The War on Drugs has become this generation’s Vietnam, the unwinnable conflict that will, in the end, destroy the innocent and reward the guilty. That, in a coke vial, is the premise of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, a film that gives flesh and face to bloodless government statistics and statements seldom…
Finding Forrester is the latest film from Gus Van Sant, one of the true American originals to emerge in the ’80s and ’90s. When Van Sant is at his best, he gives us stories and images we’ve never seen before. Finding Forrester, however, is not Gus Van Sant at his…
The moods of Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me are so artfully mingled that it’s difficult to get a fix on this highly personal independent feature. Set in a quiet little town in upstate New York’s Catskill Mountains, it is at once a drama about the unresolved traumas of…
So where’s the giant fetus?In 1968, we were promised a giant space-fetus floating above our heads this year. It’s not in evidence at this writing, nor is there any sign of the film that ends with the image — the seminal science-fiction movie of its decade and maybe of the…
With its Peace of the Pie program Saturday at Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Desert Dance Theatre celebrates world diversity and peace. The biggest piece of the program is an excerpt from a work the company commissioned from H.T. Chen called Warriors of Light. Of the Shanghai-born Chen, the New…
There’s plenty of gallery action this weekend to kick off 2001. Lisa Sette Gallery continues its season with two shows — “the center of gravity,” which features works by Marie Navarre; and “Traces and Shadows,” with works by Maurizio Pellegrin. Both of these photography-based mixed-media artists are favorites at the…
Thank God for old Jews with shaky hands and the inability to tell this word (G-O-R-E) from this one (B-U-C-H-A-N-A-N). Without them — and Survivor Richard Hatch, that self-proclaimed “fat naked fag” who, as it turns out, is just a really concerned parent and not at all, uh, abusive –…
If you are un patron des arts, hip to the street-artist-cum-gallery-phenom tip, you’ve probably seen Basquiat five times and even own a Keith Haring tie you picked up at the Museum Store at Scottsdale Fashion Square. You may have even heard of “Lalo Land,” the installation at Thought Crime Gallery…
Some soft, blinking light of common courtesy ordinarily warns people against squabbling on a circus high wire. But this is just practice. And these are the Wallendas — the Flying Wallendas. So, 25 feet up inside the lofty blue peak of the Circus Flora small top, 16-year-old Aurelia Wallenda leans…
During the summer of 1994, while most of the world was greeting Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump with dewy eyes and outstretched arms, this critic was grinning his fool head off at a very different tale of a lost, lone hero. While a featherweight Tom Hanks bumbled his lobotomized way through…
In assessing the merits of Quills, the lusty new feature by director Philip Kaufman (Henry & June), it’s tempting to seek correlative characters from popular movies to illustrate just how radical this business is not. In Kaufman’s film — affectionately constructed upon a screenplay by Doug Wright, who adapts his…
More than any other year I can remember, in 2000 I heard people comment on how particularly bad movies were. In retrospect, I think they were right. The normal preponderance of mediocrity in human affairs makes every year seem like a bad movie year, but then when you review the…
In Hollywood, all it takes is one big hit. Sandra Bullock’s ticket to stardom was the 1994 sleeper Speed, a rip-roaring action/crime thriller that co-starred Keanu Reeves. With her cute girl-next-door looks and ingratiating physical klutziness, Bullock established an instant rapport with audiences. That perception of adorableness was further enhanced…
For the past few years, we’ve been told that Latino standup comedy was booming, and this would seem to be supported by the entertainment options this New Year’s Eve. Two venues are featuring major Latino comics as headliners.George Lopez, who has appeared everywhere from The Tonight Show to The Arsenio…
David Shepherd Grossman’s Stumbling Off 6th Street is, like the previous dozen or so collections from the Valley’s own troubadour, a strong and often stirring song cycle. Grossman, who performs on New Year’s Eve at Michael’s at the Citadel in Scottsdale, has a fondness for musical melancholia, but he never…
It’s where Walter Huston found paradise at the end of The Treasure of Sierra Madre. It’s where the murdering lovers Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw rode into the sunset at the end of The Getaway. It’s where Thelma and Louise were headed when they ended up at the Grand Canyon…
Playwright-filmmaker David Mamet has the sharpest gift imaginable for shooting down the sins of American greed, the con games people run to get ahead, and the corruption that comes with success. Whether he’s haunting a secondhand junk shop, a poker room or an outlying real estate office, he always finds…
All good things must come to an end, my grandmother always used to say. Once again, it looks like she was right. A celebrated performer is stepping out of the spotlight for the final time. Children and adults have adored her for 15 years, but now the time has come…
Christmas lives in tradition. There is something so comforting about dragging down those dusty old boxes, brushing off the cobwebs and pulling out that crude little Christmas tree ornament you made in first grade, the one your mother insisted on displaying so prominently year after year, against your vociferous protests…
Contained within a care package sent by C.D. Payne is a self-penned press release introducing the author as “the Rodney Dangerfield of comic novelists,” complete with a picture of the bug-eyed comedian and his shopworn catch phrase “I can’t get no respect.” As it turns out, this is the letter…
Linda Lewis apparently has a little trouble with authority.In her solo show at the Burton Barr Central Library and group show at Mesa Contemporary Arts, she uses old historical texts and documents to wage an arty war against history’s multitude of oppressive forces. Her weapon isn’t the heady philosophical discourse…
A recent decision to stop using mechanized music instead of live musicians in some theater productions has temporarily healed a rift between artists and producers here. Theatre League, a regional troupe that stages its Phoenix shows at the Orpheum, announced last week that it will no longer use “virtual musicians”…
