A great premise gets lost in the murk in this feature directing debut from Antoine Bardou-Jacquet. Playing off the myth that we never landed on the moon and Stanley Kubrick was hired to direct a moon landing film, Bardou-Jacquet aims for dark humor with clear nods to Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and other Kubrick classics.

There are many clever moments in the movie, but they never come together as a cohesive piece, and one of the central performances drags the film down.

Rupert Grint is good as Jonny, manager of a lame sixties rock band who is deep in debt and running out of options. Ron Perlman is a bit of a muddled mess as Kidman, a Vietnam vet suffering major PTSD and working for the CIA. When Colonel Dickford, (played by Jay Benedict with echoes of Sterling Hayden in Strangelove) comes to the conclusion there’s a good chance the moon landing might not work out (“We’re going to look like dicks!”) he sends Kidman overseas to hire Kubrick, get the moon landing fake film, and then kill everybody involved.

Bardou-Jacquet doesn’t quite have the courage of his convictions in the end, and Perlman seems lost in a role he could’ve had a lot of fun with. Grint keeps things moving okay enough, as does Robert Sheehan as his druggie roommate, but it’s not enough. There are some funny lasting images, including an art film called Bounce that is just an obese man in a diaper bouncing accompanied by bicycle horns and chickens, but the super violent tone, Perlman’s dreary work and the comedy don’t blend (Available to rent on iTunes, Amazon.com and On Demand during a limited theatrical release).

Have next Monday off? Well, it's time to lace up your walkin' shoes because Saguaro National Park is waiving entrance fees for MLK Day. 

That sounds nice on its own, but those looking to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a more community-service driven way will also have their moment:

The park is seeking volunteers to help us pick up trash and litter along S. Freeman Road and S. Old Spanish Trail. This service event will be taking place on Monday, Jan. 18 from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Monday. Tools, equipment, and protective wear will be provided to volunteers. Please come prepared wearing long pants, sun-screen, hats, and close-toed shoes, with personal snacks and a bottle of water. Additional water will be available for refilling bottles. Parking is available.

To sign up for this day of service, please email or call the park’s Centennial Volunteer Ambassador, Corina Yeh, at [email protected] or 733-8603 by Jan. 15.

In addition to this volunteer project, the Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona will also be joining park staff in a service event removing invasive buffelgrass from park lands.

But wait, there's more!

In just a few weeks, voters will be deciding the winners of the New Hampshire and Iowa presidential contests—and who the hell knows what's gonna happen? On the GOP side, Cruz and Trump are fighting it out in Iowa while The Donald still holds a commanding lead in New Hampshire—though polling guru Nate Silver thinks Donald's lack of a decent ground game could be his undoing. Meanwhile, Democrat Bernie Sanders is tight with Hillary Clinton in Iowa and leading in New Hampshire. 

Anyhow, you might not know this, but if you want to vote in Arizona's March 22 presidential primary, you have to be registered with either the Democratic or the Republican Party by Feb. 22. Independents can't just pick a party and request a ballot as they can in the regular federal, state and local contests. You can take care of the paperwork at a bunch of places—libraries, post offices, party HQ and such—or just do it online here.

The recently late, long great David Bowie was, apparently, an avid reader. As part of a 2013 exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, he included a list of his 100 favorite books. I won't print the complete list here. You can go to the LA Times article to see it.

It's a wide-ranging book list indicating eclectic tastes, not surprising for a man like Bowie who spent his life in constant reinvention. Here are a few, in no particular order, where his tastes and mine intersect:

"A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess
"Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert
"The Iliad" by Homer
"As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner
The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov
"Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov
"Black Boy" by Richard Wright
"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Waste Land" by T.S. Elliot
McTeague" by Frank Norris
"A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
"1984" by George Orwell
"White Noise" by Don DeLillo
"A People’s History of the United States" by Howard Zinn
"Lady Chatterly’s Lover" by D.H. Lawrence
"On the Road" by Jack Kerouac
The Hidden Persuaders" by Vance Packard
"The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin

And I would be remiss if I left out some of his favorites not on my reading list, like:

Congressman Raul Grijalva tells The Range that he thought President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech last night was “one of the best, if not the best.”

