Arts, Entertainment, and Media

New Denver shows: MGMT, Luke Bryan and Jack Johnson. Tickets on sale this weekend

After a being out of the limelight for a spell, MGMT is back with a new record and ready to hit the road. The outfit, who is slated to release its new album in August, is set to headline the Fillmore Auditorium on Friday, September 6. Tickets ($35) go on sale on Saturday, June 22 at 10 a.m. Keep rea ... More >>

How Bill Maher and Russell Brand helped me nurse a broken heart at the JFL Comedy Fest

Comedy festivals are the perfect antidote to a nasty breakup. Not only because laughing activates several different sections of the brain, strengthening neurons that lead to insight and emotional balance, but because so many comedians love to bitch about heartbreak. Like Morrissey records or the fil ... More >>

The ten most disappointing metal albums

In the darkest recesses of the metal world, truly shitty albums lurk. Now, these albums aren't necessarily 100 percent shitty (there may still be some redeeming music to be found), but they are certainly incredibly disappointing, particularly given the otherwise worthiness of their creators. Plug yo ... More >>

Riot Fest Denver lineup revealed

Wowers. The Riot Fest Denver lineup was just revealed, and if you haven't seen it yet, brace yourself. It's pretty stellar. Headliners include a reunited version of the Replacements, along with Iggy and the Stooges, Guided By Voices, Yo La Tengo, Rocket from the Crypt, Superchunk, the Dismemberment ... More >>

Tracy Morgan on drugs, Richard Pryor and the stigma of TV comedy

While he may be world-famous and seven years sober, the streets of Bed-Stuy Brooklyn still ring in the voice of Tracy Morgan. Coming from a childhood of poverty and crack-dealing, Morgan built a respectable career in standup, performing on HBO's Def Comedy Jam before reaching TV mega-stardom on Satu ... More >>

Photos: Book of Mormon tickets are a hot item again in person and online

The people who lined up outside the Seawell Grand Ballroom to purchase tickets for The Book Of Mormon's second Denver run may have been the lucky ones. At least they could hold onto their purchases. But dozens, if not hundreds of people, who tried to buy online at the Denver Center for the Performin ... More >>

Betsy Tobin's METAPHOR examines the intricacies of human relationships

In each piece of theater she creates, Betsy Tobin tries to find an unusual way to present her work. For her newest show, METAPHOR, she delves into the complicated realm of relationships using circus arts, puppetry, video projects and more to portray the tangled webs woven by human interaction. In a ... More >>

Denver Zoo: Meet Billy, the male elephant who will make his home here later this summer

Look out, lady elephants of North America! A new hunk is headed your way. Billy the elephant is scheduled to arrive at the Denver Zoo later this summer. The five-year-old will come from the Antwerpen Zoo in Belgium, where he was called Budi. But Denver already has an elephant named Bodhi -- and t ... More >>

Jeff Scroggins & Colorado

Western Branches
Self-released

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The ten horniest metal bands

Getting laid is one of the perks of the trade. Guys form bands with the sole goal of getting their bananas peeled. Most metal dudes are satisfied with groupies every night, but some just can't get enough of the jiggly bits and the furry monsters, so they end up singing about sex on top of that. That ... More >>

To actresses of a certain age: Go bad or go home

Ten more (un)likely signings for Cash Money

Cash Money Records, the label founded by Bryan "Baby/Birdman" Williams in 1991, rose to prominence in the hip-hop scene with its signing of the Hot Boys, consisting of B.G., Young Turk, Lil' Wayne and Juvenile. Since then, the group has become one of rap's premier labels, having piggybacked Lil Wayn ... More >>

Ten rappers and the artistic movements they exemplify

Stylistically, rap has exploded, and the pieces fall everywhere from the mind-bogglingly complex to the unbelievably simple, from the brazenly dissident to the unapologetically mainstream. Rappers' influences seem to come from everywhere, but the stylistic differences between an Aesop Rock and a 2 C ... More >>

The ten best hip-hop shows in Denver in June

GETO BOYS @ SUMMIT MUSIC HALL | SAT, 6/22/13 When it comes to the history of hip-hop in the Dirty South, it begins with Geto Boys and their self-titled, Rick Rubin-produced debut. The group had existed, though with a different cast, since '86, but it wasn't until the turn of the decade -- when it go ... More >>

