Making music has long served as therapy for Evanescence frontwoman Amy Lee — but when she gets down these days, she has other treatment options. In May she married Josh Hartzler, a professional therapist. As a result, she announces with a laugh, “I’m so healthy now, it’s crazy!” Lee’s known…
Love is a funny thing. It can open your eyes to beauty, truth and all the joy the world has to offer, and it can shield you from the all the ugliness and negativity. When love is fresh, thoughts of your beloved can also take over your every waking thought…
I probably listen to more Tom Waits songs in November than in any other month. “November,” with its somber imagery of dead leaves, shiny black ravens, cold rain and a moon that’s the color of bone. And “Martha,” which always tears me up not only because it’s incredibly poignant, but…
Jonathan Bitz has an unbridled enthusiasm for the music produced here, and a genuine passion for the musicians creating that music. That’s evident just from talking to him at shows or reading his pieces in Syntax, the ad-free literary-arts magazine that he’s been publishing on his own dime since 2004…
There are easy lunches and then there are really easy lunches. At the Corner Office, lunch is easy enough — a good menu (chicken and waffles!) in an interesting room, with excellent service. But lunch is even easier at McCormick’s Fish House & Bar, a place where you can stop…
In this space, I’ve dehumanized Denver’s homeless to a disgusting degree (The Ginn Mill, October 4), comparing them to open-sored, echolalic zombies worthy of scorn and contempt. I’ve also championed our city’s homeless (Star Bar, October 11), celebrating one man as a hardworking, down-on-his-luck type of guy worthy of my…
Most bars are so five minutes ago. While I love trying the trendy/beautiful-people spots, my attention span is shorter than the dresses on Dancing With the Stars. After I’ve experienced the shlock of the new, I’m usually on to the Next Big Thing or retreating to an old standby for…
There’s news in Cherry Creek, where Eric Laslow, formerly of Corridor 44 and Restaurant 4580, has just been named chef for the Iron Mountain Winery that will be opening in the space at 235 Fillmore Street, home to the original Mel’s. Although Iron Mountain’s owners announced that they would be…
On Friday at five-thirty, six, seven at night, The Corner Office is less a restaurant than a three-ring circus filled with liquored-up yuppies doing all their best tricks, elephantine captains of industry getting hot under the collar, fierce and beautiful female executives stalking the bar like lionesses in heels, and…
Clyfford Still Unveiled. A master and pioneer of mid-twentieth-century abstract expressionism, painter Clyfford Still was something of an eccentric in the artist-as-egomaniac stripe. His antisocial behavior led to a situation where 94 percent of his artworks remained together after he died — a staggeringly complete chronicle of his oeuvre that…
With the opening of the Denver Art Museum’s Hamilton Building last year and the unveiling of the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver last month, the city’s gallery owners have really stepped up to compete. The happy result has been a season crammed with first-rate offerings — something that wasn’t so common…
There’s nothing new about working at the intersection of art mediums, especially pieces that combine aspects of both painting and sculpture. Take, for instance, those bas-reliefs from antiquity. Since they are three-dimensional, they’re technically sculptures, but because they were meant to be viewed from one side only, they’re actually more…
For Better. Karen has just become engaged to Max. She’s met him face-to-face only once, but they’ve conducted a three-month relationship via cell-phone conversations, texting and instant messaging. Everyone in Karen’s small circle —- sister Francine, brother-in-law Michael, old friend Stuart (who’s secretly in love with her) and Francine’s best…
Sometimes I wonder if there’s a kind of thespian hell, in which actors who are clearly capable of so much more are stuck forever in stale shows as punishment for being bad in some way. If so, Plaid Tidings definitely qualifies. There are a few good things about this holiday…
Forget the 1950s play and movie about Anne Frank’s diary, the generations of schoolchildren assigned to read the book, the myths that have arisen around the image of Anne Frank herself, the controversies about the way she’s been represented. Just focus on Anne Frank’s words. After all these years —…
Angel-A (Sony) The Batman: The Complete Fourth Season (Warner Bros.) Bill Maher: The Decider (HBO) Broken (First Look) Chappelle’s Show: The Series Collection (Paramount) CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: The Complete Seventh Season (Paramount) Eric Clapton: Crossroads Guitar Festival 2007 (Rhino) Gene Simmons Family Jewels: The Complete Season 2 (A&E) Hairspray…
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse(Paramount) At last available on DVD, Eleanor Coppola’s 1991 documentary about her husband’s tumultuous trek downriver remains, easily, the best film ever about the making of a movie and unmaking of a man. Francis Ford Coppola thought he was going to spend 16 weeks in…
The unsettling tone is established early in Call of Duty 4, when the president of a Middle Eastern nation is publicly executed on the world stage, and you, the player, experience the deposed leader’s final minutes through his own eyes, witnessing — through the rear window of a car —…
Hard to believe that it’s been twenty years since the release of The Princess Bride, if only because it hasn’t aged a day — the mark of something truly, blessedly timeless. Bereft of the pop-culture gags that curdle the Shrek movies and absent the cynicism of most other kids’ films…
As one of what novelist Stephen King calls his Constant Readers, I was as jazzed as every other monster-lovin’ geek when word came that filmmaker Frank Darabont was making a movie of King’s classic novella The Mist. Adapting King’s The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999) brought the…
Something about that movie, though, well I just can’t get it out of my head/But I can’t remember why I was in it or what part I was supposed to play. — Bob Dylan, “Brownsville Girl” Literally speaking, Bob Dylan isn’t “there” in Todd Haynes’s staggering mix-tape biopic I’m Not…
October 20: Maranatha Christian Center Crusaders vs. Nederland Panthers W-I-N. That’s the acronym that head coach Aaron Jones has repeated for months to his high school football team, the Nederland Panthers, when they’ve needed to get their heads in the game. W-I-N: What’s Important Now. And what’s important right now…
