Let’s get right to the point: If you are the type of person who enjoys seeing attractive naked girls meet a hideously graphic demise, there’s a scene in Final Destination 3 that will wear out the pause and rewind buttons on your DVD remote a few months from now. Mega-stereotype…
That Curious George existed at all — much less as a franchise, an icon enduring some 65 years — was a result of “happy circumstance,” wrote Houghton Mifflin publisher Anita Silvey with some understatement in 1991, upon the 50th-anniversary publication of The Complete Adventures of Curious George. Silvey and critic…
The best thing about Michael Haneke’s Caché (Hidden) is the way it draws on very contemporary fears without ever mentioning them. The War on Terror era has given us all new things to be afraid of; some fear being prey for terrorists, while others fear the government’s response, but both…
This is not George Lazenby making his doomed run at James Bond, or even Mel Gibson presuming to play Hamlet. This is serious heresy, combined with a touch of felonious assault. It has evidently not occurred to Steve Martin that, just as there is only one Eiffel Tower, there is…
The swanky brownstone interior that Black Theatre Troupe scenic designer Michael Jones has created for Knock Me a Kiss is some kind of triumph. Jones’ set — filled with overstuffed furniture; pounds of dark, shiny wood; even an imposing crystal chandelier — is glamorous but not ostentatious, and telegraphs a…
Joshua Dean Wiley, 34, has become known in local galleries for his serene, high-color landscapes and lively abstracts, and is a mainstay at the weekly Downtown Phoenix Public Market, held Saturday mornings at the southeast corner of Central Avenue and McKinley Street (www.phoenixpublicmarket.com). But the Iowa transplant’s work has lately…
Maybe it’s because we’re hung up on our past more than ever — riding a wave of giddy, nonstop nostalgia and absorbing anything that will help recapture the bliss of the good ol’ days — but Capcom’s Mega Man X Collection feels more fun than ever. The follow-up to last…
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (DreamWorks) Not since Finding Nemo has there been a movie so easy to recommend for all ages and tastes. But despite having crafted a near-perfect film, directors Nick Park and Steve Box second-guess themselves constantly on their audio commentary, as well as…
Little Mary Sunshine: As ever, Theater Works is courting its Sun City audience with this less-than-hip chestnut that spoofs musical theater. Set in the Rocky Mountains in the early 20th century, this one has villains twisting the ends of their pointy mustaches, and rugged, upright heroes rescuing damsels in distress…
Bambi II (Disney) The Batman: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) The Best of the Electric Company (Shout!) The Best of Youth (Miramax) The Cary Grant Box Set (Sony) Côte D’Azur (Strand) Daltry Calhoun (Miramax) Doom: Unrated Extended Edition (Universal) Elizabethtown (Paramount) Eros (Warner Bros.) Grounded for Life: Season 1…
If you’re not the sort of person who understands very deeply how your iPod downloads and manages all those songs, the work in “southwestNET: techno,” a show of technological devices as art at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, will leave you baffled. To use a techno term, this exhibition…
The theme of the group show at Herberger Theater Center Gallery is “Sensual Pleasures,” so there’s lots of red in the pottery, paintings and sculptures on exhibit. Because as we all know, red equals sexy. There are also the requisite nude female forms cropped tightly so the curve of a…
The studied British theatricality and sharp wit of Mrs. Henderson Presents are likely to make it a favorite among nostalgiaphiles, theater buffs, and the tea-and-crumpets set. Sailing along on the strength of another showy performance by Judi Dench, Stephen Frears’ period frolic is this year’s Being Julia, adorned with the…
Anthony Hopkins lends style points to any movie in which he appears. The thing may be a dog, but the actor who brought the gruesome psychopath Hannibal Lecter to life and got deep inside a repressed English butler always gives us something fascinating to behold. The depth and gravity of…
Here’s the first thing that’s audacious about What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole, the second installment in what has become a franchise of oversimplified science, outlandish speculation, and woo-woo spirituality: It’s not a sequel. It’s a revision. Shamelessly, Rabbit Hole uses extensive footage from the first film, including the…
A Good Woman, Mike Barker’s adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play Lady Windermere’s Fan, has been gathering dust for some time. It played the Toronto Film Festival in the fall of 2004 before opening in 2005 in every country in the world except this one. Such dawdling doesn’t bode well…
January has earned its reputation as the month in which studios unload all their cheapie horror flicks, but February is the month when we invariably get yet another middle-of-the-road black-urban-professional romantic comedy. (It’s both Black History and Valentine’s month, hence the logic.) In that regard, Something New is anything but…
Every fighting game needs a hook to stand out: Mortal Kombat has gore, Soul Calibur has weapons, Def Jam has hip-hop stars. And Dead or Alive? It has boobies. The DOA series — developed by Tecmo — made its name with a cast of fighters who look like pinups and…
Dune: Extended Edition (Universal) On paper it sounds insane: A mammoth sci-fi epic directed by David Lynch, based on an intensely weird Frank Herbert novel about ecology and giant worms. What resulted was a flop that has yet to be remedied by multiple edits through the years. This disc includes…
“Lingerie: Secrets of Elegance” at Phoenix Art Museum: Yep, you read that right. Bras, baby doll nighties, and a sunburst display of girdles are just a gallery over from the paintings of dead white guys in powdered wigs. This fascinating fashion exhibition traces lingerie’s evolution (or maybe devolution) from corsets…
Kiss of the Spider Woman: Richard Trujillo gives a thrilling performance as Valentin, a puffed-up political prisoner trapped in the tenets of Marxism who, at the start of Manuel Puig’s dreamily claustrophobic play, is harshly intolerant of his cellmate, Molina, whom he sees as less of a man because he…
Benny Hill: Complete and Unadulterated — The Hill’s Angels Years, Set Four (A&E) Billy Graham Presents: Gift Set (Fox) Bubble (Magnolia) Captains Courageous (1937) (Warner Bros.) Drake & Josh Go Hollywood (Paramount) Extreme Comedy Collection (Team America: World Police, Beavis and Butt-head Do America, and Jackass: The Movie) (Paramount) Four…
