Long Shadow Film Festival: Call for Submissions

Attention short film enthusiasts: there’s a new film festival coming to town dedicated to showcasing local filmmakers. The Long Shadow Film Festival is currently seeking submissions of short films and videos of all genres (narratives, documentary, experimental), and is especially interested in the work of Arizona artists. Check out submission details after…

CONTAGION: A-List Actors Fight for Survival in a World Full of Germs

Besides doing fun relationship stuff like arguing about how to discipline our dog, New Times blogger Tyler Hughes and his girlfriend, Jackie Cronin, go to the movies. Tyler:  So, how many times did you wash your hands after seeing Contagion?Jackie: Twice — before leaving the theater. I’ve never been so…

Drive: Ryan Gosling, American Badass

When they’re not doing awesome relationship stuff like watching endless loops of 30 Rock episodes on Netflix and figuring out what a vegan and omnivore should make for dinner, New Times writers Becky Bartkowski and Jason Woodbury go to the movies.Last night they went to see Drive, a neo-noir action flick starring Ryan…

Higher Ground: Vera Farmiga Tries to Create a Better Role

At one point in Higher Ground, Vera Farmiga’s decade-spanning directorial debut, the actress, playing Corinne, a woman still soaked with lake water after her baptism into an evangelical sect, resembles no less a touchstone than Ronee Blakley in Robert Altman’s Nashville: slightly high hair; starchy, sexless, long tunic dress; swaying…

Magic Trip: On the Road with Ken Kesey and His Merry Pranksters

The subject of Magic Trip is the LSD-powered, cross-country road movie orchestrated by novelist Ken Kesey in the summer of ’64. More than a footnote but less than a chapter in American cultural history, the voyage taken by a psychedelic Day-Glo painted school bus filled with Kesey’s Merry Prankster pals…

Phoenix Author James Sallis on His Book-Turned-Movie, Drive

Phoenix-based author James Sallis has been through the Hollywood wringer discussing his novella Drive. Sallis’ 200-page book was picked up by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. Next week, the book goes to the silver screen in a neo-noir flick, directed by Refn and starring Ryan Gosling.Between Hollywood screenings and everyday life –…

Steve Weiss to Program Films at SMoCA

It didn’t take long for indie film programmer Steve Weiss to find his next gig. The cineaste and organizer of No Festival Required, who left the programming position at FilmBar earlier this month, recently announced he will begin booking films and documentaries at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Arts starting this…

Bellflower‘s Mushy Heart Lies Behind the Flame-Throwing Muscle Cars

In Bellflower — the dystopian micro-indie that galvanized Sundance last January — a run-of-the-mill romantic disaster is swiftly followed by a crippling accident. His heart broken, his brain damaged, and his neck brace soaked with blood, Woodrow (played by Bellflower’s writer/director, Evan Glodell) sets out to make Milly (Jessie Wiseman),…

Local Documentary Beadle Architecture Screens at The Clarendon

Note: this post has been edited. Beadle Architecture will screen next Tuesday, August 30. Modernist architect Alfred Newman Beadle was notorious for adhering to an unwavering vision. But when it came to design, compromise wasn’t in his vocabulary. The man behind Phoenix’s Executive Towers and Mountain Bell building worked in absolutes…

Sion Sono’s Cold Fish screens at The Royale

Japanese filmmaker Sion Sono’s skin-crawler Cold Fish tells the tale of a mild-mannered fishmonger sucked into the bloodcurdling world of a murderous fellow seafood salesman. The hair-raiser screens at The Royale in Mesa on Friday, August 19, at 11 p.m., and Saturday, August 20, at 9 p.m.”Cold Fish is a…

The Future: Navigating What Lies Ahead in Miranda July’s Latest

Is there such thing as a sincerely calculated naïveté? Or put another way, does Miranda July have any idea of how annoying she is? On the basis of The Future, writer/filmmaker/performance artist July’s second feature, I’d guess that she must. A fabricator of her own screen image, July — the…

Conan’s Reboot Is Bloody Good

A cinematic reboot for the patron saint of 98-pound weaklings, Conan the Barbarian is both truer to the vision of its character’s creator, Robert E. Howard, and more satisfyingly pulpy than John Milius’ 1982 movie incarnation. Director Marcus Nispel, along with no fewer than three screenwriters, eschews the lugubrious mythmaking…

One Day: Life Happens According to a Plan

Directed by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig from a screenplay by David Nicholls, based on his novel, One Day stars Anne Hathaway as Emma, a too-serious would-be writer in coke-bottle glasses and combat boots. She’s nursing a crush on Dexter (Jim Sturgess), her too-good-looking rich boy college classmate. She’s earnest, tenacious…

“Biggest Loser” Hosts Casting Call in Phoenix

In 2008, Ali Vincent lost 112 pounds and won $250,000. The then-32-year-old from Mesa was a cast member on The Biggest Loser and became the show’s first female winner. Today, she’s a speaker, spokeswoman, author, and soon-to-be creator of her own charitable foundation. And she says it all started with an open…