Behind the Out Far! Phoenix International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, “there’s a core group of people who love and adore film — gay, straight, men and women,” says festival director Amy Ettinger. And at the heart of that core group is Ettinger herself, who has coordinated the annual event…
The barrio boys of Culture Clash’s The Mission wanna give it up for Latino culture. If only someone will let them. The ersatz Culture Clash now appearing at Scottsdale’s Metro Theatre is actually the cast of Teatro Bravo’s retread of the famous group’s breakout play, but it’s selling the same…
When Joe Quesada, writer and illustrator of comic books, went to work as a freelance contractor for Marvel Comics three years ago, he found the so-called House of Ideas in ruin. The comic-book industry was, as Quesada recalls, “going down the toilet”: Every month, 10 to 15 percent of readers…
Where the Big Apple is concerned, Laurie Anderson’s work has often had an eerie prescience about it. In an Encyclopedia Britannica essay on New York City she authored last summer, Anderson speculated about how far the World Trade Center towers would fall if they collapsed. (The encyclopedia’s editors opted to…
To call a movie the most accessible Dogme 95 film ever made is not merely damning with faint praise. It also threatens to alienate the two segments of the population that might consider going to see such a film in the first place: fans of the back-to-basics, no-frills-of-any-kind Danish filmmaking…
You may be under the impression that it’s 2002, but make plans to usher in Year 4700. Don’t toss your calendar — mark it for Phoenix Chinese Week, a celebration of the Chinese New Year and more than a chance to reconstruct already-broken resolutions. The local celebration began 12 years…
Nineteen years ago, Alwun House director Kim Moody got a suggestion so good that it spawned a wildly popular, one-of-a kind tradition in the Phoenix art community. One of the board members of the restored house turned gallery and performance space, Arizona State University professor of art Rudy Turk, recommended…
Actors Theatre of Phoenix has taken another artistic risk that pays off in spite of itself. The company’s production of actor/author John Leguizamo’s Spic-O-Rama succeeds mostly as a showcase for the talents of local actor Richard Trujillo, whose superb performance as six different members of one familia loca busts past…
You’ve got to hand it to any romantic comedy that makes The Mexican and the Sweet November remake seem like enduring classics, which appears to be the chief objective of Birthday Girl. This slipshod sophomore effort from Jez Butterworth (Mojo) has been sitting on the shelf since its original release…
It’s astonishing just how open Screen Gems has been about showing Slackers to the reviewing press well in advance of deadlines. Dim, youth-oriented sex comedies like this often slip into theaters under cover of darkness. Not that critical appraisal really matters to such films; if it did, Freddie Prinze Jr…
As someone who’s been dancing his entire life, Rennie Harris conveys a notion of dance that is based in day-to-day reality. “Your whole day is improvisational,” he says. “You deal with what comes to you in that moment.” With Rome & Jewels, his “hip-hop ballet” that’s been touring sold-out theaters…
As that wounded ballerina — our nation’s struggling economy — continues to flail across the stage, and President Bush maintains his relentless pursuit of Osama bin Laden, and just when you thought it was safe to open your mail again, Lance Gharavi wants to remind us of the horrific tragedy…
There is nothing terribly wrong with Kevin Reynolds’ The Count of Monte Cristo, which the Internet Movie Database lists as the 18th remake of Alexandre Dumas’ tale of innocence betrayed and avenged. It is neither a drag nor a gas; it neither betrays its source material nor adheres too slavishly…
Sean Penn began 2001 by directing one of the year’s most deeply felt films, The Pledge, in which a frazzled, disconnected Jack Nicholson played a retired cop obsessed with solving the rape and murder of a young girl. A year later, he’s acting in one of the most woefully manipulative…
For all of their soaring, daredevilish feats, motocross racers sure have a way of getting down and dirty when it comes to scrambling around the track. Watch the dust fly on Saturday, January 26, when the 2002 EA Sports Supercross Series brings 125cc and 250cc cycle action to Bank One…
Quick. Name the five top dance companies in the United States today. Personally, it would be difficult to choose only five, but if pressed, I’d say the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, White Oak Dance Project, Paul Taylor Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre, and Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG). If your…
Talk long enough with any television exec over 55, and sooner or later he’ll get around to mentioning the La Brea Tar Pits, that enormous shimmering stinkhole in Los Angeles where the liquefied remains of some 660 species of organisms still burble. These old-timers, with skin light brown and pockets…
Frank Kopyc’s performance as Eliza Doolittle’s loutish father is one of many treats in Arizona Theater Company’s production of My Fair Lady. His rousing “With a Little Bit of Luck” and comical “Get Me to the Church on Time” are both showstoppers, played with such joyous oomph that it’s almost…
It should be so easy to hate this man sitting on a couch in a high-priced hotel suite, this man sharing his bottle of Evian. He is, after all, a demon dressed head to toe (or tail?) in slate gray, the Satan of Cinema. Attacking him has long been regular…
Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, based on reporter Mark Bowden’s factual account of a 1993 U.S. Army operation gone dreadfully awry in Somalia, doesn’t just kick your ass. It pummels your entire body; it leaves you trembling. Once the premise and setting are established, this brutal combat adventure doesn’t catch…
Attended by a rather sexy air of intrigue, the hit French film Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte Des Loups) arrives upon our shores, and, refreshingly, it’s left up to us to figure out just what the hell it is. Monster movie? Costume drama? Martial-arts extravaganza? To say the least,…
