At first glance, 1999’s The Mummy, starring Brendan Fraser as a lantern-jawed Indiana Jones-in-waiting facing off against an undead Telly Savalas look-alike, played like knowing spoof, a lighthearted, if half-assed, remake of the 1932 film starring Boris Karloff. At first listen, it was one big joke, a horror-movie parody masquerading…
Last thing first. At this very moment, Chris Carter sits behind his desk in the Ten Thirteen Production offices, on the 20th Century Fox lot in Studio City, California, finishing the final X-Files episode of this season. The show’s creator has just one scene left to write–the very last–and that…
Michelle Gardner arrives bearing Danish. She shows up for what she calls her “farewell interview” clutching a four-foot-long cheese-and-blueberry concoction from Karsh’s, the kosher bakery her parents have owned for decades. She’s come to talk about Blown Sideways Through Life, the new one-woman show she’s starring in, as well as…
Bleacher Bums is a baseball comedy which, from its earliest moments, had me root root rooting for the curtain to fall. The kind folks at Ensemble Theater have set up a kiosk in the lobby so that one can, as the song goes, buy you some peanuts and Cracker Jack…
Just when we culturally deprived, mystery-starved Americans were convinced that that most delicious of movie genres, the French thriller, was dead and buried, a literate and exciting new filmmaker named Dominik Moll has emerged to revive it — and set our nerves exquisitely on edge. It’s a minor miracle that…
The directorial debut of actress turned screenwriter Agnès Jaoui (Same Old Song, Un Air de Famille), The Taste of Others is a work of delicate observation, falling somewhere between romantic drama and comedy of manners.Mr. Castella (Jean-Pierre Bacri, the director’s husband and co-writer) is a wealthy businessman whose life leaves…
As a kid, I could never remember which one was Judy Collins. I shared a room with an older brother who favored female folk singers, all of whom, it seemed, had first names beginning with the letter J: Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Jennifer Warnes, Judee Sill, Judy Collins.”She gets that…
If you think today’s kids are dumber than yesterday’s, try getting anything past some precocious little dinosaur geek. Try to tell him or her that a Mamenchisaurus is a plain old Brontosaurus, or an Albertosaurus is a good old-fashioned Tyrannosaurus rex, and you’ll see rolled eyes and weary head-shaking.The reason…
Visualize a pretty young woman and a handsome young man heading for the bedroom. She has just suggested that she wants to show him what she really wants, so, naturally, he begins unzipping his trousers en route to the bed. Oblivious to his loud boxers, she sits and begins swooning…
All righty, then, let’s see if we’ve got this straight.There’s this guy named Antipholus (of Ephesus) who has a twin brother named Antipholus (of Syracuse). The Syracuse-based Antipholus doesn’t know about the Ephesus-based Antipholus, and vice versa. Now Antipholus (of Ephesus) has a manservant by the name of Dromio who…
Initiated in 1989 within basements and backyards as private grudge matches, University Fight Night has evolved in the past six years into Arizona’s most attended amateur boxing event. “Revenge,” the forthcoming rumble at Celebrity Theatre, is yet another rivalry between students of University of Arizona and Arizona State University. UFN…
There is no good place to begin with Harry Shearer, because he doesn’t sit still long enough to allow one the chance to focus. He is a blur, forever in motion–on his way to the radio station, on his way from the movie studio, on his way to the publisher’s…
Somewhere, in deepest New South Wales, Australia, there exists a humble sheep paddock. (In this particular case, the paddock is nearly devoid of sheep — barring the odd sound effect — but never mind that.) The setting is rural, it’s pastoral, it’s quaint as all heck — and it also…
Joe Simon doesn’t read comic books anymore, and not because he’s an 87-year-old man with far better ways to spend his time. The former and, perhaps, future comics writer and illustrator simply doesn’t get them anymore; he doesn’t know who they’re for, what they’re about, why most of them even…
Luigi Pirandello’s Enrico IV is enjoying a revival. There’s a production running now at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, translated by Richard Nelson and directed by the company’s artistic director, and an independent film company is shooting an adaptation of the story for the BBC. I wonder if either is…
So which is correct — “more leathery” or “leatherier”? What the heck, let’s try them both: Paul Hogan, who was leathery in “Crocodile” Dundee, and leatherier in “Crocodile” Dundee II, is more leathery still in the dreary Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles.Leathery or not, the Australian, now around 60, looks…
There’s a majesty to Michael Winterbottom’s new film, a majesty and a terrible, icy chill. There’s also a fair bit of invention, as the director of the wrenching Jude — based on Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure — has shifted the locus of that author’s fierce, beloved English west country…
Justice may be blind, but vengeance, it turns out, has a very short memory. So it goes in Memento, the much-anticipated “puzzle” movie from Christopher Nolan (Following), which — as is already fairly well known — plays out its plot more or less in reverse. Pitting the protagonist (and us)…
Vincent Guerithault on Camelback, a wonderful restaurant, abuts a gas station on one side and a 7-Eleven on the other. Its parking lot is narrow, and the street that fronts it is noisy. Because the food inside is so good, its proprietor, Vincent Guerithault, could safely ignore his surroundings. Instead,…
The next few weeks mark your last chance this year to enjoy an event that has been going on in the Valley since before the first humans wandered out of the frozen north to escape the encroaching ice age. (Talk about your snowbirds!) Desert Wildflower Season, those few glorious months…
If you don’t like Tom Green, there’s no point in going anywhere near Freddy Got Fingered, as it won’t win you over. If you don’t know much about Tom Green but are curious, you might be well advised to watch videotapes of his show first, and be aware that inasmuch…
“Keep a diary and one day it’ll keep you,” said Mae West, and while the sentiment rings true, it does little to explain the mystery of why Helen Fielding’s sliver of literary history managed to keep anyone. Fluffy, shrill and approximately as deep as Cosmo magazine, the book somehow hit…
