"IN-CRIMI-NATION" at The Icehouse: If you think the Iraq War is our countrys low point, wait until you see The Icehouses latest sniper shot at America. Artist Mona Higuchis 12-foot-high woven paper reprint of a vintage photograph depicting Japanese girls stitching camouflage cargo nets at an internment camp is a...
It may be hard out there for a pimp, but it ain't too hard for a writer-director to make a movie whose marketing hinges on the lurid spectacle of Samuel L. Jackson pulling a half-naked Christina Ricci around on a chain. This sort of cheap trick is what they used...
We Americans complain of Big Brother's unblinking eye in the post-Patriot Act, corporate e-mail era — as well we should. But, as The Lives of Others makes plain, things could be worse. Set in East Berlin circa 1984, when one in 100 citizens of the German Democratic Republic was a...
After Dark: 100 Years of the Evening Dress at Phoenix Art Museum: Your old prom dress probably isn't a masterpiece, but formal wear by Oscar De La Renta and Gianni Versace can be as desirable as a Rembrandt. Phoenix Art Museum's exhibit of 30 gowns, selected from their cache of...
"Tenacious" at Tempe Public Library's Connections Caf: At first glance, artist Barbara Burton's quirky monoprints of bunnies and teacups seem well-suited to a coffee shop that's just a stone's throw from dog-eared copies of Brer Rabbit and Winnie the Pooh. But there's a darker subtext here. Check out Would You...
The Science of Sleep (Warner Bros.) Feature films are to video directors what sitcoms are to stand-up comedians, and for every David Fincher and Seinfeld, there are dozens of artists who should have stayed in the field they know best. Michel Gondry, who made his name directing fantastic videos for...
Given P-Town's proximity to Mexico, we Phoenicians pretty much experience Latino culture in one form or another nearly 365 days a year. But things are really gonna get amped up from Friday, May 4, to Sunday, May 6, as the PHX is fixing to host some serious Cinco de Mayo...
Flash Point The devil you dont: I have to admit that this is the first time I have ever written a letter to an editor, but after reading your vilification of Fire Chief Bob Khan I just had to ("The Fire Inside," Sarah Fenske, March 15). I retired from the...
WikimediaCommons The crap you find online: A woodblock of some old Japanese biddy letting one fly. The first rule of fart club is: You don't talk about fart club. The second rule of fart club is...Ok, you get the pic. Tyler Durden is a highly flatulent fellow who forms an...
"Armor de Amor — Agave Art for the 21st Century" at five15 Gallery: Artist Carrie May Kreyche pairs natural objects with manmade materials to make humorous, yet profound, observations about the world around us. In her Suckulent series, a baby-bottle nipple is surrounded by rings of dried cactus leaves. They...
Every New Year's Eve, I watch my favorite movie. I used to think that everyone had a favorite film until a few years ago, when I hosted a party to which I asked each guest to bring a clip from their most-loved movie. One by one the invitees phoned to...
Blame it on the History Channel's Hiroshima documentaries or the section in theology class on the Rapture. Apocalyptic visions are undeniably enthralling. I don't know about you, but I can't help but contemplate how mass hysteria would look, feel and smell. So when I come across a show like "Gardening...
Maurice Russell, a septuagenarian actor facing the end of his career and life, gazes raptly at the present that fate has given him: the company of a sullen but strangely desirable teenage girl. At first, his appraising looks give her the creeps, but something about his courtliness piques her curiosity...
In the new Clint Eastwood movie, ordinary young men — husbands and fathers, artisans and aristocrats — are drafted into a war whose motives many of them do not fully understand. There, on an island called Iwo Jima, they fight against an enemy who has been demonized by wartime propaganda...
Given P-Town's proximity to Mexico, we Phoenicians pretty much experience Latino culture in one form or another nearly 365 days a year. But things are really gonna get amped up from Friday, May 4, to Sunday, May 6, as the PHX is fixing to host some serious Cinco de Mayo...
The Mexican is currently inside a trunk trying to sneak back into the United States after the Christmas holiday. Meanwhile, here are some oldies-but-goldies: A friend of mine calls Mexicans "wabs" but, being a menso, doesn't even know what it means — except that it's not P.C. What's it mean?...
Rocky: 2-Disc Collector's Edition (MGM) An old TV commercial for Rocky included here compares Sylvester Stallone to Pacino, De Niro, and Brando -- and though we now know this to be pure madness, it's easy to see what inspired it. Sure, Stallone (who also wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay) slowly destroyed...
One morning, Gary Walkow was suddenly transformed into a successful Hollywood filmmaker. Gone were the hat-in-hand searches for financing, the deferred salaries, the long shooting days with undermanned crews, and the months upon years spent touring the festival circuit while seeking a distribution deal. For a moment, he was taking...
On an early December afternoon at the offices of Malpaso Productions, Clint Eastwood's four Academy Awards have been placed into thick velvet carrying bags, while that famous poncho — the one Eastwood donned for the entirety of Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy — is being carefully loaded into a large shipping...
History repeats itself: 11 Decembers ago, Universal had the season's strongest movie — a downbeat sci-fi flick freely adapted from a well-known source by a name director. With a bare minimum of advance screenings and a shocking absence of hype, the studio dumped it. This year, it's done it again...
It's official: Hollywood has run out of original ideas. If you thought 2006 was bad, just wait. In 2007, the studios will give up on birthing blockbusters and instead concentrate on cloning them, with sequel after sequel after sequel. Familiar titles will be followed by so many numbers that filmgoers...
It is said that a great actor or actress can "bring down the house," but before I saw (and heard) the 25-year-old American Idol finalist Jennifer Hudson in the film version of the 1981 Broadway musical Dreamgirls, I can't recall the last time I truly feared for the architectural stability...
