Arts & Entertainment >>

• Best New Bar (Since March 2006)
  Rockbar
  Rockbar could inspire a confirmed teetotaler to do a swan dive off the wagon within ten minutes of walking through the door. Conjuring the bygone decadence left behind by Perry's -- as the joint was known during the last days of disco -- Rockbar is the ideal place to relive your wasted youth.... More >>
• Best New Neighborhood Bar
  Horseshoe Lounge
  Recently witnessed at the Horseshoe Lounge: Avery Rains, aka Mr. Pacman, dressed in a full-bodied lion suit, head and paws included, stripping down to a very skimpy and curiously bulged pink thong. True fucking story. Unfortunately, this was a one-off birthday-party gig and not a weekly event,... More >>
• Best Neighborhood Bar Disguised as a Swank LoDo Club (1 Comment)
  The Lure
  At first blush, the Lure is a swank place. Almost too swank. Hang out there for a while, though, and you start to realize that it's pretty relaxed. Like that really hot blonde in high school that you yearned to talk to but couldn't muster up the courage, there's more to the joint than meets the... More >>
• Best Dive Bar in the 'Burbs
  12 Volt Tavern
  Arvada's answer to a Colfax dive bar, 12 Volt Tavern has all the grit and attitude of the city -- without the Colfax freaks. Plopped down in the middle of Olde Town Arvada, the Tavern may seem out of place among its better-groomed neighbors, but its well-worn character is completely authentic.... More >>
• Best Free WiFi in a Mexican Dive Bar
  Aztec Sol
  Aztec Sol is best known for its exhaustive collection of more than 200 tequilas, carefully curated by owner Jose Lara. The funky neighborhood spot is a favorite among locals who live and drink on the edge of Highland: Both caballeros and condo-dwellers are drawn by Aztec Sol's cheap eats and... More >>
• Best Bar Urinal for Bad Aimers (1 Comment)
  Pint's Pub
  One of the best things about being a male is the joy of having a penis. Not only is it fun to hold, but the simple act of peeing out of it feels quite nice! Few men are able to enjoy the simple act of elimination due to the typical height of lavatories and urinals. Most are built so low that... More >>
• Best Denver Answer to Cheers
  3 Kings Tavern
  We all know the words by heart. It's one of the most recognizable TV theme songs of all time: "Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name/And they're always glad you came/You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same/You wanna be where everybody knows your name."... More >>
• Best Denver Answer to Brooklyn
  Sputnik
  All the broke, arty types -- musicians, writers, etc. -- in New York can't afford to live in Manhattan. As a result, they flock to less expensive neighborhoods in Brooklyn, which is where hi-dive owner Matt LaBarge and his wife, Allison, once lived. In the fall of 2003, when the couple moved to... More >>
• Best Bar to Watch Japanese B-Movies
  Mario's Double Daughter's Salotto
  There's something about stepping inside Mario's Double Daughter's on a Sunday night that takes you to a completely different dimension. Dimly lit with subtle red and blue lights, the place is outfitted with chairs that look like they're made out of lipstick. As down-tempo grooves pour out of the... More >>
• Best Punk-Rock Bar and Pizzeria
  Pasquini's Pizzeria Uptown
  Seeing a show at Pasquini's may be the closest thing there is to a house party in Denver. The space Pasquini's inhabits was once a house, and when it's music time, tables are cleared out and the band sets up right next to the window. And to see bands like 18 Wheeler, Reno Divorce and Letters... More >>
• Best Leather Bar That Should Be Featured in Architectural Digest (3 Comments)
  Denver Eagle
  Owned by two leathermen who sport backgrounds in furniture upholstery, culinary arts and retail clothing-store management, the Eagle is an unholy alliance of industrial chic meets bad-boy bar decor. James Ventrello and James Peck (aka Jim and Jimbo) are the couple who designed and crafted the... More >>
• Best Bar to Test Your Friends for Homophobia
  J.R.'s Bar & Grill
  J.R.'s is a great place to test your friends for closet homophobia. It's so unassuming and under the radar that if your friends aren't up on the gay scene, they might not recognize the name. When you walk up, the bar -- looking like something straight off Bourbon Street, with a row of warm white... More >>
• Best Rock Club
  hi-dive
  In less than five years, the hi-dive has become a Denver institution. Many of the current top-shelf local bands got their start at this intimate south Broadway bar, which sits smack dab in the middle of the Baker neighborhood. And even though many of those groups can now easily fill places twice... More >>
• Best New Club (Since March 2006) (1 Comment)
  DC 10
  DC 10 was the hot new kid in town when it opened last summer, but things got a little too heated when a co-owner of the swank club was arrested on charges of drug trafficking. Yikes. Taking zero time to recover from the media hoopla, DC 10 went full-throttle into the SoCo nightlife scene,... More >>
• Best Club for Dancing (2 Comments)
  Rise
  DJ Brian Howe knows what it takes to set off the dance floor -- as well he should. The guy's been spinning in clubs for nearly two decades, has released over 200 mix CDs and remixed tracks for a variety of labels. Dude's on point, which is exactly why he was tapped to host his own XM radio show... More >>
• Best After-Hours Dance Parties (12 Comments)
  AfroBlu
  Once a month, the best party in town happens after hours. From 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. Afrobeat, deep house and global soul music raise the roof of whatever warehouse is hosting the party. But it's not all about the music: Producers and hosts Peju Alawusa (aka Yorubawoman) and Ashara Ekundayo also... More >>
• Best Spy Dance Parties
  gogoLab
  The screen displays a lone silhouette against the backlight. It moves sleekly and stealthily, like a cat. It's carrying a gun. All of a sudden, the music kicks in and the figure begins to dance, gyrating wildly. It's infectious, and it can only mean one thing: gogoLab, the ultimate spy dance... More >>
• Best Club Above a
  Strip Club (1 Comment)
  Tabu
  Akio, the uni-monikered general manager of Tabu, is unmistakable with his trimmed eyebrows, slicked-skyward black hair and impeccably pressed suits. He can frequently be found making rounds throughout the club, all politician-like, shaking hands and beaming affably at patrons. His hospitality is... More >>
• Best Club Comeback (2 Comments)
  The Loft
  As Club Evolution, the two-story building on the corner of 22nd and Champa streets seemed to be in a constant Darwinian struggle, first embracing the GLBT community and then later attempting to adapt to the hetero set. Both endeavors were for naught, as Evo eventually went under and later... More >>
• Best Club Move
  Soiled Dove Underground
  A huge improvement on its previous LoDo location, the newer, classier Soiled Dove was built from the ground up, with music as the focal point. Its crescent-shaped seating area was designed so that anyone seated in the 300-person-plus room would have a good line of sight. And while the sound in... More >>
• Best Club Expansion
  El Chapultepec Too
  Anybody who's ever been to El Chapultepec on the weekend knows that the tiny place fills up mighty fast. Sometimes it gets so boisterous that it's hard to hear the jazzers on the tiny stage. Many times we've wished the club was about four times bigger -- you know, the kind of joint where you can... More >>
• Best Club Night
  Chit Chat
  It doesn't have a line down the block or a slate of superstar celebrity guest DJs. It's not the place to see or be seen. Nor is it filled with fickle hipsters who instantly think everything is so ten minutes ago. What Chit Chat is, is the city's best house party -- er, make that club night.... More >>
• Best Club Night for Hooking Up
  Night of the Living Shred
  Thursdays at Bender's is like a salmon migration. In a sea of dyed black locks and thick mascara, sweaty hormones bubble to the surface as twenty-somethings shamelessly grope each other on the dance floor. Every week, the two-room club is packed, with Balls Deep Karaoke hosted by Jermaine Smith... More >>
• Best Comedy Night (1 Comment)
  Tuesday nights Squire Lounge
  After three years in action, the Tuesday night open-mike night at the Squire Lounge continues to draw both legions and lesions. A veritable test lab for different types of humans -- from hipster to hep C, transient to tranny -- the Squire is the type of bar that welcomes all with open arms,... More >>
