer-director Ron Shelton’s latest comedy-drama, got started. Shelton obviously wanted to do for boxing what he’d already done for baseball in Bull Durham, golf in Tin Cup and pickup basketball in White Men Can’t Jump. But somewhere along the way,…
Many of us latter-day Arizona settlers fled the northeast precisely because we found the words “winter” and “fest” don’t go together well. But for those who are nostalgic for biting cold, punishing winds and treacherous snow, Flagstaff Winterfest is here again. The 14th annual chill-out to the north kicks off…
Time was when you went to the theater to be entertained, not to be entertaining, and nuns were scary creatures whose sexual repression made them want to beat little kids senseless. Those days are mostly gone. Today, theater comedy often relies on audiences to augment the shtick of the actors…
The evening of March 14, 1885, was an auspicious one in the annals of musical theater. Less than four years had passed since the opening of London’s Savoy Theatre, built specifically for the productions of librettist William Schwenk Gilbert and composer Arthur Seymour Sullivan. The partners’ first six works had…
In the past 30 years, Woody Allen has written and directed something like 28 movies — “something like” reflects the confusion of how to count his contribution to New York Stories — a remarkable productivity record for a major filmmaker, and one that’s even more impressive when you consider how…
Ignore her title. She’s no lady. It is the summer of 1988, at the Pavillion Theatre in Glasgow, Scotland. Elvis Costello is playing a solo show to promote his latest album, Spike. As soon as he walks onstage, members of the audience begin yelling for “Tramp the Dirt Down,” a…
Angie Tidwell is a total loser. She’s 37 and lives with her mom. Her favorite singer is Helen Reddy. She collects vintage dollhouse furniture, works as a guest greeter at Wal-Mart, and is still a virgin. But what makes Angie a total washout is that she’s only seen The Phantom…
In Cradle Will Rock, his third directorial outing, Tim Robbins takes on an almost insurmountably ambitious project: a re-creation of an era into which characters imaginary, obscure and famous are woven into a tapestry that represents the texture of the time. It’s a tall order. E. L. Doctorow was able…
Boo hoo! Frank McCourt had a miserable childhood! Honestly, who can say their childhood wasn’t impoverished in some way… or in many ways? That Mr. McCourt survived and eventually published his inescapable memoir is nice, of course, and the book is indeed a poignant and crafty piece of work. Nonetheless,…
The world’s demand for minimally talented 30-year-old high school dropouts who believe they’re great poets or great musicians or great movie directors isn’t going to catch up with the supply anytime soon. That won’t keep the strivers from striving, of course, nor will it snuff out their dreams. Case in…
The first space opera of the year 2000, Supernova, turns out to be more nostalgic than futuristic. There isn’t an idea in this brief, handsomely produced actioner that isn’t a sci-fi chestnut. Event Horizon, Aliens, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, even The Fly all…
“Dave, it’s Arlo calling.” There was no need to ask “Arlo who?” The instantly recognizable voice on the other end of the phone has been a familiar one since 1967 when Arlo Guthrie’s first album was released. A goodly chunk of that classic work was the lengthy monologue within a…
Whatever happened to television sketch comedy? Nowadays you really only find it on late-night TV shows such as Saturday Night Live or Mad TV. But for years before the format was marginalized into the fringes of televised programming, you could enjoy examples any night of the week. From the earliest…
It’s likely that many of the readers who bought four million copies, in at least 30 languages, of David Guterson’s 1995 best-seller Snow Falling on Cedars have been looking forward to the movie version. Others have probably been dreading it. For better or worse, this multifarious story about nativist bigotry,…