“I watched all eight and other than his first one, this was his best State of the Union,” Grijalva said.

Grijalva said he was particularly impressed with Obama’s push against allowing wealthy interests to decide the future of nation, his call for action on climate change— “Like it or not, climate change is real,” Grijalva said—and his veiled warning against embracing the brand of politics being peddled by Donald Trump.

“We can’t let ourselves be divided in to ‘us vs. them’ and not get anything done in this country,” Grijalva said. “That’s not our strength. I thought all those parts were very powerful and aspirational.”

As Obama enters his final year in office, Grijalva said he still has his differences with the president but is impressed with what he has accomplished.

“The differences over trade, the differences over an economic strategy and creating jobs, you know, those differences are still there,” Grijalva said. “But I was here when Bush left and we were inches away from going into the toilet economically and going into a depression.”

Grijalva still wishes the Affordable Care Act had “been stronger, but given the odds that he was working against, his legacy is going to viewed, from an objective point of view, as remarkable.”

Chances are, you found out on Monday which friends you could delete from your list if they were talking about anything other than the loss of rock legend and beloved weirdo David Bowie. You may have also seen some of the many tributes put out to honor the Thin White Duke. Well, aside from the already posted "Space Oddity" lyrics on Rialto Theatre's marquee, the historic venue and its across-alley bar, R Bar, are offering a full week of events to help commemorate David Jones. 

The events began last night with a special performance from Tom Walbank at R Bar and will culminate in a large mural painted on the side of the venue of Bowie and Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister from Tucson-based artist Danny Martin. Here's what the rest of the week has in store:

• Wednesday, Jan 13: The "Live and Rare" residency continues at R Bar with Tyler Akin, who has been asked to offer a tribute to the late rock 'n' roll god. The show begins at 9 p.m.
  
• Thursday, Jan. 14: DJ PhatSoul will be presenting a David Bowie video tribute set in addition to the hip hop and soul that comes standard on Thursday nights from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m.
  
• Friday, Jan. 15: Beginning at 5 p.m., the legendary Phil Davis will be performing during happy hour at R Bar for the first time with some soulful Bowie additions to his set. Davis will play until 7 p.m.
  
• Saturday, Jan 16: At R Bar, Clif Taylor will be spinning Bowie all night. Anyone dressed as any iteration of Bowie gets half-priced drinks. Over at Rialto, the "HEROES" tribute will feature live music, a Bowie dance party and the same dress-up deals as R Bar, hosted by KXCI's Cathy Rivers and Hannah Levin. There is a $3 cover for the Rialto event, which begins at 8 p.m.
  
• Sunday, Jan. 17: "Every Day Is Like Sunday" DJ night features DJ E_RUPT playing all your favorite Bowie jams with a screening of your favorite Bowie films. The weekly dance night runs from 9 p.m. until 2 a.m.
  

For more information on these and other Rialto Theatre events, visit the venue's website.

During his State of the State speech in Phoenix Monday, Gov. Doug Ducey expressed interest in prison sentencing reform, and reducing the state's prison population. 

Ducey, who's starting his second year in office, didn't provide much detail, except that he would like to create a panel of substance abuse experts to look into drug abuse treatment—perhaps as an alternative to prison or jail time for people facing nonviolent drug convictions? Pima County has a program that's had much success in giving people second chances, and keeping jail beds from overflowing.

The Tucson-based prison reform advocacy group American Friends Service Committee applauded what they called the "governor's openness to discuss these issues."

AFSC Program Director Caroline Isaacs issued this statement:

Excess citrus got you down? This weekend, you can pick all that extra fruit off your productive trees and donate it to folks who need it when the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona hosts another Super Citrus Saturday event. As part of the food bank’s 2015 gleaning initiatives alone, over 88,000 pounds of fresh fruit were donated from January through March to help those in the community who struggle with food security.

