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• Best Free Entertainment

  Zombie Crawl

  The zombie zeitgeist is in full swing, spawning hit movies, best-selling novels and immensely profitable video games. Every city worth its salt has an annual zombie crawl, where zombie fans dress up as the undead and walk, en masse, among the unsuspecting populace. Denver, being particularly salty, has one of the biggest zombie crawls in the nation. The event celebrated… More >>

• Best Film Festival

  DocuWest

  Documentaries seem to always get the short end of the reel in the film world: Nobody wants to see Food, Inc. when they can see Avatar instead. But docs do make a difference in our world, and although most major film festivals include a documentary segment, there are just a handful of documentary-only film festivals in the country. We have… More >>

• Best Adult Spelling Bees

  Metro Denver Promotion of Letters

  As bee champs get older, do they keep their fine sense of spell? Find out for yourself at the monthly adult spelling bees hosted as fundraisers by Metro Denver Promotion of Letters, a non-profit teaching organization that provides free writing workshops for kids. Staged every third Thursday at the British Bulldog, 2052 Stout street,these beer-friendly bees are strictly for grownups,… More >>

• Best Gallery Show — Solo

  Halim Alkarim: The Witness Archive

  Iraqi-born Colorado artist Halim Alkarim is a true virtuoso. He's done gorgeous abstract paintings, stunning installations and, for his Robischon solo, The Witness Archive, hauntingly beautiful portraits in lambda prints on aluminum that are imbued with political content. The son of a critic of Saddam Hussein, Alkarim and his family (including his brother Sami, another gifted Colorado artist) suffered under… More >>

• Best Abstract Show by a Denver Artist

  Big Lots, Wendi Harford

  In Big Lots, a powerful — and beautiful — show, Denver artist Wendi Harford presented a range of stylistic approaches, with works anchored by everything from graffiti-like looping lines to rigid stripes. In fact, the only unifying factor was the size of the pieces, since Harford favored monumental over intimate; her taste in color was notable, too. Harford was a… More >>

• Best Design Show

  Streams of Modernism

  Guest curators Katherine and Michael McCoy took over the two main exhibition spaces on the first floor of the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, transforming them into a history lesson on the development of modern design. Using some spectacular pieces from the Kirkland's permanent collection, the McCoys walked visitors through the twentieth-century. The show began with the likes… More >>

• Best Actress in a Musical

  Regan Linton, Man of La Mancha

  To the character of Aldonza, the tavern maid whom Don Quixote mistakes for the Lady Dulcinea, Regan Linton brought a lovely voice and strong acting chops, all animated by an incandescent fire. The scene in which Aldonza is raped by the regulars at the tavern is always ugly, but the way Linton — who's wheelchair-bound — played it will be… More >>

• Best Directorial Achievement

  Israel Hicks

  With last spring's Radio Golf at the Denver Center Theatre Company, director Israel Hicks completed August Wilson's magnificent ten-play cycle, which took audiences on a decade-by-decade journey through the black experience in the United States during the twentieth century. Over the years, Hicks had assembled an extraordinary array of acting talent for these rich, multi-textured productions, and Radio Golf was… More >>

• Best Unsung Arts Series

  Newman Center for the Performing Arts

  Not only is the Newman Center a jewel box of a venue, with its three intimate performance spaces and elegant balconied plaza, but it also plays host to one of the finest college concert series nobody ever heard of, thanks to the often adventurous programming of center director Stephen Seifert. In a world where such arts mainstays as dance and… More >>

• Best Side Trip by a Pop Band

  Flobots.org

  In the public realm, they go by the names Jonny 5, Brer Rabbit and Andy Rok, but off stage, Flobots Jamie Laurie, Stephen Brackett and Andy Guerrero are looking for ways to put their ideas to work on a more human level. Through their non-profit Flobots.org, the local-rock-band-made-good brings some of the power back to the people by offering at-risk… More >>

• Best Audio-Visual Performer

  CacheFlowe

  On the audio side, CacheFlowe produces dense, intelligent and profoundly weird music. His style incorporates IDM, glitch, dubstep and hip-hop to create a beat-driven, brain-warping and brilliantly creative sound. Then he adds custom, real-time-generated visuals, synced to and driven by his music via custom software he wrote himself. The result is an incredible audio-visual synthesis that will make you wonder… More >>

• Best Hip-Hop Producer

  Boonie Mayfield

  How dope are Boonie Mayfield's beats? Consider this: Mr. J. Medeiros from the Procussions sought out Boon Doc (aka Solomon Vaughn) after stumbling across a clip of him rocking his MPC on YouTube one morning. Medeiros ended up working with Boon on his five-song EP, The Art of Broken Glass, and last summer the burgeoning producer pretty much slayed the… More >>

• Best Concert

  My Bloody Valentine

  No band could possibly live up to the hype surrounding My Bloody Valentine's landmark recording, 1991's Loveless, in a live setting, but Kevin Shields and company come close. Somehow, their handful of 2009 North American dates included a gig in Denver, and after a rocky start in the house mix, My Bloody Valentine performed a show that was, at times,… More >>

• Best Musical Re-Partnership

  Le Divorce

  Not nearly enough people remember the band Facade. The act was a charming mixture of dream pop and jazz that played low-key shows for a couple of years right after the turn of the millennium. Then the band's singer, Kitty Vincent, dropped out of music for the better part of the decade, while guitarist Joe Grobelny went on to Jet… More >>

• Best Unxpected New Venue

  Theory + Practice - CLOSED

  Like some kind of superhero venue, Theory + Practice lives a double life. By day, it masquerades as an art gallery, but once night falls and a sound system and a few lights are added, it transforms into the sweetest underground dance venue in town. It has a central location, nice acoustics, a fine floor for dancing — and it's… More >>

• Best Dance Club

  Beta

  You want a top-notch clubbing experience in Denver, Beta is the first place you should look. It's been around long enough now to lose that new-club smell, but it's still got an unbeatable tandem of the finest sound system and best talent bookers in town. That means you're going to see the world's best DJs and dance artists here, and… More >>

• Best Halloween in a Cemetery

  Halloween Cemetery Tour and Spirits of Riverside Art Show

  When the Friends of Historic Riverside Cemetery wanted to raise money to help restore Denver's oldest cemetery to its former splendor, they brought a host of historical city figures back to life on Halloween. Period-clad reenactors revived such characters as Sand Creek Massacre good guy Silas Soule, turn-of-the-century temperance worker and police matron Sadie Likens, African-American social climbers Barney and… More >>