• Best New Funnyman
  Ben Kronberg
  Ben Kronberg is the shit. No, really. He calls himself the Poop Joke Ninja. At the Gong Show last fall, he rolled out on stage in full ninja-style costume and told, yep, poop jokes. He was gonged. But that's okay, because the experimental performer scored a spot at the invitation-only HBO U.S.... More >>
• Best Karaoke Night
  Charlie's
  Bring your competitive edge and those succulent lungs down to Charlie's on Mondays and Tuesdays to battle it out mano-a-limp-wrist with some of the town's fiercest amateur vocalists. The nightly sign-up sheet doesn't care about your sexual orientation -- but if you suck, then you'll be outing... More >>
• Best DIY DJ Night
  Bring Your Own Records Party
  Everyone has a little disc jockey inside of them, and once a month (or so), Carioca Cafe -- better known to scene kids everywhere as Bar Bar -- hosts a coming-out party for all the wicky-wicky wannabes. The concept is simple: Bring your records, play your records. Be sure to arrive early because... More >>
• Best Goth Night
  Disintegration
  Club Boca might not seem like much when you first walk in, but it's the ideal spot for a goth night. Then again, it could also work for an opium den or a high school makeout party. Dark, moody and decked out with plenty of couches, it's the type of place where engaging in heavy petting is almost... More >>
• Best Jazz Club
  Dazzle
  Going strong for a decade now, Dazzle has become synonymous with jazz in the Mile High City. Whether the club is spotlighting dynamic local talent like weekly residents Ralph Sharon, Rehka Ohal and Pat Bianchi or showcasing internationally renowned artists such as Slide Hampton, Richie Cole and... More >>
• Best Jazz Jam (1 Comment)
  The Meadowlark
  Joshua Trinidad has a handle on jazz. As host of the Thursday-night Jazz Odyssey show on KUVO, the guy regularly gives spins to cats like David Murray, Matthew Shipp and the Bad Plus. The inventive trumpeter and his Sputter bandmate, drummer David Kurtz, have teamed up as Cougar Legs to host... More >>
• Best All-Comers Jam (1 Comment)
  Tantrums Jam
  As if musicians needed another reason not to make it into work. The Tantrums Jam, hosted each Wednesday night at Kokopelli's by Tempa Singer and her Tantrums bandmates, has become the mid-week gathering place for local players to get loaded and get down. While guitarists currently make up a... More >>
• Best Drummer Jam
  Denver Drum Collective
  The drummer is the backbone of a band, holding everything together, and the Denver Drum Collective wants to make that spine stronger. Think of it as a chiropractic session for any drummer interested in sharing ideas and gaining new skills. The DDC has already brought legends Stanton Moore and... More >>
• Best Jam Flashback
  Colorado '88
  Hard to believe, but as recently as nineteen years ago, very few of the ski bums negotiating the slopes of Aspen and Telluride gave a damn about Phish. Hence, some of the mountain-town club gigs documented on Colorado '88, a three-CD set available at www.jemprecords.com, were attended by fewer... More >>
• Best Recording Studio (1 Comment)
  8 Houses Down
  In punk-rock years, 8 Houses Down is like a dinosaur. The recording studio, headed by engineers Jeff Merkel and Matt Van Leuvan, has been a staple in the underground scene for over a decade. Its client list reads like the index to a scenester yearbook, with such alumni as Planes Mistaken for... More >>
• Best Record Label
  Needlepoint Records
  Needlepoint Records is less of a label than a collective of bands and friends working together to produce top-notch rock and roll. Based in Denver, the little label that could has chugged out a number of stellar local discs by acts as varied as Everything Absent or Distorted, Rabbit Is a Sphere... More >>
• Best Record Label With Grammy Ties
  Silver Wave Records
  For the past five years, a local indie label has been quietly filling its mantel with Grammy awards for its Native American recordings. Last year, Boulder-based Silver Wave Records took home a Grammy for its compilation Sacred Ground -- A Tribute to Mother Earth, while this year, the... More >>
• Best Recording (Since March 2006)
  If This Thing Should Spill
  Although Born in the Flood's debut full-length was one of the most hotly anticipated local discs in years, few expected the quartet to top the watermark it had already reached with The Fear That We May Not Be. The act had all but cemented its renown by delivering transcendent live shows with... More >>
• Best Local Concert (Since March 2006)
  Born in the Flood/Nathan & Stephen CD-release show
  It wasn't that long ago that the idea of an all-local bill filling a venue as large as the Gothic seemed outrageous. Nowadays, it happens pretty frequently. Still, few shows over the years have reached the excitement level that surrounded this four-band superbill. Each of the acts slated to... More >>
• Best Concert (Since March 2006)
  Tool
  Coming off a well-received outing at Coachella, Tool opted to play a series of rare, intimate theater shows, one of which happened to be at the Buell. Almost as soon as the show was announced, 2,000 rabid Tool fans eagerly parted with $66.66 for a chance to get up-close and personal with their... More >>
• Best In-Store Show by an Indie Hero
  Calvin Johnson
  Beat Happening, K Records, Dub Narcotic Soundsystem and so much more: Calvin Johnson is a living legend in the world of indie music. Over the years, he's never seemed to lose sight of what makes the music and art special, including the intimacy of performing. So when it was announced that he'd... More >>
• Best Concept-Album Performance
  Mothership
  When drummer James Barone told his friends about this seemingly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play a show at a planetarium, the very idea fired up their collective imaginations. Luckily, his band, Mothership, was fully capable of meeting the expectations. The act had already written an epic... More >>
• Best Solo Outing
  Sarah Lucey
  When Sarah Lucey, Supply Boy's blazingly great guitar player, discovered she had songs that didn't really fit into that band's context, she decided to flesh them out on her own. One night last summer, she headed over to tHERe coffee shop armed with a handful of tunes, her beautiful,... More >>
• Best Happy-Hour Troubadour (4 Comments)
  Jim Yelenick
  Over the years, Jim Yelenick has fronted various outfits -- Jet Black Joy, Zillion Dollar Sadists, a Turbonegro cover band and, most recently, a band called Invasion. As a frenzied frontman, the guy's never been afraid to expose himself, if you know what we mean. And that punk energy spills over... More >>
• Best Sound Man (1 Comment)
  Ron Gordon
  Hearing a show at the Walnut Room is an audiophile's wet dream. There's no doubt that the room was "built for music," as the club's slogan claims. With over two decades of audio engineering experience under his belt, Ron Gordon clearly knew a thing or two about sound dynamics and acoustics when... More >>
• Best Live Band
  Kingdom of Magic
  Frontman/guitarist Luke Fairchild is a gnarly motherfucker when you put him in front of a mike. The seasoned musician, who has charmed crowds before in such stellar acts as White Dynamite and Sparkles, is now allied with equally formidable musicians drummer Devin Rogers (of Munimula) and bassist... More >>
• Best Band With the Worst Name (1 Comment)
  Pee Pee
  Pee Pee. It's hard to say out loud without giggling even a little bit. It's like a recession back to grade-school vernacular, and it's absolutely the silliest combination of two monosyllabic words since "wee wee." But who needs a clever, well-thought-out band name anyway? This Denver-based... More >>
• Best New Band (2 Comments)
  Nathan & Stephen
  At first glance, declaring Nathan & Stephen Denver's best new band looks like a misprint. But while Nathan McGarvey and Stephen Till initially began performing together as an acoustic duo, their project has blossomed into a bulging-at-the-seams nonet thanks to the addition of another seven... More >>
• Best Band From an Actual Cowtown
  Vitamins
  Every once in a while, a great new band surfaces that seems fully formed -- like Athena, sprung from the head of Zeus. Greeley's Vitamins, which until recently stayed beneath the radar by playing mostly warehouse-type shows, is one such act. Taking an eclectic approach to songwriting, Vitamins'... More >>
