According to the Arizona Shakespeare Festival’s production of Romeo and Juliet, Verona was full of crazy people who screamed a lot, mugged outrageously, told jokes and fell on the ground. Of course the title couple lived there as well, and they tried to go about their forbidden love affair, in…
Death and the Maiden turns out to be a lot like a political candidate: lots of promises, and always the hope of answers to it all. But South American playwright Ariel Dorfman sidetracks us with credibility problems–always a bad sign when it comes to politics–and ends up so muddling what…
Death and the Maiden turns out to be a lot like a political candidate: lots of promises, and always the hope of answers to it all. But South American playwright Ariel Dorfman sidetracks us with credibility problems–always a bad sign when it comes to politics–and ends up so muddling what…
According to the Arizona Shakespeare Festival’s production of Romeo and Juliet, Verona was full of crazy people who screamed a lot, mugged outrageously, told jokes and fell on the ground. Of course the title couple lived there as well, and they tried to go about their forbidden love affair, in…
In “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” what was the Emperor’s actual state? Hint: It’s the title of Mike Leigh’s new film. Naked, a black comedy, is built around a flawless performance by a superb young actor named David Thewlis. Thewlis and several of the other actors are so good, and some…
A friend of mine was a classmate of comedian-actor Denis Leary at Emerson College in Boston in the mid-’70s. He showed me a copy of the college literary magazine, to which both he and Leary had contributed some poetry. I confess I was hoping for an expos, hoping to find…
In “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” what was the Emperor’s actual state? Hint: It’s the title of Mike Leigh’s new film. Naked, a black comedy, is built around a flawless performance by a superb young actor named David Thewlis. Thewlis and several of the other actors are so good, and some…
A friend of mine was a classmate of comedian-actor Denis Leary at Emerson College in Boston in the mid-’70s. He showed me a copy of the college literary magazine, to which both he and Leary had contributed some poetry. I confess I was hoping for an expos, hoping to find…
Sexuality is the theme of two exhibitions, one deadly serious in its approach to the subject, the other, for the most part, lethally boring. “Brian Weil: The AIDS Photographs,” on display at ASU’s Matthews Center, is a nationally touring collection of AIDS-related photographs taken around the world by this internationally…
Sexuality is the theme of two exhibitions, one deadly serious in its approach to the subject, the other, for the most part, lethally boring. “Brian Weil: The AIDS Photographs,” on display at ASU’s Matthews Center, is a nationally touring collection of AIDS-related photographs taken around the world by this internationally…
The difficulty in reviewing Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room is knowing how much consideration to give to the playwright’s personal life. The cast of the production at Phoenix Little Theatre wore red ribbons at the curtain call, pointing out to audience members–if they hadn’t already read it in the program–that Marvin’s…
The difficulty in reviewing Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room is knowing how much consideration to give to the playwright’s personal life. The cast of the production at Phoenix Little Theatre wore red ribbons at the curtain call, pointing out to audience members–if they hadn’t already read it in the program–that Marvin’s…
The title is 8 Seconds, which refers to the length of time a rodeo bull rider must remain on the bull’s back in order to qualify in the competition. It’s also approximately the length of time that this little movie is likely to linger in your memory after you’ve seen…
The title is 8 Seconds, which refers to the length of time a rodeo bull rider must remain on the bull’s back in order to qualify in the competition. It’s also approximately the length of time that this little movie is likely to linger in your memory after you’ve seen…
In the grand tradition of noir, la Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, Romeo Is Bleeding is narrated by a hero who is a hopeless sap–his buddies refer to him at one point as “you dumbest of all fucks.” This particular DOAF is Jack Grimaldi (Gary Oldman), a…
In the grand tradition of noir, la Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, Romeo Is Bleeding is narrated by a hero who is a hopeless sap–his buddies refer to him at one point as “you dumbest of all fucks.” This particular DOAF is Jack Grimaldi (Gary Oldman), a…
Sierra Vista sculptor Robert Wick has a heart bigger than his art. And that’s pretty big, considering that some of his bronze sculptures are more than 13 feet high and weigh so much they have to be lifted by cranes and transported by flatbed. Wick was the featured artist and…
Legend has it that movie mogul Louis B. Mayer once stated: “If you’ve got a message, send a telegram.” With Past History, a new play written by Arizona State University’s Michael Grady and presented at the school’s Galvin Playhouse, Western Union would be snowed under. Past History attempts to draw…
No one served George Bernard Shaw’s satirical purposes better than the religious hypocrite. In The Devil’s Disciple, you can almost hear Shaw smacking his lips in anticipation as he sets forth his plot of the rogue and his pious family. The rogue, of course, ends up with the family fortune,…
Ben Stiller, who directed Reality Bites, also co-stars in it. He plays Michael, one point on a romantic triangle of Generation Xers (isn’t it amazing how quickly that term grew tiresome?). Michael is a well-to-do yupster, a producer for a vapid music-video network. Point number two is Troy (Ethan Hawke),…
If you look closely at beautiful Dana Wynter in the climactic chase scenes near the end of director Don Siegel’s 1956 sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, you can tell what she’s thinking: Oh, forget it, let’s just go to sleep and turn into aliens. She’s begun, you can…
Given the recent increase of ugly–and often violent–anti-Mexican sentiment in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement, it took a lot of huevos for Scottsdale Center for the Arts to mount “Cruzando Fronteras/Crossing Borders.” The center should be saluted for its brave farsightedness in exhibiting what has turned…
