Remember what a fun couple Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves were in Speed? Well, forget that. In The Lake House, Warner Bros.’ slow and heavy kickoff to the summer romance season, Bullock and Reeves play the mopiest lovers to hit the big screen since Tony and Maria channeled Romeo and…
Given that John Singleton directed the second movie in the Fast and the Furious franchise, it makes a perverse kind of sense that Justin Lin would follow. Just as Singleton did with Boyz N the Hood, young Lin quickly made a name for himself with a powerful breakthrough film that…
Before I tell you why and how quickly you should go to see Nearly Naked Theater’s nearly perfect (and almost entirely clad!) production of The Who’s Tommy, I had better come clean: I don’t like modern dance. All that flailing and hopping and mimicking of shape and form; all that…
Gretchen Schermerhorn, 31, has opinions on everything, from the exploitation of women to animal abuse to globalization, and her art reflects her political leanings subtly and with humor. She won’t get in your face, but she will make you think. Her prints stimulate conversation, allowing her to poke fun at…
Gamers are so used to Mario that the fundamental weirdness of his exploits no longer raises an eyebrow: A dumpy Italian plumber journeys through a fairy-tale land, where turtles throw hammers, mushrooms bestow magic powers, and a kingly turtlebeast holds a princess captive. Where other videogame plots might have been…
Valley of the Dolls Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Fox) Behold The Godfather and Godfather Part II of drag-queen cinema — two movies that provide the gateway to a lifetime of wig addiction. The films couldn’t be more different in temperament — the 1967 original is mile-high Hollywood kitsch,…
June 1969 Tommy, a double-album rock opera by The Who, is released. At first banned by the BBC and certain U.S. radio stations (probably because of the child abuse that features so prominently in its story), it eventually reaches #4 on the U.S. Billboard album charts and #2 in the…
Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: These adapted adventures feature music and lyrics by Roger Miller and a book by William Hauptman, but retain Mark Twain’s deeply moral depictions of the 19th-century social tapestry. Twain scholars probably don’t head for dinner theaters often, but those who do in this…
Black Hawk Down: Extended Cut (Sony) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: The Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Fox) Charmed: The Complete Fifth Season (Paramount) Dumbo: Big Top Edition (Disney) Entourage: The Complete Second Season (HBO) The Fast and the Furious: Franchise Collection (Universal) Firewall (Warner Bros.) Garfield: The Movie — The…
Urban art is defined by the city that it represents. In a glorified cow town like Kansas City, the boring neon art installation at the top of the Sulgrave Building hints at the town’s sheltered nature. Works like Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary, a portrait of the Madonna adorned with…
In 1994, during a routine excavation at the site of Temple XIII in Palenque, Mexico, workers unearthed a pre-Columbian burial chamber containing the remains of a woman, cloaked in a heavy layer of powdered red pigment. They called her “The Red Queen.” Mexican-born artist Ricardo Mazal took more than 300…
Cars, the latest vehicle to roll off a Pixar assembly line that has thus far yielded nothing but spit-shined classics, answers that age-old question: What would Doc Hollywood have been like had it been populated entirely by, ya know, cars? If the promise of that particular premise — in which…
Like the Grand Ole Opry plopped into a fragrant barn at the county fair, Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion befits its roots in frosty Minnesota soil through its worldview, Buddhist by way of Scandinavia: Life is about suffering. The wind chill is below zero and so is your spouse;…
Trotted out like ol’ Trigger whenever there’s a movie with saddles and six-shooters, the term “revisionist Western” would surely be a cliché if there were enough Westerns to warrant its use more than every few years. Fact is, any movie in a genre as depressingly out to pasture as the…
With ice caps melting, sea levels rising, and Poseidon sinking fast, this is no environment for any disaster movie — particularly a real one — to take our interest for granted. Thus An Inconvenient Truth, named for the super-bad news of global climate change, isn’t just another lefty doc for…
Face paint? Check. NoDoz? Check. Deep wellsprings of violent nationalistic pride? No doubt, mate. Yes, it’s time for the World Cup, that quadrennial spectacle that consumes the globe for a month of TV marathons, street parties, and patriotic gestures by men with shaved skulls. That means it’s also time for…
The John Wayne/John Ford Film Collection (Warner Bros.) Featuring the most epic pairing of director and actor in Hollywood history, this 10-disc box spews machismo all over. Wayne and Ford defined not only the western and war-movie genres, but also our culture’s image of rugged manhood. Among the highlights is…
“Annual Summer Juried Exhibition” at ASU Harry Wood Gallery: This year’s crop of MFA hopefuls shows a surprising awareness of domestic issues including water conservation, racial profiling and changing family values. Look for tongue-in-cheek political lampoons, like Exhibitions Class Award winner Corie J. Cole’s ceramic caricatures of cowboy Bush and…
We’ve seen them listed in playbills, and maybe we’ve even been seated near one in a restaurant or on a bus. But who knows what stage managers actually do, anyway? Glenn Bruner does. As stage manager for Arizona Theatre Company, Bruner is the lifeline to the actors, the props people,…
You know how in most romantic comedies, the best friends are nearly always more interesting than the actual leads we’re supposed to care about? The Break-Up doesn’t play that game. Vince Vaughn is the focus and the primary source of entertainment, which is all the more impressive when you consider…
There was a time when people moaned whenever Hollywood would remake — and thus suck the life out of — a classic movie. These days, Hollywood just sucks the life out of movies that weren’t that great in the first place. Ah, progress. Well, June 6, 2006, is upon us,…
The Old West has vanished, John Wayne is dead, and — this just in — the two most famous ranch hands in America are gay. But there would be no point in telling any of that to Harlan Fairfax Carruthers, the deceptively charming protagonist of Down in the Valley. Like…
