There tend to be two poles when it comes to making semi-autobiographical movies about one’s childhood, and both are designed to make the viewer cry. There’s the “Those were the good old days” approach (see My Dog Skip or Stand by Me), usually depicting the time in a young boy’s…
“See, there’s this pre-Columbian emperor who’s a spoiled brat, and he gets turned into a llama, and he meets this peasant, and the two of them become buddies and save this little village . . .”It takes nothing away from The Emperor’s New Groove, Disney’s delightful new animated feature, to…
A mixture along these lines, with a strong dash of Mannheim Steamroller’s Christmas records, gives some idea of the flavor of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which performs this Sunday at the Web Theatre. The entertainingly over-the-top symphonic-rock ensemble, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Siberia or with railroads, is a project…
You may have noticed some nuts around the Valley in the last weeks. No, I don’t mean the election protesters. I mean The Nutcrackers. Ballet & Friends in Scottsdale and Ballet Etudes in Chandler wrapped up their wonderful productions recently. That makes two down and one to go, with the…
This is a city of ghosts. Like an ancient necropolis unearthed from beneath the desert, Phoenix is a place of the dead. You see them caught in mid-scream in front of the bronze dome of the State Capitol, wandering eyeless across the dirt mounds of Pueblo Grande on Washington Street…
Children of Eden
Day One: It was just part of the job, just another movie on another afternoon. This one promised to be no more special than any other, save for the casting of Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe. Proof of Life was the movie during which they fell in love, or whatever…
About halfway through the megabudget mountain-climbing adventure Vertical Limit, even the most rugged, thrill-hungry disaster-movie fans may find themselves going numb. Not from the howling weather on the icy faces of K2, in the Himalayas, where the action supposedly takes place. Not from oxygen deprivation. Not even from stretches of…
As Harvey Korman is dying in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater at the end of Blazing Saddles, he still has time to wonder aloud, of Douglas Fairbanks Sr., “How did he do such amazing stunts . . . with such little feet?”More to the point: How did he do them…
I’m the man of this house! . . . until you get home. What I say goes around here! . . . right out the window. This excerpt is characteristic of “The Man Song,” a much-requested radio hit by comic Sean Morey, who plays a two-night stand at the Tempe…
Christmastime is here, but for the first time, Charlie Brown’s father will not be around to watch his depressed, round-headed child celebrate the holiday. He will not be in front of the television next week to watch his little boy seek psychiatric help from a nickel-grubbing girl who diagnoses her…
In 102 Dalmatians, a new brood of puppies is born, one of which, Oddball, doesn’t develop spots. The resulting feelings of inadequacy are such that the poor thing runs away from home and hides in a cave, gets bitten by a bat and turns into a slavering mad dog. Cruella…
Late in the 19th century, Marius Petipa choreographed a confectionery story ballet on Tchaikovsky’s music based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s tale The Nutcracker. Russian choreographer George Balanchine’s version has been enchanting children and adults since 1954. Yet he is one Russian not represented in the Nutcrackers around the Valley this holiday…
Philip Curtis, the Scottsdale painter who died November 12 at age 93, would have loved the Phoenix Art Museum’s farewell to him last week. He always liked a good party. And this one included some of his favorite things: a few hundred of his closest friends praising him and his…
In our daily physical world, “Sustained,” the new installation by Gene Cooper, is located at the Lisa Sette Gallery in downtown Scottsdale. The installation also exists in the cyberworld of technology and virtual reality, over a tangled web of fiber-optic cables. And on yet another level, the work exists literally…
Despite the recent collapse of several small theaters, new playhouses are springing up like Christmas tree lots. Would that these companies were offering something other than a handful of interesting performances in shows no discerning playgoer will want to see.Hidden away in a tiny, unmarked storefront, D and D and…
At first glance, the new Japanese import Non-Stop seems to be a crude knockoff of German director Tom Tykwer’s wonderful Run Lola Run, but Non-Stop was released in Japan (under the title Dangan Runner) in 1996, two years before Lola was shot. Could Tykwer have seen the film at a…
Lots of performance art in the Valley this weekend. Along with Karen Finley at autoMATIC (see story right), Saturday, December 2, will also see the 15th annual Bad X-Mas Pageant at Alwun House, 1204 East Roosevelt. The show, possibly the longest-running annual performance-art event in Phoenix, is a revue featuring…
Some artists like to play coy about the underlying themes in their work. You know the sort of thing — the interviewer asks, “Did you have any deeper meanings in mind in the scene of the big wheat silo with the twin haystacks at the base and the farmgirl straddling…
Gardens have been a source of contemplation and inspiration ever since we were booted out of the first one for bad behavior. These havens give us order and perfection within the otherwise untamed chaos of the natural world. In the solace they provide, some religious scholars have argued, we are…
If “No Absolutes” — ASU Art Museum’s group exhibition showcasing artists working today in the Southwest — is any indication of what is truly being produced in the region, maybe it’s time to pack it up and move to Minnesota. Jointly curated by the museum’s director, Marilyn Zeitlin, senior curator…
Unbreakable is such a quiet film that whenever a character speaks above a whisper, it sounds like the shattering of glass in a monastery. It’s also a terribly sad movie; almost no one cracks a smile or a joke, and everyone wears the look of someone who’s just spent the…
