A third of the way through Home Fries, you may begin wondering if the filmmakers haven’t outsmarted themselves. Overloaded with oddities but a bit short on horse sense, this is one of those stubbornly defiant, attitude-driven movies that’s so busy scrambling genres, breaking rules, and dashing expectations on the road…
Is there anyone, save the amateur rappers over his show’s end credits, willing to admit that they like Jerry Springer? Somebody somewhere must, considering the enormous success of his syndicated TV talk show. But whether his devoted audience is likely to head down to the multiplex for a feature-length dose…
In the rancid nightmare farce called Very Bad Things, Peter Berg, in his movie writing-directing debut, creates characters that you immediately want to see killed off. From the title to the ads to the Web site (which features a Vegas stripper who will dance for you), Very Bad Things has…
For nine years Michael Cole starred as one of Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s dancers. Now he’s starring on stage and screen. Computer screen that is. The tall, gorgeous, dreadlocked dancer/choreographer could easily star on the silver screen too. Cole dances his work Command X/V, Versions 1, 2, and 3 during…
If they’d been written today, the Tyrone clan of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night would be just another dysfunctional family whose shrieking harangues would be best appreciated by a Jerry Springer audience. The more refined crowd that came to see this infamous family at the Herberger Theater Center…
Even students of English history may have trouble sorting out the palace intrigues and intragovernmental conspiracies that fill Elizabeth, the handsome new production about Queen Elizabeth I’s ascension to the British throne in 1558. With the bewitching Australian actress Cate Blanchett (last year’s Oscar and Lucinda) in the title role,…
Surprise and pleasure come wrapped together in A Bug’s Life. This big adventure about tiny critters is the latest piece of robust whimsy from Pixar, the computer animation studio that broke into features with the 1995 smash Toy Story. It should prove irresistible to children. Toy Story opened up the…
Holed up with his Sidney Bechet records, old flannel shirts and a dog-eared copy of War and Peace, Woody Allen has made a second career of shunning fad, fashion and fame–and of ostensibly keeping to himself in the most populous city in the United States. No nouveau-grooveau glitz or designer…
There’s art in them thar hills. For the second year in a row, Sonoran Art League sponsors “Hidden in the Hills,” a studio tour and sale showcasing some of the northeast Valley’s best painters and sculptors. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, November 21; and the same hours Sunday,…
thursday november 19 The 10th annual cultural shindig celebrating Phoenix’s relationship with its sister city of Grenoble, France, French Week ’98, continues Thursday, November 19; Friday, November 20; Saturday, November 21; and Sunday, November 22, at various locations. This week’s highlights include the dinner-theater event An Evening With Nostradamus, at…
Flannery O’Connor once said, “Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.” The same might be said for publishers and Hollywood types. Enter one gloriously gammed horror-movie queen. Another wanna-be author riding the coattails of her…
Names like “A Puncher’s Paradise,” “Reluctant Mount,” “Last Drop” and “Lickin’ Clean” leave little doubt that you’re in the company of men who wear chaps. No, this isn’t theme night at the local gay bar. This is the Cowboy Artists of America annual bunkhouse of fun at the Phoenix Art…
These days, the best way to get a laugh in the theater is to hum the theme song from Laverne and Shirley. But references to my favorite sitcoms were still not enough to mask my discomfort while I watched talented people wrestle bad material to the ground. In Mixed Company’s…
The first time we see Ray Joshua, the young black hero of director Marc Levin’s impressive feature debut Slam, we get a vivid taste of the conflicting forces that rule him. His olive-drab pants, so hip-hop baggy that you could fit two rail-thin Rays inside, are stuffed with bags of…
First, a disclaimer: Having missed last year’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, I deliberately put off seeing it until after viewing its sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. That way I could view part two without prejudice, as well as be able to judge whether…
Well, now we know why the term “bored to death” was invented. Meet Joe Black takes an interesting idea–Death assumes human form and comes to Earth to learn about human existence–and reduces it to a flat, uninspired, interminably slow movie. Not only slow but long: a full three hours. Produced…
There used to be a problem with punk rockers not respecting their elders. But for one of the finest punker outfits in the state, it’s no problem–they don’t have any elders. One Foot in the Grave surely must be the greatest punk band ever to emerge from a retirement community…
Spike Jones died in 1965, but his orchestrations, which included sneezing, belching in tune, controlled hiccups and asthmatic wheezing, have not been forgotten. The guy who introduced such musical instruments as car horns, cannons, doorbells, water-filled balloons, anvils and flushing toilets will be paid homage this Saturday at the Sundome…
thursday november 12 Phoenix College’s theater-arts department continues its season with The Imaginary Invalid (Le Malade imaginaire), the last comic masterpiece of the great French dramatist Moliere, freely adapted by its director, Larry Soller. It’s the story of Argan, who is sure that he’s gravely ill, and who is encouraged…
Anyone who’s seen choreographer David Rousseve’s dances broadcast on PBS or live in Arizona in the past several years knows he likes to populate the stage like it’s a small town. As he did in Urban Scenes/Creole Dreams at Gammage in 1994 and, more recently, in Dry Each Other’s Tears…
For filmmaker Todd Solondz, it’s always midnight in suburbia. Life is lonely, and the natives can be hostile. In his daring second film, Happiness, the darkness engulfs victims of all ages: a boy in the throes of impending adolescence, three New Jersey sisters tormented by sex and love, an obscene…
Fifteen minutes into Velvet Goldmine, director Todd Haynes’ love letter to England’s glam-rock scene of the late Sixties/early Seventies, the film has already promised to be many things: a missing-person mystery; a meticulous period piece; an essay on sexually liberated dandyism; a quasi-musical; a portrait of the Machiavellian as an…
