Record Deals

“It’s just an opportunity to get some stuff really cheap,” says Kathleen Martindale, coordinator of the no-frills KGNU Book and Music Fair and Artists and Their Crafts show taking place today. “Short of us having the radio turned on, I think the entertainment lies in the little bit of chaos…

DIY Redux

One of my favorite First Friday diversions is the monthly mini-shop hosted by clay sculptor Marie Ev.B Gibbons at her cozy EvB Studio Collection, nestled next door to the Oriental Theater, at 4343 West 44th Avenue. Gibbons invites art strollers to stop in and create a different miniature clay work…

Modern Made Fun

“The mid-century-modern style has been near and dear to my heart since I was a little kid watching The Jetsons,” says hostess Dana Cain. “Modern design is so popular in Colorado right now, and it seemed like the ultimate thing I could do for Denver,” she adds, explaining the motivation…

Reel World

Milan Records operates in a niche, yet its diverse boundaries seem endless: Specializing in film soundtracks, along with Latin, electronic and generally uncategorizable musical varieties, Milan embraces the ambient nature of music like no other label. Accordingly, a Milan-inspired film festival is a complete no-brainer: Such a purveyor of music…

Second Helping

During the first two years of Boulder’s International Fringe Festival, something about its “Pick of the Fringe” component didn’t seem right. A panel of judges chose the Fringe’s best works for an end-of-festival showcase, relying in part on audience votes that were prone to ballot-stuffing mischief — not the kind…

Talking Shop

Shoppers with an international flair can’t possibly miss today’s Global Market hosted by local Lutheran Family Services refugee and asylum programs. The market features an astounding outlay of exotic fair-trade goods that come from every corner of the earth, including the horn of Africa, southeast Asia, Central America and the…

Slippery Slope

“We got about a hundred feet by eight feet of painters’ tarp,” explains Dave Momper, “and we made an adult-sized Slip ‘n Slide. We stake it down at one end, and we get sprinkler heads arranged so the water’s landing on the slide. The secret is that you’ve gotta get…

Can You Dig It?

Most people are only interested in what’s inside their beer can. But most people aren’t members of the Brewery Collectibles Club of America (BCCA), the 4,000-member outfit that will hold its 37th annual CANvention today through September 1 at the Adam’s Mark Hotel, 1550 Court Place. Denver adman and beer…

Sketches

The American Landscape and Carny. Rule Gallery has typically presented single solos since landing in its new space several months ago, but this time, there are two different shows in that long and narrow sales room. The two work well together, though, as both are made up of photographs about…

Flow

Summer — especially as hot as this one’s been — strikes me as an odd time to be thinking about quilts, but that’s what’s on the mind of Judy Hagler, owner of Translations Gallery (773 Santa Fe Drive, 303-629-0713), in her new exhibit, Flow. Then again, the cloth pieces in…

Eames 100: This Is the Trick

Even though Shannon Corrigan has been at the helm of the Emmanuel Gallery on the Auraria campus for a couple of years now, there’s still something of a breath of fresh air to the place — and she’s apparently the one who’s brought it. Why Emmanuel needed air in the…

Now Playing

Sista’s and Storytellers. This is not a play, and it’s not exactly a cabaret act, either. It’s sort of a cross between a slumber party and a church service, as a group of women who sang together as children in a choir called the Heavenly Voices come together for a…

All in the Timing

Modern Muse has kicked off its new season with All In the Timing, six one-acts by David Ives, a witty, sometimes brilliant word-spinner. The plays are all about language, communication and understanding, and also chance and fate. The dialogue is light and funny and fizzy, and it gets your frontal…

Flanders

Eight years ago, the philosophy professor-turned-cineast Bruno Dumont debuted his sophomore feature at the Cannes Film Festival. Set in a banal French village on the northeastern coast, the plot involved an investigation by police superintendent Pharaon, a repressed, mouth-breathing mama’s boy, into the rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl…

2 Days in Paris

Back in 1995, Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise gave flesh to a Yank’s fantasy of worldly European womanhood: Julie Delpy’s Celine, a sprite who materialized on a passenger train for one sweet Viennese night of courtship and flirtation, as if willed from the fevered dreams above a thousand hostel beds. As…

Rocket Science

It seems fitting that a movie about debate competition should produce ambivalent feelings. As a master debater says early on in Jeffrey Blitz’s Rocket Science, a strong opinion is a luxury the great ones don’t allow themselves; it only gets in the way. What matters is being able to argue…

No End in Sight

Masterfully edited and cumulatively walloping, Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight turns the well-known details of our monstrously bungled Iraq War into an enraging, apocalyptic litany of fuckups. You may have already heard some or all of the absurd, shameful, appalling details that Ferguson collects and still be driven to…

The Nanny Diaries

Shortly after graduating from film school, I took a part-time job as the assistant to a successful movie and television director who told me I’d be handling a mix of personal and professional responsibilities. Not long after, I was put to work maintaining the good humor of the tenants at…

Cafe Jordano

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing simple, straightforward neighborhood Italian food. In fact, doing just that is a noble tradition that extends further back in this country’s history than does the impulse to slap down a bunch of white tablecloths, boot Dean and Louis Prima off the radio in favor…

Charlie Brown’s Bar & Grill

I’m pretty well sauced on Guinness by the time Sean and I get to Charlie Brown’s Bar & Grill (980 Grant Street). The eighty-odd-year-old bar tucked into the Colburn Hotel & Apartments — a famed ’40s hangout of Beat hipsters Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg — is packed,…

Sandwich Time

Last week I took a run out to the Montecito at 5970 South Holly Street in Greenwood Village, which is right next to Annabel’s, the other new joint owned by Mel and Jane Master. Chef Adam Mali has handed over day-to-day ops at the original Montecito, at 1120 East Sixth…

Cucina Colore

Stop giving him pork chops!” The woman is hissing, eyes flashing, using her mom voice on her husband, one arm thrown protectively over the top of the car seat set beside her on the banquette seat two tables down at Cucina Colore. “I’m not giving him pork chops. I’m giving…