Alice Cooper on how Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali and Elvis are probably, definitely, aliens

Alice Cooper is a shock rock pioneer that's influenced countless artists with his on stage horror movie imagery and antics, which included hangings and beheadings by guillotine. Theatrics aside, Cooper (aka Vincent Furnier) is also a talented songwriter. Hits like "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out" and ... More >>

The ten best concerts to see in Denver this week

ALICE COOPER & MARILYN MANSON @ RED ROCKS | MON, 6/3/13 Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson at Red Rocks. Sweet Jesus! How this totally obvious and sure-to-be-awesome pairing has not happened before now is anybody's guess. The music world's O.G. shock rocker and his direct artistic descendent are slated ... More >>

The ten best concerts in Denver this weekend

ALABAMA SHAKES @ RED ROCKS | SUN, 6/2/13 Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes has a powerful and mesmerizing voice and she sings with an impassioned believability that sounds like she has experienced a fuller life than her young years could hope to contain. Her earthy vocals and the band's solid, vibra ... More >>

Joan Baez on her time in Denver and what it took to finally get over her stage fright

It took decades, but Joan Baez has finally overcome her stage fright. The legendary folk singer and activist, who initially found fame during the folk renaissance of the 1960s, partnering with Bob Dylan on stage and fighting for a wide range of causes into the '70s, '80s and '90s, says she's discove ... More >>

The five best jazz shows in Denver this June

TRIBUTE TO CHET BAKER @ DAZZLE | WED, 6/5 Last month marked the 25th anniversary of legendary trumpeter Chet Baker's death after falling out of a hotel room window in Amsterdam. So in honor of Baker's life, local trumpeter Justin Peterson is presenting a new concert series, "I Miss You, Chet," in wh ... More >>

Poet Noah Eli Gordon on his wild new collection, The Year of the Rooster

Noah Eli Gordon's newest book is hard to pin down. And why would you want to? The Year of the Rooster, out now on Ahsahta Press, is best understood through experience rather than painstaking analysis. It's wild and flowing, playing with gender pronouns, musical imagery, and poetic forms to create a ... More >>

Two interesting new shows bend reality into representational art

See also: Photos: Realism shows bring fine art to life at Kirkland and Goodwin galleries

The ten geekiest metal bands

Geeks love metal more than the computers on which they listen to it. They yearn for heavy metal that was forged by Orcs in the mountains of Mordor, smuggled halfway across the universe on Serenity and then discovered by Silver Surfer while scouting for delicious planets. These bands aren't necessari ... More >>

Photos: Ten biggest Hollywood movie misses filmed in Colorado

We've been surveying Hollywood's relationship with our fair state via picks for the ten best movies filmed in Colorado, plus ten memorable movies set in Colorado but not filmed here and the ten most awesomely cheesy Colorado movies. Today, it's the ten biggest Hollywood movie misses shot in Colorado ... More >>

Arrested Development Season 4: Relax, it's not terrible

After ingesting almost nine straight hours of the newly revived Arrested Development series, I've come to two conclusions: 1) The cast and creators of AD still got it, and 2) This show was made for hermetic losers like me. The "story of a wealthy family who lost everything" was nothing but a mild cr ... More >>

Photos: Top ten movies filmed in Colorado

Our Melanie Asmar has been reporting about efforts to attract more moviemakers to Colorado -- and one great selling point is to check out the classics that have been partly filmed here over the years. Below, count down our ten favorites, as culled from the flicks listed on the FilmInColorado.com we ... More >>

Nathan Dunlap or number 89148: Was Hickenlooper right not to use killer's name?

