American Dreams. Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid were among the first artists to embrace conceptual realism in the 1960s. Although the two no longer collaborate, American Dreams, at the Singer Gallery, focuses on a body of work they did in the 1990s. The paintings and collages combine images of George…
Bill Joseph, who died in 2003, is best remembered as a sculptor, and several of his pieces are prominently sited downtown. These include the Christopher Columbus monument in Civic Center Park, the bronze eagle on the United States Courthouse on Stout Street, and the Beaumont Fountain, west of Broadway on…
From the end of World War II through the 1970s, American culture hit one of those golden ages that dot the history of humanity every hundred years or so. The country’s wealth led to a renaissance in science, literature, drama, film, painting, sculpture, architecture and design. Accomplishments from this period…
Macbeth. Setting Macbeth in the old West should work. From what we know, eleventh-century Scotland was a violent and lawless place, a place where the dirty, drunken louts and desperate whores of our own frontier days would fit right in. Unfortunately, director Geoffrey Kent’s vision is far too literal and…
Karen has just gotten engaged to Max. She’s met him face-to-face only once, but they’ve conducted a three-month relationship via cell-phone conversations, text 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 friend, Lizzie…
The Best of the Colbert Report (Paramount) Blame It on Fidel! (Koch Lorber) Blood Car (TLA) The Crown Prince (Koch) Deck the Halls (Fox) Election (Tartan) Flight of the Conchords: The Complete First Season (HBO) Help!: Deluxe Edition (Capitol) I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (Universal) James Bond Ultimate…
Sesame Street: Old School Volume 2(Genius)On the heels of the Electric Company boxed sets, which were at once educational and groovy as all get-out, comes the latest in greatest hits from Sesame Street before the neighborhood was gentrified for Elmo’s protection. Chief among the copious highlights in this triple-disc acid…
Castlevania, the vampire-hunting series that stretches over twenty years and as many games, has basically two kinds of fans. There are the traditionalists, who’ve followed the games since they were straight-up action titles with thumb-busting combat and infamously steep difficulty curves. Most agree that the best of the old-school Castlevanias…
Banking on the career choices of Vince Vaughn garners increasingly erratic returns, which is ironic, given that he has finally settled on (or surrendered to) a consistent on-screen persona: his own bad self. Uneasy from the beginning, Vaughn avoided the superstardom that seemed within reach after Swingers by trying on…
Less a war drama than a set of dueling position papers, Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs may be the gabbiest movie ever made about American foreign policy — and it wasn’t even written by Aaron Sorkin. Hot young screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan is fresh off his alpha-male script for The…
A doom-ridden pulp cabalist with a dark sense of purpose as well as humor, Richard Kelly shoots the moon with his rich, strange and very funny sci-fi social satire, Southland Tales. Kelly’s debut, Donnie Darko, was the first post-millennial cult hit; his second feature, Southland Tales, achieved film maudit status…
If Forest City can’t sell its newest affordable townhomes at Stapleton, it will probably start building more low-income rentals, which the company committed to as part of its agreement with Denver. According to that plan, Stapleton should have 4,000 rental units by the time it is built out in 2020;…
Stapleton is big enough for everyone, but after five years, it’s having trouble making room for affordable homes. Last June, Nicoleta Nagel and her three-year-old daughter moved out of their rented apartment in Lowry and into a burgundy-colored condominium in Stapleton. For the 27-year-old Romanian immigrant, the second-story home didn’t…
Rather than mincing words, a November 4 editorial in the Denver Post sliced and diced its subject, Governor Bill Ritter — and Post kingpin Dean Singleton supplied the blade and did much of the carving. Two days earlier, on a Friday afternoon (a day and time when politicians often take…
The two women that Mike Gross had ordered from Craigslist were running late, and he suspected they might not show, so he found two more in the back of Westword. But the second duo’s phone number led him right back to the first pair he’d called, one of whom proceeded…
Dear Mexican: I like to think that I’m an open-minded sorta guy for a teenager. I fervently oppose racial stereotypes, though I do think they’re sometimes good for a laugh or two. I have several Mexican friends, and none of them live up to the “Mexican standard” of lawn-mowing, stupidity…
Loyal readers may recall my dear friend Brett, often referred to in these pages as “the law student.” He’s a full-fledged lawyer now — Mazel tov, Brett! Pay me the money you owe me, you cheap bastard — with a keen eye for injustice. And on a recent night on…
Colorado Rockies spokesman Jay Alves wasn’t returning a lot of calls last week, not with all those cranky people questioning his explanation that World Series ticket sales had been sabotaged by an “external malicious attack,” but Off Limits had left a message with these magic words: Steve Horner. Yes, at…
“Taking It to the Streets,” Jared Jacang Maher, October 25 THEY DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH I enjoy good political protests as much as the next lefty. But “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” That famous statement was made by a dead white male, so I…
In 1988, Westword published its fifth Best of Denver issue, a celebration of the city that saluted everything from the Best Band (the Subdudes, just going national) to the Best Hungry Young Band (Big Head Todd and the Monsters, long before they started singing Hillary Clinton’s song) to the Best…
You have to hand it to Boulder proto-hipster Waylon H. Lewis. In his five years in the niche publishing racket, the 33-year-old has managed to take a rather lackluster magazine concept – Yoga in the Rockies – and revamp it under the canopy of Elephant, a kind of post-new age…
Say you point out that’s something wrong in your workplace, and you get fired for it. Now say you happen to be a cop or a doctor or a rocket scientist, and the problem you’re pointing out could get somebody killed. Think you’ve got a constitutional right to speak your…
