Producer Joel Dorn, who founded the superb revival label 32 Jazz, is giving jazz collectors two more shots of the real thing (and the rare thing) with his initial releases on Label M. From the dusty archives of Baltimore’s old Left Bank Jazz Society, he’s plucked a wealth of jazz…
The 23rd Denver International Film Festival leaves the gate Thursday with an opening-night screening at the Buell Theatre of David Mamet’s State and Main. How appropriate. The playwright/filmmaker’s latest effort is a comedy about the effects of a film crew’s visit on a quiet Vermont village; it stars Alec Baldwin,…
Behold the ancient rituals of autumn. The sting of just-rubbed wintergreen oil catches in the nostrils. Two tall quarterbacks kneel facing each other, soft-tossing spirals, while a lean wide receiver yanks on a pair of black Adidas sport gloves, then balls them into fists. Weariness mingles with anticipation as a…
Some may find reason to embrace the romantic comedy Woman on Top as the nonsensical, sweet-tempered fantasy of two South American filmmakers who don’t understand life in this country very well but grasp all the magical powers of Brazil. After all, Brazil ranks second only to fashionable Tibet on every…
Mythology tends to obliterate hard work. The progress of John Coltrane through the popular imagination — tenor of his time, transcendentalist, martyr — often fails to acknowledge the agonies of his development. As the troubled saxophonist (Dexter Gordon!) in the exemplary jazz film Round Midnight tells us: “You don’t pick…
If Tiger Woods knows what’s good for him, he’ll keep an eye on the Wongluekiet twins. That’s because ten, twelve, maybe fifteen years from now, Aree Song Wongluekiet or his brother, Naree Song, might sneak up on Tiger and snatch away first-place money at, say, the $35 million Arnold Palmer…
The strange love affair that rules Patrice Leconte’s Girl on the Bridge is full of old-fashioned European art-movie attractions. The young heroine, Adele (pop singer and Chanel model Vanessa Paradis), is a delicate, doe-eyed woman-child who can’t tell love from sex and is so melancholy that she wants to leap…
The sultans of sirloin who blithely run up $300 dinner tabs at gilt palaces like Morton’s and Del Frisco’s would never deign to set foot in the Columbine Steak House & Lounge. At the scruffy Columbine, on scruffy Federal Boulevard, they’ve been tossing skinny slabs of beef on the fire…
Itching for a fight? Put a pipefitter from the Bronx and a cabbie from San Francisco on adjacent bar stools and ask which team will win the World Series. Or get a couple of lifelong Broncos fans going about where the worm must turn this season — in Brian’s brain,…
As any Klump family member can tell you, this has been a hot summer for black comedians. New movies starring Martin Lawrence, the Wayans brothers and Eddie Murphy have already pulled down more than $300 million at the box office, and by the time Chris Rock’s remake of Heaven Can…
In the view of documentarians Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey, fallen ’80s televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker — she of the pink feather boas and the streetwalker mascara — was the misunderstood victim of right-wing religious zealots, unscrupulous reporters and a corrupt judicial system. Now living “in exile” (also known as…
When new Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke held Dan Issel’s big feet to the fire last week, any casual observer of Denver’s beleaguered NBA franchise had to wonder: What is Issel to do? Wave a wand and transform his motley collection of slew-footed children and graying journeymen into the Los Angeles…
Irish charm and British eccentricity are hot properties on this side of the pond, especially among U.S. moviegoers. Witness the phenomenal success of The Secret of Roan Inish, in which a ten-year-old Irish girl finds her lost brother living among seals off the rugged western coast, or of The Full…
In your worst nightmare, you’re absolutely famished and nothing but a gorgeous hot pastrami on light rye will do. But you’re also in Denver, 2,000 miles from Manhattan, nagged in the depth of your hunger by visions — rivers of creamed herring, big bowls filled with half-sour pickles, mountains of…
The undefinable guitarist Charlie Hunter, Thursday, July 27, at the Gothic Theatre and Friday, July 28, at the Boulder Theater, has become, in the publics mind, inseparable from his instrument. Hunters eight-string Novax guitar, a one-of-a-kind hybrid he designed himself, allows him to play bass and lead lines simultaneously and…
Hall of Famer Robin Roberts was once asked to recall his greatest thrill in an All-Star game. The Phillies’ estimable right-hander answered immediately: “When Mickey Mantle bunted with the wind blowing out in Crosley Field.” Your Colorado Rockies should be so lucky. The recent eleven-game losing streak that likely spelled…
The bewildering penchant of recent American movies for glorifying the lovable naif, the perpetual adolescent and the village idiot takes a strange new turn in Miguel Arteta’s dark comedy Chuck & Buck. Arteta’s hero, Buck O’Brien (Mike White), is a 27-year-old manchild who eats lollipops all day long, takes refuge…
French director Luc Besson’s underwater adventure The Big Blue has inspired ecstasy in fans around the world since 1988, and for the American contingent, the release this week of a “director’s cut” of the film will surely be cause for celebration. Besson (La Femme Nikita) has added almost an hour…
Next time you get an undeniable urge for a big plate of Jägerschnitzel with shrimp lo mein on the side, head straight east on Alameda Avenue to the Sunset Lounge. Hankering for a chicken-fried steak or a Reuben sandwich? Not to worry: The Sunset’s kitchen is nothing if not versatile…
or most Americans, the social and political issues underlying José Luis Cuerda’s Butterfly seem remote. The tensions between republicans and fascists in Spain after the fall of that nation’s monarchy in 1931, as well as dictator Francisco Franco’s victory in the bloody Spanish Civil War, may have stirred strong feelings…
t has taken moviemakers and, more crucially, foot-dragging movie investors almost a decade to catch up with rave culture — the heady mix of secret warehouses, electronic music, designer drugs and ecstatic dancing that has come to define the yearning and the restlessness of a generation. But now the 5…
Before home runs got as cheap as bubble gum, the great Detroit Tiger slugger Hank Greenberg stood out as one of just ten major-league players who had hit fifty or more dingers in a season. In that, the original Hammerin’ Hank’s company was rare: Ruth, Foxx, Wilson, Kiner, Mize, Mantle,…