• Best Day of the Dead in a Cemetery

  Dia de los Muertos

  Where better to celebrate the Day of the Dead than in an actual cemetery, right beside the holiday's honorees? The Chicano Arts and Humanities Council and Denver muertos artist Jerry Vigil put on a grave event worthy of the ancestors in Crown Hill Cemetery last November, complete with a sugar skull workshop for kids, Aztec dancing, mariachi music, fiesta food… More >>

• Best Movie Theater -- Food

  Cinebarre

  Popcorn and hot dogs might be classic cinema foods, but sometimes you hunger for more. And for those times, Cinebarre is the place to go. The Thornton theater offers first-run movies with a full menu (and bar!). There's nothing too fancy on the menu -- just pizza, burgers, sandwiches, salads, desserts and appetizers -- but it offers a solid selection… More >>

• Best Artistic Reuse of a Historic Building

  Mirada Fine Art Gallery

  Back in the '20s, when the foothills town of Indian Hills was marketed as a "mountain getaway" for Denver's elite, George Olinger erected the Indian Hills Trading Post to serve as a general store, post office and sales office for the new community, which quickly gained a reputation as an artists' colony. Today the renovated building again welcomes artists, as… More >>

• Best Gallery Show — Duet

  Monroe Hodder and Michael Clapper

  In order to present two solos in the same space, William Havu Gallery often pairs a painter with a sculptor. This approach was stunningly successful when Monroe Hodder: Painting Metabolism!, a show of gorgeous post-minimalist paintings, was put together with Michael Clapper: New Sculptures, an equally stunning exhibit of abstract three-dimensional works. Monroe Hodder, who divides her time between London… More >>

• Best Members' Show

  You of All People! Here of All Places!

  RedLine was founded by Laura Merage, an artist as well as arts supporter, and the facility combines studio space with one of the most impressive exhibition galleries in the region. Though there hasn't been a regular schedule of shows here, many of the exhibits have been first-rate — and that was certainly the case with You of All People! Here… More >>

• Best Set Design

  Indiana, Indiana

  For weeks before Indiana, Indiana opened, Buntport Theater Company was on Facebook, asking for Mason jars. From the moment you entered the theater, you could see why: The entire back wall of the set was composed of glass jars. These were filled with objects representing aspects of the protagonist's past: corks, dried leaves, yarn, used teabags, buttons, seed pods, sticks,… More >>

• Best Actor in a One-Man Show

  Steven Burge, Fully Committed

  Steven Burge was a charmer in Fully Committed, a one-man show about Sam, a hapless employee manning the phones in the grubby basement of one of New York's snobbiest restaurants, the kind of place where Diane Sawyer competes with supermodel — and vegan — Naomi Campbell for a table. In addition to playing Sam in this Aurora Fox production, Burge… More >>

• Best Theatrical Event

  New Play Summit

  For three days in February, playwrights, critics, actors, theater lovers and theater professionals thronged the Denver Center Theatre Company complex, watching staged readings, attending performances, listening to panel discussions and holding animated debates of their own over breakfast pastries or lunchtime salads and sandwiches. The Denver Center's New Play Summit, which got its start in 2006, becomes more sophisticated and… More >>

• Best Venue for Dance/Avant-Garde

  Packing House Center for the Arts - CLOSED

  Patrick Mueller of Control Group Productions (and its home, the Packing House Center for the Arts) thinks Denver hasn't been living dangerously enough — at least in its arts offerings. He aims to fill the gap by booking more challenging, fringe-style performance programming, from Butoh to multimedia to theater to Control Group's own Dance Night for Beginners series, which blends… More >>

• Best Ongoing Rise to Stardom

  Pictureplane

  After his remixing of a HEALTH track a couple of years ago, the ascent of Travis Egedy, who performs under the Pictureplane moniker, to national and even international renown would have been hard to predict. Dark Rift, his 2009 album, made it onto playlists far from Egedy's immediate group of friends. But despite the attention he's received for his own… More >>

• Best Music Documentary Produced by Coloradans

  Wesley Willis's Joy Rides

  Chris Bagley and Kim Shively befriended Wesley Willis when he briefly made Denver his home in the early part of the last decade. Fortunately, they had the foresight to shoot footage of the legendary artist and songwriter as he charmed everyone he met. Culled from five years of meticulously edited footage, including interviews with Willis's family and friends in Chicago… More >>

• Best CD Packaging

  Punchline, Boulder Acoustic Society

  Punchline's DIY 3D View-Master wasn't exactly a boon to the listening experience — but it was really freaking cool. Contained in a standard-sized case, the album could be folded into a viewfinder through which you could view photos of the band popping out at you. And given how little reason there is to buy an actual, physical CD these days,… More >>

• Best Local Concert

  3OH!3

  What a Christmas present! A week before we all gathered together to commemorate our contributions to mass consumption and consumerism, the Mile High City was treated to a Holy Night of an entirely different order — an all-local bill at the Fillmore Auditorium. Who would've thought we'd live to see the day? Proving that Denver is truly a special place,… More >>

• Best Second Act

  Jim McTurnan and The Kids That Killed the Man

  With well-received appearances at Monolith and CMJ for its sixth and seventh shows, respectively, it's safe to say that former Cat-A-Tac frontman Jim McTurnan has gone from good with that group to better with his new band, The Kids That Killed the Man. This time around, McTurnan is writing catchier songs that hit harder. Maybe it's the freedom of having… More >>

• Best Old Venue Makeover

  Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom/Cervantes' Other Side

  When partners Duncan Goodman, Joshua Sonnenberg, Jeff Howell and Scott Morrill bought Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom and the adjoining Quixote's (now known as Cervantes' Other Side) from the Bianchi brothers last October, they immediately started making improvements in both places. And we're talking about a lot more than a new coat of paint and new decor. The partners went all out,… More >>

• Best Jukebox

  Gabor's - CLOSED

  The jukebox at Gabor's is one of our favorites for price alone, since the staff fills it with credits so often it's as good as free. But this juke also holds some killer platters: from staples like Johnny Cash's Live at Folsom Prison and the Stones' Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! to Tom Waits's Rain Dogs and Lou Reed's Transformer. And… More >>

