It took artist Merrill Mahaffey 20 years to realize that the art he thought he liked painting was actually just the art he thought he was supposed to be painting.”When I was in college and graduate school, the common teaching was that a painter was supposed to end up as…
The enormous pleasure of American Safari begins even before the curtain rings up on this nostalgic pseudo-comedy. As playgoers settle into their seats at the Herberger Theater Center’s Stage West, a picnic table sails dreamily around the stage, attended by a smiling couple who silently toast one another with Kool-Aid…
Linda Eder sounds bored. If what her publicist says is true, Eder would probably rather be out riding one of her horses than yakking long-distance with another journalist about her career as a fabulous Broadway star. Perhaps in the hope of speeding up the interview, Eder quickly mentions her upcoming…
“Comedy workshop,” said the marquee outside the Tempe Improv. The comedian working in the shop wasn’t named, but the crowd was lined up hours before showtime even so. The Unknown Comic it wasn’t. No, 13 years after he christened the venue, Jerry Seinfeld, quite probably the biggest star in American…
That anyone should consider making a film of Reinaldo Arenas’ memoir Before Night Falls is curious. That the person to do it should be painter-turned-film-director Julian Schnabel is truly unusual. And that the results should be as good as they are is most remarkable of all. But it would appear…
Im Kwon Taek has long been the best-known Korean director in America; in fact, it would be fair to say that he’s pretty much the only even vaguely known Korean director, and even then, his renown is strictly among festivalgoers. The general distribution of his latest film, Chunhyang, should be…
At last you can take a deep breath and relax, consumers of American cinema, for our trilogy of virtually unrelated cheerleader movies is now complete. Having reappraised youthful sexuality in But I’m a Cheerleader and celebrated ass-kickingness in Bring It On, we now accomplish both, sort of, in Francine McDougall’s…
Watching this film is like watching a donkey being beaten for 90 minutes, so egregiously is the titular character treated and so powerless does she appear against her offenders. That the abuse is treated in a comedic fashion for a good part of the film makes it even more unacceptable…
If the Native American sport of hoop dancing demands an analogy, the Hula-Hoop is not it. “It’s almost like a house of cards,” offers Rebecca Stenholm of the Heard Museum, “but that’s not it, either.” In fact, the dance combines the speed and agility of professional hockey with the elegance…
There is no need to look west toward Los Angeles or east toward New York for young, emerging literary talent. The only place Arizonans need look is south down the main drag, where this week Tucsonan Lydia Millet, whose latest novel, My Happy Life, will be published by Henry Holt…
Eddie Izzard knows precisely why he wanted to become a performer, be it an actor or standup comedian or, for that matter, a street performer entertaining passers-by for spare change. When he was 6 years old, Izzard was living in South Wales with his parents and older brother. Before that,…
The Wedding Planner begins with footage of a 7-year-old girl performing a wedding ceremony with her Barbies, a fitting opening since the movie that ensues could almost be the result of a screenwriter literally transcribing the play scenario enacted by a small child and her dolls. If you were (or…
No modern artist made more of normality than Norman Rockwell did. “I do ordinary people in everyday situations, and that’s about all I can do,” he once wrote. Yet Rockwell had a highly theatrical and romanticized sense of the ho-hum. The more than 70 paintings and several hundred magazine illustrations…
The general trend in contemporary art galleries these days is that a certain exclusivity can be achieved through sparse offerings. You won’t find that at the Udinotti Gallery — it’s done little to change its look and feel in 20 years in downtown Scottsdale. At this gallery, the art is…
If fame is fleeting, it also has its own geography. While New York types and theater buffs the world over revere Stephen Schwartz as a superstar, much of the rest of the world has never heard of him. Although he’s among the most successful composers working today, and despite a…
It is, one might argue, the original Spaghetti Western. Especially considering that it’s the work’s Arizona Opera première, the company’s current staging of La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West) is an irony-rich experience — sitting in Tucson, the heart of six-shooter country, listening to cowboy-hatted lawmen…
The doomed are often a remarkably energetic and productive lot, especially when it comes to creating portraits of their personal horrors. Themes vary in intensity between slow self-destruction and grand devastation, but in vampirism, the full spectrum of ghastliness may be covered. This is because the imbalance represents so much…
The reviewers are in agreement on Shadow of the Vampire: The 1922 German movie of which it’s a takeoff is great, a masterpiece. You won’t read different here — F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, on the set of which the rather roguishly conceived premise of Shadow unfolds, is a must-see. If you’ve…
For his first film as director, The Indian Runner in 1991, Sean Penn chose as his source material Bruce Springsteen’s “Highway Patrolman,” off the album Nebraska. It was a perfect song, and it spawned a nearly perfect movie; Penn, writing his own screenplay about two brothers — one good, one…
The big art talk in the Valley these days is about an iconic American presence, Norman Rockwell. But you can also find explorations of the African world with two shows on the gallery scene this week.A show of works by artist William Kentridge, “Ubu Tells the Truth and Other Stories,”…
When you dream the American dream, what pictures appear in the cloud over your head? For me, as for millions of others, it’s the idyllic images of Norman Rockwell, the premier American illustrator. Or is that the premier illustrator of America? Either way, if you have never seen the works…
Deep in the heart of Scottsdale, tucked into a forgotten strip mall, tiny Metro Theatre — home to the often brilliant but financially troubled Ensemble Theatre — is bustling tonight. While Ensemble shows generally play to half-empty houses, this second-night performance is teeming, its capacity crowd spilling onto the makeshift…
