Randy Roberts, the owner of Z Art Department (1136 North Speer Boulevard, 303-298-8432), has done a good job over the last few years of picking up pieces of old modern art created by earlier generations of Colorado artists. In the past twenty years, there’s been increasing scholarly and collector interest…
archiTECHtonica. This is one of several shows put together by CU Art Museum director and curator Lisa Tamiris Becker to herald the opening of the institution’s new building. It’s paired with a show made up of related objects from the permanent collection. Becker invited an international cast of artists who…
The 39 Steps. This show is uninhibitedly silly — a take-off on a 1930s Hitchcock film, which itself was based on a novel by John Buchan. The plot didn’t make much sense in the movie — something to do with an attempt by foreign spies to steal British air defense…
Though based on actual 2001 events in Ohio that caused an unmanned freight train laden with toxic waste to go haywire, Unstoppable could just as well be set in the shining sun of Reagan’s 1980s. As the driverless locomotive begins gathering speed across rural Pennsylvania, bedecked with autumn leaves, it…
All first-rate actors are first-rate in completely different ways, and Brian Landis Folkins is no exception. He doesn’t have a highly defined stylishness, doesn’t raise the temperature every time he walks across a stage or reduce audiences to tears with the suppleness of his emotions. With him, you don’t get…
The 1960s of Shout isn’t the era of revolution for the hell of it, wild and woolly locks, tie-dye, raucous pleasure, ragged form-busting music and lots of dope — though pot does eventually enter this world. Think of the start of that decade — Jackie Kennedy’s demure A-line dresses and…
The Rocky Mountain Rollergirls’ A-list traveling team 5280 Fight Club defeated the Charm City Rollergirls (Baltimore, MD), Gotham Girls Roller Derby (New York, NY) and the Oly Rollers (Olympia, WA) on their way to winning the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association’s national championships and the Hydra Trophy this weekend in…
Art is expensive. Between the paint and the clay and the canvases and the brushes — to say nothing of the time it takes to create art — it’s no wonder artists are starving. Then again, perhaps the suffering builds character. But that doesn’t mean that artists and aspiring artists…
Noah Van Sciver is a very successful comic book artist: Besides his weekly appearance in Westword with 4 Questions, he’s also been praised by comic critics and even nominated for an Ignatz Award for his series Blammo, now in its sixth issue. All of these things would be way better…
No one in their right mind would normally try to hit four art walks all in one night, but last Friday wasn’t any old First Friday, it was Denver Arts Week’s Know Your Arts First Friday and, courtesy of Visit Denver flak Rich Grant, I got to do it in…
It’s a film so cool, Boyz II Men dedicated its first LP to it: That EP was called Cooleyhighharmony, if you’ll recall, and many of the songs on it (including the cover “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday”) were in homage to the 1975 classic Cooley High. Set…
Several blocks outside the First Friday art-walk on Santa Fe sits Illiterate Gallery at 72 South Broadway. It’s a part of town that some consider a place so-called “hipsters” call home — but if you stand in front of Illiterate too long on any other night of the week, you’re…
Before Night at the Museums on Saturday, where eighteen Denver museums opened their doors to whoever wanted to come, free of charge, in conjunction with Denver Arts Week, I’d never been to the Denver Botanic Gardens before. After spending Night at the Museums at the Botanic Gardens on Saturday, I…
The founders of Gravity Defied Theatre had their work cut out for them when they founded the troupe in 2008. In addition to facing the standard pitfalls and challenges of starting a new theater company, founders Keith Rabin, Jr., and Danny Harrigan had to carve out a viable niche in…
In an effort to shed some light and some laughter on the stupidity that constantly swirls through the airwaves, we bring you a stupid moving advertisement that will hopefully brighten your day, either with its outright foolishness or with its laughable condescension. This week, Bundaberg Rum from Australia succeeds in…
The glitz! The glamor! The desire for popcorn! The Starz Denver Film Festival began on Wednesday and continues through November 14, but this weekend promises to be a big one. You can get in on the action by reading Michael Roberts’s roundup of must-see movies provided by festival artistic director…
Around 11:34 last Friday, my phone rang, and on the other end of the line was what sounded like a 20-year old modem screaming at me with the type of digital candor only available to machines. “Excuse me?” I said. The sound repeated itself. And that was the beginning of…
Ever read George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984, wherein the powers that be monitor your every move via video devices called telescreens? Super creepy, right? Well now a creepily similar technology is coming to a theater near you…
Why is this First Friday different from all other First Fridays? In most ways, it isn’t, and that’s the real beauty of it. But it is Denver Arts Week’s Know Your Arts First Friday Arts Walk, meaning the monthly evening art walk event in arts districts all over town will…
Ah, Heidi Montag. How do we take pleasure in your misfortune? Let us count the ways: First, there was The Hills, one of the most boring reality-drama-fests ever created. Then, there was the messy split from husband/ultra-douche Spencer Pratt. Then, there was the will-they-won’t-they sex tape, and the comically enormous…
If you participated in last year’s Lumberjack Crawl down Colfax Avenue (see the slideshow from that Lumberjack Crawl), you know how much fun it can be. Organizer Kiki Nichols is bringing the crawl back for a second year; this time, All Jacked Up: Second Annual Lumberjack Crawl will focus on…
Making a movie starring Zach Galifainakis and Robert Downey Jr. is kind of like making Jell-O: The result is awesome, and it’s pretty difficult to fuck up. And sure enough, for about its first half, the trailer for Due Date makes the movie look like what it should be: a…
