Antonioni and Bergman, I get. Show me Buñuel or Godard, Tarkovsky or Marguerite Duras, and you won’t see me knit my brow. David Lynch is a snap. I can even sort of see where Stan Brakhage is coming from. When it comes to cryptic cinema, I’ll sit there and find…
So you’re a live-theater nut, and you’ve seen Vampire Lesbians of Sodom at Planet Earth and Born Yesterday at Theater Works, and you’ve had dinner at Murder at Greystone Manor, and you think you’ve exhausted every option in town this lean summer season. You needn’t despair and start searching your…
Mr. Peabody had the advantage. He and Sherman could just hop into the WayBack machine if they wanted to chat with some of history’s best and brightest. For the rest of us, it’s just not so easy. We can try to marry a beautiful nose-wiggling witch or sit huddled in…
Bryan Singer did not read comic books as a young boy, because he couldn’t read them. As a kid, he was slightly dyslexic and, therefore, unable to follow the dialogue as it bubbled across panels and pages; quite simply, Singer says now, comic books confused him, so the Jersey boy…
Not many materials have had the schizophrenic life that plastic has. In the khaki-toned years following World War II, it looked as fresh and desirable as spun candy, a dream come true for industrial designers trying to create forms for an array of new and old functions. But as plastic…
There’s an old story, perhaps apocryphal, about the original 1914 production of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Apparently, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the celebrated actress who originated the role of Eliza Doolittle, stopped the show one night. Stepping to the footlights halfway through her performance, she called out, “If Mr. Shaw does…
In Bryan Singer’s last movie, 1998’s Apt Pupil, Ian McKellen portrayed a Nazi war criminal hiding out in the suburbs, passing himself off as an ordinary old man crouching behind drawn blinds. In Singer’s new movie, X-Men, McKellen plays Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, the son of Jews who were murdered in…
For most Americans, the social and political issues underlying José Luis Cuerda’s Butterfly seem remote at best. The tensions between republicans and fascists in Spain after the fall of that nation’s monarchy in 1931, and dictator Francisco Franco’s victory in the bloody Spanish Civil War, may have stirred strong feelings…
Armchair shrinks can debate for hours about why Mel Gibson loves to get the snot knocked out of him. A facile answer, considering the star’s reputation as a homophobe, is that the lady doth protest too much, and that getting electrically tortured by Gary Busey in Lethal Weapon or hacked…
The special guest at HexaCon 10, this year’s edition of the annual gaming convention, Arizona’s largest, is Steve Jackson, head of Steve Jackson Games. Gameheads will presumably recognize this as a big deal, especially because Jackson will be bringing with him most of his game line, including two previously unreleased…
As relief to us denizens of the scorched cultural wasteland that is the summertime Valley, ARTlab 16 presents the aptly named performance art fest Wasteland Circus. The sixth edition of the event, which has been absent from the Valley for the past two years, features “big screen video works, performance…
Have Pat Robertson and The 700 Club been informed? A major bookstore chain is encouraging parents to initiate their children into the world of wizardry and magic. To celebrate the release of the fourth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Borders stores around the Valley are…
“There ain’t no cure for the summertime blues,” says the song. Rubbish, Scottsdale Gallery Association would say — not only is it bad grammar, but patently untrue. Its cure: this year’s Summer Spectacular Artwalk, scheduled from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, July 6. Various openings and related events at and…
Vampire Lesbians of Sodom
Director Alison Maclean, from Canada by way of New Zealand, turns her camera on the American landscape — or, more accurately, the underbelly of the American landscape — in Jesus’ Son, an uneven, but often effective, adaptation of Denis Johnson’s autobiographical book. Billy Crudup stars as a thoroughly marginalized character…
Why is the film called Disney’s The Kid? Is it really possible that the studio was so concerned that someone might actually mistake the film for an update of the Chaplin classic that the brand name had to be formally incorporated in the title? Or was this an attempt to…
Is there a more bankrupt genre than the parody movie? So many movies nowadays are so painfully self-aware and referential anyway that there often isn’t much left to make fun of, which is especially the case for Kevin Williamson-penned films like Scream and its clones, clichéd teen slasher movies that…
Had Julian Glover not broken his leg at the beginning of January, it’s quite likely he would be off filming a movie. But, Glover reminds, having a broken leg in the movie business is like being pregnant in the movie business: “It lasts five years,” meaning casting agents don’t phone…
Ever send out an invitation to a big wingding and no one RSVP’d? That’s basically what happened to Mesa Arts Center’s Galeria Mesa when it sent out a submission call for its third juried exhibition of work by art educators who teach in Arizona’s public schools, colleges and universities –…
In the imaginary world of Howard Crabtree, the reprimands of a mean-spirited guidance counselor can lead to a full-blown musical comedy revue. In the real world, local highflier Lyman Goodrich took Crabtree’s cue (to “just put on a show!”) and has staged his own production of Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs…
Despite what many believe, it doesn’t come down to explosions, star power or millions of greenbacks thrown at the producers. The true indicator of success for a summer movie is The Moment, that one memorable scene that sticks in your head, the one that Billy Crystal parodies the following spring…
The press kit for The Perfect Storm contains the damnedest thing I’ve ever read. Right at the top, there is a “special request to the press” that reads, in full: “Warner Bros. Pictures would appreciate the press’ cooperation in not revealing the ending of this film to their readers, viewers…
