Shane, the teenage hero of Mark Christopher’s 54, wears the petulant expression of a Raphaelite cherub, and he comes complete with a halo of curly blond hair. He’s played by a pretty newcomer with the exotic name of Ryan Phillippe, but there’s nothing exotic about the voice that comes out…
In the pecking order of tragic black musicians, Frankie Lymon can’t hold a votive candle to, say, Charlie Parker or Billie Holiday. But now, like that pair, the late doo-wopper has got his own movie–or, rather, he’s got his own space in a movie that, for better or worse, is…
In the bluish-green depths of the ocean, we see the deck of a sunken ship. Out of the murk, two pinpoints of light approach–humans, lured to this wreck by irresistible curiosity. It’s the beginning of a James Cameron movie, but it’s not that James Cameron movie. It’s the first shot…
Largely associated with the cinder block and milk crate set and families expert in child mass-production, the drive-in movie theater really is about a piece of 20th-century Americana that is quickly dissolving. Many drive-ins of yore are now Kmarts, apartment complexes and even trailer parks. Conceived by an entrepreneur named…
thursday september 3 The art show of heretofore unseen works titled “The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss” is, for those of us who adore the late doctor’s mad and wise poetic and artistic vision, far more seductive than Andrew Wyeth’s Helga stuff. Wilde-Meyer hosts the show, which includes “secret images…
Most trials don’t have the sort of high theatrics that TV and movie courtroom dramas do. Even the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson, for all its bizarre spectacle, was never rocked by any testimony from the defendant. But attorney Daniel M. Petrocelli is coming to the Valley to talk about…
Henry Jaglom’s movies offer everything that Americans hate about French films, but with little of the philosophical depth or visual daring that marks the best French cinema. He also captures the annoying qualities of Woody Allen movies–the self-absorption, the feigned feminism, the pretentiousness–without achieving anything like Allen’s humor and charm…
Slums of Beverly Hills is the first feature by the young writer-director Tamara Jenkins, and it has its mild amusements. One of those movies that gets bonus points for being “personal,” it bops along from episode to episode, as if the filmmaker were discovering her subject as she went along…
The idea of destiny–especially the notion that two people are fated to meet and fall in love–is a load of crap, but a surprising number of people buy into it. Probably for that reason it has proved to be a fairly popular component in movie romances, City of Angels and…
“That is known as the lowest point in my life, because I basically was a human barbell,” says Next Stop Wonderland star Hope Davis of her role in the 1995 remake of Kiss of Death, in which she played Nicolas Cage’s girlfriend. “Big, big hair and really cheesy clothes,” she…
thursday august 27 The soul sisters of the ’70s trio LaBelle–Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash and Patti LaBelle–looked like they’d just beamed down from the planet Mongo in the “Lady Marmalade” days, but weren’t they great days? Twenty-odd years later, the solo LaBelle (real name: Patricia Holt) still has the pipes–an…
Here’s how you know you’ve made it: You’re on a long-distance call to Vegas, talking with a gorgeous blonde that you’ve seen on late-night cable TV, and it’s not costing you $2.99 a minute. In fact, she called you. Of course, on this occasion, the blonde in question isn’t talking…
For the fourth year, the Chandler Center for the Arts will be quilted in lively color when it presents a quilt show to challenge the eye and the spirit. This year’s exhibition, titled “Background Check,” runs from Friday, August 28, through Friday, October 2. “The goal of this annual show…
Joanne Rapp has always been something of a “low talker”–that Seinfeldian girlfriend of Kramer’s whose inaudible delivery got the politely nodding Jerry to agree inadvertently to wear a “puffy shirt” on national television. But the wares and wearables Rapp promoted in near whispers for 26 years at her Marshall Way…
Based on a French film of 1990 called Force Majeure, the unhelpfully titled Return to Paradise aspires to be a morality play, one of those stories that makes you fret about what you would do in the same situation. It also wants to be a belated coming-of-age story, the drama…
Darren Aronofsky’s debut feature, Pi, won the Dramatic Directing Award at Sundance this year, and it’s easy to imagine why. Whatever its faults, and it has more than a few, it is unquestionably different. It at least takes a stab at interpolating cerebral ideas into the format of a thriller…
thursday august 20 The three one-acts that compose The Silent Accord of Transience: The Aluminum Can Man Trilogy detail the encounters of Al, who makes his living collecting aluminum cans, with three different women. The Unlikely Theater Company presents this work, by Victoria Safriet, in its main-stage venue for the…
Although some highbrow critics have scoffed at them over the years as aesthetic wanna-bes, riding the coattails of artists like Henry James and E.M. Forster to the illusion of stature, the producer-director team of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory has had a long a career in the arthouses. In the…
Bertha has passed on. The air conditioner known by that name, which, for 45 years, has cooled the building that now houses the Arizona Museum for Youth, has gone to Ventilation Valhalla. The installation of a new AC unit has necessitated the shutting down of the museum since late March,…
Jamie Lee Curtis is the most obvious graduate of Slasher U to cross over into big-time stardom–she’s back, in Halloween: H20, for the class reunion. But she’s not alone. Some major, no kidding, Oscar-winning, A-list stars have also matriculated the world of disreputable, low-budget slice-and-dice movies. Here’s a brief compendium:…
The timing couldn’t be better for How Stella Got Her Groove Back. The “dog days” of summer are upon us, and few prospects could be more welcome to asteroid-weary moviegoers than a light romance-comedy that includes a trip to Jamaica as part of the package. Director Kevin Rodney Sullivan may…
The unkillable masked killer in John Carpenter’s slasher-movie prototype Halloween is the most generic of all movie monsters. Even his name–reputedly borrowed from a British film distributor who made an overseas hit out of Carpenter’s early film Assault on Precinct 13–is prosaic: Michael Myers. He’s just a tall, silent stunt…
