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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
