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Captain Morgan

At this point in the career of actor-comedian Tracy Morgan, it’s likely you’re familiar with some of his belly laugh-inducing characters. For instance, unaccredited zoologist Brian Fellow from Saturday Night Live, with a sixth grade education and an abiding love for all God’s creatures. More recently Morgan has portrayed 30...
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CONTAGION: A-List Actors Fight for Survival in a World Full of Germs

Besides doing fun relationship stuff like arguing about how to discipline our dog, New Times blogger Tyler Hughes and his girlfriend, Jackie Cronin, go to the movies. Tyler:  So, how many times did you wash your hands after seeing Contagion?Jackie: Twice -- before leaving the theater. I've never been so...
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One Day: Life Happens According to a Plan

Directed by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig from a screenplay by David Nicholls, based on his novel, One Day stars Anne Hathaway as Emma, a too-serious would-be writer in coke-bottle glasses and combat boots. She's nursing a crush on Dexter (Jim Sturgess), her too-good-looking rich boy college classmate. She's earnest, tenacious...
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The Five Best Prequels That Have Nothing to Do with Star Wars

If you want to turn a pleasant quest through the sunny hills of Azeroth into an all-out, Night-Elf-on-Dwarf rumble, mention prequels. In American popular culture, the prequel is still most strongly associated with the Star Wars prequel trilogy - those films we waited decades for while technology caught up to George...
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The Help: Civil Rights Through a Soft-Focus Lens

More than just the Hollywood It Girl of the moment, Emma Stone is a real actress, and in The Help, she gets an ostentatious, Oscar-baiting Big Scene in which to prove it. Stone is, to borrow a phrase from Bret Easton Ellis' Twitter account, thoroughly post-empire — she doesn't need...
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Drive: Ryan Gosling Is at the Wheel in a Heist Gone Bad

As stripped down and propulsive as its robotic title, Drive is the most "American" movie yet by Danish genre director Nicolas Winding Refn. The film, for which Refn was named best director last May in Cannes, is a sleek, tense piece of work that, as a vehicle for Ryan Gosling,...
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Feedback from the Issue of Thursday, September 29, 2011

SAD SONGS Music does give comfort: Your story "Facing the Music" was truly inspiring. I wept as I read it (Kholood Eid, September 15). If you've ever had a relative lingering on his or her deathbed, you know how deeply depressed everybody is. Sometimes, the family is even more depressed...
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Higher Ground: Vera Farmiga Tries to Create a Better Role

At one point in Higher Ground, Vera Farmiga's decade-spanning directorial debut, the actress, playing Corinne, a woman still soaked with lake water after her baptism into an evangelical sect, resembles no less a touchstone than Ronee Blakley in Robert Altman's Nashville: slightly high hair; starchy, sexless, long tunic dress; swaying...
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Urban Stargazing

One new idea for every day in 2011. We're talking big, small, local, international, in action and on the drawing board. Here's today's -- what's yours? Oscar Lhermitte is recreating the stars. It's no small task, the French designer admits, but after noticing the disappearance of a few notable star...
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Art Cars: American Folk Art You Can’t Hang on the Wall

Jose Benavides’ vision of the Madonna appeared at Mesa Arts Center last fall. For many people visiting MAC for the “Guitars & Handlebars” season opening exhibit, she was a revelation: a 17-foot-long motorized sculpture on wheels, draped in a shroud of 500 license plates from 50 U.S. states (plus Mexico...
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The Seven Best Football Movies Ever

The NFL regular season starts tomorrow night and football fans can barely contain their glee. They've waited out a long, hot summer fraught with player trades, contract negotiations, and the possibility of an owners lockout. They're more ready than ever to cheer on their favorite teams over the next few months.When...
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Requiem for a Super Middleweight

The boxing world loves a good comeback story, and local pugilist Jesús “El Martillo” González has one of the better tales of redemption we’ve ever heard. Widely considered one of the biggest wunderkinds to emerge from Valley’s boxing scene, the South Phoenix southpaw turned pro at 18, amassed an impressive...
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Rise of the Planet of the Apes: James Franco Destroys Humanity

Besides doing fun relationship stuff like arguing about how to discipline our dog, New Times blogger Tyler Hughes and his girlfriend, Jackie Cronin, go to the movies. Tyler: So, if I remember correctly you haven't seen any of the original Planet of the Apes movies, including that awful Mark Wahlberg...
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Dude Awakening

At the risk of pissing off that Dos Equis guy, Jeff Bridges is truly one of the most interesting men in the world. Besides bringing one of the more memorable characters in film history to life with his portrayal of “The Dude” in The Big Lebowski, the venerated actor is...
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Six Best Bums in Entertainment

In a world gone mad, one vagabond has the courage and the fortitude to stand up to the corrupt forces that tear all that is good asunder. This is the plot to Hobo With A Shotgun, and it is more than 80-minutes of hideously terrific cinema.The contest-winning Grindhouse trailer turned...
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Albert Brooks Takes His Dark Side Out for a Spin in Drive

When Albert Brooks greets me in the reception area of his Beverly Hills office, I immediately recognize his shirt. The baggy, faded, red short-sleeve button-down imprinted with dull green palm trees belongs to the inimitably tacky wardrobe of Bernie Rose, the mobster and sometime B-movie producer Brooks plays in Nicolas...
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Five Great Boxing Moments Outside of the Ring

The US Airways Center has played host to some of the Valley's biggest event, but this Friday, the downtown arena welcomes its biggest guest, Jesus. No, we're not talking about the skinny, bearded messiah from Bethlehem. We're talking about 26-year old Phoenician boxer Jesus "El Martillo" Gonzalez, a hard-hitting southpaw...
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Project Nim: One Chimp’s Sad Tale

Not every homo sapiens who sees Project Nim will be moved to pledge membership in PETA. Still, this documentary biopic of the '70s chimp picked to endure an "experiment" in simian sign language and general neglect pulls human heartstrings as wrenchingly as any creature feature in the 45 years since...