• Best Band to Come Out of Nowhere (4 Comments)
  Tifah
  To the Denver-centric, if you don't hail from the metro area, you might as well be from Mars. Maybe that's why the arrival of Louisville-based Tifah seems so, well, sudden and wonderfully foreign. It also probably has something to do with the fact that the group's members -- vocalist/organist... More >>
• Best Purveyors of Mile- High Honky Crunk (17 Comments)
  3OH!3
  Pimp-limping on the fine line between stoopid and stupid, 3OH!3 just might be Ballerado's hip-hop Tenacious D. Sean Foreman and Nathaniel Motte rock DFA-style low-tech beats, punk attitudes and Ruff Ryder growls that manage to simultaneously lampoon and revere the well-worn signifiers of punk,... More >>
• Best Diamond in the Rough (1 Comment)
  The Heyday
  On stage, the members of Heyday are like precocious four-year-olds trying to ride a bike: cute and determined, yet still wobbly and unsure. In time, though, their inherent charisma will shine through, and they'll become less stilted, more fluid and self-assured. Rather than speed through the... More >>
• Best Singer-Songwriter -- Male (6 Comments)
  Gregory Alan Isakov
  Gregory Alan Isakov has a unique, endearing presence that instantly sucks people in. Isakov has rendered us dumbfounded on numerous occasions with his ability to move audiences in a way that performers with much larger profiles would envy. With a captivating voice that evokes a rootsier Glen... More >>
• Best Singer-Songwriter -- Female
  Rachael Pollard
  Watching Rachael Pollard perform at Chielle recently was a breathtakingly intimate experience. It was like being serenaded by a hummingbird from a windowsill. Pollard sang with a delicate hush that was barely above a whisper, and at one point, she even played her acoustic with her gloves on. It... More >>
• Best Guy Who Spends Forty Hours a Week at Band Practice
  Andrew Segreti
  Guitar players are a dime a dozen, but finding (and keeping) a decent drummer in D-town? Not so easy. That's why Andrew Segreti is the golden drummer boy of the local scene. His octopus arms reach far and wide into varied musical projects, including Bailer, the Autokinoton and the Horace Van... More >>
• Best Guy Playing Music for All the Right Reasons (1 Comment)
  Chris Adolf
  Once upon a time, people used to actually play music because they loved it, purely out of joy and for no other reason. No shit. Hard to believe, right? To think that folks wrote and recorded songs with complete disregard for how it would be received or how it would be marketed -- that's just... More >>
• Best Expatriate Still Involved in Local Music
  Andrew Murphy
  When he created Radio 1190's Local Shakedown program many years ago, Andrew Murphy taught listeners that indigenous Colorado talent was more than just a series of transient fads. And even though he eventually moved to the Bay Area to work for Revolver Distribution, Murphy's heart remains firmly... More >>
• Best Meeting of the Minds (6 Comments)
  The Oriental Theater and the Bianchi Brothers
  Promotions can be a nasty business. The competition is rabid, cutthroat and full of enough shit-talking to make Simon Cowell cringe. So who ever thought that rival promoters could actually work together instead of against each other? To prove that harmonious unions are always better than... More >>
• Best Creative Upsurge
  Landlordland
  Landlordland used to be that weird indie-pop band that didn't fit in with the other indie-pop bands. The act had a little too much rock and roll in its blood, and its use of samples seemed to be at odds with its more conventionally melodic brethren. As a result, the group's live shows sometimes... More >>
• Best Unlikely Comeback
  Eyes Caught Fire
  Dynamic lead guitarist Dustin Bingham left Eyes Caught Fire in the fall of 2005, which seemed to end the band's long run as one of the most well-regarded acts from Colorado Springs. Though relatively unknown in Denver, Eyes had built a strong regional reputation for its hauntingly cathartic live... More >>
• Best Frontman (2 Comments)
  Dameon Merkl
  Dameon Merkl looks like the tall, handsome son of Orson Welles and has the dark vocal intensity of Nick Cave. His deep voice has a presence and timbre that late-night jazz radio-show hosts would kill for, but even an easy laugh from him carries an undercurrent of menace. As the brooding yet... More >>
• Best Frontwoman
  Becca Mhalek
  You just knew that if the woman who made the sax scream, howl and sing in Nightshark ever put her lungs to use as a vocalist, she'd probably be pretty great. With the edgy, ferocious presence of early Patti Smith and the fearless spirit of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks-era Lydia Lunch on her side,... More >>
• Best Neo-Shoegaze Album
  Avoiding the Consequences
  The artistic ambition behind Drop the Fear, Ryan Policky and Gabriel Ratliff's previous band, was undeniable, but the act's music felt unfinished. When Avoiding the Consequences swept into stores last fall, all of the hyperbolic critical accolades seemed a bit premature. However, the dreamy,... More >>
• Best Demo Recording
  The Furnace Room Demos
  The Autokinoton has been around for, like, ever. But constant lineup changes -- including the very recent departure of guitarist Shaun Herrera -- have recessed the band again and again over the years. In spite of this, the act has taken on each subsequent incarnation with a musical fervor and... More >>
• Best Art-Rock Disc
  Laps in the Sleep Saloon
  The old cliche about too many chefs spoiling the soup became an old cliche for the usual reason: In the vast majority of cases, it's true. But the men and women of Rabbit Is a Sphere are the exception that proves the rule. Robert Rutherford, Natalie Winslow and Christopher Nelsen all sing lead,... More >>
• Best Post-Hardcore Disc
  The Always Open Mouth
  It's not always pretty to look Fear in the face. Late last year, for instance, David Marion, the group's frontman, got whacked upside the mug with a bass headstock, resulting in a hole in his cheek "that you could fit a small rodent through," according to a post on the band's website. But... More >>
• Best Blues Disc
  The Turner Diaries
  Turner is no axman-come-lately. When the late Tommy Bolin decided to leave Zephyr circa the early '70s, Turner took his place -- and he subsequently played guitar for the Legendary 4-Nikators and bluesman supreme Otis Taylor, whose 1996-2003 platters gained much of their power from Turner's... More >>
• Best Post-Jam Disc
  Yonder Mountain String Band
  The list of people contributing to this veteran Nederland combo's bow for the famed Vanguard label may fill longtime supporters with anxiety -- but such worries are misplaced. On the album, banjoist Dave Johnston, guitarist Adam Aijala, bassist Ben Kaufmann and mandolinist Jeff Austin join... More >>
• Best Fusion of Hip-Hop and Jazz on Disc
  True by Design
  There's a natural affinity between jazz and hip-hop; the genres each champion improvisation, be it instrumental or verbal, as well as the joy of grooves and the pleasures of cool. So, too, does Future Jazz Project, which brings these sounds together in a way that's all too rare these days. On... More >>
• Best Led Zeppelin Connection
  Waterloo, Tennessee
  Local roots-music fans know all about KC Groves. A longtime Lyons resident, she's one-fourth of Uncle Earl, a combo that's played lots of gigs and festivals in these parts and contributed a song to the 2005 Colorado Bluegrass Music Society compilation. Now, however, the outfit is taking a giant... More >>
• Best Underground Venue (2 Comments)
  Blast-o-Mat
  Over the years, a number of DIY spots have appeared -- Pancho's Villa, the Junkyard, Garageland, the Hipster Youth Halfway House -- and all have inevitably burned out after short but fiery existences. The latest to carry the torch is Blast-o-Mat, a garage turned totally sweet venue. Attracting... More >>
• Best Underground Mixed-Use Venue (2 Comments)
  Rhinoceropolis
  Rhinoceropolis has an anything-goes spirit, with a variety of artists and artistic mediums occupying its unassuming space on Brighton Boulevard. At least once a month, 'Nopolis hosts local art shows and promotes them with the same fervor as it does the musical acts that pass through its doors.... More >>
• Best Show Fliers
  Yerkish
  In this era of MySpace bulletins, e-mail and text messages, making fliers would seem to be a lost art, an archaic means of promotion. Hardly anyone goes to the effort of making handbills anymore, and those who do are rewarded for their efforts by watching their handiwork being crumpled and... More >>