• Best New Tradition

  Lumberjack Pub Crawl

  Kiki Nichols had a very good reason for putting together 2009's inaugural Lumberjack Pub Crawl: "I think it sounds fun to dress up like woodsmen and march down Colfax," she told us. And fun it was, complete with Paul Bunyans, a big blue ox named Babe (or two), fake stubble and more flannel than you could shake a hatchet at.… More >>

• Best Holiday Lighting

  Hudson Holiday

  Let there be light! Although several spots around town have holiday light shows, the Museum of Outdoor Art-sponsored extravaganza at Hudson Gardens outshines the rest. Conceived and designed by MOA resident wizard Lonnie Hanzon, Hudson Holiday one-ups everybody else with its artsy attention to detail, whimsy and spectacle that combine to create an experience that's funny (one of its more… More >>

• Best Movie Theater -- Drink

  Mayan Theatre

  Next time you sit down to enjoy Hollywood's finest, why abuse your teeth with high-fructose corn syrup when you can abuse your liver with high-octane ethanol? The Mayan offers a great selection of beer, wine and cocktails to help wash down your next flick. And your designated driver gets pampered, too: This theater offers some of the best coffee and… More >>

• Best Public Art Save

  Boardman Robinson Mural

  In 1940, Colorado artist Boardman Robinson created a fabulous 6' x 12' painting for the then-two-year-old Englewood post office, where the mural's been on display ever since. Late last year, though, the U.S. Postal Service suggested that this office might be closed and its operations consolidated with other locations — which meant that the Boardman might go the way of… More >>

• Best Gallery Show — Group

  Collective Nouns

  Faculty shows don't often rise to greatness, but few college faculties have the artistic talent and range of Metropolitan State College of Denver. In fact, Metro is Colorado's biggest art school. So when the college's mini-museum, the Center for Visual Art, decided to do a show dedicated to its instructors last spring, it had nearly fifty faculty members to choose… More >>

• Best Show About the Intersection of Art and Race

  Floyd Tunson: Remix

  The role of African art in the development of modernism in the early twentieth century is a well-known story. With Floyd Tunson: Remix, Colorado artist Floyd Tunson, himself African-American, turned that story on its head — or at least its side. He painted dead-on copies of famous Picassos and Matisses, put them up sideways, then inserted exact replicas of racist… More >>

• Best Theater Production

  Slut Energy Theory

  Jazz singer René Marie's self-written, one-woman tour de force packed an emotional wallop that lingered in your mind long after the show had closed. For Slut Energy Theory, Marie created a stubborn, vulnerable, tough-minded protagonist called U'Dean who carried in her mind and body the scars of her father's sexual abuse. Having conjured up U'Dean from somewhere deep in her… More >>

• Best Supporting Actor in a Drama

  Harvy Blanks, Radio Golf

  In Radio Golf, the home that once belonged to Aunt Ester, a centuries-old repository of the black American experience, is to be demolished to make way for development, but itinerant worker Sterling Johnson refuses to let that happen. As played by Harvy Blanks, Johnson is one of August Wilson's garrulous holy fools. Needling, wheedling, playing the buffoon or cutting off… More >>

• Best Return to the Denver Stage

  Chris Whyde Die! Mommie Die!

  Who knows where Chris Whyde disappeared to for three years, but with Die! Mommie Die!, he made a sensational re-entry onto the Denver scene as Angela, a murderous Bette Davis/Joan Crawford-type diva. His was an impersonation that even those ladies might have liked: He had every intonation, queenly gesture, dignified turn of the head and changing flicker of expression down… More >>

• Best Flight School

  Frequent Flyers Aerial Dance Studio

  Frequent Flyers founder Nancy Smith took a flying leap by opening the doors of a spanking new aerial dance facility and school. Smith, who's been flying through the air with the greatest of ease in Boulder for more than twenty years, started the new year by beefing up her class schedule with a daily curriculum for all ages, increasing community-outreach… More >>

• Best Denver Anthem

  "O, Queen City," Houses

  The warmest love letter to Denver put to tape this year is also its truest. "O, Queen City" begins with a pair of guitars in no particular rush and feels more and more like the perfect day in the Mile High City with every passing bar. The song is about stopping by Denver on the way to a beach destination… More >>

• Best New Music Zine

  Infested With Ugly

  With the Internet pretty much taking over where independent publishing once reigned supreme, it's refreshing when anyone puts out a new print publication — much less one done in the grand tradition of the photocopied, stapled, black-and-white zine, like Infested With Ugly. True to form, Infested With Ugly focuses on parts of the local punk scene that virtually no one… More >>

• Best Evidence That Giving Music Away Pays Off

  Pretty Lights

  Five consecutive sellouts at every major theater in the state. Five! On his own, or as the headliner: Aggie Theatre, Boulder Theater, Fox Theatre, Gothic Theatre, Ogden Theatre. Yeah, Derek Vincent Smith, who performs under the Pretty Lights moniker, is pretty much playing with the house's money at this point. While the recording industry scrambles to figure out just how… More >>

• Best Free Concert

  Twist & Shout

  Couldn't get tickets to see Matt Morris at the Bluebird? Couldn't find a babysitter in time to make it to the Flobots show at the Ogden? Not to worry: Twist & Shout has you covered with a full calendar of in-store performances featuring the most laudable locals — everyone from Rose Hill Drive to DeVotchKa to Paper Bird. And they… More >>

• Best Farewell Show

  Everything Absent or Distorted (a love story)

  The members of Everything Absent or Distorted always played like they were going down in flames, so when they finally did, it was quite the spectacle — never mind that the breakup was for logistical reasons and totally amicable. So maybe there was a little too much booze, and maybe some of it got on some electronics, and that might… More >>

• Best Mid-Sized Venue Makeover

  1stBank Center

  When AEG Live first announced that it had partnered with Kroenke Sports Enterprises to manage the Broomfield Events Center, a far-flung venue with a checkered history, skeptics wondered how the partners would turn it into a choice destination. Still, history has shown that, under the direction of Chuck Morris, AEG Live can transform Commerce City soccer fields into a prime… More >>

• Best Eye Candy in a Ladies' Room Line

  Cactus Jack's Saloon

  In 1938, Frank Sinatra was 23 years old — and much better-looking than you might imagine, judging from the mug shot snapped in Bergen County, New Jersey, where he'd seduced "a single woman of good repute...under the promise of marriage," according to the arrest report. Back then, that kind of hanky-panky could get you thrown in jail — but Sinatra… More >>

