BROADCAST VIEWS

It's always a pleasure to chat with the great Lauren Gilger, which Your Humble Narrator got to do this morning on KJZZ's The Show...

...about the current drama between Harkins Theatres...

...and production company A24...

FEST RESULTS

Check out my short article, online at Phoenix Magazine, about this year's edition of the Phoenix Film Festival...

...which runs through April 19.

HACK MAN; HACKMAN

Happy Friday the 13th everybody!

Check out my Phoenix Magazine column on Friday the 13th, Part 2, playing this evening at 9:30 p.m. in actual 35mm at Majestic Cinema Tempe 7...

...and also The Birdcage...

...playing on June 17 as next week's "Tuesday Classic" at Harkins Theatres.

CINE AL FRESCO

Check out my short article, online at Phoenix Magazine, about "Moonlight Cinema" at Harkins Fashion Square in Scottsdale...

...this week featuring Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Sandlot.

YES THEY CANYON

Check out my review, online at Phoenix Magazine...

...of Joe Raffa's moving documentary Bad Indian: Hiding in Antelope Canyon, playing this weekend at Phoenix Film Festival.

24

The 24th annual Phoenix Film Festival...

...kicks off Thursday night and runs through Sunday, April 14; check out my short article, online at Phoenix Magazine, previewing the festivities.

COMMUNITY FEST

Check out my short column, online at Phoenix Magazine, about this year's edition of the Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival...

...February 18 through March 3 at three different Harkins Theatres around the Valley.

SADDLES SOARS

Check out my column, online at Phoenix Magazine, on two cool flicks...

John Carpenter's They Live played already Saturday in Scottsdale, but you can still catch the Mel Brooks masterpiece Blazing Saddles this Tuesday night, May 23; it's the "Tuesday Night Classic" this week at Harkins Theatres...

POP QUIZ

This past Friday Your Humble Narrator had the pleasure to moderate a Q&A with writer-director Tom Huang...

...after a Phoenix Film Festival-sponsored showing of his film Dealing with Dad at Harkins Shea in Scottsdale. It was a small crowd, but they were attentive, and asked intelligent questions. The film plays through May 4 at Shea and from May 12 to May 17 at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre in Sedona. Recommended.

We also tried to take a picture in front of the poster for his flick, but all we got was poster.

NOTHING BUT THE FEST

The Phoenix Film Festival opens tonight; check out my short article, online at Phoenix Magazine...

...previewing the festival.

YOU'LL BREW THE DAY

The Viking melodrama The Northman, now in theaters, dramatizes the Nordic legend that was the root of Shakespeare's Hamlet. It's to the credit of Harkins Theatres that, as the "Tuesday Night Classic" for this week, they're showing another, rather more lighthearted version of Hamlet: 1983's Strange Brew, the big-screen outing of the SCTV "hosers" Bob and Doug McKenzie, played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas respectively.

No, really. The toque-wearing, beer, donut and back-bacon loving Canadian brothers from the second-greatest sketch comedy show of all time (second only to Monty Python's Flying Circus, that is) serve as a sort of two-man Horatio in the yarn, in which Pam Elsinore (Lynne Griffin) finds, after the death of her father, that her Uncle Claude (Paul Dooley) has taken over the family business, Elsinore Brewery. A video game assumes the role of The Ghost. Best of all is the great Max Von Sydow, who plays an evil brewmeister completely straight, as if he was the villain in a Bond picture.

Directed by Thomas and Moranis from a script they wrote with Steve De Jarnatt, this very silly but sweet-natured and sometimes hilarious '80s curio deserves a bigger cult. I defy anyone to deny the ring of Shakespearean poetry in a line like "Gee, you're real nice. If I didn't have puke breath, I'd kiss you."

Strange Brew plays at 7 p.m. Tuesday at numerous Harkins locations, as part of the chain's "Tuesday Night Classics" series. Tickets are just $5; go to harkins.com for details.

MOVIE NIGHTS

This year's postponed edition of the Phoenix Film Festival finally kicks off tomorrow at Harkins Scottsdale 101...

...and runs through August 22, concurrent with the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival, at the same venue. Check out my short preview article, online at Phoenix Magazine.

THE KANE SCRUTINY

Check out my short column, online at Phoenix Magazine, about a double feature at Harkins 101 in Scottsdale...

...Citizen Kane at 3:30 p.m., followed by last year's Mank at 6 p.m.  Tickets are just $5, so even if you skip out after Kane, you still get your money's worth and more.

DUECE IN THE HOLE

Harkins Theatres pays tribute to the great Kirk Douglas Saturday with 1 p.m. screenings of Spartacus at several multiplexes; check out my "Friday Flicks" column about it...

  
...online at Phoenix Magazine. But the time has also come, I regret to say, to tell my one in-person Kirk Douglas story.

I've gotten out of the habit of using this blog to obsessively mention the passing of every pop-culture notable, but there have been some keenly-felt passings in recent months and weeks: singer/actor Jack Sheldon, for instance, of "I'm Just a Bill," and “Conjunction Junction” fame, also comedian Jack Burns, who I just recently saw in his one superb scene in The Night They Raided Minsky’s, and of course the great Terry Jones, in whose honor I had Spam at Oak’s Diner in Cave Creek...

