The independent production/distribution company The Shooting Gallery probably got a lot more attention when Monica Lewinsky showed up in Washington, D.C., wearing a cap with its logo than it is likely to from the release of The 24 Hour Woman, a modest, deserving film from writer/director Nancy Savoca. Savoca has...
The new Mel Gibson vehicle Payback is arguably the first major-studio release this year to have even a modicum of aesthetic ambition. For his directorial debut, Brian Helgeland--who won an Oscar for his screenplay for 1997's L.A. Confidential (co-written with director Curtis Hanson)--has chosen to adapt The Hunter, the first...
The Best Actor nomination which Nick Nolte garnered last week for his superb star turn in Paul Schrader's Affliction (see page 63 for review) is a boon not only to his career, but to the career of Mel Weiser. The Valley-based writer's new tome Nick Nolte: Caught in the Act...
thursday february 18 Karate demonstrations, children's singing and dancing groups, strolling clowns, face painters, live music and radio remotes, a carnival midway with 25 rides and 20 games; arts-and-crafts exhibits; and photo opportunities with a live 400-pound tiger, along with an international food festival and beer garden, are among the...
Former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet stands charged of murder, torture and kidnapping, but even he has access to the British court system as he fights his extradition to Spain. That's better treatment than another Chilean, Oscar Fuchslocher, is getting in the United States. Fuchslocher, who has been ordered deported by...
You Can't Fight the INS Thanks for publishing the column on Oscar Fuchslocher ("Red Hot Chile Paperwork," Amy Silverman, December 17), which was no doubt an eye-opener for many of your readers. Few native-born Americans have any idea of the monster lurking at the heart of the federal government--an unaccountable...
Disco dead? Hardly. According to Headbangers Against Disco (or H.A.D.) it's still alive and sucking. This self-proclaimed "idealistic organization that works to prevent the spread of disco and all it stands for" wants to sell you $24 tee shirts advising you to "burn down your local disco now!!" The headquarters...
The great attorneys of our time--Tom Cruise, Susan Sarandon, Tom Hanks--must now make room in the firm for a new partner. John Travolta, who in past lives has been a disco king, a hip hit man and a deep-fried Presidential candidate, reinvents himself in A Civil Action as a greedy...
Teacher, teacher, I declare--I see Monica Lewinsky's underwear! Actually, the panties in question don't belong to Lewinsky; they're owned by drag queen Celia Putty, a performer at Wink's, a Valley gay bar. But that doesn't stop 30 Glendale Community College students and their instructor from roaring as the "semen"-caked intern...
This mystery begins with the five known, credible witnesses to a car crash. The scene was north Phoenix. The time was 1:43 in the morning. Robert Nettles was on his back patio, facing Cactus Road, when he heard the chilling scream of tires on pavement. Nettles told police he looked...
Even students of English history may have trouble sorting out the palace intrigues and intragovernmental conspiracies that fill Elizabeth, the handsome new production about Queen Elizabeth I's ascension to the British throne in 1558. With the bewitching Australian actress Cate Blanchett (last year's Oscar and Lucinda) in the title role,...
Thursday December 24 Since Christmas Eve is generally a day of ease and relaxation, when we do all those little things that we've been meaning to get around to the rest of the year, why not stop by the Burton Barr Central Library Thursday, December 24, both to catch up...
The past year has been filled with good films . . . interesting films . . . worthwhile films. In fact, there were many that I think of as being wonderful or droll or whatever. But 1998 failed to produce a single film to which the term "great" might be...
Fifteen minutes into Velvet Goldmine, director Todd Haynes' love letter to England's glam-rock scene of the late Sixties/early Seventies, the film has already promised to be many things: a missing-person mystery; a meticulous period piece; an essay on sexually liberated dandyism; a quasi-musical; a portrait of the Machiavellian as an...
Belle and Sebastian The Boy With the Arab Strap (Jeepster/Matador) Goth can be a many-sided gloom. At its silliest, it's too much eyeliner on a suburban kid playing make-believe with death and destruction. At the other end are fashion nonspecific soundtracks of honest human entropy: the artist-as-fuck-up documents like Big...
It comes as no surprise to learn that Paul Devlin, the producer, director and editor of SlamNation, is an Emmy winner for his work on TV sports shows like NBC and CBS Olympic coverage and Extreme Games 101 on ESPN2. SlamNation is a documentary chronicle of the 1996 National Poetry...
When you are young, you need your father. When you are old, you need your sons. --Vietnamese proverb This much about Loi Nguyen's last hours may be recounted with reasonable certainty: The 17-year-old awoke on September 24 at his parents' home near 19th Avenue and Dunlap in Phoenix. It was...
Checking the vital signs for guitar-based rock has long been an ongoing preoccupation for critics. Still, you knew something was a bit different this year when new releases by Hole, Marilyn Manson and even the sample-heavy Garbage were judged not merely for their musical merits but for their potential to...
There are three reasons one might want to brave the August heat and go to the Phoenix Zoo this weekend, when the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile pulls in. One is to participate in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile Talent Search, a national hunt for a new moppet between the ages of 3...
Montana Grill & Bread Company, 3717 East Indian School Road, Phoenix, 553-8553. Hours: breakfast, lunch and dinner, Monday through Saturday, 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Can we talk? It's time we had a discussion about grills. It seems that just about every new restaurant in town calls itself a "grill."...
"I'm here every day," the guy says. "Well, every day except Sunday. Sunday is for family and God." The guy is Mexican, handsome, in his 30s, with a mustache and a smile like sunlight. He has a taco stand on Van Buren near 17th Avenue. The stand has been there...
Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita still has the power to scare off people. Proof is the book's new movie adaptation, directed by Adrian Lyne and scripted by Stephen Schiff and starring Jeremy Irons as the passionate pedophile Humbert Humbert, a man entranced by nymphets. Completed more than two years ago, the movie...