• Best Dance Lessons for Zombies

  Thriller Dance Workshops

  Zombies are not only dancing in the streets, but they're doing it like pros, thanks to DanzArtz' series of Thriller-specific Guerilla Thrilla classes that teach Michael Jackson's classic video dance sequence step by step to anyone willing to offer up their time and the class fee. On Halloween night, close to 250 students donned zombie togs and makeup and danced… More >>

• Best Holiday Lighting — Amateur Division

  Alek Komarnitsky

  Clark Griswold, eat your heart out. If it's Halloween or Christmas, you can be sure that Alek Komarnitsky has bedecked his Lafayette home with the most incredible light display around. After he caught flak in 2004 for tricking visitors to www.komar.org into thinking they could control his Christmas light show (it was an elaborate online hoax), Komarnitsky figured out a… More >>

• Best Movie Theater -- Programming

  Starz FilmCenter

  If your interest in film extends at all past Hollywood's latest remakes, explosion showcases and toy commercials, you're probably already a regular of Starz FilmCenter. The menu runs the gamut from foreign gems to the best of local indie cinema, with stops at all points in between. It also offers great regular programs, including the GLBT-focused Cinema Q and Doc… More >>

• Best New Public Art

  "Un Corrido Para la Gente"

  Carlos Frésquez was part of this city's burgeoning Chicano artists' movement of the '70s and '80s, creating works that specifically referred to the Mexican-American experience. In the '90s, he started to conflate the dreams of Aztlán with postmodernism, and his paintings grew into installations, setting the stage for his latest triumph, "Un Corrido Para la Gente." This funky piece, the… More >>

• Best Historic Art Show — Solo

  Allen True's West

  Though they are neighbors, the Denver Public Library, the Denver Art Museum and the Colorado History Museum rarely cooperate on programs — but Allen True's West, highlighting the career of one of Denver's most important artists, was one of those rare win-win-win collaborations. True's chosen subject was the way the American West was rapidly changing before his eyes, and the… More >>

• Best Show About the Intersection of Art and Commerce

  Colin Livingston: The Big Idea

  One of the area's most clever young artists, Colin Livingston has been pondering art as commodity. In pursuing this, he's done all kinds of conceptual works — including having clients pick from sets of palettes, patterns, logos and slogans, becoming full partners in his paintings. With this show, he pushed the idea even further by creating an installation that aped… More >>

• Best Actor in a Drama

  William Hahn, Opus

  Dorian is a brilliant but unstable musician, the most troublesome member of the musical quartet featured in Opus, a man who seems to channel Mozart when he plays. In the Curious Theatre Company production of this play, Hahn brought his usual intensity to the role, but he also gave the character an out-of-world quality, the dreaminess of a man lost… More >>

• Best Supporting Actress in a Drama

  Erica Sarzin-Borillo, Eccentricities of a Nightingale

  Among all the characters in Eccentricities of a Nightingale, a passionate, sometimes overwrought play, the protagonist's insane mother comes closest to old-style Southern Gothic, and Erica Sarzin-Borillo played her large and theatrical in this Germinal Stage Denver production. But she also acted with such precision and emotional richness that her very staginess hinted at inarticulable and otherwise unreachable truths.… More >>

• Best Debut on a Denver Stage

  Aluminous Collective - CLOSED

  After rehearsing for eleven months, Aluminous Collective — a company formed by director Colleen Mylott and a group of onetime Naropa students — brought Charles Mee's Big Love to Denver. It's a fascinating play: The plot, liberally based on Aeschylus, concerns fifty sisters who have been promised by their fathers to fifty grooms and have fled from Greece to Italy… More >>

• Best Burlesque Comeback

  Black Box Burlesque

  Last summer, the women behind Black Box Burlesque — Reyna Von Vett, aka Cora Vette, and Westword contributor Michelle Baldwin, aka Vivienne VaVoom — experienced some issues with the space they'd been renting at the Denver Civic Theatre. And by "experienced some issues," we mean they paid $2,500 in monthly rent to the facility's sub-leaser, and when said sub-leaser was… More >>

• Best Thematic Music Anthology

  Denver Show and Tell Project

  Lindsay Thorson of Dream Wagon isn't exactly a household name. For that matter, she's not that well known, even in Denver's underground scene. But she deserves to be, for her innovative Denver Show and Tell Project alone. Launched in May 2008, the project took shape as Thorsen solicited songs from fellow musicians, offering different themes each month. So far, the… More >>

• Best Music Blog

  One Track Mind

  We love music. We love free stuff. So it stands to reason that Danny de Zaya's One Track Mind has become a daily destination around here. Every day, One Track Mind offers a free, legal MP3 download of a new track from some hot new band or artist, in styles ranging from electronic to indie. Every track is reviewed and… More >>

• Best Self-Promotion Gimmick

  Online World Tour Candy Claws

  The world is getting wise to the ways of the big labels, and the ways aren't working, anyway. Which paves the way for enterprising little bands like Candy Claws, which started with the one thing you absolutely must have before any self-promotion technique has a shot: great music. In the Dream of the Sea Life, released last year, is a… More >>

• Best DIY Festival

  Titwrench

  Sarah Slater, a longtime stalwart of the underground music scene, was the mastermind behind Titwrench, a completely independent festival featuring musical projects in which women had strong, if not always exclusive, creative input, and featuring experimental projects from Colorado and beyond. The enthusiasm of the crowds each night was infectious, and attendance was strong even though there was another music… More >>

• Best Near-Reunion

  Murder Ranks and Get Your Going

  Since the infamous Warlock Pinchers broke up in 1992, it's been rare to find Daniel Wanush and Andrew Novick in the same room. Still, the split apparently didn't involve much acrimony, because in September, Novick's Get Your Going project performed Crispin Glover songs with a puppet show on the same bill as Wanush's heavy dub band, Murder Ranks. After the… More >>

• Best Club Night

  The Solution

  Over the past three years, DJs Low Key and Sounds Supreme (aka Justin Green and Nate Watters) have built the Solution, their underground hip-hop night, into the best weekly party in town. The club night got its start at Milk, then moved to the Funky Buddha, and recently relocated to the roomier Bar Standard, where the DJs can make good… More >>

