I hesitate to expect too much from any theater season, but the upcoming calendar of plays and musicals certainly looks more interesting than the last several have. This season, old Will is hotter than ever, and there are more musical tributes than you can shake a baton at. If there...
When Robin Williams was America's favorite funnyman in films like Mrs. Doubtfire, it always felt a little strange admitting that the guy seemed kinda creepy. When he "got serious" in irritating tear-jerkers like Hook and What Dreams May Come, it was certainly in vogue to proclaim him annoying, but few...
The man who is perhaps the most unlikely pop star of our time is returning to Phoenix. Morrissey — son of librarians, celibate singer of sexual songs, violent vegetarian, bundle of endless contradiction and controversy — graces Celebrity Theatre with his presence on Friday, August 9. The question is: Why?...
It's September 11, 2002, but Richard J. Botto isn't at home watching the relentless CNN coverage of last year's terrorist attacks. Instead, the native New Yorker has agreed to meet me for drinks at Sapporo to talk about Razor, the national men's magazine he launched two years ago. Botto is...
The plot of The Importance of Being Earnest, for those unfortunates who've missed it these past 109 years, goes something like this: A dandified London wastrel by the name of Algernon (Algy) Moncrieff (portrayed in this adaptation by Rupert Everett) welcomes into his chambers his friend and ally, Ernest (Colin...
LYT: Don't you find it interesting that Blue Crush director John Stockwell is on this whole girl-power kick, going off on the "sexist" guys who'd rather "appreciate a cute girl in a bikini, but ain't gonna give up a wave for them," yet the movie's marketing is all about appreciating...
It's daunting to hear that John Sayles' new film Sunshine State is almost two and a half hours long and consists mostly of calm conversations. But don't be deterred, or you'll miss out on a study of character, class and changing times that puts Robert Altman's stodgy Gosford Park to...
Anyone who wants proof of the sorry state of mainstream country music need only look at the struggling career of 30-year-old Allison Moorer, who by all rights should be a major star by now. The Alabama-born singer and songwriter made a big splash in 1998, when her heartfelt ballad "A...
David James is a black man. Ginger Mattox is a white woman. In the fall of 1998, Phoenix police officers pulled over Ginger Mattox as she drove near her home in the historic Story District near 16th Avenue and McDowell. The officer pulled over the professionally dressed woman, checked her...
Like a Jawbreaker that changes color every few seconds that you suck it, MIIB: Men in Black II delivers a quick buzz, lots of stuff to look at, and a totally non-nutritious joy that can only be attained with the aid of artificial flavorings and Yellow #5. In a nutshell,...
Her name sounds like the answers to a multiple-choice question on a catechism quiz, but the Reverend Doctor Lady Bishop swears she's all of the above. She is America's premier voodoo priestess, a messenger of a mélange of disciplines including black magic and Mormonism who's here, she explains, to "work...
Ten years after The Scandal -- and its negative effect on the size of his audiences, power and independence -- Woody Allen broke his longtime avoidance of the Oscar telecast with his pro-New York standup shtick at this year's ceremony. The positive audience response suggested that all is forgiven ...
Twenty miles north of Kearny, Arizona, a pistachio tree grows. Strangers turn up from time to time to trim its branches, or to snip away the weeds growing near its trunk. Some leave notes or handwritten poems that, like the tree, are dedicated to the memory of Ladmo, the late,...
Wherever we were, it seemed sure we weren't where we wanted to be. The taxi driver had grinned and waved as he sped off, leaving us alone on an empty, pitch-black street somewhere in the middle of Havana. Si, this was where we would eat dinner, he had said, or...
This Saturday evening, the dramatic architecture of the Arizona State University Art Museum serves as the backdrop for an outdoor showcase of inventive filmmaking -- the sixth annual Short Film and Video Festival. But rather than the glamour and gloss of Hollywood, expect low production values and some shaky camerawork...
Five years ago, this interview would have been such the big deal—the coup of the year, the elusive great white at last wriggling on the hook. At least, that's how she was treated back then, when she still took her meals in that velvet closet. She attracted the spotlight (some...
Say this about World Wrestling Federation Entertainment head honcho Vince McMahon: He knows what his fans want. Few movies have ever been as specifically tailored to an existing audience as The Scorpion King, in which McMahon's prize champion, The Rock, portrays The Rock wearing a loincloth and going by the...
Peter Bogdanovich, maybe the last man alive who wears a neckerchief without irony, holds a copy of a newspaper article in which his old friend Larry McMurtry is saying nice, or not nice, things about him--Bogdanovich can't tell which. "He's kind of risen from the dead," McMurtry was quoted as...
Before he died of congestive heart failure in March 1992, Richard Brooks, director of The Blackboard Jungle and In Cold Blood, used to tell this story. It takes place sometime in the late 1940s, when Brooks was ascending royalty in Hollywood; after all, he'd written John Huston's Key Largo, starring...
Sean Penn began 2001 by directing one of the year's most deeply felt films, The Pledge, in which a frazzled, disconnected Jack Nicholson played a retired cop obsessed with solving the rape and murder of a young girl. A year later, he's acting in one of the most woefully manipulative...
"Are we gonna play chicken here, Robert? Who's gonna go first?" That's Chris Moore talking, from the other end of a cell phone--the preferred means of communication for the Hollywood producer too afraid of standing still. Moore--a producer of Good Will Hunting and the American Pie films, partner with Ben...
