Jamie Lee Curtis is the most obvious graduate of Slasher U to cross over into big-time stardom--she's back, in Halloween: H20, for the class reunion. But she's not alone. Some major, no kidding, Oscar-winning, A-list stars have also matriculated the world of disreputable, low-budget slice-and-dice movies. Here's a brief compendium:...
The first weekend of the theater season looked like show business as usual. Phoenix Theatre was kicking off its 78th year with another tried-and-true musical; Theater Works was tackling a show beyond its limited means; and Planet Earth was providing its usual quirky, black-box alternative to both of the above...
thursday august 27 The soul sisters of the '70s trio LaBelle--Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash and Patti LaBelle--looked like they'd just beamed down from the planet Mongo in the "Lady Marmalade" days, but weren't they great days? Twenty-odd years later, the solo LaBelle (real name: Patricia Holt) still has the pipes--an...
No Mere Mr. Nice Guy The article on Travis Lee ("St. Travis at the Bat," Michael Kiefer, September 3) was awesome. I never knew how "nice" a guy Travis was. I had seen him play many games, but had only seen the baseball player side of Travis, not the man...
BFA Blues Your article ("I Was Sick . . . and Ye Visited Me Not," Terry Greene Sterling, August 6) is continuing proof that the Baptist Foundation of Arizona is not a charitable foundation and should have that status revoked by the state and be forced to pay taxes to...
Although some highbrow critics have scoffed at them over the years as aesthetic wanna-bes, riding the coattails of artists like Henry James and E.M. Forster to the illusion of stature, the producer-director team of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory has had a long a career in the arthouses. In the...
Where do racist white gangs allow black people to be members? In Arizona, according to a news release by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. At least that's what the Reverend Oscar Tillman, president of the Arizona NAACP, was saying at the news conference he called last...
In 1974, Robert Towne was seething on the lot where his most famous script, Chinatown, was being shot. When I interviewed him at the time, he was appalled at director Roman Polanski's heavy hand, particularly Polanski's ending where Evelyn Mulwray, the Faye Dunaway character, gets killed. Twenty-three years later, I...
Mancuso's, 6166 North Scottsdale Road (The Borgata), Scottsdale, 948-9988. Hours: Dinner, 5 to 10 p.m., seven days a week. Arizona has its share of ancient wonders: the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, Meteor Crater. I suppose you could add Mancuso's to the list. After all, it's nearly as old. When...
Do we really need to see the great Kevin Spacey fuming and fussing in one of those we-do-things-my-way-or-we-don't-do-them-at-all roles? In The Negotiator, he's playing Chris Sabian, an expert hostage negotiator for the Chicago police, whose job it is to talk down Samuel L. Jackson's Danny Roman, another police expert who...
The luncheon appears to be nothing special, just another stop on the rubber-chicken circuit for some of the state's true power brokers--the heads of Arizona's utility companies. But for Paul Newman, it's like entering the lion's den. At the annual gathering of the Arizona Utility Investors Association, Newman, a Democrat,...
Spike and Mike's Classic Festival of Animation is the other yearly film anthology from the same two Californians--Spike Decker and Mike Gribble--who concoct Spike & Mike's Festival of Sick and Twisted Animation. Like Sick and Twisted, their annual blowout of scatology, sacrilege and sensationalistic sex, the Classic festival is a...
A pungent, ardent yearning permeated the big theater at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch one balmy evening in July. It felt like artistic homesickness. Walter Murch--the renowned film editor and sound designer--was making an audacious presentation to a few dozen filmmakers, journalists, broadcasters and trusted friends. George Lucas himself took time...
Public-address announcer Jeff Munn skitters down the stairs to his press-box seat high above Sun Devil Stadium. His heart still pounds after his frenzied drive from downtown Phoenix, where 30 minutes earlier he finished announcing the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game that had gone 12 innings. Munn slips out of his...
One of the few seemingly spontaneous bursts of energy at this year's Oscar ceremony was provided by motor-mouthing Dutch director Mike van Diem, who seemed genuinely surprised to have won the award for Best Foreign Film for his debut feature, Character. If the commercial popularity and Oscar sweep for Titanic...
In 1978, RSO Records was the most successful record label on planet Earth. From Christmas of 1977 to May 20 the following year, the Robert Stigwood-owned label maintained a 21-week stranglehold on the top position of Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart. No other record label has ever managed to score...
Picture the setup for a girl-on-girl tryst in a porn nugget titled Hot Seats released last summer on VCA video: Horny babes on mountain bikes traversing the hills outside of Los Angeles, clad in tight bike shorts, nipple-enhancing jerseys and enough makeup to challenge any Spice Girl. Two of them...
. . . but when worlds collide, said George Pal to his bride, I'm gonna give you some terrible thrills . . . --The Rocky Horror Picture Show Nowhere in the press materials for Deep Impact can I find any reference to Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer's novel When Worlds...
The Horse Whisperer, the latest film from Robert Redford--and the first of his directorial efforts in which he also stars--could almost serve as a compendium of Redford's best and worst tendencies. It features his eye for gorgeous, pictorial vistas, his straightforward narrative approach and, most important, his understanding of actors...
And the Nominees Are . . . : In the movie business, it's the Oscar. In the recording industry, it's the Grammy. In the restaurant world, it's the James Beard Awards. Right now, the firm of Deloitte & Touche is tabulating results from the first round of balloting. A few...
The flimsiest hustle in movie promotion today--one perpetrated by film festivals and their camp followers--is that independent movies are starved for mainstream attention. The truth is, they often have an open field in big-city media. Major studios are usually unable to deliver a finished print of a would-be blockbuster until...
thursday may 7 One of the state's largest amateur sporting events, the 1998 Arizona Special Olympics Summer Games showcases the athletic prowess of some 2,000 developmentally disabled adults and children in a variety of Olympic-style competitions, held on Arizona State University campus in Tempe, mostly in and around Sun Angel...