• Best Bar Art

  Lion's Lair

  There's always been plenty to say about the Lion's Lair. From the artists on the stage to the cast of characters who occupy its dark corners at all hours, the Lair is one of Denver's most storied haunts. Yet the conversation got more interesting when Matthew Hunter, the Lair's longtime manager, launched a bi-monthly series of art exhibitions last spring.… More >>

• Best Use of Fire and Congas

  Colorado Fire Tribe

  There are some seriously badass hippies hanging out at Confluence Park on Sunday nights. If you never thought you'd see the words "hippie" and "badass" in the same sentence, well, you have no idea how awesome things can get in a hurry when you give half the hippie crowd hand drums and the other half fire. These informal Colorado Fire… More >>

• Best Film Program

  The Watching Hour

  Every Friday and Saturday night at ten, Denver Film Society programming manager Keith Garcia brings in what he calls "the cooler films," films that don't always get the exposure they deserve. The Watching Hour incorporates all corners of offbeat cinema, including sub-series of zombie films and Ozploitation movies, the original Italian Inglorious Bastards, an archival print of the Dario Argento… More >>

• Best New Public Art Downtown

  "Trade Deficit"

  Long before they got their nicknames, the historic neighborhoods of LoDo and RiNo were defined by the railroads that brought commerce to Denver. That heritage creates the perfect conceptual tie-in for Joseph Riché's "Trade Deficit," a three-part sculpture spread near Broadway between Blake and Lawrence streets, with the most successful portion on Blake. For all three, Riché used discarded freight… More >>

• Best Historic Art Show -- Duet

  Edward and Donna Marecak, Z Art Department

  Artists Edward and Donna Marecak were major modernists: He was an idiosyncratic painter and she was a master potter. With the help of gallery director Paul Hughes, Z Art Department owner Randy Roberts tapped the estates of the couple to create a pair of intertwined retrospectives that showed just how great the talents of the late artists were. The Marecaks… More >>

• Best Show About the Intersection of Art and High Fashion

  Mary Ehrin: Rockspace

  Artist Mary Ehrin, a protegé of Clark Richert, made her initial claim to fame with feather paintings, one of which is in the Denver Art Museum's collection. In recent years, she's turned to installations of three-dimensional objects that, like those earlier works, refer to stylish garments and accessories. In Mary Ehrin: Rockspace, at Rule Gallery, viewers passed through a lattice-work… More >>

• Best Actress in a Drama

  Kathleen M. Brady, Well

  What a pleasure to see Kathleen Brady in a role worthy of her abundant talents. In the semi-autobiographical Well, playwright Lisa Kron explores her own mother's long-term debilitating, unclassifiable illness or persistent hypochondria (take your pick). As the actress representing Lisa tells her story, the mother herself appears in all her disheveled warmth, passion and humor to kvetch, talk to… More >>

• Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy

  Marcus Waterman, Yankee Tavern

  Real-life conspiracy theorists tend to be boring people with bad breath who trap you in corners to expound endlessly on the actual author of Shakespeare's plays and how the CIA staged 9/11. But Yankee Tavern's Ray is way funnier and more ironic. He talks to ghosts, hates Starbucks and the facial-tissue industry, and carries a moon rock in his pocket… More >>

• Best Theater Season

  Boulder's Dinner Theatre

  Dinner theaters aren't called on to worship at the altar of art, but rather to satisfy down-home audiences looking for anxiety-free entertainment: families, young couples, church groups, business groups, people celebrating birthdays and anniversaries. But Boulder's Dinner Theatre nimbly accomplishes the two-step between commercialism and creativity, mounting summer productions filled with adorable kids; old chestnuts that reliably fill the house;… More >>

• Best Blossoming Relationship

  Swallow Hill Music Association and Denver Botanic Gardens

  The Denver Botanic Gardens boasts one of the most beautiful — and intimate — open-air concert halls in the city, where it hosts its annual summer music series under the stars. Tickets can be pricey and hard to come by, but they're well worth the effort. And who better to choose the performers for such an exclusive venue than Swallow… More >>

• Best Slice of Recorded Music Out of Colorado

  Local Shakedown Vol. 3 Radio 1190

  Like the previous compilations in this series produced by Radio 1190, Local Shakedown Vol. 3 is both a labor of love and a love letter to the underground scene. Everything in this collection — from Magic Cyclops's faux-commercial introduction to the debut of a true hip-hop act with Time's "Cockroach Goddess" to previously unreleased tracks by Cowboy Curse and Bad… More >>

• Best Band Blog

  Plain Pictures

  Travis Egedy of Pictureplane writes blogs like he makes music: weird and like he's floating in outer space and ridiculously optimistic. It's good for contextualizing his music, sure, but it was also here that we first heard about Die Antwoord and Lil B's "I'm God." Plain Pictures is one-stop shopping for obscure mixtapes, confessions of a crush on Kristin Stewart,… More >>

• Best Corpse Paint on a Band That Doesn't Play Black Metal

  The Widow's Bane

  Painting your face to look like the ghoulish visage of a pasty, rotting cadaver has long been the province of death-obsessed, Scandinavian black-metal bands. The practice, though, dates back to '80s punk legends the Misfits — which is probably where Boulder's the Widow's Bane got the idea. But here's the funny thing: While clearly drawing inspiration from the bleaker side… More >>

• Best Show Completely Enshrouded in Fog

  Sunn O)))

  Avant-garde metal band Sunn O))) finally came to Denver and played a packed house at the Bluebird. Before the show, the stage crew filled the theater with a nearly impenetrable layer of fog; those lucky enough to make it to the foot of the stage could see the mighty Attila Csihar of Mayhem come on stage dressed alternately as a… More >>

• Best Place to Learn to Be a Rock Star

  Mike Marchant's Songwriting Workshop

  Mike Marchant is a ridiculous talent as a songwriter, guitarist and general gangly badass. Fortunately for the rest of us, he's willing to share, both as a member of umpteen Denver bands, including Houses and Widowers, and as the host of a songwriting workshop at the Meadowlark. Every other Monday, Marchant leads an informal conversation about the making of music.… More >>

• Best New Club

  Casselman's Bar & Venue

  In the year since Adam and Andrew Ranes opened Casselman's Bar & Venue, it's gone from a 9,000-square-foot space with a lot of potential to an outstanding, multi-use venue that's equally inviting whether it's being used for live music or corporate events. While the back room, which was a distribution warehouse for the May Company in the '40s and '50s,… More >>