You can donate all of your excess citrus to the Community of Food Bank of Southern Arizona on Saturday, Jan. 16 from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. The push for fresh fruit donations will take place at two Tucson-area locations: Rillito Nursery & Garden Center (6303 N. La Cholla Blvd.) and Wells Fargo Bank (4669 E. Broadway Blvd.).

The organization will also be accepting donations throughout the season at any time, at any of the three Community Food Bank locations in Tucson, Marana and Green Valley. For more information, visit the food bank's website or call 449-8340.

A federal judge in Tucson is allowing a lawsuit against the Border Patrol's alleged inhumane and unconstitutional detention methods to proceed, which means these accusations can now be looked into further.

In June of last year, a coalition of immigration rights advocacy groups—including the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona and the National Immigration Law Center—filed a suit against the agency, using the testimonies of more than 75 former detainees who alleged men, women and children were kept in freezing, overcrowded and dirty cells for long periods of time (these are nicknamed "hieleras," or ice boxes), were often abused by agents, and denied access to beds, showers, water, medical care and even legal representation, according to the National Immigration Law Center.

The Department of Homeland Security denied the claims, and asked Federal District Judge David C. Bury to throw out the suit against eight Arizona  Border Patrol detention centers in the Tucson sector, says a report by Fronteras Desk. He sided with the advocacy organizations.

A June press release from the law center describes:

Former and current detainees described being packed into crowded cells with only concrete benches or the floor for a “bed.” They were stripped of warm clothing and provided with only flimsy aluminum sheets that do not protect against the frigid temperatures. In most cases, the lights are left on 24 hours a day, making sleep difficult, if not impossible. Immigrants have no soap or water to wash after using the restroom and before meals, and do not have access to showers.

The government’s own standards state that people should be detained in holding cells like those in the Tucson Border Patrol facility for no more than 12 hours, but all of the plaintiffs were held for much longer. In fact, Border Patrol’s own records show that, during a six month period in 2013, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detained over 58,000 people for 24 hours or longer in holding cells within the Tucson Sector; more than 24,000 of these individuals were held for 48 hours or longer.

According to Fronteras Desk, the judge also ruled the case should move into a class action lawsuit, which would allow the possibility for more plaintiffs to join.

State Rep. Victoria Steele (D-LD9) resigned from the Arizona Legislature yesterday, saying she wanted to focus on her congressional campaign. Steele hopes to challenge freshman Congresswoman Martha McSally (R-CD2), but first she has to win the Democratic primary race against former state lawmaker Matt Heinz.

In a press release, Steele said the decision was "not easy."

"A lot of people worked hard to help me get elected to LD9 not only once, but twice and I am grateful for all of their support and devotion over the years," Steele said. "I have poured my heart and soul into representing the people of this district without regard for politics, race, gender, or economic status. I believe that being a strong representative means working with members of both parties and I have sought to uphold that philosophy throughout my career in the legislature."

While it might not have been an easy decision, it was probably the smart one. The fundraising demands of a congressional alone—leaving aside the time spent out on the trail doing grassroots organizing and pressing the flesh—requires a huge amount of time. Trying to do that alongside keeping track of bills, attending committee hearings and handling the other demands of the legislative session is a recipe for failure.

Democratic precincts leaders in LD9—which basically includes most of Tucson on the north side of Speedway, as well as the Catalina Foothills and Casas Adobes area—will have to meet in the upcoming days to submit three names to the Pima County Board of Supervisors to make a final pick.

So far, we hear that four Democrats are interested in the appointment: Pamela Powers Hannley, the editor of the American Journal of Medicine, a lefty blogger and Democratic Party activist; Ted Prezelski, an aide to Tucson City Councilman Paul Cunningham, a former blogger and a Democratic Party activist; Matt Kopec, an aide to Tucson City Councilwoman Karin Uhlich and a veteran of local political campaigns; and Aaron Rottenstein, who has worked in communications for the U.S. House of Representatives as well as on local political campaigns.