• Best Graffiti Advocates
  Guerilla Garden
  Guerilla Garden ain't no bunch of tag-bangers. The crew is Denver's unofficial graffiti-advocacy organization, and its members are some of the city's top graffers, including Jher, Jolt, Voice, Crims, Koze and Emit. Since forming in 2005, they've worked with several programs that promote graffiti... More >>
• Best Collectible
  Graffiti Art (4 Comments)
  The Magnet Mafia
  The Magnet Mafia not only has a cool name -- who wouldn't want to join that family? -- but it's also serious about underground art. Dead serious. The Mafiosi create art on -- wait for it -- magnets, then stick them up around town. Find one, take it home and throw it up on the fridge. Plus, the... More >>
• Best New Public Art (Since March 2006)
  "Denver Monoliths," by Beverly Pepper
  "Denver Monoliths," the enormous abstract sculpture in front of the Denver Art Museum's outrageous Frederic C. Hamilton Building, looks like the Flintstones meeting the Jetsons. The primitive forms of Beverly Pepper's charcoal-gray concrete sculpture provide a mighty contrast to the futuristic... More >>
• Best New Public Art -- Indoors
  "ENGI," by Tatsuo Miyajima
  Every project built with city money must set aside 1 percent for public art. In the case of the Denver Art Museum's Hamilton Building, the city-funded piece is Tatsuo Miyajima's "ENGI," located in the El Pomar Grand Atrium. It's a conceptual installation made up of eighty LED displays embedded... More >>
• Best New Public Art -- Suburbs
  "Kawil," by David Mazza
  Aurora, like Denver, has a 1-percent-for-art program, and among the city's most recent commissions is David Mazza's "Kawil," which is situated on the lawn of the Aurora Fire Department's station #5. "Kawil" is done in the young artist's signature neo-modernist style, with angled steel rods... More >>
• Best Climbable Art (1 Comment)
  "Scottish Angus Cow and Calf," by Dan Ostermiller
  There's something downright lovable about the "Scottish Angus Cow and Calf," the massive bovine bronzes that reside on the south side of the new Hamilton Building. They're not as obvious as "Big Sweep," the giant ode to housekeeping at the museum's entrance -- but that's half the fun. The cow... More >>
• Best Spinning Art
  "The Windmill Project," by Patrick Marold
  Denver artist Patrick Marold makes pieces that address environmental issues, and his latest, "The Windmill Project," in Vail, is staggeringly large, with 2,700 separate elements. Each of those comprises a ten-foot tall transparent tube, which houses a light and is topped by three rotating prongs... More >>
• Best Museum Exhibit (Since March 2006)
  RADAR
  The blockbuster RADAR: Selections From the Collection of Kent & Vicki Logan represents a conflation of art-related events. It's the largest of the three special exhibitions at the Denver Art Museum presented to coincide with the opening of the new Frederic C. Hamilton Building. It showcases the... More >>
• Best Fond Farewell
  Retirement of Dianne Vanderlip
  It was 29 years ago that Dianne Vanderlip came to the Denver Art Museum to start a contemporary art department. In the intervening decades some contemporary aged into modern, so Vanderlip's charge expanded to overseeing what is now the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. As early as last... More >>
• Best Gallery Show -- Solo
  COLIN LIVINGSTON
  Last fall, Ivar Zeile's + Gallery mounted the imaginative COLIN LIVINGSTON: Palettes, Patterns, Logos and Slogans, in which potential collectors were invited to come up with their own compositions by selecting from a menu of -- you guessed it -- palettes, patterns, logos and slogans. Livingston... More >>
• Best Gallery Show -- Group
  Directions in Abstraction
  Co-ops typically present solos by their members, featuring group shows only when a time slot accidentally opens up. Such an unexpected opportunity presented itself last spring, and Edge member Mark Brasuell came up with Directions in Abstraction off the top of his head. He included his own work... More >>
• Best Debut (1 Comment)
  Yoshitomo Saito
  Yoshitomo Saito moved to Denver just last summer, and he's already had a solo at one of the city's top galleries. That's quite a feat, but 108 Blue Cranes was unbelievably ambitious and stunningly serene. The exhibition was something of a retrospective, covering the past twenty years that the... More >>
• Best Old West Show
  Colorado & the West
  Every summer, David Cook Fine Art presents a handsome historic survey of art from the region. It's always one of the finest exhibits of the year, and Colorado & the West was no exception. Then again, since Cook snags first-rate material from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it... More >>
• Best Old Modern Show
  Colorado Modernism: 1930-1970
  Colorado artists began embracing abstraction in the 1930s, and by the late '40s and early '50s, it had become a full-blown regional movement. Unfortunately, much of the work has been mostly forgotten. Aiming to correct this oversight, painter and volunteer art historian Tracy Felix put together... More >>
• Best Show About Former Hippies
  The Armory Group
  In 1966, Boulder was attracting some of the nation's first hippies, many of whom were enrolling in fine-art classes at the University of Colorado. Student studios were then in the Armory, and a group coalesced there, including members Dale Chisman, Clark Richert, John De Andrea, Margaret Neumann... More >>
• Best Recent-History Show
  Decades of Influence
  By far the most ambitious undertaking of the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver in its ten-year history, Decades of Influence was Cydney Payton's attempt at summing up Colorado art from the past two decades. With a topic this vast, she used not only the museum itself, but also the Center for... More >>
• Best Artful Family Reunion
  Vavra Triptych
  No one has done more to promote Colorado's historic artists than Hugh Grant, director of the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art. But Grant only rarely mounts shows at the museum, which is one of the reasons that Vavra Triptych was so special. Grant brought out work by husband and wife... More >>
• Best Art History Lesson
  Treasures Revealed: The Art of Hungary
  The Emmanuel Gallery on the Auraria campus is such a hassle to get to, it often gets overlooked. But that all changed when Emmanuel presented an exhibit so important that Denver Art Museum director Lewis Sharp spoke at the opening -- even though it was right in the middle of his own opening of... More >>
• Best Asian Art History Lesson
  Japanese Art
  Aspen-based collector Kimiko Powers and her late husband, John, were connoisseurs of the old school. They were broad in their interests; as a result, they amassed some of the finest art works of art available. Ron Otsuka, the esteemed curator of Asian art at the Denver Art Museum, made friends... More >>
• Best Contemporary Asian Art Lesson -- Museum
  Waves on the Turquoise Lake
  A study of contemporary artists from Tibet is a pretty off-the-wall topic, but Waves on the Turquoise Lake was a spectacular exhibit. Jointly conceived by CU Art Museum director Lisa Tamiris Becker and the Mechak Center's Victoria Scoggin, the show was definitely a situation where the East met... More >>
• Best Contemporary Asian Art Lesson -- Gallery
  Under the Radar
  China has long had a rich cultural tradition, but the country has been out of the art picture for a century or more. Times are changing, and now that Wal-Mart has turned the place into an economic powerhouse, its art is again coming to the fore. Robischon Gallery's Under the Radar: Chinese... More >>
• Best Historic Photo Show -- Group
  From Nordenskiold to Nusbaum
  You knew the show at the Denver Central Library was serious simply by noting the word count of the title: From Nordenskiold to Nusbaum: Archaeology, Photography and Tourism in the Early Years of Mesa Verde National Park. Whew, seventeen! The Nordenskiold part refers to Gustaf Nordenskiold, who... More >>
• Best Historic Photo Show -- Solo (1 Comment)
  Denver's Pictorial Photographer
  Pictorialism is a photographic style in which images are blurred to create the atmospheric quality normally associated with a painting. It was all the rage a hundred years ago -- and it is again right now. Believe it or not, Denver had its own first-generation pictorialist, R. Ewing Stiffler,... More >>
• Best Iconic Photo Show
