Born in East Africa during World War II to German missionary parents, Manfred Fischbeck became something of a missionary himself — a dance missionary. For 30 years, the dancer, choreographer and musician has headed Group Motion Dance Company in Philadelphia. He’s brought the good word about his dance style and…
It is a smoggy evening at the Burbank Airport, and Carlos Gonzales of Mesa is explaining his documentary film, the one he is making by himself with his own money. “There’s chicks showing their tits, dudes smoking weed and some guy who got jumped really bad and they fucked him…
Filmmaker Bobby Bowfinger, the lead character in the intermittently funny Hollywood satire Bowfinger starring Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy, has a dream. Nothing so grand as an Academy Award, or even a table down front at the Golden Globes. No, when Bowfinger allows his fantasies to run wild, he sees…
Do not be fooled: Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss receive top billing in Detroit Rock City, but KISS doesn’t actually appear in the film until its final three minutes. And when they do show up, clad in their de rigueur leather-and-greasepaint get-ups, it’s simply to perform…
It has been almost 40 years since Eric Rohmer, riding the crest of the French New Wave, embarked on the first of his Six Moral Tales. The series would eventually include at least two classics — My Night at Maud’s (1969) and Chloe in the Afternoon (1972). Linked by theme,…
Whimsical. Quirky. Sometimes outright wacky. If you know Barenaked Ladies only from their No. 1 hit “One Week” or an occasional television appearance, you should catch the Canadian quintet’s much looser and wilder concert act. Valley fans will have the chance to see the Barenaked Summer Nights Tour when it…
A new film that can claim, even tenuously, to be “by Orson Welles” doesn’t come along every day. The Big Brass Ring isn’t by Welles, really; it’s a new work by the admired director George Hickenlooper, best known for his classic documentary chronicle Hearts of Darkness and the short Some…
In the highly competitive, dog-eat-dog world of the modern-day superhero, the members of the group that eventually becomes known as the Mystery Men — they don’t really have a name through most of Mystery Men — start out with a couple of strikes against them. First off, there’s the little…
Runaway Bride, the long-anticipated reunion of Pretty Woman stars Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, isn’t a sequel, but it feels like one. In everything, there is a distinct sense of predestination, of events occurring according to some irresistible force of the inevitable. This makes life especially easy for Garry Marshall,…
Steven Spielberg wants your money. This isn’t exactly news — he’s forever coming up with new and better ways of parting you from your dough, in theaters and out. GameWorks in Tempe is a wonderful example of why the public loves to make Mrs. Spielberg’s son a very, very wealthy…
Flagstaff SummerFest
Ever since he was a boy, Richard Warren has been haunted by Buffalo Bill. In an attempt to exorcise his Wild West demon, Warren ditched a career in public relations and, in late middle age, wrote a play about the late, great cowboy. That play, How I Came to Be…
So what would it be like to cab around the city with a record-company weasel, a couple of writers, a punk-rock singer, a porn-PR pro and an adult-film star wielding a large bong in a box? An irony-rich ride more fun than a pop-up Popsicle, Daddy-O. A cab ride that…
First published under the title The Iron Man in Great Britain in 1968, The Iron Giant is a minor classic of 20th-century children’s literature. The slim volume by the English poet laureate Ted Hughes is a pacifist parable in the guise of a sci-fi hero fantasy. Hughes spun his yarn…
Robert Wise’s 1963 version of The Haunting (from Shirley Jackson’s novel) has long been considered one of the milestones of the horror film. After 36 years, DreamWorks has bankrolled a new version under the direction of Jan de Bont (Speed, Twister) — an idea that should sound unpromising, even to…
Feel like shooting lutefisk in a barrel? Pick on beleaguered Minnesota again as the epicenter of everything that’s square-headed and unhip in America. Want to let the world know that two plus two equals four? Take aim one more time at the vain stupidity of beauty contests. Drop Dead Gorgeous,…
If you plan to park your kids in front of Inspector Gadget for 80 minutes, have at it. The film is terrible, drab, spiritless and empty, but it’s also harmless enough. Sure, it’s full of anarchic, slapstick violence, and it encourages the belief that if you stuff a trench coat…
By phone from Kansas City, Missouri — where he’s performing at a comedy club called Stanford & Son’s — Tucson native and MAD-TV regular Pablo Francisco does the most impressive of his several ace impersonations. It’s “The Trailer Guy” — the deep, sonorous voice that intones the come-ons behind movie…
Celtic and dance companies in the Riverdance/Michael Flatley mode, as well as other folk/performance art dance troupes such as the Australian Tap Dogs, have been all the rage as touring companies on stages around the world for the last few years. One would hardly expect a Celtic dance company to…
“Another man said one time Elvis Presley is the biggest thing that ever happened,” the Reverend Leroy Jenkins says. “No, he wasn’t, Jesus was. Amen. Elvis Presley’s dead and almost forgotten; Jesus is still remembered and you haven’t seen him in 2,000 years!” The Reverend Jenkins is witnessing toacrowd of…
Eyes Wide Shut, the final motion picture from the late, great Stanley Kubrick, is easily the most anticipated adult film of the year. It’s Star Wars: Episode I–The Phantom Menace for grown-ups. Any film by the notoriously painstaking auteur would have achieved this status. Kubrick made only 13 features in…
You can tell the first wave of summer blockbusters has shot its wad when the studios start tossing out their second- and third-string films. In the old days, these would have been called “programmers”–thoroughly competent entries that reiterated all the conventions of their reliable, easy-to-market genres. Such is Lake Placid,…
