Poetic Nonsense

Unlike Southeast Asia last week, Agnieszka Holland’s new film Total Eclipse has nary an eclipse, total or partial, in its length. A pity–astronomical phenomena would have provided a bit of diversion. The film concerns the tempestuous relationship between the prodigal French poet Arthur Rimbaud (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his older, sort-of…

Pic Hits for the week

thursday november 2 Arizona State Fair: The annual corn-dog carnival continues daily, through Sunday, at the fairgrounds, bounded by McDowell Road and Encanto Boulevard between 17th and 19th avenues. Along with the usual attractions–midway rides and games, livestock and agricultural exhibits, etc.–this year’s fair features Thunder Lagoon, a manmade “rain…

Kid Pics for the week

at the fair Arizona Super Bowl XXX Kids’ “In” Zone: Interactive tests of skill and games are planned during regular hours Friday and Saturday at Arizona State Fair. Highlights of the event, sponsored by the NFL and the Arizona Cardinals, include the Jerry Rice Super Bowl Touchdown Game, Gamemaster inflatable…

Dreading Water

Even in this fast-paced world of ours, are we ever able to embrace change? Imagine going back to 1948 to a small Kentucky town in the Cumberland River Gorge, to find people who know little of change. These are the characters currently being examined by Arizona State University’s theatre department…

Half the World’s a Film

To celebrate its 45th theatre season, Grand Canyon University continues to emphasize the works of Shakespeare with the pastoral comedy As You Like It. This whimsical tale of love is filled with all the unbelievable characters and situations we have now come to expect on TV sitcoms, but they are…

Short Subjects

After rumors that Louis Mall’s Vanya on 42nd Street would open in the Valley proved baseless, there seemed little to do but wait for it to arrive on video. But if you’d rather not see the film in your living room, you can at last catch its Valley premire at…

Slack’s Fifth Avenue

Kevin Smith’s debut feature, Clerks, was about two young slackers hanging out at their boring counter help jobs, mooning about women, wrangling with skewed customers and ruminating upon bizarre philosophical notions. Smith’s sophomore effort, Mallrats, is about two young slackers hanging around a shopping mall, mooning about women, wrangling with…

Kid Pics for the week

orange crush “Boo! At the Zoo”: This sixth annual event is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Phoenix Zoo, 455 North Galvin Parkway, in Papago Park. Highlights include the “Trick-or-Treat Trail,” costume parades, a hay maze, a “best dressed” contest, live entertainment, crafts and face…

Pic Hits for the week

thursday october 26 Arizona State Fair: The annual corn-dog carnival continues daily, through November 5, at the fairgrounds, bounded by McDowell Road and Encanto Boulevard between 17th and 19th avenues. Along with the usual attractions–midway rides and games, livestock and agricultural exhibits, etc.–this year’s fair features Thunder Lagoon, a manmade…

Looming Large

If I can only have a dress made from Junichi Arai’s fluid stainless steel fabric in time for Halloween, I can go to the big party as Queen of the Martians. The arresting fabric, which moves like mercury in the hand and could have come straight out of some secret…

Strange Interlude

Theater Works has scored solidly with a winning production of John Guare’s darkly deranged comedy The House of Blue Leaves. Guare is the author of two pieces I have admired very much, the film Atlantic City and the play and film Six Degrees of Separation. But despite two acclaimed New…

“A” Bomb

The theme of The Scarlet Letter is hypocrisy, and the new film version of this classic never embodies its theme more strikingly than in one of its opening titles: “Freely adapted from the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne.” Yeah, right. Douglas Day Stewart’s script has wildly altered Hawthorne’s plot, to be…

Soviet’s Choice

The 1926 masterpiece Bronenosets Potemkin (The Battleship Potemkin), the second feature of a wise-ass 27-year-old Soviet director named Sergei Eisenstein, is one of those works whose effect on modern culture almost can’t be overstated. Although Eisenstein already had experimented with the technique he called “montage” in his 1924 debut feature,…

Kid Pics for the week

at the fair Thunder Lagoon Kids ActiviTIKI HUT: KPNX-TV, Channel 12, hosts this exhibit from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at Arizona State Fair. A variety of activities is planned, including coloring projects and animal shows, all with an eye toward educating kids about saving the rain forest and…

Pic Hits for the week

Info:Category:Calendar Edition:Print 10/19/1995 Pic Hits for the week By Clay McNear thursday october 19 Arizona State Fair: The annual corn-dog carnival opens Thursday and continues through November 5 at the fairgrounds, bounded by McDowell Road and Encanto Boulevard between 17th and 19th avenues. Along with the usual attractions–midway rides and…

Stages

Actors Theatre of Phoenix’s production of Ruthless! The Musical continues through Sunday, October 22, in Center Stage at Herberger Theater Center, 222 East Monroe. Eureka! Theatre Company’s production of The Woolgatherer continues through Saturday, October 21, at 7th Street Theater, 3302 North Seventh Street. For more details, see Theatre listing…

My Left Footlight

Remember camp? It was that over-the-top ironic sensibility that gained favor in the Sixties, and one assumed that, like Dada, in time it would find its way to the dung heap of history. But here we are 30 years later, and some people still have not lost their taste for…

Slum Enchanted Evening

“Maria! I just met a girl named Maria/And suddenly that name will never be the same to me.” Her real name is Katherine Stewart, and she is the main reason to see the revival of West Side Story, currently stirring up the sleepy suburbs at Mesa Amphitheatre. West Side Story…

Hither and Yarn

The Eureka! Theatre Company has shown itself to be a bastion of controlled-risk theatre. Founder and artistic director Evann Wilcosky has consistently produced top-quality productions of plays most theatres in the Valley won’t touch. Last season’s roster included Christopher Durang’s Baby With the Bathwater and one of the year’s best…

Murderess Intent

Director Gus Van Sant’s crackling new film To Die For matches up perfectly with the performance of its star, Nicole Kidman. It’s as lean and graceful as a cheetah, and it wears a lewdly sinister grin that intimates you’re being let in on a naughty joke. Watching the film, you…

Short Subjects

Ralph–I beg your pardon, “Rafe”–Fiennes plays Lenny Nero, his first full-fledged Hollywood hero, in Strange Days, a futuristic thriller from the penof James Cameron and the eye of Kathryn Bigelow. He’s a schmoozing ex-cop street hustler who deals in illegal virtual reality discs of addictive quality, and Lenny’s fiddling around…

Pic Hits for the week

thursday october 12 Chandler Doo Dah Days Festival and Super Duper Doo Dah Parade: It does the heart good to see a municipality unfetter the bun and let its hair down once in a while. City of Chandler’s annual oddball hoe-down is something akin to a fright wig. The second…