  Marilyn Monroe: Beginning
  to End
  When you talk about photogenic, you've got to talk about Marilyn Monroe. After all, more than a few photographers built their entire careers on their memorable images of her. Camera Obscura Gallery, granddaddy of the city's photo scene, hosted an interesting duet comparing and contrasting Andre... More >>
• Best Contemporary Photo Show -- Solo
  John Bonath: Blessings Revisited
  Well-known digital photographer John Bonath had a hell of a year battling cancer. So it's amazing how well he kept his spirits up -- even naming his one-person show at sellarsprojectspace Blessings. Man, what a trouper! In his pieces, Bonath created fantasy worlds that are completely believable... More >>
• Best Showcase of Photograph Trends (1 Comment)
  (REAL): Photographic Constructs
  This dynamite show, put together by Center for Visual Art director Jennifer Garner and assistant director Cecily Cullen, featured eight photographers who were pushing their medium to the absolute edge. Local talents Jon Rietfors, Gwen Laine and David Zimmer were joined by internationally famous... More >>
• Best Sculpture Solo
  James Surls
  The star attraction at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art last fall was James Surls: A Cut Above. The sculptor made his name in the 1980s from a studio in Texas, but he moved to Colorado in 1998 and has been here ever since. Surls's medium of choice is wood, which he carves into attenuated... More >>
• Best End to a Daydream (1 Comment)
  Matthew Rose: Spelling With Scissors
  Lauri Lynnxe Murphy is a one-woman art scene. In the past, she was involved with Edge Gallery, was one of the founders of the long-closed ILK co-op, which she ran, then opened Pod, a boutique that morphed into Capsule, an alternative gallery. Experimental shows were a specialty, with the... More >>
• Best Ceramics Show -- Solo
  Martha Daniels
  Martha Daniels's work riffs off the history of ceramics, combining Mediterranean and Asian influences in the same way as her mentor, Betty Woodman. The most remarkable creations in the show at William Havu Gallery were her delicate -- though gigantic -- towers that subtly referred to work by the... More >>
• Best Ceramics Show -- Group
  Breaking the Mold
  Wouldn't it be neat to be rich? You could put together a first-rate art collection overnight -- ten years or so in the art world. That's what Connecticut collector Virginia Vogel Mattern did. In 1988 she became enraptured with pottery from the pueblos of New Mexico, and over the next decade... More >>
• Best Imitation of Carnival Spin Art
  Something to Consider
  Despite having an essentially meaningless title -- Something to Consider -- this show did have some of the freshest-looking abstracts seen last summer. The paintings were edgy examples of post-abstract expressionism, as done by Quintín González, a Denver artist who just keeps getting better and... More >>
• Best Installation Show
  Weekend in So Show
  After years of gurgling in a temporary space, the Laboratory for Art and Ideas at Belmar -- the Lab, for short -- finally started an exhibition program in its finished home last fall. The place aims to bring high culture to Lakewood, an idea out of the mind of founding director Adam Lerner.... More >>
• Best Video Projection
  Chimera
  Last spring, the University of Denver's Victoria H. Myhren Gallery hosted an unusual multi-media installation called Chimera, named after the female demon of myth. Minnette Vári, the artist who created it, put herself in the title role. A South African, Vári has long been interested in racial... More >>
• Best Show by an Emerging Conceptualist
  Undergo
  Like most artists, Justin Beard needs to have a day job, and for a while he was a construction worker. It is this grueling experience that inspired the interrelated pieces in his smart solo, Undergo, on view last summer. The exhibit was dominated by a full-sized replica of a pickup truck made of... More >>
• Best Design Show
  DoubleButter Boontje
  Paul and Pifuka Hardt opened P Design Gallery last year, and since then, they've presented a regular show schedule devoted to furniture and decorative arts. What set DoubleButter Boontje apart was that two of the three featured designers live right here in Denver. David Larabee and Dexter... More >>
• Best Place to Find Undiscovered Artists
  Art-O-Mart
  Art-O-Mart, the quarterly art smorgasbord at Capsule Event Center, is the perfect place to find quality pieces that won't cost an arm and a leg. Taking place on First Fridays in June, September and December, Art-O-Mart showcases unjuried work in all mediums. You never know what you might find. More >>
• Best Drawing Lessons
  Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School
  Life-drawing aficionados usually sketch any body they can find. Few people, after all, have the right personality to disrobe so that a crowd can scrutinize every shadow and wrinkle. For more interesting models, try Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School. The invention of Brooklyn burlesquer Molly... More >>
• Best Clay Lessons
  First Friday mini-shops
  Denver ceramic artist Marie E.v.B. Gibbons is well known for her spooky and evocative clay and mixed-media sculptures, but she's also a great teacher. Since moving to her sunny new studio in the shadow of northwest Denver's Oriental Theater, Gibbons has been hosting monthly clay mini-shops... More >>
• Best Denver Flashback
  Jack Kerouac's On the Road scroll exhibit
  A benchmark of Beat-era lore, Jack Kerouac's famous On the Road manuscript was typed in just twenty days on a 120-foot-long scroll. Kerouac embodied the movement's spontaneous and obsessive nature in one burning semi-autobiographical swoop. And because the alleys and byways of Denver lurk all... More >>
• Best Film Flashback
  On the Road film project
  Beat central, Naropa's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, is commemorating On the Road's fiftieth anniversary by sending a digital video camera to Kerouac haunts in New York, San Francisco, Lowell (Kerouac's Massachusetts birthplace), Denver, Iowa and Mexico City, as well as to such... More >>
• Best Local Drinking Film (2 Comments)
  Drunk by Noon
  Want to know where to go to get plastered in this town? Drunk by Noon is 21 minutes of classic Denver dive bars threaded together through the story of a Madison Avenue advertising executive who suddenly has an epiphany: He's been destroying the planet through his work. Directed by Eric Galatas... More >>
• Best Local Sports Film (5 Comments)
  The Goal
  Move over, Murderball! The latest in quad-rugby films, The Goal, was jam-packed with Denver love. Director Darla Rae was inspired by Jason Regier, president of the Denver Harlequin Wheelchair Rugby Team; The Goal follows the story of two disabled athletes struggling to rebuild their lives.... More >>
• Best Local Hair Film
  Combover: The Movie
  When Denverite Chris Marino was six years old, he saw something at a swimming pool that changed his life: a combover. Decades later, the obsession resulted in a movie about the world's worst hairstyle. Portions of the film were shot in Denver, but Marino found there just weren't enough locals... More >>
• Best Showcase of Local Filmmakers
  5 Minute Film Fest
  Short, sweet and to the point: That's the 5 Minute Film Fest, hosted every quarter by Denver filmmaker Johnny Morehouse. He collects movies from anyone in town who wants to participate, pops the popcorn, pulls out some beer and has everyone down to his studio for a party honoring shorts that... More >>
• Best Film Festival (2 Comments)
  The Shoot Out 24 Hour Filmmaking Festival
  Although it's only in its third year, the Shoot Out is one of the area's most-anticipated film fests. While it may not offer a lot of glitz and glamour, this affair is all about taking the power instead of watching passively. On a designated night in October, teams gather at 8:55 p.m. to get... More >>
• Best Performance by a Coloradan in a Film
  Jessica Biel
  Don Cheadle is usually a lock in this category, but except for The Dog Problem, which has yet to enjoy a wide release, he had no credits in 2006. Meanwhile, Jessica Biel was displaying some major star wattage. We're used to seeing the Boulder hottie in hack-'em-slash-'em thrillers like The Texas... More >>
• Best Performance by Colorado in a Film
  Skills Like This
