The premise is preposterous, the final score inevitable, and the record reading on the feel-good-ometer is totally predictable. But Mystery, Alaska comes furnished with some winning quirks and charms -- including a very funny bit concerning premature ejaculation at 20 degrees below zero. So even if you don't really believe...
In 1846, Mexico was in a state of disarray, as various bandits and warlords roamed the land jockeying for power. Knowing an opportunity when he saw one, U.S. President James Polk sent the Army down to the border to prepare for an invasion, hoping to gain control of the Santa...
A kid limps up and offers his palm. He wears a black Misfits tour shirt and Marine fatigues, glittery combat boots and a teal-colored mess of hair. Framed by the hazy hues of Mill Avenue on a Friday night, he seems an antagonistic juxtaposition to the street's sugary chain-store harmony...
Year-end best-of lists are usually accompanied by depressing State of Music essays, the kind that take a sweeping view of significant happenings and industry trends and culminate with dire prognostications for the future. Inevitably, most of those things start to sound like a Chicken Little speech. If you tried to...
ROB SCHUH USED TO BE ABLE TO bench-press 500 pounds. These days, he struggles to lift a more pedestrian 150. Schuh -- arguably the Valley's finest jazz drummer -- is only 36, but he looks more damaged than his years. His short, receding hair exposes his huge Vulcan ears and...
What is it they say -- that even a flea can reach Mount Olympus riding in Pegasus' mane? Well, in the case of the new Albert Brooks comedy The Muse, Brooks is the flea and Pegasus is his delectable co-star, Sharon Stone. But I get ahead of myself. In The...
If Kevin Williamson has anything to say about it, the good works of noble movie schoolteachers like Mr. Chips and Miss Dove and Mr. Holland will be wiped out in one fell swoop. In their place, the creator of TV's hormonal Dawson's Creek series proposes an unmitigated horror -- a...
Woe to the scribbler who presumes to rewrite a master--unless he is so deft that his invasion of privacy produces something new and exciting. Enter British writer/director Oliver Parker. He has the nerve to meddle with Oscar Wilde's sublime farce An Ideal Husband and the skill to pull it off...
The Birthday Party Live '81-'82 (4AD) The Birthday Party's 1980 arrival in London came at just the right moment. Punk rock had died, and the somber, icy tones dubbed "post-punk" (more as a requiem than as a symbol of progress) had turned punk's corpse into a zombie. Back home in...
ANTHONY PERRI IS QUICK TO TELL PEOPLE THAT he's not an educated guy. He dropped out of high school on the first day of his freshman year, after attending Italian (the one class he figured he could pass) and lunch. He's a little fuzzy on history (he refers to General...
Gladys Knight & the Pips Claudine Bobby Womack The Poet Leon Huff Here to Make Music (The Right Stuff) This trio of R&B rereleases from The Right Stuff label dates back to the heart of the disco era. Released at any other time, two of the albums would easily have...
The Sleepwalker Murder Case may be over, but one question continues to captivate the public: Is it true that Scott Falater talked about a 1980s Canadian sleepwalking murder case with colleagues at Motorola before the murder? The short answer: no. This story within the story--what had Falater been chatting about,...
What's New: The Valley's restaurant boom shows no sign of slowing down. Here's a run-down of some of the places that have opened over the past few months: * Tequila Grill (4363 North 75th Street, Scottsdale, 480-941-1800). Run by veterans of Sam's Cafe, this place features Southwestern fare. Look for...
Remember Keiko Ibi, the pretty Japanese woman who gave the touching acceptance speech after she won for Best Documentary Short at this year's Oscars? The chance to see her 37-minute winning film, The Personals, on a big screen comes up this weekend, when it's shown as part of the Saguaro...
thursday june 10 "I used to think that if you did an hour on TV, you couldn't go and do that same hour live. But I've learned the opposite is true. That's precisely the hour audiences want you to do. There's this feeling that if you did it on TV,...
The Price Isn't Right: Oscar Wilde once defined a cynic as one who knows "the price of everything and the value of nothing." Well, I'm starting to feel more and more cynical. That's because Valley restaurant prices are starting to get way out of hand. When I first started this...
Has any major American director had quite so many career swings as Robert Altman? Maybe not, but if there's one thing the last 30 years have made clear, it is that it's never safe to count Altman out. The mid- and late '90s have been particularly unfriendly to him. After...
So you've seen all the Oscar winners and also-rans, and you've caught up with whatever might vaguely be interesting among current releases. Don't panic, you needn't resort to Wing Commander yet--there's a surprisingly rich assortment of festival films from which to choose in the Valley this week. The most notable...
A theater critic can't afford to have a favorite play. Saddled with personal preference and fond memories of a first performance, he's apt to overlook the show's flaws once it's revived. But my response to Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky hasn't been equaled in the 14 years since I first saw...
You knew Olympia Dukakis was an Oscar- and Obie-winning actor. You saw her in Moonstruck and Steel Magnolias and in many other films. So what's she doing acting as creative consultant to a San Francisco dance troupe that's making a new work here in Phoenix? No scripts in the offing?...
DGeneration Through the Darkness (C2/Columbia Records) Produced by famed glam hag Tony Visconti (T. Rex, Bowie, etc.), Through the Darkness differs little from DGen's last Ric Ocasek-knobbed No Lunch. There's a torrent of jumbo, sperm-filled Clash chords, soaring Mick Jones harmonies and ersatz-Clash topical politicizing atop an invented street hustle...
When hit men wore hats, and Cadillacs had running boards, the average Mafia don could knock off the Tattaglia brothers in mid-afternoon and sit down to a nice plate of chicken cacciatore that evening, content that he'd seen to the family business and blazed a path for his first-born son's...
