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10) Internet Cat Video Festival Geeks love cats. Geeks love the Internet. This explains why there are so many Internet cat videos out there. What's harder to explain is why someone decided to take those videos and show them offline, but regardless of why it happened, let's all just admit we're glad it did. Join your fellow lovers of clever kitties for more than an hour of the web's finest felines, including a short program of local cat videos. Just don't be surprised if it makes you want to adopt a kitten.
The program screens Friday, August 1 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, August 2 at 2 and 9:30 p.m. at the Sie FilmCenter. Tickets are $10, or $7 for DFS members. For more info, visit the DFS Internet Cat Video Festival page.
9) Mars Science Laboratory Two Year Recap Curious about what Curiosity has accomplished over the past two years? Where better to get those answers, and maybe get your future astronauts excited about space, than at the Mars Science Laboratory Two Year Recap. Your guide to the stellar successes of the Curiosity Rover is Adam Pender, a Lockheed Martin engineer and Jet Propulsion Laboratory Solar System Ambassador who helped land the rover on the Martian surface, meaning you can't get closer to the source unless the thing itself could talk.The presentation starts at 7 p.m. Thursday, August 7 at the Lookout Mountain Nature Center. Admission is free, but you must preregister for the event.
8) Cruel Summer: 28 Days Later Cruel Summer's zombie madness wraps up with Danny Boyle's zombie apocalypse reimagining 28 Days Later (yes, it's a zombie movie, don't be pedantic). A man wakes up from a coma to find London deserted, except for a few survivors and a lot of pissed off, turbocharged zombies, making for one of the most unusual and artful zombie movies of all time. As usual, Cruel Summer impresario Theresa Mercado will have some movie themed souvenirs on hand, so get there early to get your hands on some and grab a good seat.
See 28 Days Later at 9 p.m. Tuesday, August 5 at Crash 45. Admission is free, but drinks aren't, so plan accordingly. For more information, visit the Cruel Summer Facebook page. Continue for seven more great geek events in August.
7) Tacticon The last major Denver Gamers Association event of the year is here, and it's a great one for hardcore gamers. Get your fill of board games, roleplaying games, miniatures games over four days of intensive tabletop fun. There's also a vendors room, to buy new games, and an auction, to sell off some old games and get some new-to-you stuff to take home. Throw in a handful of gaming industry guests and a kids con that runs alongside the main event, and you have a recipe for a weekend of power gaming the likes of which the world has never seen. Well, not since the DGA's last event, anyway.The games begin at 6 p.m. Thursday, August 28 at the Denver Radisson Southeast. Tickets start at $20 for a day pass. Buy tickets and find out more at the Denver Gamers Association website.
6) Doctor Who series 8 premiere Ready for your first look at the brand new Doctor in action? The Denver Film Society and Denver Comic Con have teamed up to make an event of it, showing the series 8 premiere on the big screen, and inviting fans to come in costume for a chance to win prizes. Whether you dress up or not, there's no better way to meet the new Doctor than with a legion of other fans, and if this one turns out to be the best yet, don't you want to say you were there when it all began?
The show starts at 6 p.m. Saturday, August 23 at the Sie FilmCenter. Admission is free, but seating is limited and allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis, so get there early. For more information, visit the DFS Doctor Who event page.
5) Six Artist Squid Works Comic Showcase Denver has a vibrant, thriving comics scene and collectives like Squid Works are a big part of that. For almost twenty years, the artists, writers and various comics creatives of Squid Works have been creating a diverse array of content in every medium under the wide umbrella of "comics," while helping foster a community for that work here in Denver. The work of half a dozen of those creators will be on display at the Six Artist Squid Works Comic Showcase, highlighting the latest works from Stan Yan, Dan Conner, Shane Rodriguez, Jake Roth, John Peters and Paul Niemiec. Between the six of them, they cover everything from slice-of-life realism to off-kilter takes on traditional superhero comics, offering a tantalizing cross section of what Denver's homegrown talent has to offer.Meet the artists and see their work at 7 p.m. Saturday, August 9 at Mutiny Information Cafe. Admission is free. For more information visit the Squid Works website.
Continue for four more great geek events in August.
4) Myths and Legends Con Not every fandom is big enough to have its own con, but that's why there are events like Myths and Legends Con. This year's event focuses on Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Firefly, Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, and My Little Pony. Gaming, cosplay and a couple of themed dances will fill your days and nights, and a bevy of authors and artists will be on hand to talk about their work.The con starts at 5 p.m. Friday, August 8 at the Ramada Plaza North. Tickets are $20 until Monday, August 4 and slightly higher at the door. For tickets and more information, including a full lineup of guests and a schedule, visit the Myths and Legends Con site.
3) RiffTrax Live: Godzilla Kaiju are back in the public eye, thanks to last year's Pacific Rim and this year's Godzilla reboot. What better time, then, to resurrect the god-awful '90s take on Godzilla for some serious ridicule? This is no off-brand movie riffing, either -- this is RiffTrax, made up of Mystery Science Theater 3000 alumni Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, performing live and simulcast out to theaters across the country. Matthew Broderick and his big, dumb lizard nemesis won't know what hit them.
See RiffTrax tackle Godzilla live at 7 p.m. Thursday, August 14 at a variety of theaters across the metro area, including the Denver Pavilions 15. Tickets are $12.50. For more information, visit the Fathom Events RiffTrax page.
2) The Complete Twin Peaks Program Ever wanted to see the entirety of cult legend Twin Peaks in a movie theater, over the course of a few days? Well, this is almost certainly your one and only chance. The Alamo Drafthouse is showing the whole damn thing -- the feature-length pilot, the entire series and the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me film -- over one week. That includes an overnight marathon of the whole damn series -- minus the pilot -- that has to be the most intense Twin Peaks experience humanly possible.
The program begins at 7 p.m. Thursday, August 14 with the pilot. Tickets are $10. It continues at noon Saturday, August 16 with the series marathon (expect to finish around 1 p.m. the next day). That event is free, though you'll need a $30 voucher, redeemable for food and drink, to save a seat (hey, it's not like you're going to go 24 hours with no other sustenance than David Lynch's fever dreams). Finally, wrap the whole thing up with Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me at 7 p.m. Wednesday, August 20. Tickets for that are $10.75. It all takes place at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas. For more information, visit the Alamo Drafthouse website.
1) Denver County Fair You'd be hard-pressed to find a county fair anywhere in the country geekier than the Denver County Fair. How geeky? Well, there's the robot opera, the zombie beauty pageant, a platoon of Stormtroopers and even a spelling bee. Pretty geeky. If you need a break from all that geekery, you've also got all the usual fair attractions -- animals, pie eating contests and the like -- plus an only-in-Colorado pot pavilion, because even geeks like to get high.
The fair starts Friday, August 1 at the National Western Complex. Tickets are $10 for the weekend. For more information, visit the Denver County Fair website.
