With this review, I join the cacophony of critics and flacks heralding the latest tribute to George and Ira Gershwin. The Gershwins’ Fascinating Rhythm, a new musical revue that’s parked briefly at the Herberger Theater Center on its way to Broadway, is the most impressive, most opulent staging of Gershwin…
On the day after Christmas, I found myself at Circus Flora, a spectacle I opted for over yet another Neil Simon comedy at the Herberger. Circus Flora, performed in a big, plastic tent in Scottsdale, began with an unscheduled performance by me: Singled out by the clown for not having…
Given the manipulative tendencies of many mainstream pictures, Stepmom easily could have slipped into a sticky morass of sentimentality and melodrama. Instead, it proves a genuinely affecting movie that approaches its adult themes with intelligence, maturity and rare authenticity. The film stars Susan Sarandon as Jackie, a divorced mother of…
In 1933, producer Merian C. Cooper, director Ernest B. Schoedsack and pioneering animator Willis O’Brien created one of this century’s most indelible and powerful archetypes: King Kong. Then they did a peculiar thing: As if appalled at what they had wrought–but also delighted at the money it made them–they spent…
Exploding from the industrial murk of late-’60s Birmingham, England, Black Sabbath almost single-handedly created the genre known as heavy metal. The band became infamous for its ultraheavy riffs, as well as for themes more akin to Rosemary’s Baby than to the reigning flower power of the day. But a decade…
The past year has been filled with good films . . . interesting films . . . worthwhile films. In fact, there were many that I think of as being wonderful or droll or whatever. But 1998 failed to produce a single film to which the term “great” might be…
Were the Kennedys complicitous in the death of Marilyn Monroe? Did the government cover up an alien crash-landing at Roswell, New Mexico? Were the Clintons involved in the death of Vince Foster? Was Christopher Marlowe, or perhaps Sir Francis Bacon, the actual author of the plays attributed to William Shakespeare?…
Did you know that here in Arizona we are, by order of the governor herself, smack in the middle of statewide tribute to composer Frederic Chopin? Yes, a proclamation signed by Jane Dee Hull on October 22 declares November 1, 1998, through February 28, 1999, “A Tribute to Chopin Season.”…
thursday december 31 There’s a local angle on the massive metal show featuring Black Sabbath, with Pantera, Megadeth, and Soulfly in support: That last band’s founder, Max Cavalera, formerly of Brazil’s political-thrash outfit Sepultura, is now a Valley resident. For more info on the Brobdingnagian head-bang-fest, slated for Thursday, December…
For more than 150 years, photographers have been busily snapping opposing realities and versions of the truth. They’ve wielded cameras as tools of analysis and exploration, to clarify mysteries and bring the distant near. And they’ve used them as tools of expression, to make enigmas of the commonplace. There’s plenty…
British actress Jane Horrocks is thrice-gifted: She can act, she can sing, and she can sing like Judy Garland. And like Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich and a host of other legendary performers. Horrocks’ ability to mimic the singing and speaking voices of these artists lies at the heart…
Geniuses often come across unimpressively in the movies. Amadeus presented Mozart as a giggling fop. Both Kirk Douglas and Tim Roth gave us Van Gogh as a pathetic head case. I.Q.’s Albert Einstein was a cupid-playing old duffer. Ken Russell’s freaky depictions of Liszt and Mahler speak for themselves. When…
The talents of Maya Angelou–she is or has been a teacher, memoirist, prize-winning poet, actress, civil-rights activist, editor, playwright, composer, dancer, producer, theater and TV director, and adviser to three presidents–range so far and deep that no feat she accomplishes could come as a surprise. Give this quick study three…
The quiet crusade against cutting down live Christmas trees has reached the point when it can be declared a full-fledged social movement–Saturday Night Live has done a sketch about it. On a recent episode, ultra-PC Lilith Fair troubadour “Cinder Calhoun” (Ana Gasteyer) sang a song called “Christmas Chainsaw Massacre.” Even…
As if to say “We’ve got your number,” record moguls seem hell-bent on selling music as if it were a badge. Pick one station, any station, and you’re guaranteed to hear the same sort of thing, over and over. A new artist with a flair for the unique inevitably faces…
Thursday December 24 Since Christmas Eve is generally a day of ease and relaxation, when we do all those little things that we’ve been meaning to get around to the rest of the year, why not stop by the Burton Barr Central Library Thursday, December 24, both to catch up…
If there were any real justice in the world, Larry Shue would be considered the greatest comedy writer of the American theater, and Neil Simon would be a ribbon clerk. Instead, professional stages the world over continue to groan under the weight of Simon’s comedies, while Shue is–well, he’s dead…
On May 30, 1957, the Los Angeles Times reported that the body of “the distinguished film producer and director James Whale” had been found floating in the swimming pool at his home in Pacific Palisades. Fully clothed, Whale’s corpse exhibited a head wound. “Whale,” the Times went on to point…
DreamWorks’ grandiose attempt at an animated feature for adults is a flimsy musical about Moses–a Sunday-school film strip writ ultralarge and decked out with the spectacle of Hollywood Bible epics. Slender sermons nestle among flashy action sequences and diaphanous fashion statements from the more tasteful pages of the Nefertiti’s Secret…
Old-fashioned romantic comedies are an endangered species, and in these generally unromantic days it’s always a pleasant surprise to find a decent one like Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail. Ephron, of course, made her bones five and a half years ago with the huge hit Sleepless in Seattle, but since…
In his best book, All the Trouble in the World, P.J. O’Rourke describes traveling up an Amazon tributary in Peru with a boatload of eco-tourists, the lot of them trying to attract the attention of a pod of estuarine dolphins by singing to them. Rather grudgingly, O’Rourke admits: “. …
thursday december 17 Who is that masked man? Say that line in this area, and there’s a good chance that you’re asking about Zarco Guerrero, local mask-maker and performance artist. Guerrero takes the plum role of the Devil in La Pastorela, a “teatro”-style Christmas pageant presented by El Teatro de…