• Best Restaurant for Seeing Local Musicians

  City, O' City

  Being in a rock-and-roll band typically doesn't pay the bills, and it seems like half of Denver's musicians earn their keep at either City, O' City or its sister restaurant, WaterCourse. And those who don't work here come here, anyway: Chella Negro has a song called "City O'," in honor of her time at this restaurant. We're not sure if… More >>

• Best Performance by Colorado in a Film

  Crested Butte, Avatar

  We know what you're thinking: Avatar didn't take place in Crested Butte, it was set on some far-off mystery planet that exists only in the computers used to animate it! That's true. But as University of Colorado teacher and Crested Butte resident David Rothman points out, there are enough coincidences between the movie's plot and the town's history to make… More >>

• Best Language Lovers' Meetings

  Word Nerds, Fresh City Life

  There are nerds, and then there are all the subsets of nerds: comic-book geeks, music freaks, LARPers and word nerds, of course, which is why the Denver Public Library's Fresh City Life program has devoted the last Wednesday of every month to epic throwdowns of the Scrabble variety. From 5 to 8 p.m. at Novo Coffee, word lovers can try… More >>

• Best Museum Shop

  Denver Art Museum

  Perhaps the most successful space in the controversial Frederic C. Hamilton Building is the new Denver Art Museum shop built into the formerly bleak and cavernous lobby. Roth Sheppard Architects, one of the city's most distinguished firms, did an undeniably brilliant job of using all those dramatic glass and canted walls — and then the museum did an equally commendable… More >>

• Best Historic Art Show -- Group

  100+ Years of Colorado Art, Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities

  Over the past several years, Hugh Grant, the founder of Denver's Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, has been enthusiastically collecting art by historic Colorado artists; in the process, he's turned his institution into the principal depository of paintings, sculptures and works on paper by the state's impressive roster of artists. Not only that, but he's become Colorado's most… More >>

• Best Show About the Effects of Mind-Altering Drugs

  The Psychedelic Experience

  Back in the '60s, when boomers began to experiment with drugs, particularly LSD, the effect was labeled "psychedelic" — and the altered perception colored the psychedelic posters used to promote concerts. A half-century later, those posters are considered art — and the Denver Art Museum has become a major collector of them, as revealed by The Psychedelic Experience, a super-popular… More >>

• Best Actor in a Comedy

  John Arp, The Skin of Our Teeth

  The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder's play about human history, apocalypse and a whole lot more, is tricky to pull off, with its illogical, non-linear plot and crazy mixing of comedy and profound seriousness. The Aurora Fox production owed its success largely to the performance of John Arp as Antrobus, the prototypical human male at the center of the… More >>

• Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy

  Hannah Duggan, Indiana, Indiana

  Hannah Duggan gets better every year. We could single her out for the high-heeled, mustachioed nurse she played in The World Is Mine, but we think recognition is really due for her versatile, smart, funny acting in Indiana, Indiana, the Buntport production in which she doubled as a nurturing mother and the touching, slightly mentally unhinged young love interest, Opal.… More >>

• Best Theater Booster

  Chip Walton

  Over the years, there have been hits and misses at Curious Theatre Company, transformative plays that vibrated in your mind long after you'd seen them and others that slipped instantly into oblivion — or that you wished you could send there. Nonetheless, Curious is the most consistently interesting and risk-taking company in Denver, and that's because founder Chip Walton is… More >>

• Best Promoter

  Sub.Mission

  The measure of a great promoter is simple: Do they bring in killer talent that you otherwise wouldn't see? When it comes to Sub.Mission, the answer is unequivocally yes. Now in its third year, this outfit is largely responsible for the dubstep scene in Denver. Sub.Mission has brought in names like Caspa, Skream and Shackleton, exposing longtime bass heads and… More >>

• Best Colorado Music Retrospective

  Rocky Mountain Low

  Dalton Lawrence Rasmussen should be given a key to the city for this detailed and encyclopedic compendium of Colorado underground music of the late '70s. Tracking down the songs and having them remastered took Rasmussen years, but all his effort paid off. The availability of Rocky Mountain Low on vinyl salutes an era when you could listen to these songs… More >>

• Best New Recording

  Summer EP, Houses

  From the instant you hear Summer, Houses sounds familiar. Maybe that's enough, and you'll be whoa-oh-ing in seconds. And even if you're skeptical of this level of warmth, of retro pop music this golden, there's no resisting the second of the band's three seasonal EPs. Andy Hamilton hits the perfect balance in these songs: They're generous without being naive, sweet… More >>

• Best New Band

  Snake Rattle Rattle Snake

  Since its name suggests motion and lethal grace, it shouldn't be surprising that this band — which includes former members of Monofog, Red Cloud and Space Team Electra — would make music to match. Arch lyrics accompanying dynamic polyrhythms and hazily incandescent atmospheres combine in vibrantly fluid songs that are a marvel in blended contradictions. Frontwoman Hayley Helmericks cuts a… More >>

• Best All-Local Covers Show

  Denver Does Denver

  Many bands do shows where they cover famous acts. But Denver Does Denver featured local bands covering the songs of other local bands. Across two venues and over several hours, you could hear Mike Marchant covering "Sleepy Shoes," by the Pseudo Dates, Pictureplane covering "Punk Bitch," by 3OH!3, Married in Berdichev covering Milton Melvin Croissant III and vice versa, and… More >>

• Best Open Stage

  The Meadowlark

  With a rotating cast of noteworthy curators, Tuesday night's open stage at the Meadowlark has seen its fair share of subpar or nascent talent. More often than not, though, you'll catch a diamond in the rough or an established musician testing out new material on a crowd that's far above coffeehouse class. This is one of the few outlets where… More >>

• Best Blues Club

  Blues & Greens Restaurant

  Dubbed "Boulder's Home of the Blues," Blues & Greens Restaurant (which was formerly Skinny Jay's Pizza) really qualifies as Colorado's Home of the Blues. One of the few spots on the Front Range dedicated primarily to the blues, Blues & Greens takes that dedication seriously. Almost every night of the week, it brings in fine local talent like the Delta… More >>

• Best Place to Watch Day Turn Into Night

  Carioca Cafe (Bar Bar)

