America’s Funniest Home Videos: Salute to Romance (Shout Factory) Behind the Mask (Good Times) Broken Bridges (Paramount) Color of the Cross (Fox) Conversations With Other Women (Hart Sharp) Crank (Lions Gate) Everybody Says I’m Fine (BFS) Good Morning World (S’More) Hello Kitty’s Animation Theater: Complete Collection (ADV) Live Nude Girls…
It’s been 20 years since the first Castlevania bewitched gamers with its gothic horror. Twenty years of vampire hunters going fist to fang with Lord Dracula. With almost two dozen titles in the series, Castlevania is one of the most enduring and beloved game franchises of all time. Castlevania: Portrait…
Bandidas (Fox) This review is not long enough for a suitable treatment of the beauty of Penélope Cruz and Salma Hayek. The makers of Bandidas would certainly prefer I tried, though, than to discuss this plodding cliché of a western featuring the two. You could write the script right now…
Breaking the Mold. In 2003, Connecticut collector Virginia Vogel Mattern donated some 300 pieces of contemporary American Indian art to the Denver Art Museum. For one of the special shows inaugurating the new Frederic C. Hamilton Building, Native Arts curator Nancy Blomberg has selected over a hundred works for the…
In the last twenty years, the “Built Green” movement has gone mainstream, with big developers such as ForestCity at Stapleton promoting the environmentally friendly features being incorporated into their buildings. But a generation or two ago, only kooks or visionaries thought about such an issue. Here in Denver, we had…
There’s been a lot of talk about the burgeoning art scene in Denver, with dozens of venues featuring the work of hundreds of artists. The current culture boom is best exemplified by the strip of galleries that line Santa Fe Drive, an area that has been almost universally hailed as…
The Big Bang. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your entertainment dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang posits the following…
There’s a historic tension between science and religion — at least between science and literalistic, primitive religion — and it’s become especially virulent over the last decade or so. The schism has never made much sense: Some religious people find that scientific advances only feed their sense of wonder and…
What is natural, these days?” a lady dressing for the evening asks her maid, who finds Madame’s violet lipstick a bit too artificial. The year is 1939, the place Paris, after the Munich Conference’s false promises of peace and on the eve of Hitler’s deadly march across Europe. The lady’s…
At face value, Alpha Dog — based on a real-life story that’s still waiting for its ending — plays like an amped-up, drugged-out episode of Dragnet. In 2000, a gang of SoCal kids kidnapped and murdered fifteen-year-old Nicholas Markowitz, a soft-spoken boy from the San Fernando Valley who dreamed of…
Sitting in a strip mall in southeast Denver, Palace is surrounded by RV dealerships, bars that start serving at 7 a.m., used-car lots and dry cleaners. In this neighborhood, a good diner would not be shocking, nor would a couple of burrito places, maybe a decent joint for barbecue or…
Mama, please let your babies grow up to be cowboys. I’ve always had a thing for cowboys, so I should have known we were in trouble when we sat down in the Cowboy Bar — a temporary saloon that sets up in the Hall of Education basement during every Stock…
When I parked outside John Holly’s Asian Bistro (see review), I counted thirteen restaurants within my line of sight on Park Meadows Drive. Remarkably, most of these were local, not national chains: Brewery Bar III, Anthony’s Pizza, a sushi bar, a Japanese restaurant. Even more remarkable, a P.F. Chang’s China…
I’d been to John Holly’s Asian Bistro before. Several times. Since it opened three years ago, I’ve eaten in the slick, smooth dining room, waited in the entry for takeout orders of Yushan pork, steamed vegetables and sushi. But I never thought about reviewing the place until I spoke with…
Anti-Glacier Movement’s most obvious touchstone is Radiohead. Frontman Jesse Nesbitt evokes Thom Yorke’s signature croon better than most of his counterparts who’ve co-opted the British band’s eclectic, folk-influenced space rock sound. Anti-Glacier, though, goes beyond mere imitation. Instead of residing in the safe, warm environs charted by Yorke and company,…
Quick: Name three things that come from Denmark. Drawing a blank? You know, Denmark. It’s that little Scandinavian country that owns Greenland, used to reign in blood over vast swaths of northern Europe and until now has been known mostly for tasteful furniture design. Well, Danish metal quintet Mnemic (the…
Kayo Dot thrives at extremes. On its Tzadik debut, 2003’s Choir of the Eye, the act creates exhaustive, dynamic backdrops in which dense layers of distortion descend into exquisite, wistful excursions, like chaos dissolving into serenity — or something akin to dropping acid in a tunnel with Marshall stacks blaring…
A few short years ago, Jamie Foxx was the opposite of an award magnet — but that was before he won a Best Actor Oscar for the 2004 Ray Charles biopic Ray. Since then, he’s been nominated for five Grammys, including three this year: one for his contributions to “Georgia,”…
Erin Bode There’s a montage in Play Misty for Me in which Clint Eastwood and Donna Mills are seen walking on the beach, waves crashing behind them, then frolicking in the woods while Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” plays. The purity and beauty of the…
What happens when a bunch of Southern rockers from Augusta, Georgia, collide with Yes in a head-on train wreck? The Dixie Dregs. Formed in the late ’60s, the Dregs — originally known as Dixie Grit — mixed a heady blend of progressive jazz fusion with classical overtones and Allman Brothers-like…
Randy Newman hails from a family of film composers (uncles Lionel and Alfred were Hollywood heavyweights), so his success scoring Pixar blockbusters and other flicks is fitting. Too bad his cinematic achievements have put such a crimp in his career as a recording artist. He’s made some of the best…
Behold yet another worldwide reggae star that you’ve probably never heard of. Unfortunately, unless their name is Marley, Toots or Spear, most reggae artists typically go unnoticed by the masses. Beres Hammond falls into that category, in spite of a 35-year career that has made him a superstar in his…