And then, of course, there’s Kirk Douglas.

Kirk Douglas was, I think, my first movie star. If you had asked me, when I was a small child in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, to name a movie star, Kirk Douglas is probably the first, and for a while the only, name I could have given you. Even before John Wayne, I would have known that Kirk Douglas was both Spartacus in Spartacus and Ned Land in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and at some level I believe I would also have understood that he somehow had a public identity, as Kirk Douglas, that was greater than either of those roles.

Douglas, who passed on last week at 103, was a very good, surprisingly versatile actor, but far greater than any acting skill was his famed larger-than-life charisma, his electrifying, tightly-coiled intensity that was always on the verge of tipping over into self-parody, yet also had an edge of the glamorously tragic. He’s been a lifelong favorite of mine, which is part of why I hesitate to tell the story of my one real-world encounter with him. Before you read on, I must warn you that this story may constitute a textbook case of Too Much Information.

Because this, you see, is the story of how I once took a shit in front of Kirk Douglas.

Back in 1999, I was covering a film festival in Palm Springs, California. The fest’s big draw was an appearance by screen legend Kirk Douglas, who was there to introduce his new film Diamonds, in which he played a former boxer who had been afflicted with a stroke. It wasn’t a particularly good movie, but Douglas was in it, along with Dan Aykroyd, Jenny McCarthy and no less than Lauren Bacall.

The screening was in the auditorium of Palm Springs High School, and The Wife and I arrived early, quite excited at the chance to see, live and in person, this major Hollywood icon that we had enjoyed on TV and on the big screen all our lives. We got good seats, and then I excused myself, suddenly feeling the rather urgent need to use the boys’ lavatory.

When I walked in, by now in a bit of rush, I noticed two things immediately.

One was that Kirk Douglas himself was standing at one of the sinks, looking in the mirror, fixing himself up for his appearance in front of the crowd.

The other was that, this being a high school lavatory, there were no doors on the stalls.

There was really no choice at that point, however. I betook myself to a stall near the end of the row, dropped my trousers, took a seat, and began to do my business, praying it would be a relatively quiet affair. At the sink, the great man splashed a little water on his face, straightened his tie, and then…we made solemn eye contact in the mirror.

There he was, one of the last great leading men of Hollywood’s Golden Age. There was Van Gogh in Lust For Life, there was Doc Holliday in Gunfight at the OK Corral, there was Colonel Dax in Paths of Glory, "Jiggs" Casey in Seven Days in May and Chuck Tatum in Ace in the Hole. There was freakin’ Spartacus himself, looking at me in what I perceived as mild contempt for daring to exercise this particular bodily function in his presence.

But he didn’t flee in hasty revulsion. He sized himself up in the mirror, decided he was prepared to meet his public, and strolled calmly out of the lavatory, leaving me alone with my shame. When I returned to my seat and told The Wife what happened, she looked at me with a similar reproachful disdain. When Douglas was introduced, I had a momentary fear he might tell the audience what he had just witnessed and invite them to vent their scorn at me. But he just cheerfully introduced the movie.

RIP, sir, and thank you for all the wonderful performances. Sorry that that was the only performance of mine you ever got to see. I hope that it is among the earthly memories you’re able to discard as you head for eternity.

THANK GOD IT'S, WELL, YOU KNOW...

Check out my online column at Phoenix Magazine, featuring movie choices this weekend, including the Iraq war drama The Yellow Birds with Alden Ehrenreich, 50th anniversary showings of 2001: A Space Odyssey at Harkins Tempe Marketplace and the Monkees movie Head at FilmBar, and...

...a "No Festival Required" showing of the documentary Lives Well Lived Sunday afternoon at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. No problem staying out of the sun for the next few days...

IT'S BACK, ACTUALLY

Harkins Theatres screens Love, Actually tonight as a "Tuesday Night Classic" at 7 p.m. at several different multiplexes throughout the Valley. The chain did this before back in 2014; here's what I posted about it then:

This week’s edition of Tuesday Night Classics at Harkins Theatres is Love, Actually, the 2003 multi-strand holiday comedy-drama by Richard Curtis. As with many of the Tuesday Night selections, it might be slightly premature to call it a classic, but it’s a strong, rich movie, and it wouldn’t be a bad way to get the holidays rolling, actually.

Actually. What a great word. Nobody says “actually” like the English of the posher classes. For them, perhaps, it’s a way of admitting that most of what they say is understated pleasantry, while at the same time asserting that the particular remark to which they’re attaching the modifier is heartfelt, even though they aren’t about to drop the reserved, self-deprecating manner. Coupled with the word “love,” it’s a fairly hot-blooded English avowal of passion, actually.

Even among the English, no one says the word “actually” quite like Hugh Grant. He used it more than once in his halting, foot-shuffling performance in Four Weddings and a Funeral back in 1994, scripted by Curtis, and he used it again in Love, Actually.