  It's fascinating to watch how the clientele at the Carioca Cafe, better known as Bar Bar, changes over the course of a day (and three happy hours) — especially when this classic dive, one of the last left downtown, brings in live music. Get there a few hours before a gig and you'll find some of Denver's finest barflies, a… More >>

• Best Performance by a Coloradan in a Film

  Amy Adams, Sunshine Cleaning

  Amy Adams, Castle Rock's finest export, has already received considerable critical acclaim, netting Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for roles in Junebug, Doubt and Enchanted. In 2009's Sunshine Cleaning, though, she showed that she could carry a film single-handedly. The film, about a single mother who starts her own crime-scene clean-up business, was too quirky for its own good, never… More >>

• Best Road Poets

  Ken Arkind and Panama Soweto

  Ken Arkind and Panama Soweto dropkick the notion that you can't make a living as a poet. You just have to be a really good poet. Arkind and Soweto, who have ruled Denver's slam scene for years, are both National Poetry Slam champions, a credential that brings calls from universities, clubs and venues. As the Dynamic Duo, this two-man team… More >>

• Best Museum Exhibit

  Embrace!

  Since coming to the Denver Art Museum from Germany, director Christoph Heinrich has been a workaholic, refitting the permanent-collection galleries devoted to modern and contemporary art and putting together a couple of major shows, including Embrace!, an over-the-top, pull-out-all-the-stops installation that's garnered national attention. The title reflects his goal of having artists embrace the revolutionary interior of the four-story Hamilton… More >>

• Best Show About a Little-Known Denver Master

  Paul Gillis: Curiouser

  Paul Gillis is an artist's artist who toils away in his studio, creating quirky, cartoonish paintings and watercolors — but rarely exhibits them. Realizing that, Simon Zalkind, one of Denver's most gifted curators, mounted a show devoted to pieces that Gillis had done over the last dozen years, almost none of which had been displayed before. Although the works are… More >>

• Best Blues Jam

  Eugene Sings the Blues

  Sure, Eugene Carthen can sing the blues. Hell, dude's been honing his pipes since he was four years old, singing gospel through high school and performing with various R&B groups since then. While he regularly gigs around town as Eugene Sings the Blues, he also hosts a Wednesday-night blues jam at Herb's, where players join the listeners packing the bar's… More >>

• Best Actress in a Comedy

  Billie McBride, The Skin of Our Teeth

  The Antrobus family represents all of humanity in The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder's strange, 1940s play about the end of the world, and the playwright clearly saw Mrs. Antrobus as a conventional housewife. But in Billie McBride's hands, she was less a submissive helpmate than a woman intent on protecting her family, and so strong in her beliefs… More >>

• Best Supporting Actor in a Musical

  Scott Beyette, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

  Scott Beyette's lisping, daft and desperate William Barfee was the highlight of the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a sweet, silly musical about competitive kids. In this Boulder's Dinner Theatre production, Beyette (who's also been doing some excellent directing at BDT) pulled off the neat trick of being hyper-funny and completely over the top while still communicating all the… More >>

• Best Theater Booster, RIP

  Jeffrey Nickelson - CLOSED

  Jeffrey Nickelson founded Shadow Theatre Company on a $500 gift in 1997, kept it going on a shoestring, moved it into a fine new home in Aurora two years ago, resigned abruptly last summer and, shortly thereafter, died of a heart attack. Since then, the company has dissolved in a welter of accusation and counter-accusation. Nickelson may never have been… More >>

• Best Indie-Rock Elder Statesman

  Aaron Hobbs

  Singer/guitarist Aaron Hobbs isn't any older than many musicians who started making their mark around town in the '90s. But his first band, Small Dog Frenzy, crafted an indie-rock racket that's undergone many reincarnations since, an unbroken string of excellence that includes the projects Acrobat Down, Hobbs NM and, currently, Popwreck. Hobbs's raspy, catchy anthems have served as a model… More >>

• Best Place to Catch an Emo Version of "Wonderwall"

  The Key of D

  A few years ago, video whiz Tony Shawcross and his merry multimedia pranksters took over Denver's public-access TV channels and re-branded them Denver Open Media, in an attempt to revolutionize what had become boring and bland. There's no better proof of their success than The Key of D, an interactive music show that Shawcross hosts on Comcast channel 56 every… More >>

• Best Hip-Hop Mixtape

  The Format, FOE & DJ Awhat

  In a crowded field of standout releases from some of the city's finest MCs and DJs, The Format, a mixtape by FOE and DJ Awhat, quickly rose to the head of the class — and that's saying a lot, because many of those mixes are hot as hell. Gliding on top of dense electro backdrops fashioned from borrowed beats put… More >>

• Best New Hip-Hop Act

  Air Dubai

  Air Dubai, which began life as a hip-hop duo and showed tons of potential right out of the gate with its debut long player, 2008's The Early October, has made an absolutely stunning transformation. From the sounds of the act's latest tune, "I Know How," recorded at Coupe Studios with studio time the group earned through a recent University of… More >>

• Best Barely Recognizable Cover Song

  "Subbacultcha," The Lovely and Talented

  Many bands are content with learning the chords and melody of one of their favorite songs, then getting up on stage and pumping it out. The so-called faithful cover song is often a cop-out or just plain filler — but not in the hands of JT Nolan of the Lovely and Talented. He decided to put a hot-jazz spin on… More >>

• Best Karaoke Bar

  Charlie Brown's Bar & Grill

  Good karaoke bars need several things: cheap booze, a thick songbook, a DJ capable of inflating your ego, a no-cuts-no-butts-no-coconuts method of choosing singers and, perhaps most important, a loyal following of wannabe Axl Roses who will sing along to the lyrics of almost anything and cheer you on while you do the Vanilla Ice dance during instrumental breaks. Charlie… More >>

• Best Jazz Jam

  Jazz Expo

  When guitarist Cole Rudy started his every-other-Monday Jazz Expo nights at the Meadowlark, he was looking to re-create the backyard jams he'd enjoyed with his music-school friends. Some of those friends are now part of a rotating cast that includes gypsy-jazz guitarist M'hamed El Menjra, trumpeter Gabe Mervine and alto saxophonist Matt Pitts. Whether they're burning through standards or collectively… More >>

