The Death Bite: Hal Corley’s unfortunately named drama is not about vampirism, but rather about 18 hours in the life of Robyn Fair, an oddball who longs to launch her life from the New Jersey suburb where she lives. First, she has to untangle herself from her deceitful foster daughter,…
Catch a Fire (Focus) In his commentary for the underrated, undervalued Catch a Fire, director Phillip Noyce discusses the inspiration: witnessing the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. He wanted to comprehend “the terrorist’s mind,” so he found a story that accomplishes such a difficult thing: the…
Anyone who played games back in the olden days (i.e., the late ’80s) knows that they used to be a lot tougher. Cartridges back then subscribed to the “Oh, you want some of this?” school of game design. They made you gnash your teeth, throw your controller, and bellow four-letter…
1934 In her first stage performance, Ella Fitzgerald wins an Amateur Night competition at the Apollo Theater. 1936 Ella’s first recording, “Love and Kisses,” is released on Decca Records. 1938 Ella’s first Number One single is “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” a novelty number recorded for an Abbott and Costello movie in which…
Academy Awards Collection (MGM) The Comedians of Comedy (Anchor Bay) Dallas: The Complete Sixth Season (Warner Bros.) The Doctor, the Tornado & the Kentucky Kid: Ultimate Collector’s Edition (New Video Group) Dora the Explorer: Cowgirl Dora (Paramount) The Fabulous Baker Boys (MGM) Facing the Giants (Sony) The Festival: The Complete…
His pseudonym reads like that of a second-rate sci-fi author. The name of his solo exhibition is derived from the language of the apes spoken in Tarzan novels. His work is a gold mine of Freudian obsessions, from big-breasted babes with Barbie waistlines to superhero men with bulging biceps and…
Drawing is often considered a “practice” art. Granted, Michelangelo’s sketch The Risen Christ sold at auction for a record $12.3 million a few years ago. Even Picasso’s rough sketches of his mistress, Genevieve Laporte, fetched a hefty sum. The catch is that only after their deaths and their recognition as…
New-school genre junk food: Take a Tarantino wanna-be with Sundance credentials, add a large, famous-enough cast and a show-biz backdrop, season the violence with references to Sergio Leone and Takeshi Kitano, serve cool, and garnish with a cynicism beyond irony. Smokin’ Aces is writer-director Joe Carnahan’s third and most elaborate…
Maurice Russell, a septuagenarian actor facing the end of his career and life, gazes raptly at the present that fate has given him: the company of a sullen but strangely desirable teenage girl. At first, his appraising looks give her the creeps, but something about his courtliness piques her curiosity…
Park City, Utah — On the first Saturday of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, I rolled out of bed and hustled up Main Street for the 8:30 a.m. screening of Tamara Jenkins’s The Savages, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as adult siblings caring for an irascible elderly parent…
For most of us, the closest we get to practicing medicine is telling a depressed co-worker, “Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.” But that doesn’t stop us from living vicariously through TV doctors. Now, with Trauma Center: Second Opinion, you can take your surgical dreams one step further. Thanks…
Cocaine Cowboys (Magnolia) Slam! Bang! Pow! Snort! This tawdry and giddy documentary tells the story of Miami’s transformation from a place where old people go to die to a place with so much drug money that the Mercedes dealers were constantly out of stock, where the hit men would rather…
Park City, Utah — Ten days of terse texting among professional narcissists working on little or no sleep in one of the last cold spots left on Al Gore’s inconvenient Earth: Welcome to Sundance ’07, where the wounding, home-front melodrama Grace Is Gone sells and it hardly pays to be…
Brokeback Mountain: 2-Disc Collector’s Edition (Universal) Cowboy del Amor (Genius) Crooks (Lightyear) Fiddler on the Roof (MGM) The 2006 FIFA World Cup Film: The Grand Finale (Sony) Ghost Encounters: The Queen Mary (Anthem) The Guardian (Buena Vista) Hopeless Pictures: Season One (Genius) Jesus Camp (Magnolia) John Pinette: I’m Starvin’ (Image)…
After Dark: 100 Years of the Evening Dress at Phoenix Art Museum: Your old prom dress probably isn’t a masterpiece, but formal wear by Oscar De La Renta and Gianni Versace can be as desirable as a Rembrandt. Phoenix Art Museum’s exhibit of 30 gowns, selected from their cache of…
Funny man galore performs a rare club date at the Tempe Improv. Tue., Feb. 5, 8 p.m.; Wed., Feb. 6, 8 p.m., 2008…
Plein-air painting was supersexy 150 years ago, when Monet and his indie impressionist bros trekked outdoors in search of the perfect natural lighting. Though these bad-boy artists were shunned for their bastardized practice during their careers, we now see their disciples – the retired, pony-tailed therapist wearing mandals and painting…
“Fuck You, Joe Arpaio” seems like a threat, but when rapper, one-man band, and comic devil Page the Village Idiot utters the insult, it reeks of promise. Page’s meager beginnings with hardcore punk outfits Idols of Perversity and The Claymores taught him the stage moves, but he soon tired of…
MySpace. CrySpace. A place for friends. A place for nauseating self-indulgence. Whether you love or loathe the online meeting and sharing place, there are sure signs of addiction: Obsessing over the “About Me” statement. Sending butt-hurt e-mails when you aren’t on somebody’s top friends list. Staying up all night dolling…
Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, Pan’s Labyrinth is something alchemical. To an astonishing degree, the 42-year-old Mexican filmmaker best known for his contribution to the Blade and Hellboy franchises has transformed the horror of mid-20th-century European history into a boldly fanciful example of what surrealists would call le…
Imagine being trapped in a tiny room full of people who cannot sing but insist on doing so anyway (at the top of their lungs!), and you’ll understand my discomfort while confronting Desert Stages’ Suds last month. This is one of those musical revues — and they are legion —…
Viva Piñata begins with you acquiring the deed to a barren patch of land on “Piñata Island,” a strange place where everyone wears masks and the main form of currency is chocolate coins. Your first order of business is a little gardening, breathing some life back into your dusty plot…