Grant plays the young Prime Minister of England, who arrives for his first day at Ten Downing Street only to find himself instantly afflicted with infatuation for a smiling, zaftig office assistant (Martine McCutcheon) who bears, though it’s never stated, some resemblance to our Ms. Lewinsky. This is one of several plot strands which Curtis loosely interweaves. The theme, it need hardly be said, is love: Romantic, marital, erotic, cross-cultural, adulterous, parental, filial, puppy, requited, unrequited, from afar, even patriotic—all of these variations are treated by the enormous cast.

Indeed, the case could probably be made that Curtis, also making his directorial debut, got a bit overambitious here, that there are too many plotlines, that some of them inevitably get short shrift. But I enjoyed the company of all of these people, and even when the movie gets a bit corny and carried away, as in a chase through Heathrow at the end, I found myself indulging it as one would indulge someone going on and on about a new love.

Standouts among the cast include Bill Nighy, hilarious as a down-on-his-luck rock star hoping for a Christmas hit, Kris Marshall as a dorky Brit convinced (not unreasonably) that his accent would make him a hit with American girls, Lucia Montez as the Portuguese housekeeper for whom Colin Firth falls across the language barrier, and Emma Thompson as the wife of the straying Alan Rickman—she suffers courageously in the grand Greer Garson tradition.

Most impressive of all, maybe, is the prodigal young Thomas Sangster—more recently seen in The Maze Runner—as Liam Neeson’s stepson who’s smitten with a girl at school. This kid’s grave, sober line readings dare you to patronize the significance of his feelings.

ALAN HAIL

Like all sensible lovers of great acting, I was saddened by the death of Alan Rickman, way too young at 69, earlier this month.

Here in the Valley, Harkins Theatres is paying a very cool tribute to Rickman with a mini-festival of his films today only at the Valley Art in downtown Tempe: Love Actually (11 a.m.); Galaxy Quest (1:50 p.m.); Truly, Madly, Deeply (4:10 p.m.) and Die Hard (8:45 p.m.). (They’re also showing Labyrinth at 6:30 p.m., as a David Bowie tribute.) Tickets are only $5, and proceeds benefit Save the Children.

Great choices, but I would have included Sense and Sensibility, and one of my sisters always raves about a TV movie Rickman starred in called Something the Lord Made.

Anyway…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this week our honoree is General Sarris, the menacing reptile-arthropod-whatever played by Robin Sachs in Galaxy Quest…

He was insultingly named, by the way, after the late auteurist critic Andrew Sarris.

ALL AN ACT...UALLY

This week’s edition of Tuesday Night Classics at Harkins Theatres is Love, Actually, the 2003 multi-strand holiday comedy-drama by Richard Curtis. As with many of the Tuesday Night selections, it might be slightly premature to call it a classic, but it’s a strong, rich movie, and it wouldn’t be a bad way to get the holidays rolling, actually.

Actually. What a great word. Nobody says the word “actually” like the English of the posher classes. For them, perhaps, it’s a way of admitting that most of what they say is understated pleasantry, while at the same time asserting that the particular remark to which they’re attaching the modifier is heartfelt, even though they aren’t about to drop the reserved, self-deprecating manner. Coupled with the word “love,” it’s a fairly hot-blooded English avowal of passion, actually.

Even among the English, no one says the word “actually” quite like Hugh Grant. He used it more than once in his halting, foot-shuffling performance in Four Weddings and a Funeral back in 1994, scripted by Curtis, and he used it again in Love, Actually.

Grant plays the young Prime Minister of England, who arrives for his first day at Ten Downing Street only to find himself instantly afflicted with infatuation for a smiling, zaftig office assistant (Martine McCutcheon) who bears, though it’s never stated, some resemblance to our Ms. Lewinsky. This is one of several plot strands which Curtis loosely interweaves. The theme, it need hardly be said, is love: Romantic, marital, erotic, cross-cultural, adulterous, parental, filial, puppy, requited, unrequited, from afar, even patriotic—all of these variations are treated by the enormous cast.

Indeed, the case could probably be made that Curtis, also making his directorial debut, got a bit overambitious here, that there are too many plotlines, that some of them inevitably get short shrift. But I enjoyed the company of all of these people, and even when the movie gets a bit corny and carried away, as in a chase through Heathrow at the end, I found myself indulging it as one would indulge someone going on and on about a new love.

Standouts among the cast include Bill Nighy, hilarious as a down-on-his-luck rock star hoping for a Christmas hit, Kris Marshall as a dorky Brit convinced (not unreasonably) that his accent would make him a hit with American girls, Lucia Montez as the Portuguese housekeeper for whom Colin Firth falls across the language barrier, and Emma Thompson as the wife of the straying Alan Rickman—she suffers courageously in the grand Greer Garson tradition.

Most impressive of all, maybe, is the prodigal young Thomas Sangster—more recently seen in The Maze Runner—as Liam Neeson’s stepson who’s smitten with a girl at school. This kid’s grave, sober line readings dare you to patronize the significance of his feelings.