Monster’s Ball producer Lee Daniels makes his directorial debut with Shadowboxer, and it couldn’t be clearer that he’s trying to follow his previous formula for success. Oscar-caliber actors? Check. Interracial sex? Plenty. A violent demise or two, all in the service of character development? Oh yes. But Daniels maybe could…
It seldom fails. Every year, we’ll get a movie that doesn’t necessarily have a remarkable plot or director, but does feature an aging master (or mistress) thespian from the U.K., whom one might assume is an automatic shoo-in for an award nomination, ensuring eternal recognition for the movie at hand…
It’s no secret that documentaries have finally gained some currency in the American media. With the help of Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock, and a very cold bunch of penguins, docs have increased their audiences by railing against injustices, exposing political and corporate malfeasance, and inviting us into hidden worlds. Naked…
The old Lucas/Spielberg stunt of turning B-movie peekaboos into E-ticket thrill rides remains the industry standard — to the virtual exclusion of other multiplex fare, particularly when school’s out. But as not every kid who remade Raiders in Super 8 either gave up the dream or morphed into Michael Bay,…
Deb Baker swears it’s a coincidence that her newest murder mystery, Dolled Up for Murder — her second for Berkley Books — is set in Phoenix. From her home in Wisconsin, the author says she didn’t even know there were serial killers here, and insists there’s nothing so odd about…
Christy Puetz, 36, is as colorful a character as the beaded dolls she creates. Her downtown Phoenix apartment, which doubles as a studio, is crammed with large-scale paintings and prints she has bartered her own artwork for. She sits, cross-legged and calm, in the inner sanctum of her bedroom, wearing…
Native American heroes are a rare commodity in videogames. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, released a decade ago, is the most prominent example. Now Turok finally has company. The best way to describe Prey is “Doom meets Cherokee mysticism.” And while most critics are fawning over this first-person action/horror title, don’t believe…
V for Vendetta (Warner Bros.) Illustrator David Lloyd calls this adaptation of the comic he made with writer Alan Moore “very good” — so why did Moore beg to have his name removed? The intentions are noble, sure; name another big-studio blockbuster in which a government manufactures fear to keep…
Beavis & Butt-head: The Mike Judge Collection, Volume 3 (Paramount) Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf (Panik House) Broken Saints: The Animated Comic Epic (Fox) Dallas: The Complete Fifth Season (Warner Bros.) Elvis: ’68 Comeback (BMG Heritage) A Fish Called Wanda: Deluxe Edition (MGM) Girls Next Door (Fox) The Graduate (MGM)…
Been to the gym this summer? Make it pay off during One O’Clock Shirtless Shots, where you’ll get a penny shot for exposing yourself from the waist up. Bring on the sweaty armpits, chest hair, or whatever your naked torso has going for itself. The naughtiness happens every night at…
City anglers can get fishy without leaving town at Red Mountain Park Lake during Urban Fishing. The eight-acre oasis features two fishing docks and waters stocked with channel catfish, bluegill, hybrid sunfish, largemouth bass, carp, and white amur. Other species like tilapia — documented by a two-pound, 13-inch record-setting catch…
Michael Mann’s Miami Vice is like a car that’s been stripped of everything but its two bucket seats and rebuilt from the ground up. The protagonists are a pair of detectives named Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx), and a cover of Phil Collins’ “In the Air…
The Ant Bully is based upon a very short children’s book by John Nickle, who wrote and illustrated the 1999 work all by his lonesome after years of providing illustrations for The Wall Street Journal and Sports Illustrated, not to mention other works of kiddy lit. The book, as most…
Originally, Ward Serrill set out to make a documentary — and a short one at that — about Bill Resler, an avuncular tax professor at the University of Washington who thought he knew enough about basketball to coach the girls’ team at Roosevelt High School in Seattle. Never mind that…
For 35 years, Woody Allen was a long shot to stray into the Bronx or Staten Island, much less the alien reaches of London, England. The creator of Manhattan has always been joined to his chosen borough like pastrami on rye — so when he ventured abroad last year to…
I’ve nearly recovered from having seen a dinner theater production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast in east Mesa last week. My headache, which began shortly after Anthony Majewski began singing, is almost gone. My stomachache (which wasn’t caused by anything I ate, since I skipped the dinner portion of…
1740 The first version of Beauty and the Beast, by Madame Gabrielle de Villeneuve, appears. Villeneuve’s version doesn’t end with the transformation of the Prince, who remains ugly — and grumpy about it, too. 1756 A newer, more cautionary (and much more sexist) version of the tale by Madame Le…
Flight sims — games that emulate the experience of being in a cockpit — are plenty popular on PCs, but have never taken off on home consoles. This is partly due to their inherent complexity. When it comes to recreating an entire cockpit’s worth of buttons, levers, and gizmos, the…
Feed (TLA) Remember the old jokes about “What’s grosser than gross”? The makers of Feed do, as they prove in the first 10 minutes — one-upping their opening scene featuring a voluntary victim of cannibalism by bringing in a guy who gets nekkid and shoves cheeseburgers down the throat of…
West Side Story: This deeply sincere take on Arthur Laurents’ landmark musical thankfully never tries to impersonate the movie version, which is what audiences who attend West Side Story often want. Instead, Desert Stages’ Sharks and Jets dance like kids actually might if they were trapped in Hell’s Kitchen and…
2005 Academy Award Nominated Short Films (Magnolia) Animaniacs: Volume 1 (Warner Bros.) Ask the Dust (Paramount) Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That! (ThinkFilm) The Benchwarmers (Sony) Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story (Shout! Factory) Bogie & Bacall: The Signature Collection (Warner Bros.) Chappelle’s Show: The Lost Episodes (Paramount) Electric Shadows (First Run)…
Hair holds a magic exalted for centuries. In the Biblical story of Samson, hair was a source of power. In Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, long, flowing locks are the epitome of beauty. Hair has also been used for functional and artistic purposes. In the Victorian era, pendants containing a lock…
