9/10-9/24 There’s arguably nothing inherently funny about being a Latino immigrant struggling in America. So forgive us if a one-man show of monologues chronicling immigration hassles and low self-esteem under a post-September 11 backdrop doesn’t immediately lighten our mood. Unless that comedic romp happens to be the follow-up to the…
“The Landmine Prints” at Burton Barr Central Library: ASU professor John Risseeuw’s unique approach to printmaking includes what he calls “content-specific paper” — handmade paper composed of materials that relate to the topic of the artwork itself. Risseeuw brings together more than a dozen such works in “The Landmine Prints”…
THU 2 We have a right to be crabby. We were born on the last day of Cancer, as was David Spade, and he got all the looks, all the talent and all the good scripts. Thank the heavens we hold no responsibility for our own success. So says “professional…
Last fall, at a banquet held at a private country club in north Scottsdale, Arizona State University President Michael Crow stood before a gathering of A-plus middle school students enrolled in the prestigious Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth and did his darnedest to convince the gifted kids and their…
With some notable exceptions, you won’t find the folk art now appearing in “Great Masters of Mexican Folk Art” at Phoenix Art Museum popping up in your average Mexican mercado. Having beaten the bushes in backwaters all over Mexico for various forms of folk art for 25 years, I feel…
She might have been a Midwestern orphan named Mildred Davenport. She may have been the great-granddaughter of the illegitimate son of the King of England. She even could have been a Native American, invited by President Franklin Roosevelt to act as America’s goodwill ambassador to Mexico. The only thing we…
In Victorian England, 40,000 novels were published every year. Of the few that have endured, perhaps none is more worthy of a film adaptation than William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, if for no other reason than this: It’s a chore to read. Clocking in at 850 pages, with frequent excursions into…
It’s a real credit to Intimate Strangers director Patrice Leconte that even though his film features a couple of ridiculous contrivances to get the plot going, the overall film still feels very true. Leconte has a gift for depicting the quirks of odd relationships; his last film, Man on the…
In We Don’t Live Here Anymore, an overwrought domestic drama about a pair of entangled couples, Peter Krause plays philandering writer Hank Evans, struggling to produce as he propositions female students at the college where he teaches. Blithely pretentious, fretful only over his writing, Hank observes from a distance as…
Oh, Janis. Oh, gorgeous, outrageous, soul-ripping, rockin’ bluesy mama Janis Joplin. She’s a volcano. She’s a tsunami. She’s a fearless, reckless, raging American beauty. Watch her tear open her chest to reveal her hot, pulsing wounds. Watch her rage with burning, glorious light. Watch her smile that sweet Janis smile…
Whatever is worthwhile about The Hunting of the President — a new documentary on the right-wing attack dogs that conspired to bring down Bill Clinton throughout his presidency — the film is plagued by a single, damning problem: It was made by Harry Thomason. Thomason is an über-F.O.B., a very…
In artist John Risseeuw’s works, the subject matter isn’t difficult to decipher. Rather than searching for abstract thought, the viewer needs only to examine the paper on which Risseeuw’s art is printed. In his latest collection, “The Landmine Prints” which shows at downtown’s Burton Barr Central Library beginning Thursday, September…
9/4-9/5 Danny Ochoa has a secret identity he wants to keep on the down low. As a judge for Lowrider Magazine, the 37-year-old isn’t worried about any potential diss he may have dealt at any of the 16 events he visits every year, but he’s been on the receiving end…
Sat 9/4 Leave it to the dog fanciers to try to pooch a good time. Those purebred purists often take a dim view of wiener dog racing, fearing the sport is harmful to the delicate animals. But NASCAR-style crashes are unlikely at the Wiener Dog Nationals on Saturday, September 4,…
Sat 9/4 Despite their supernatural gifts, the prognosticators and fortunetellers gathering at the Psychic Fair on Saturday, September 4, at Two Hawks Leather & Gifts, 8273 West Washington in Peoria, won’t disclose the winning PowerBall numbers or — more important — when the Grim Reaper will visit. “If I ever…
Thu 9/2 At first glance, we assumed that ASU’s Evelyn Smith Music Theatre, 40 East Gammage Parkway in Tempe, was hosting some sort of organic Asian buffet. Turns out that the rice bowls, chopsticks, pods, gourds and chiles on hand will whet our appetites for new music, not chicken teriyaki…
THU 26 For more than a year, Emerg McVay of local band Bionic Jive has hosted the collective elements of spoken word, hip-hop and graffiti art at the Priceless Inn, 5014 South Price Road in Tempe. The weekly set, presented by DJ Element and Dumplarock, continues to fly high, so…
There’s a new movie called Hero. Don’t confuse it with that dusty Dustin Hoffman vehicle, nor with the epic Bollywood musical espionage extravaganza Hero: Love Story of a Spy (though that’s worth a mind-altering look if you can find it). America and India aren’t directly involved here, but huge imperial…
Winner of the Dramatic Audience Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Maria Full of Grace is an uncomfortably realistic look at a 17-year-old Colombian woman who, desperate for a job, agrees to swallow capsules of heroin and transport them to New York. Although a work of fiction, the film…
Those of us who have grown up in the United States may be weary of our country’s claims of freedom and opportunity. Faced with a wobbly quote from our leader attributing terrorism to envy, we might roll our eyes, aware of a reality far darker and more complex. But there…
You know how fear is scary? Well, director E. Elias Merhige is into that, especially in his new serial-killer thriller Suspect Zero. Absent, however, is the dark-comic malevolence the director smartly cultivated in his successful and disquieting Shadow of the Vampire a few years ago, bullied and bulldozed out of…
Hell hath no fury like a wanna-be filmmaker scorned. After being left in financial ruin by a Nashville investment banker nearly 18 years ago, Dan Wilkins dreamed up a multitude of elaborate revenge fantasies to get even with the man who did him wrong, many of which would’ve landed him…