  When Colorado is cast in a film, it usually gets a bit part that winds up on the cutting-room floor -- or worse, Italy or Vancouver stands in for the state. But when Colorado filmmaker Monty Miranda -- who filmed all of John Hickenlooper's mayoral commercials in 2003 -- decided to make Skills... More >>
• Best Movie Theater -- Comfort
  Harkins Northfield 18
  With eighteen regular screens and one mondo screen, there's always something to see at the Harkins Northfield 18. And you'll see it from the lap of luxury, since the seats are deep and plush. But Harkins boasts plenty of amenities beyond incredibly comfortable seating, including a water... More >>
• Best Movie Theater -- Programming
  Starz FilmCenter
  Starz FilmCenter has seen better days. It's a bit tatty around the edges, and the seats make airplanes look comfortable. But no other theater can unseat the king when it comes to must-see programming, including critically acclaimed small fests, special nights and the annual blowout of the Starz... More >>
• Best Movie Theater -- Food
  Cinema Grill
  A night at the Cinema Grill is a guilty pleasure. There's nothing too healthy on the menu, whether cinematic (Happy Feet, The Astronaut Farmer, The Number 23) or culinary (pepper poppers, potato skins, burgers, cheese dogs, ice cream smoothies), but a few hours here are undeniably satisfying.... More >>
• Best Cheap Movie Night (2 Comments)
  Tiffany Park Movies 6
  The only thing better than the $1 show is the 50-cent show. On Tuesday nights at Tiffany Park Movies, all screens are just two bits. There's no stadium seating or fancy digital sound, and your shoes stick to the floor, but that's a fair price to pay for saving twenty bucks on admission. Plus, a... More >>
• Best Reason Not to Kill Your TV
  Denver Open Media
  When it comes to mainstream TV, the techno-savvy rebels at deproduction are mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore. So when Denver allowed the local nonprofit to take over its three floundering Comcast public-access channels, it turned them into Denver Open Media. Now insomniac... More >>
• Best New Book by a Colorado Publisher
  Golem Song
  Marc Estrin is a smart man. Scary smart. So smart you may wonder if you're capable of reading his books. You are, and you must. Golem Song treads serious turf -- hate, racism, anti-Semitism -- that most writers avoid, but the book redeems both itself and the reader with a wry, sometimes raunchy,... More >>
• Best New Book by a Colorado Author -- Thriller
  Kill Me
  Stephen White has been writing his Alan Gregory novels for almost two decades. You'd expect his work to have fallen into formula by now, but his fourteenth book, Kill Me, is fast-paced and vivid enough to convert new readers to his particular brand of psychological thriller. The lead character,... More >>
• Best New Book by a Colorado Author -- Literary
  Augusta Locke
  If you like Annie Proulx and Kent Haruf, pick up William Haywood Henderson. Having grown up in Colorado and Wyoming, he has an innate sense of how to write Western characters, with reserve and isolation broken up by glimpses of deep emotional currents. Augusta Locke follows six generations... More >>
• Best New Book by a Colorado Author -- Vampire (2 Comments)
  The Nymphos of Rocky Flats Mario Acevedo
  Felix Gomez was a soldier in Iraq. Now he's a vampire -- and a detective sent to look into a sweeping case of nymphomania at Rocky Flats. We're serious. With Gomez, Mario Acevedo has created a new literary hero for Colorado. Though a vampire, he doesn't drink blood; he works for the forces of... More >>
• Best Online Poetry Slam
  www.podslam.org
  Conceived in the '80s, propagated in the '90s and formalized in the 2000s, Slam Poetry is once again evolving, this time to meet the demands of the YouTube era. Since last year, Podslam.org has featured dozens of videos of local and national Slammers spitting words, ideas and everything in... More >>
• Best Therapeutic Poetry Organization (1 Comment)
  Art From Ashes
  Life isn't always easy for the young. And high-risk youth whose lives are impacted by violence, drugs and alcohol sometimes don't have the opportunity to find their voices or learn to express themselves. To combat that, Art From Ashes collaborates with other youth-service organizations to offer... More >>
• Best Original Play -- Local Authors
  A Synopsis of Butchery
  Buntport mined an odd little piece of Victorian history for this play. Washington Irving Bishop was a mentalist, possibly a bit of a fraud. He collapsed on stage one night, and an autopsy was immediately performed. His mother, Eleanor Fletcher Bishop, was convinced that he had been cut up while... More >>
• Best Original Play -- Non-Local Author
  1001, by Jason Grote
  Director Ethan McSweeny had his actors use a deliberately arch, hammy style for the first twenty or thirty minutes of this play, and even though the script is ironic and humorous as written, the style grated. But as the action continued, the play -- a kind of swirl of images and words... More >>
• Best News for Playwrights -- Small Venue
  Curious Theatre Company
  It's very hard for playwrights to get their work produced, yet without production, it's impossible for a playwright to hone his craft. And new playwrights are, of course, the heart and soul of a living theater culture. Curious has joined a group of theaters nationwide that believe in showcasing... More >>
• Best News for Playwrights -- Large Venue
  Denver Center Theatre Company
  Artistic director Kent Thompson has taken strides toward his goal of bringing the work of more women and writers of color to the Denver Center. He has also instituted an annual two-day New Play Summit. Jason Grote's 1001 was seen at last year's summit before being mounted this February. This... More >>
• Best Theater Production (1 Comment)
  The Caretaker
  You knew from the moment you entered the theater and saw David Lafont's beautifully detailed set -- stacks of papers, a hanging toilet seat, a shopping cart, a bucket set under a leak in the ceiling -- that someone had put a lot of thought into this production, someone with an understanding of... More >>
• Best Theater Season
  Buntport Theater Company
  You know a theater's something special if you always find people of all ages and types in the audience, and if you keep hearing yourself recommending the place to friends (and, later, the friends call up to thank you). From script to set, this troupe of seven creates every piece they mount from... More >>
• Best Performance by an Audience Member
  Unnamed audience member
  This charming small musical calls on audience members to join the spelling team on stage every night. On the night I attended, a tall, dark man was one of the people who responded. Word was he was an actor, but we never learned his name. The man's poise was extraordinary, and his delight in... More >>
• Best Audience
  Shadow Theatre Company
  It's just too easy to enter a theater, sit back and wait to be terrified, amazed, moved or entertained. Theater is a live medium that works best when audience members are involved and there's a genuine current between them and the actors. When you attend Shadow Theatre Company productions, you... More >>
• Best Comedy
  Plenty of Time
  He's a would-be Black Panther; she's the spoiled, underage daughter of a Martha's Vineyard couple. After a night of sex, they agree to meet again, and the once-yearly affair continues for decades. He fights overseas. She becomes first a fire-breathing feminist and then a successful... More >>
• Best Comedic Performance of the Year (2 Comments)
  Michael Shalhoub Tartuffe Germinal Stage Denver
  Germinal picked a perfect time to stage this update on Moliere, a spoof of hypocritical religiosity. Among a strong cast, Michael Shalhoub stood out in the lead. His Tartuffe was juicy and outrageous, utterly repulsive and periodically rather appealing. Shalhoub's mobile, clearly defined... More >>
• Best Actress in a Comedy
  Angela Reed
  We first met Ashley while she was watching one of those smarmy television shrinks with her teenage son, Justin. The shrink's advice to a sexually incompatible couple inspired her to reveal far more than Justin wanted to know about her relationship with his father. By conventional standards,... More >>
• Best Actor in a Comedy
  John Hutton
  Michael is a hyper-literate writer capable of dismissing the work of Rainer Maria Rilke as "infantile nonsense." But he has nonetheless sold out to become a best-selling novelist. His wife has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. She wants him to read her diaries after her death -- and she wants... More >>
• Best Nasty Comedy
