Party Animals

One of summer’s hottest galas goes down tonight at twilight, when five local bands and more than thirty restaurants and watering holes share air with lions, tigers and bears at Do at the Zoo, the Denver Zoo’s largest fundraiser of the year. “This really is a great summer party with…

Sweet Mixers

In the real world, alcohol and engineering aren’t two things you want to mix. Tonight, though, it should be safe to make an exception when the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver launches this summer’s Mixed Taste: Tag Team Lectures on Unrelated Topics series with a dual lecture titled “Irrational Engineering…

Period Piece

Last year’s 1940s WWII Ball, held in a hangar at the Boulder Airport, was a surprise success. “We’d expected 200 people, and 600 turned up,” says event organizer Khyentse James. And this year will be twice as big — literally. The ball will be held in a bigger hangar, and…

The New Centurions

“Mapping out the route for the inaugural Denver Century Ride has been a lot of fun,” says ride director Leslie Caimi. “The terrain you can get into within 100 miles of downtown? It’s incomparable. Our route utilizes Denver’s vast bike-path system, some of the metro area’s classic road cycling and…

Celebrity Scenery

For over a century, Colorado’s vistas — mountain, plain and city — have attracted the attention of artists in general and photographers in particular. The Camera Obscura Gallery is presenting a solo in honor of one of the best of them: Gifford Ewing Retrospective: Colorado & Beyond. The exhibit is…

Welton Welcome

Among the myriad festivities going on all around downtown today, there’s at least one that comes with a big slice of history. Juneteenth 2010: We Define Who We Are, taking place on Welton Street between 24th and 29th streets, commemorates the end of slavery in Texas, as it has on…

Pride and Joy

The Denver PrideFest runs on a shoestring each year, but it still remains free, and that’s just the first perk of this annual festival, which rolls around for its 35th year today and tomorrow in Civic Center Park. Not every pride event can make that boast anymore, notes Heather Draper…

Hot Rocks

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and where there’s fire, there’s barbecue. That’s more or less the motto of Frisco’s annual Colorado BBQ Challenge, whose heat begins rising today and continues through Saturday night on the town’s Main Street. “We’re the largest barbecue competition in Colorado, with 68 teams across the…

On Broadway

There’s no place else to be today but the Westword Music Showcase — even if we do say so ourselves. We started by assembling what is arguably our best lineup of headlining talent ever, including Ghostland Observatory, Superchunk, Dirty Projectors, Neon Indian, BoomBox, Single File, Tickle Me Pink, Oh My…

Westword iPhone App: We now live in your phone

Westword — thirty-plus years your weekly, ink-stained guide to Denver — now lives in your iPhone. The Westword iPhone app went live last night and is stocked with much of the same content you get here at westword.com. More specifically, you’ll find:…

On the Move

Italian sculptor Maria Cristina Carlini has come up with an interesting idea, though it’s difficult from a logistical standpoint. She creates bodies of monumental abstract works that travel the world. The vagabond Carlinis have now landed here for an ambitious two-part show at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and…

Black and white shines at Foothills Art Center

Stark: Life in Black and White, at Foothills Art Center (809 15th Street, Golden, 303-279-3922, www.foothillscenter.org), is made up of the work of five Denver-area artists, each of whom has been given a mini-solo to showcase his or her black-and-white pieces. (There’s also a supplementary piece, by Greg Cradick of…

Now Showing

Colorado & the West. This is the tenth summer in a row that David Cook Fine Art, the state’s premier purveyor of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century material, has presented a group show dedicated to historic Western art. This year’s version is anchored by more than two dozen oil paintings and watercolors…

Now Playing

Girls Only. The trouble with Girls Only, a two-woman evening of skits, singing, improvisation and audience participation, is that it’s so relentlessly nice. Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein have worked together for many years; at some point, they read their early diaries to each other and were transfixed by the…

Breckenridge Film Festival

In the days of Cannes, Sundance and even the Starz Denver Film Festival, the Breckenridge Film Festival is an anomaly. The fest has managed to retain a truly indie vibe throughout its thirty years of existence; this year, you can catch 51 different independent dramas, comedies, documentaries, short films and…

Marlene Dietrich and Maurice Chevalier get the star treatment

The Marlene Dietrich and Maurice Chevalier we remember were artificial figures, carefully lit, costumed and photographed, their media images manipulated and protected. They were stunning in their glamour and originality, but meant entirely for the screen. For his play Dietrich and Chevalier, Jerry Mayer unearthed some unexpected biographical data on…

Trash in the Pan

The bizarre, blurry nightmare that is Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers starts ugly, ends confused and spends a lot of time and videotape getting there. On the way, it meanders from lowbrow comedy to snuff-film horror without ever stopping to explain itself. “It is a genre film, but it’s just taking…

Go Below With Indie Films

Head underground, literally and figuratively, to get a look at some of Colorado’s most unusual filmmakers when the Indie Film Underground sets up shop underneath St. Mark’s Coffee House tonight. The ninety-minute program of experimental short form film and video from independent artists from all over the state should offer…

The Whole World’s Watching

The FIFA World Cup, the international showdown that’s held soccer fans rapt nearly every four years since it began eighty years ago, might not be as highly heralded in the U.S. as it is in practically any other nation on earth, but there’s a reason for its global popularity: It’s…

New Frontiers

Ask Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art associate curator Petra Sertic what’s special about a trio of shows opening today, and she’ll tell you straight up: “Everything.” A mixed bag of shows by two strong artists with local ties — Tony Ortega and Gary Sweeney — and a collaborative exhibition focusing…

Music in the Moment

It’s concert season all over the Front Range, including at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, where the spirit of the music lives on this summer, not only on the outdoor stage, but in the galleries. Three music-inspired summer shows — Two Fisted Art Attack: Denny Dent Retrospective;…