When Governor John Hickenlooper announced yesterday that he's offering a reprieve to Nathan Dunlap, who was convicted in 1996 of killing four people at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant, he never uttered Dunlap's name. Instead, he chose to call him "offender number 89148," reasoning that he'd already go ... More >>

Vulgar auteurism and Justin Lin

Return of the Titans

The Winner and Still the Tramp

The ten best concerts to see in Denver this week

TURBONEGRO @ OGDEN THEATRE | MON, 5/20/13 In 1989, when Norwegian band Turbonegro got together, it was clearly fueled by a love of Alice Cooper and acts like Hanoi Rocks and the Stooges. You can hear the influence in songs like "Sell Your Body (To the Night)," which features an obvious guitar-riff n ... More >>

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As thriving as South Broadway is today, it wasn't always that way -- the Mayan was almost razed

These days, South Broadway is a thriving nightlife district that has undergone a cavalcade of changes in the past few years. As much of a makeover as the strip has had, though, not everybody's stoked with the changes. If you've logged on to Facebook, you've no doubt seen posts from some people expre ... More >>

Clear Creek Rapidgrass Music Festival lineup

Dig your bluegrass? Banjos and mandolins make your heart swell? Great. You're gonna love this shindig: two days of banjo goodness up in the hills. Clear Creek Rapidgrass is slated to go down on the first weekend of July at the Shelly/ Quinn Baseball Fields in Idaho Springs on Friday, July 5 and Satu ... More >>

Scrambled Eggheads

Calling all Jane Austen fans! The sold-out Sense & Sensibility The Musical adds a date

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen fans will find a way to experience her work -- and now Denver has another option. After the Stage Theatre at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts sold out the entire run of Sense & Sensibility: The Musical, the troupe has added one more da ... More >>

Prairie dog poisonings not the only things angering Stapleton residents

This week's feature, "The Dogs of War," reports on the ongoing campaign to manage -- and, in some cases, exterminate with poison -- prairie dog colonies in the emerging Stapleton community. Master developer Forest City and city park managers are battling to protect natural-looking (but not quite nat ... More >>

Pusha T

Tuesday, May 14, Ogden Theatre, 888-929-7849.

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The Watching Hour launches summer series with Requiem for a Dream

On the surface, Darren Aronofsky's bleak masterpiece Requiem for a Dream, the screwball musical nun-comedy of Sister Act and a spaghetti Western from Thailand don't have much in common. In the eyes of Denver Film Society programming director Keith Garcia, they all share one important trait: They're ... More >>

Benjamin's Buttons

Do drugs make musicians more creative?

Do drugs fuel creativity? Is an addled mind essential to making great music? Does sobriety cause creative impotence? What if Jimi Hendrix had suddenly decided to enter a twelve-step program? Would Are You Experienced? have sucked? To answer this nagging question, you have to take a look at rock's re ... More >>

A rundown of the rap world's favorite drugs

Drug culture isn't relegated exclusively to rock, obviously. For its part, the rap game is equally loaded with drug references of all kinds, from Promethazine and DMT to LSD and PCP, and likewise addled with its own cautionary tales and fatalities. While there's nothing as concrete to suggest that d ... More >>

The ten best concerts to see in Denver this week

SHABAZZ PALACES @ LARIMER LOUNGE | MON, 5/6/13 In the first half of the '90s, Ishmael Butler went by the moniker "Butterfly" as part of the rap trio Digable Planets. After the outfit's 1995 split, the group performed one-off shows here and there, but since 2009, Butler has released music with Tendai ... More >>

Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company announces eighth season -- including a world premiere

The Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company has just announced its upcoming season, the eighth for this troupe, and it's an intriguing one that includes three regional premieres and one significant capture: And the Sun Stood Still, a play about Copernicus and his struggle to publish On the Revolutions of t ... More >>

Ten best hip-hop shows in Denver this month

FLOBOTS @ AGGIE THEATRE | FRI, 5/3/13 Half a decade after releasing the platinum single "Handlebars," which made rounds on radios across the country, the Flobots have grown significantly, both as a musical group and as a philanthropic force within the Denver community. Since parting ways with Univer ... More >>

Zac Brown Band's Jimmy De Martini on genre-bending country songs

The Body Electric Poetry Film Festival celebrates the merging of two art forms

The idea for The Body Electric Poetry Film Festival began when poet and filmmaker R.W. Perkins realized he was the guy who could make it happen. "I'm a video poet and had a lot of success with my stuff overseas -- I was noticing a lot of really talented filmmakers being showcased in Germany and the ... More >>

Space Jam