  Vigil
  A strange, disoriented, misogynistic and clearly half-mad, middle-aged man named Kemp shows up at the bedside of his dying auntie, apparently summoned by a letter from her. He then proceeds to take care of her -- that is, prepare meals and rant while she tries to eat them; ask whether she wants... More >>
• Best Return to Denver
  Caitlin O'Connell
  We've seen only sporadic appearances by Caitlin O'Connell at the Denver Center for the past few years, so her return to play Lane, the achievement-obsessed doctor who hires a reluctant maid in The Clean House, was a joy. Beginning as a rigid perfectionist in an icy white suit, she evolved into... More >>
• Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy
  Sydney Parks
  Sydney Parks's big moment was a twisted hybrid reminiscent of both the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet and the courtship of Roxane by Cyrano de Bergerac on behalf of his friend Christian. Maybe there was a little Taming of the Shrew in there, too. Parks played Janice, who, at the play's... More >>
• Best On-Stage Freakout
  Charlotte Booker
  Charlotte Booker's Virginia loved to clean so much that she offered to take the place of her sister's maid, who hated the chore. Happily, she sneaked over every day to set Lane's house to rights. But at one point, the plot required this devotee of tidiness to create an "operatic mess." She... More >>
• Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy
  Erik Edborg
  Over the years, Erik Edborg has provided us with a number of memorable characters, whether he's moping in a curly wig as Cinderella or attempting to slide a roll of toilet paper under a door. He's always been hilarious in a goofy, hyperkinetic way, but in the last couple of years he's also... More >>
• Best Actress in a Drama
  Trina Magness
  Williams's Talk to Me Like the Rain is more a tone poem than a play, a small, wistful piece between a woman and a man who has just returned to her after a several-day absence. Urged by him to speak, she launches into a long monologue beginning, "I want to go away. I want to go away." The woman... More >>
• Best Actor in a Drama (2 Comments)
  Ami Dayan
  In this taut political play, written by an Israeli playwright, the first Intifada is covered from the perspective of a Palestinian family. Ami Dayan, who also directed, played the older of three brothers, Da'ud. This man was hardly likable. He was a compromised character, tough and clear-eyed,... More >>
• Best Supporting Actress in a Drama
  Mare Trevathan
  We've seen Mare Trevathan, one of the region's best actresses, far too little in the past few years, but her presence in what was essentially a cameo role galvanized Aphrodisiac, a play about a congressman and his mistress. Trevathan played Monica Lewinsky, and it was a tribute to her talent and... More >>
• Best Supporting Actor in a Drama (1 Comment)
  Josh Hartwell
  Josh Hartwell is one of those intelligent, convincing actors who are never flashy but bring a low-key integrity to every role they play. As interpreted by Paragon, Hedda was almost a black comedy, a kind of nineteenth-century Heathers, but Hartwell's Tesman brought a depth and kindness to the... More >>
• Best Actor in a Musical
  Scott Beyette
  With the theater's skilled performers having all kinds of fun with the nugatory plot and animating Gershwin's fabulous songs with their fine voices, Crazy for You was an evening of pure froth and fun. Scott Beyette was a lithe, leaping, tapping wonder as Bobby, a young man trying to revive an... More >>
• Best Actress in a Musical
  Jean Arbeiter
  Aldonza is the peasant wench that Don Quixote insists is his beloved Dulcinea. Jean Arbeiter, a fine singer and actress, made her so dirty and fierce, so angered by Quixote's fulsome praise ("Once, just once, would you look at me as I really am?") that when she finally capitulated, singing... More >>
• Best Supporting Actor in a Musical
  Geoffrey Kent
  Among many fine performances in musicals this season, Geoffrey Kent's Officer Lockstock stood out. It's a very clever, funny role as written, and Kent played it with relaxed authority: He made the officer-narrator stiff-necked and formal, but every now and then threw in a moment of pure gyrating... More >>
• Best Supporting Actress in a Musical
  Genevieve Baer
  The best comics actually get inside their characters; no matter how outrageous the people they play, they force themselves to believe every idiotic word and gesture. Think of the rich gallery of characters created by Carol Burnett and Tracey Ullman. Genevieve Baer is in this camp. She's a very... More >>
• Best Season for an Actor (3 Comments)
  Leonard Barrett
  Leonard Barrett is a tremendously appealing actor whose jazz-singing background shows in his work; there's always something improvisational and unexpected about it, and also a hint of hidden depths. There's kindness and humor, too. As Norman in Bas Bleu's The Dresser, Barrett's job was to get an... More >>
• Best Season for an Actress
  Simone St. John
  We saw a lot of Simone St. John this season, from her tightly wound Jocena in Shadow Theatre Company's Four Queens through the angry little spitfire she created for the same company's Waitin' 2 End Hell. But she really outdid herself in the lighthearted comedy Plenty of Time, aging convincingly... More >>
• Best Performance in a One-Person Show
  Diana Dresser
  This light comedy by Theresa Rebeck had many sharp lines, but it pretty much stayed afloat on the charm and talent of Diana Dresser, playing a young mother about to re-enter the dating scene. Dresser tried on various items of clothing and a few pairs of shoes, periodically asking the audience... More >>
• Best Direction of a Comedy
  Jamie Horton
  Okay, a cast consisting of John Hutton, Martha Harmon Pardee and Karen Slack gives a director a lot to work with, but under Jamie Horton's direction, these already fine actors shone even brighter. They worked with feeling and discipline, every gesture and intonation perfect. Written by Steven... More >>
• Best Season for a Director
  Terry Dodd
  This year, Dodd gave us both a beautifully conceived and executed version of Pinter's The Caretaker and the best production of The Weir we've seen in Denver. The Weir is an odd, spooky piece, a collection of ghost stories told by lonely souls in an isolated Irish pub. Dodd knew exactly how to... More >>
• Best Set -- Large Theater
  The Clean House
  Sarah Ruhl's play weaves elements of magic and mystery. Set in the expensive home of a couple of New York doctors and moving to a bright, sunny balcony, with a thematic focus on cleanliness and creative chaos, it requires a designer with a strong sense of color and contrast who's also interested... More >>
• Best Set -- Small Theater
  A Synopsis of Butchery
  Buntport is located in a cavernous warehouse on the outskirts of town. Some theater groups might find this a difficult space to work in, but not the Buntporters, who use it as a goad to higher and higher flights of ingenuity. They've performed in front of a van that they push from place to place... More >>
• Best Music
  1001
  Adding DJ Sara T, one of Denver's best on the turntables, to the mix of stories and styles in Jason Grote's 1001 was a stroke of genius on the part of director Ethan McSweeny. It jacked up the energy and contributed all kinds of electricity, dimension and excitement. More >>
• Best Musical
  Crazy for You
  This show is a wonderful compendium of many of Gershwin's best songs, strung along a plot so thin as to be almost non-existent. Sung by the talented regulars at Boulder's Dinner Theatre, all the songs glimmered with life, from such favorites as "Someone to Watch Over Me," "Nice Work If You Can... More >>
• Best Asset to the Stage (2 Comments)
  Annie Dwyer
  We're not awarding this for any one particular performance, though if we had to choose among this year's crop, it'd be Everything Old Is New Again, in which Annie Dwyer revived one of her old tricks: going out into the audience, snatching patrons' drinks -- beer, wine, Scotch, it was all the... More >>
• Best Theatrical Politics
  The Exonerated
  This theater piece, put together by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, is about six innocent people who spent anywhere from two to 21 years on death row and were then released. The most unsettling case is that of Sunny Jacobs, who, along with her husband, Jesse Tafero, was found guilty of the... More >>
• Best Theatrical Gamble
  Urinetown
