Cheri Jarvis raced to the emergency room, afraid. "When I arrived at the hospital, I did not even recognize my son. He was covered in blood and his head was swollen and his nose was everywhere on his face. He had so much blood caked on his teeth and mouth...
Classical grand opera is no laughing matter. With its labyrinthine story lines, massive productions and pampered performers, it's no wonder that opera scares away many a potential audience member. But B.J. Ward sees through the traditions and focuses on the fun and absurdity hiding just beneath the surface. Since 1990,...
So, let me get this straight. Even after three major film festivals in February -- four, if you count the ongoing Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation at Centerpoint (see Repertory Film) -- you're still hungry for more film-festival action? Well, okay, but you'll have to hit...
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,...
Garry Shandling does not have a face for the big screen. He has a mug that seems to spread to the edges of the theater; it's like an approaching storm front, a sky full of billowing clouds roaring in from the north. And it's a face built for two emotions:...
It's hard to blame Kirk Douglas for choosing Diamonds as a comeback film, after fighting back from a devastating stroke almost four years ago. Certainly no one can fault him for wanting to act again, to prove he's still got it. However, the question is this: Can the movie that...
"May I smoke?" Agnieszka Holland asks. It's a gracious request, considering that she's sitting in her own hotel room, during a recent visit to Phoenix. Of course, her interviewer tells her; after all, where would a Polish director be without a cigarette in hand? "Yes," she replies, lighting up. "I...
A hunger for the exotic is usually what stirs artists to jump past the humdrum of the "new and improved" to the rarer thrill of things "never before felt or seen." But as the Phoenix Art Museum's "Taos Artists and Their Patrons, 1898-1950" suggests, that hunger isn't confined to the...
As far as I know, I am not queer. And if I thought I were, nothing would change much, really. I would have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend. Or maybe I wouldn't. My parents might look at me with furrowed brows for a while, but they always did that...
Writer-director Anthony Minghella has chosen to follow up his Oscar-laden The English Patient with another literary adaptation -- this time, of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley. Highsmith is best known to film buffs as the author of Strangers on a Train, the basis for one of Alfred Hitchcock's best...
You hope for Dorothy Lamour, reclining against a palm tree in her sarong, when you hear the title The Hurricane. Instead, you get well more than two hours of Denzel Washington huddled in a cell. In the poster art, Washington glowers out, one bandaged fist cocked for a right to...
When Paul Thomas Anderson's second feature, Boogie Nights, was released in 1997, critics and film industry types fell over themselves to designate Anderson the next big thing, an auteur in the footsteps of Scorsese and Coppola. His film turned Mark Wahlberg from a has-been underwear model and rapper into a...
How do you make a sequel to a nearly perfect film? Toy Story, the 1995 hit from Disney and Pixar, was not only the first fully computer-animated feature; it was also as brilliantly written and directed a film as any of the classic Disney releases. Pixar did nearly everything right...
The gentlest and most innocent of the Muppet "monsters" of Sesame Street is aimed at the show's littlest viewers. As a result, he's also the least amusing for adults; even if you grant that Elmo is awfully sweet, you may wince at the prospect of sitting through his big-screen starring...
While Kevin Smith's Dogma does perhaps offer moviegoers the first slacker angels, higher beings are nothing new in the movies. Silent master D.W. Griffith actually staged the Fall of the Angels, quite spectacularly, in his 1926 epic The Sorrows of Satan. But movie angels since then have usually been folksier,...
Much like the religion that has swirled around the Star Wars trilogy for twentysome years, the fanaticism evidenced among American fans of Japanese anime remains a mystery to some of us. Writer-director Hayao Miyazaki's megahit Princess Mononoke does very little to cast light on this obsession: More's the pity, since...
In the eyes of the general public, Michael Mann is still best-known for Miami Vice. He has received a great deal of critical acclaim for films about serial killers, Mohicans and bank robbers. So who would have guessed that his most engrossing and suspenseful film to date would be a...
Ken Krusensterna knew he was in trouble the moment he knocked on the front door of Gabriela Leyva's house and it swung open from his touch. She had told him many times that she kept the door and the gate locked because she lived alone. It was 8:30 at night,...
On my belly they lay the blue strings You know what that means Here comes my family On their faces I see pain Thinkin' in my head I'm the one to blame And now it's over They close the casket And my son just became a goddamn bastard How many...
Music is supposed to be the universal language, but a swish pan across your CD collection and mine will only illustrate how much music keeps us apart. There's only a fraction of stuff we can both listen to without forcing infomercial smiles. Half of my enjoyment of music stems from...
