The 10 best pictures of 2002: 1. I’m Going Home: The most beautiful film ever made about aging by the world’s oldest working filmmaker, the 94-year-old Manoel de Oliveira. 2. Far From Heaven: Todd Haynes’ Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama about race and gayness in the 1950s is more timely than ever,…
Four of the top 10 films I saw this past year don’t actually open in the U.S. until 2003, but they played at various film festivals during the year. By listing them here I not only alert readers to films they should watch out for in ’03, but I also…
There were lots of good movies this year, but few great ones that left me thinking one couldn’t have asked for more. I resolved to see as many as possible way back in January, and did okay; there are still one or two I missed, and while Adam Sandler’s Eight…
It’s never a good sign when somewhere in the vicinity of half of my most memorable moviegoing experiences in a given year come from reissues of films at least three decades old. But there it is: In my memory banks, 2002 may well be remembered as the year of the…
The biggest event to happen to television this year took place at the multiplex last summer: My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a one-woman show that has blossomed into a one-woman franchise. This spring, CBS-TV will debut My Big Fat Greek Life as a midseason replacement, featuring the entire cast of…
Save the ChildrenIrresponsible pool owners: I have been a reader of your newspaper for about eight years, and I would like to say that you are the only voice of reality in the Valley. Also, as a somewhat new parent, I have to say the story that you ran in…
Let’s make this clear: These aren’t bad albums bands you hate make bad albums. No, these five records do something much worse: They’re disappointments, unworthy efforts from once-great artists and overhyped freshmen. What’s most offensive, though, is that a lot of people didn’t even seem to notice. 1. The Vines,…
1. Oasis, Heathen Chemistry (Epic): This bloated corpse of a band, overhyped from its first note and compared to the Beatles during its brief peak, was never all that. It’s always written bland songs. Even its hits are just glossy hooks and shimmery guitars bereft of any substantive content. But…
At a time when officials were leaving faculty positions vacant, firing secretaries and talking about raising tuition as much as $1,000 per student, top executives at Arizona State University were getting hefty raises. And President Michael Crow was getting ready to redecorate his office. Between September and October of last…
Jefferson Davis McGee was not the man who raped and killed 8-year-old Elizabeth Byrd. But on May 28, 2001, McGee was beaten to the brink of death by fellow maximum-security jail inmates who believed he had killed the girl. The inmates of Madison Street Jail believed McGee was what cons…
On a recent Wednesday evening, Paul Hewitson dressed up in a neatly pressed gray suit and a western-cut white shirt, and headed out to dinner at his favorite restaurant, Red Lobster. Many people take a meal of crab legs and coleslaw for granted, but until recently, such an event was…
One of Arizona’s most reviled killers apparently is going to have to wait much longer to get his wish — to die by lethal injection. On December 16, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals tabled its discussion of whether Robert Comer is mentally competent to become a so-called death…
Courting Trouble Ad nauseam: I have just finished reading Paul Rubin’s article titled “Courthouse Scoundrels” (December 19). Obviously, Mr. Rubin spent significant time doing research. Of particular interest to me was what you had to say about Gary Karpin. One can’t help but wonder how his victims even heard about…
The Greathouse family met Father Carl Carlozzi on the evening of April 24. It was the night their two toddler sons, Dylan and Steven, drowned in their unfenced swimming pool in Maryvale. Carlozzi, a gray-haired man with a calming demeanor and kind smile, gets called in to help survivors deal…
In June 1993, an attorney for the discipline unit of the Vermont State Bar sent a letter to her counterpart in Arizona. It alerted the local Bar that disbarred lawyer Gary Karpin was moving to Phoenix. “Suffice it to say,” the letter said, “out of excess of caution, I forward…
Governor-elect Janet Napolitano has been playing Santa these past few weeks, checking her list and giving jobs to the nicest of her friends. Even a few naughty ones made the cut. The Spike likes to savor each appointment like a Christmas bonbon, unwrapping it eagerly and examining the tasty morsel…
A lawyer for a man accused of plotting to kill Sheriff Joe Arpaio will use the entrapment defense to challenge what was one of the top county lawman’s grandest public busts. Defense attorney Ulises A. Ferragut Jr. will employ the defense next month in the long-awaited trial of James Brian…
Labor Pains Mexican-American War: Day labor centers might be short-term charitable fixes, but we also need some justice and context (“Herding People,” Susy Buchanan, December 12). John Dougherty’s 1998 “Bordering on Exploitation” provided context and a concern about injustice. Will the U.S. ever do with Mexico what northern Europe has…
Joe Fendler can’t believe what he’s hearing. Sitting before him is a group of people he claims are planning to encourage public defecation, urination, intoxication, intimidation, burglary and littering — not to mention illegal immigration — by rewarding a bunch of wetbacks. To make matters worse, they’re going to use…
Charity work isn’t supposed to be about fame and fortune — unless you’re Susan Heywood, czarina of the Scratch & Sniff Awards. Scratch & Sniff — the annual Academy Awards-esque dinner party held to raise money to help cats and dogs — is the pet project of Susan and her…
Six months ago, I received an impassioned e-mail from a woman in south Chandler. She was responding to a column I had written a week earlier about Bishop Thomas O’Brien’s long history of coddling and secretly transferring priests who had molested children. In the e-mail, the woman told the story…
Phoenix City Councilman Michael Johnson’s raucous nightclub on South Seventh Avenue quietly won an unusual reprieve last month from the state liquor board. An administrative law judge’s recommended one-year suspension of the club’s liquor license was overturned by a vote of the full board. A first-term councilman and retired Phoenix…
