Flattened plant stems.The phrase might sound sort of dispirited to you or me, but it makes Linda Moulton Howe’s heart beat just a little more quickly. Listen to her for a while, and yours might, too. This journalist has spent the last couple of years studying the phenomenon, which she…
There’s plenty of French star power in The Closet (Le Placard). This comedy must have been a fairly big deal in the Land of the Heavy Sauce; it stars Daniel Auteuil, Gérard Depardieu and Thierry Lhermitte, and was written and directed by Francis Veber. In U.S. terms, this is roughly…
Back in her early teens, Reese Witherspoon proved herself a terrific actress in her big-screen debut, Man in the Moon, in 1991. Since then, she’s done first-rate work in critical hits like Pleasantville, cult faves like Freeway and Election and underrated gems like Best Laid Plans. So how is it…
Easily the best performance in the last year’s wheezy The Legend of Bagger Vance was by the drawly, plainspoken J. Michael Moncrief, a boy with an old man’s face, as the local kid who idolized Matt Damon and helped Will Smith caddy. The same character, as an adult, also narrated…
One of Gary Larson’s Far Side comic’s many versions of the Divine Comedy was subtitled thusly: “Welcome to Heaven. Here’s your harp . . . Welcome to Hell. Here’s your accordion.”It’s against this general attitude that Nick Ariondo works. Ariondo, a virtuoso on the instrument most associated with Myron Floren…
“I don’t know if it will be read by everyone, but it is meant for everyone,” Victor Hugo wrote, famously, of his novel Les Misérables. The same could be said of the stage musical, which plays in Tempe through July 21, and which, with global box office receipts exceeding $1.8…
New York painter Donald Sultan long ago abandoned the tried-and-true tools and materials customarily associated with an artist. Eschewing canvas, Sultan instead opts for heavy-duty Masonite topped with cheap, run-of-the-mill linoleum tiles — the kind seen on the floors of old cafeterias and kitchens — as a base for his…
The will-call line for The Vagina Monologues snaked all the way across the lobby of the Scottsdale Center for the Arts, and I was the only man in it. That is, until another fellow — a local publisher of some renown, at least in publishing circles — approached the line;…
“Why the heck would anyone want to do a play about that?”I’ve been speaking for more than an hour with “Tony,” a convicted sex offender, about Mr. Bundy, Jane Martin’s one-act drama about a child molester. I’ve got a long list of questions I’d like Tony to consider — Does…
Originally, this was to be a story about how Stan Lee, the industry icon who ran Marvel Comics for decades and co-created Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, wound up remaking archrival DC Comics’ most venerable heroes in his own image. The 12-part miniseries, Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating, was set…
Kiss of the Dragon — the latest vehicle for martial arts star Jet Li, a mainland Chinese talent who became a superstar in Hong Kong and has since succumbed to the blandishments of Hollywood — has a little of the best (and a lot of the worst) of Hong Kong…
Even more than the recent Depression-era comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the turn-of-the-century drama Songcatcher is an absolute treasure-trove of old-timey, traditional folk music. Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia in the year 1907, the film follows city-bred musicologist Dr. Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer) as she traverses…
Basket weaving can be wild. Really. A stroll through the newest exhibit at the Arizona State University Art Museum proves it. “The Ties That Bind: Fiber Art by Ed Rossbach and Katherine Westphal,” featuring works from the Daphne Farago collection, explores the lives and work of a husband and wife…
The month of our independence, July is that time when Americans reflect on the qualities that make our nation great — and in Phoenix, in July, no such quality is more apparent than perversity. After all, this economic engine, the sixth-largest city in the United States, represents an enormous suspension…
By his own definition, Bruce Campbell is a “midgrade, kind of hammy actor”–a B-movie star, in other words, a man whose career unfolds, like a Swedish porn loop, on Cinemax in the wee small hours of the morning. When I mentioned to a handful of people I was writing about…
I’m being far from hyperbolic when I say that the most searingly memorable art event in the Valley this summer is Iranian-born Shirin Neshat’s critically acclaimed 1998 video installation, Rapture.And, after seeing this 13-minute piece, on loan from Santa Monica’s Broad Art Foundation and staged locally in a stripped-down, shadowy,…
I usually leave playwright Joe Marshall’s comedies having found plenty to like. Marshall regularly offers interesting insights into the human condition; his people are usually at least amusing; his dialogue is often droll and sometimes downright funny. But In a Nutshell, which Marshall is presenting via his own Alternative Theatre…
For almost two decades, Stanley Kubrick wanted to make a film based on Brian Aldiss’ 1969 short story “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long,” about a robot child named David who wants only to be “real” so Mummy and Daddy will love him. The late director of 2001: A Space Odyssey…
Sexy Beast, the debut feature from British director Jonathan Glazer, is a riveting, scary and often funny foray into a traditional American genre: the gangster film. Like the western, the gangster film has always been predominantly American turf, but — unlike with the western — every decade or so the…
Those expecting Himalaya to focus upon the beloved traveling carnival ride known for its liberal use of Def Leppard (“Do you wanna go faster?”) are in for a few surprises. For one, this sensuous, exotic film is more like an issue of National Geographic come to life, rich with cultural…
As painful as it can be, there’s no getting around one of the basic truths: Size Does Matter.Formidable rotundity is the most obvious physical trait of comic John Pinette, and it’s the source of his claim to TV fame. Pinette, who performs this weekend at the Tempe Improv, is most…
If you haven’t lost a finger to a too-much-bang-for-your-buck firework, you can count on both hands the number of states that have banned all consumer fireworks. And, yes, Arizona is among them — Arizona, home of Do-It-Yourself Pest Control, drive-thru liquor stores and the right to carry a handgun just…