• Best Actress in a One-Woman Show

  Ethelyn Friend, Calamity

  Yes, there was a man on stage in Calamity _ a musician supposedly hired by Calamity Jane for the crazed, disorganized Wild West show with which she attempted to eke out a living later in life — but he served primarily as a foil for the drunken, obscenity-spewing, self-pitying, self-destructive creature Jane had become. This was essentially a one-woman show,… More >>

• Best Free Movie Series

  Ubisububi Room

  The tiny, intimate Ubisububi Room, in the basement of the Thin Man, has quietly become home to the best free film series in town. Curated by Gio and Carmela Toninelo, the Ubisububi has turned Wednesday nights into a chance to see programs featuring everything from sci-fi classics to indie romances, frequently with a seasonal twist (expect to see horror movies… More >>

• Best Poets for a Captive Audience

  Captured Words/Free Thoughts

  Residents of the Denver Women's Correctional Facility have a lot of time to think — and they show that they've put that time to very good use in Captured Words, a collection of poems, stories and essays that they wrote in the fall of 2009, when a group from the University of Colorado Denver visited the facility every week to… More >>

• Best Museum Show — Solo

  Rex Ray

  San Francisco artist Rex Ray, who used to live in Colorado, has become a hot property over the past few years. Fortunately, Denver is one of the spots where his remarkable signature style is regularly highlighted. Ray's work riffs on mid-century modern, using organic shapes in cut paper arranged in the manner of abstract landscapes. For most of 2009, a… More >>

• Best Abstract Show by an Out-of-Towner

  Barnaby Furnas: Floods

  New York artist Barnaby Furnas, who's achieved international fame over the past ten years, made his local debut this year at MCA Denver in a show put together by new director Adam Lerner. Handsomely ensconced in the Large Works Gallery, Barnaby Furnas: Floods included a handful of the artist's remarkable — and sometime huge — acrylic paintings. Furnas considers himself… More >>

• Best Sculpture Show

  Charles Parson: Personal Echoes on the Horizon

  Foothills Art Center typically presents group shows, but last summer the entire place — even the Carol and Don Dickinson Sculpture Garden — was given over to a fabulous solo that delved into the abstract and conceptual sculptures and installations of the legendary Charles Parson. The pieces outside were a trio of gongs in the form of hieratically composed tubular… More >>

• Best Actor in a Musical

  Leonard Barrett, Man of La Mancha

  Leonard Barrett is a jazz singer, which meant he brought new shadings to the familiar songs of Man of La Mancha, an old warhorse of a musical, soaring on the title song and giving "The Impossible Dream" just enough originality to make it unsentimental and fresh. Barely recognizable as Don Quixote in his thick, old-man makeup, yet masterful, powerful and… More >>

• Best Reason to See Long Day's Journey Into Night

  Jim Hunt

  Long Day's Journey Into Night, Eugene O'Neill's most famous masterpiece, is talky and long, and although Paragon's production was pretty good, watching it felt a bit like fulfilling an onerous school assignment or being trapped in a bar by a self-pitying, whiskey-breathed old fart who won't shut up. But Jim Hunt, who played paterfamilias James Tyrone, redeemed the evening with… More >>

• Best Boulder Theater Booster, RIP

  Frank Georgianna

  Frank Georgianna almost single-handedly kept theater alive in Boulder, founding Boulder Rep and staging classics, new plays and musicals during a period when almost nothing else theatrical was happening in that small town. Then Donovan Marley discovered Georgianna's talents as an actor and director, and for several years he worked with the Denver Center Theatre Company. Devoted to Lee Strasberg's… More >>

• Best Promoter Turned Musician

  Matt Fecher

  Ever since he moved here from Indiana a few years ago, Matt Fecher has demonstrated that he possesses exceptional sensibilities. Say what you will about Fecher — he strikes some folks as a little too cool for school — the guy definitely has a great set of ears. Witness his knack for pulling in stars of tomorrow for the Monolith… More >>

• Best Music Video Director

  Eric Heights

  Although Eric Heights hangs his hat in L.A. these days, his heart is still very much in the Mile High City, judging from the videos he's produced for so many Denver artists. From his most recent work with Spoke in Wordz and ManeRok to past clips for Ichiban, 3 the Hardway, The Pirate Signal and Deca, Heights has used his… More >>

• Best Hip-Hop Album

  CPR, Fresh Breath Committee

  The Fresh Breath Committee lives up to its early promise by delivering an engaging album imbued with a classic feel and brimming with fluid grooves and compelling beats. Featuring a stable of stellar MCs who could easily turn heads on their own, the Fresh Breath crew manages to shine individually without stepping all over one another. Lyrically, the Committee has… More >>

• Best Band With the Worst Name

  The Foot

  The Foot: Great band with a lousy name that doesn't come close to describing the music — unless, of course, it's some sort of subtle reference to an ass-kicking or something. Because then the name makes complete sense. Fortunately, these guys put far more thought, time and effort into their music than their handle, and it shows. Primary Colors, the… More >>

• Best Band Reinvention

  Action Packed Thrill Ride

  Always a fine band with an exciting live show, Action Packed Thrill Ride became can't-miss by smoothing some of the rough edges and leaning away from country and toward rock and roll. Now the band's shows are as much fun as its name. The group recorded a new EP, Best I've Felt, and offered it for free as a download… More >>

• Best Clearing-the-Air Act

  Paris Wine Bar

  Since the state's smoking ban was introduced several years ago, longtime coffeehouse Paris on the Platte and the adjoining Paris Wine Bar were among the only places where people could legally smoke in the city. Near the end of 2009, though, owner Faye Maguire made the tough decision to go smoke-free. But she did more than clear the air; she… More >>

• Best Jazz Club

  Dazzle Restaurant — Lounge

  There's a reason that Dazzle keeps winning awards, a reason that Downbeat magazine rates this spot as one of the top 100 jazz clubs in the world: Dazzle keeps getting it right. Seven days a week, you can count on the club to bring in stellar talent, whether it's a high-caliber national act along the lines of Tom Harrell, Bill… More >>

• Best Singer-Songwriter

  Nathaniel Rateliff

  Nathaniel Rateliff has been an undeniable presence on the local scene for years, from fronting the critically lauded Born in the Flood to, more recently, serving as the driving creative force of the Wheel. With Flood, Rateliff's expressive vocals added a layer of distinction to already stirring indie-rock compositions. When he's on his own, though, his captivating voice — which… More >>