  Producer-director (and marketer) Dan Wiley bet he could stage this edgy, contemporary musical about a city suffering a drought so bad its inhabitants are forced to pay to pee -- and executed for freelance urination -- in the Denver Department of Public Works' Wastewater Management Building. He... More >>
• Best Impact in a Small Role -- Tragic
  William Hahn
  William Hahn is one of those actors who always make an impact; you often find your eyes straying toward him, even when there's significant action somewhere else on the stage. In King Lear, sporting a gentle, soul-shrinking little smile, he brought an element of truly original creepiness to a... More >>
• Best Impact in a Small Role -- Comic
  Bill Christ
  Bill Christ played Amadeus's Emperor Joseph II, usually a tiny and forgettable role, to hilarious effect, listening to Mozart's music as puzzlement and a determination to appear cultured chased each other all over his face. The brilliance of Christ's bumbling buffoons -- he knows just how far to... More >>
• Best Lobby Entertainment (1 Comment)
  White Christmas Holiday Revue
  There's something magically Christmasy about standing out in the snow and pushing your nose against the glass of a ritzy hotel to see satin-clad girls crooning retro Irving Berlin classics by the fire. In this wonderland setting, former Cabaret Diosa dancing girl Kim Franco and her crack troupe... More >>
• Best Sideshow Performer
  Ukulele Loki
  Colorado might have lost the Crispy Family Carnival, but we still have Ukulele Loki, aka Aaron Johnson. A true vaudeville performer, Loki served as music director/ composer/on-stage musician for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's 2006 production of As You Like It, led the "indie acoustic... More >>
• Best Absurdist Cabaret Artist (1 Comment)
  Nina Rolle
  What do Zen and cabaret have in common? Nothing, unless you're Nina Rolle. The artist describes Zen Cabaret as "a traveling medicine show that pitches a tent in whatever town it's in, and then these rogues show up and put on a production." Most recently, Rolle pitched her Zen tent in Boulder for... More >>
• Best Drag Show
  Demented Divas
  The reviews are in: Local triple-nippled drag queen and fabulous fundraiser Nuclia Waste has a mushrooming hit on her well-manicured hands with Demented Divas. The hilarious Vegas-style drag show, featuring Portia Potty, Gabbriella Butz'In and Iona Trailer, not only encourages the most... More >>
• Best Jesus Freak
  Devout dancer
  The bearded man held his wooden cross high and bumped and swayed to the indie rock coming out of the Keystone Resort speakers. The young workers scanning lift tickets and passes all smiled in his direction and bopped with him. Kids giggled. Their parents wondered if the strange man was a beggar... More >>
• Best Place to Find Non-Ironic Mullets on Men
  The Grizzly Rose
  If you've got friends in low places, bring 'em on down to the Grizzly Rose. It's a country wonderland of a bar, complete with a mechanical bull and a stage where live acts perform weekly. Every day, the shit-kickin' saloon is filled with multiple mullet-man sightings -- but an event several... More >>
• Best Place to Find Non- Ironic Mullets on Women
  The Denver Detour
  In the spirit of mullet mania, we shine the spotlight on the lavender ladies who party hearty in the working-class-queero ambience of the Denver Detour. Sheila Keathley and her sporty staff have been slinging stiff drinks in this humble watering hole for the past 23 years. Fortunately, there's... More >>
• Best People-Watching
  Supreme Court
  The Supreme Court is a cross between a strip club and the tackiest of wedding receptions. Glowing neon signs in every window read "Live Music and Dancing." There are mirrors galore, with a wood dance floor in the midst of an otherwise tackily carpeted room. The bar seats are dominated by lonely,... More >>
• Best Place to See a Drunk Liberal
  Drinking Liberally
  Religion and politics: two topics that should never be broached while imbibing alcohol. The religion part is understandable, but sometimes you just need to get liquored up and bitch about W and his administration. Join up with like-minded ranters at Drinking Liberally to toss back some brewskis... More >>
• Best Place to See a Drunk Conservative
  Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Party
  The Golden-based Independence Institute believes in protecting an individual's right to do just about whatever bat-shit-crazy thing that individual wants to do -- including shooting, smoking and drinking. But since this is also a sadly responsible organization, it strongly suggests shooting... More >>
• Best Drunken Gang
  Geeks Who Drink
  Anyone who's been to one of Geeks Who Drink's seventeen weekly pub quizzes knows that quizmasters John Dicker and Joel Peach have created something far bigger than your average trivia night. They've got a gang situation on their hands, a mobile army of adoring geeks ravenous for a cerebral... More >>
• Best Canine Fashion Show
  Mutts & Models
  There's something so satisfying about the perfect outfit. And if that outfit happens to coordinate with one's pet – well, you don't see that every day. You can, however, see it once a year at Mutts & Models, the annual benefit for Harrison Memorial Animal Hospital. Featuring local celebrities... More >>
• Best Paper Fashions
  Paper Runway Fashion Show
  For budding fashionistas, nothing beats a paper doll. They're cheap, they come with an entire wardrobe of two-dimensional clothes, and if you're talented enough, you can make your own outfits. The Art Directors Club of Denver sees no reason to outlaw paper as a fabric substitute, and its Paper... More >>
• Best Secret Halloween Party
  Pumpkin Follies and Goat Show
  They like to keep it quiet down on Main Street in Littleton, but every October, downtown businesses and the locals gather the Pumpkin Follies and Goat Show, one of the most daft -- and clever -- Halloween parties on the planet. The two-day event begins with a goat-stew dinner and festive... More >>
• Best Kids' Birthday Party
  tRUNks
  As if tRUNks, Buntport Theater's ongoing live-theater serial for young people, weren't already the best thing to happen to Denver kids since chocolate milk, imagine what a great birthday party could be built around a performance. Reserve in advance with troupe ringleader Jessica Robblee, bring... More >>
• Best Family Freebie
  Target Free First Tuesday Nights
  What could be more brilliant than a free night at the Children's Museum? Catch some quality time with the kids from 4 to 8 p.m. every first Tuesday of the month, when the museum hosts guided play throughout the building and special literacy-building storytimes for children and their busy... More >>
• Best Free Entertainment
  La Piazza Dell'Arte
  For one weekend each June, Larimer Square becomes a giant canvas for chalk artists. Mimicking the street painting of sixteenth-century Renaissance Italy, dozens apply to the Larimer Arts Association for permission to create their masterpiece on some of Denver's highest-rent asphalt. The lucky... More >>
• Best New Outdoor Festival (3 Comments)
  SunStock
  Last year's inaugural SunStock music festival was R.C. Griffin Jr.'s effort to give acoustic rockers a place to showcase their musical stylings, a place that anyone could access free. A place to spread the love. The only rules were leave nothing but footprints, and hug someone at the festival... More >>
• Best Place to See a Rainstorm
  Red Rocks Amphitheatre
  It's rare that rain and concerts go well together. But at Red Rocks, the rain makes a beautiful backdrop. From the concrete seats, listeners get a view of clouds gathering over downtown Denver, and bands often keep playing while everyone watches the lightning strike in the background. Getting... More >>
• Best Annual Yuletide Celebration
  Golden
  Each Saturday morning from late November until Christmas, Golden stages a holiday parade that seems to have time-traveled from an earlier era. School groups, bands, equestrian troupes and more are frequent participants, marching a few blocks through the center of a town that somehow gets more... More >>
• Best Annual Celebration of Fall
  Famous Flamethrower's High Altitude Chili Cookoff Weekend
  At the end of August, Winter Park Resort gives you a perfect fall getaway with the Famous Flamethrower's High Altitude Chili Cookoff Weekend. It's a small, elite contest, and the winner earns the Rocky Mountain region's spot in the World Chili Cookoff. Meat and spice are all that's allowed -- no... More >>