If you don’t like opera, it’s probably because you’re a cultureless rube ― but it also might be that you just haven’t seen the right opera yet. To that end, you could probably do no better than La Bohème. “This is the opera that makes people fall in love with…
Denver Arts Week is back and once again provoking the question of why we need one. Similar to Denver Restaurant Week, which came about as a way to put culinary Denver on the national map, it’s all a matter of raising awareness of the city’s cultural stature among the natives…
The science of global warming is tough enough to evaluate without the sort of hard sell Ondi Timoner pushes on behalf of her subject, Bjorn Lomborg, in Cool It. Author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and the movie’s eponymous source book, the Danish adjunct professor of statistics became, over the past…
In the climax of Morning Glory, Rachel McAdams is dressed in a flesh-colored, diaphanous cocktail dress, its halter top and tight bodice giving way to spilling tulle. This is the kind of dress a screen heroine wears when a slow-building love plot is coming to a head; it is the…
We all know that reading Westword can warp your soul and leave you broken and twitching in an irrigation ditch outside of Rocky Flats, but did you know it can also teach you something? That’s according to Adriana Nieto, chair of the Richard T. Castro Distinguished Visiting Professorship committee at…
The Misha May Foundation’s second annual A Moment for Mutts fundraiser at the Mercury Cafe will feature two kinds of dancing entertainment: belly and inter-species. Dahlia the belly dancer will perform a solo routine, while Mile High Musical Tails will present dogs and their owners performing choreographed routines. “I’m taking…
Although the popular perception is that Hollywood has always been the epicenter of the movie universe — and it has been for about 100 years now — David Emrich, a Colorado film historian and author of Hollywood, Colorado, notes that it wasn’t always that way. “If you went to Hollywood…
A nine-film series running through the Starz Denver Film Festival, Women + Film is a collection of stories told by women filmmakers that covers issues of social justice from a global perspective. In an effort to open dialogue between filmmakers, community leaders, human-rights advocates and the public, the series culminates…
“As I came out of the womb, my father handed me a pencil, and I’ve been writing ever since,” says local author Steve Katz, whose new book, Time’s Wallet celebrates its release today. The book is the first part of a memoir that will end up spanning two or three…
When Denver-based filmmaker Neil Truglio listened to the music of Iron & Wine, he was inspired. In fact, his emotional reaction to the band’s first album, The Creek Drank the Cradle, was the impetus for his brand-new flick, We Are the Sea. “It’s about an English teacher at a high…
Greg Graffin might be best known in some circles as the lead singer of Bad Religion, but he also has a Ph.D. and teaches several classes at UCLA. Rather amazingly, he has combined these worlds in his new book, co-written with author Steve Olson. Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad…
With the ubiquity of digital stimuli these days, it can be easy to forget the value of actual film projection. “There are several foundations of film that make it different from digital projection,” says local experimental filmmaker Rett Rogers. “Film is intermittent, meaning that 24 still images per second appear…
Much of the best comedy comes from improvisation. The scripts are thrown out, and the sudden comedic impulse while under pressure reveals humor that few could have written if they’d sat down with the time to contemplate and dial in a scene. Now, for the second year, Bovine Metropolis Theater…
The Colorado Mountain Club’s 18th annual Backcountry Bash, tonight at the American Mountaineering Center, is a raucous party celebrating, ironically enough, solitude and silence. The fundraiser supports the Backcountry Snowsports Initiative, an effort to preserve quiet-use areas for backcountry skiing, snowboarding and snowshoeing and to strike some balance in areas…
If you’ve seen Seinfeld, you kind of already know Carol Leifer: Besides working on the show between its fifth and seventh seasons, Leifer is also the legendary “real Elaine Benes,” having at least partially inspired the character. Now, that’s comedy street cred. More recently, Leifer penned a book of humorous…
You may have heard that Boulder, at least according to Bon Appétit magazine, is 2010fs Foodiest Town in the country, and from now until November 20, you can taste why — for a bargain. The fifth annual First Bite Boulder, a culinary orgy for dollar-deprived gastronauts, trumpets more than forty…
There would appear to be a clear divide between fine art and pop art in music. But singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile, who performs with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra tonight, doesn’t see one. Taking a cue from her idols Elton John, Patsy Cline and Queen, Carlile has been working with orchestras around…
Master baker and cake decorator Buddy Valastro, confectioner extraordinaire of TLC’s Cake Boss, brings his animated shtick to the Paramount Theatre tonight for a live, interactive show-and-tell demonstration that will pimp his mad talents and techniques; his masterpieces make Martha Stewart’s sugar highs droop in defeat. The performance, part of…
The Denver Art Museum’s Logan Lectures, named for sponsors and art enthusiasts Vicki and Kent Logan, are always a big deal owing to the important speakers who are invariably featured. The art celebrity who be leading the discussion tonight is Richard Phillips, a New York-based painter renowned for his super-realistic…
Gifts for Yule is in its thirteenth year now, and it’s no wonder the fair is still going strong. Every year, you’ll find art, antiques, jewelry, beads, soap, knits, vintage, glass, clothing and so much more — handmade locally, ready to take home, wrap up and surprise your loved one…
“In an ideal world, you’d wax your skis or snowboard every time you went out on the hill,” says Kim Walker, owner of Outdoor Divas. “Most people get lazy about it, but it’s the single easiest thing you can do to have more fun out there and lengthen the life…
When Gene Siskel walks out of your movie a half-hour into it, you just might have a cult classic on your hands. The iconic television personality and film critic reportedly drew the line on 1980’s Maniac during the film’s notorious “Disco Boy” scene, in which effects guy Tom Sevini, here…
