The history of outdoor companies is filled with people who started with little more than a good idea and persistence. The mighty Patagonia was the softgoods company of Chouinard Equipment, which in turn was started by itinerant Yosemite rock climber Yvon Chouinard, who made chrome-moly steel pitons with a second-hand…
Allen True’s West. Allen Tupper True was Denver’s premier muralist during the first third of the twentieth century. Sadly, many of his commissions have been painted over or were lost when the buildings they were in were demolished. Now, the three big cultural institutions on the Civic Center are jointly…
Absurd Person Singular. The Denver Center Theatre Company should be applauded for selecting Absurd Person Singular, Alan Ayckbourn’s dark comedy, as one of its Christmas offerings. Ayckbourn’s trademark is intensely clever, laugh-out-loud farce capering over the surface of a sad and penetrating cynicism, and it’s the perfect antidote to the…
Could Dave Foley prostitute his talent to amuse any further without actually becoming a prostitute? In a plunging step down from emceeing celebrity poker, Foley provides a recognizable face to Jameel Khan’s picked-over Goodwill bin of workplace comedy, The Strip. Foley’s Glenn is manager of a down-market Radio Shack-type store…
Don’t be misled by the cheesy, generic poster for Kirk Jones’s Everybody’s Fine, in which a grinning Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore and Kate Beckinsale pose with Robert De Niro (airbrushed almost to the point of unrecognizable) for their characters’ family photo in front of a Christmas tree. It’s a marketing…
John Woo spent a decade navigating the big-studio minefield — longer than most foreign auteurs last in Hollywood before throwing in the towel. Beginning in earnest with an above-average Jean-Claude Van Damme programmer (Hard Target), Woo then produced one decent facsimile of his hyperkinetic Hong Kong neo-noirs (Face/Off), rose to…
It’s interesting to notice that some artists basically ignore the fads and trends that sweep over the art scene periodically and instead follow their own vision of what art should be about. A good example is Robert Mangold, the dean of Colorado contemporary sculpture, who, over the past five decades,…
Singin’ in the Rain follows a glamorous Hollywood couple, Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont, through the transition from silent movies to the talkies. Don comes through pretty well, but Lina’s voice is a harsh, squeaking disaster that threatens to sink the studio. Enter Kathy Selden, who wants to be a…
Long before the Denver theater world woke up to his talents, actor-director Frank Georgianna was a significant force in Boulder, where he began his work in the 1970s. His Boulder Repertory company never had a home of its own; he and his wife, Ernestine, rehearsed the actors in the basement…
Finding the perfect place to get up-close and personal with Santa Claus becomes a priority as Christmas gets closer. Shopping centers are a convenient option, since Santa is usually available for a photo anytime during mall hours through Christmas Eve. The Cherry Creek mall, 3000 East First Avenue (www.shopcherrycreek.com), has…
Bad sweaters. College football games. You know they’re connected somehow, with ties that go back decades, to the days of raccoon coats and the Charleston. Perhaps that’s why the Mile High Bowl Association, an organization dedicated to bringing a college bowl game to Colorado, decided to throw the first annual…
George Lucas, father of Star Wars, inspires a strange mix of slavish devotion and irrational hatred. Like the light and dark sides of the Force he mythologized, his partisans maintain a tenuous balance — with the love of Boba Fett on one side and the need to throttle Jar-Jar Binks…
Being Jewish, I do suffer from a touch of that inevitable holiday-season alienation. But I can always count on the Boulder Arts and Crafts Cooperative’s annual Judaica Show, currently in progress, to make me feel at home in the midst of a sea of Christmas trees and creches. Absolutely the…
The documentary Born Into Brothels, a portrait of Calcutta’s red light district, will be shown tonight at 7 p.m. at Buntport Theater, 717 Lipan Street. The widely acclaimed film, written and directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, won a string of accolades, including the Academy Award for Documentary Feature…
A clone army of Santa Clauses is coming to town! Hundreds, maybe even thousands of Denverites will dress up like Santa or sexy Santa’s helpers and hitting LoDo for Denver’s annual Santa Claus Pub Crawl. The crawl starts at 1 p.m. today at Fadó, 1735 19th Street, where a tree…
The Mona Lucero Design Boutique has brightened 15th Street on the edge of Highland since 2002, and the store’s longevity has a lot to do with being consistent: Lucero herself is the rare entrepreneur who perfectly balances creativity and business sense. Year after year, she’s built her indie retail enterprise…
Jimmy Sellars recognizes that it’s tough to run a gallery during the holidays, when everyone’s focus turns to affordable gift shopping rather than high-end art. So in December, many galleries compensate by hosting de rigueur art markets or miniature shows. But not Sellars. At least, not exactly. “I wanted to…
Fill your thermos with hot cocoa, bundle up the family and head downtown for the 35th annual Parade of Lights. The well-loved Denver holiday tradition features huge balloon characters, local high-school marching bands and dance troupes, tons of floats, thousands of lights illuminating the night, and this year’s parade grand…
The holiday season would come unwrapped without some tongue-in-cheek striptease fun, which burlesque queens Reyna Von Vett (aka Cora Vette) and Michelle Baldwin (aka Vivienne VaVoom), the power flirts behind Black Box Burlesque, are happy to provide in the form of Naughty Noel. “We’ll have group numbers and stripping Santa…
The relationship between art and commerce is a longstanding one, dating back to ancient times — though artists typically shy away from acknowledging any connection. This hostility to the market has led to another longstanding tradition: the starving artist. But ignorance of the system is not bliss for young Colorado…
I was first introduced to Jubelale in 2003 by a buddy who loved the beer only slightly more than the artwork, which he collected and framed. The posters were so cool that his wife allowed him to hang them in the living room. Made by the renowned Deschutes Brewery in…
In an age in which bloggers, Tweeters, Facebookers and other amateur cyber-journalists wear their lives and opinions on their sleeves for all to see, the question of “How far do you go?” can lead to a pretty far-ranging discussion. That’s the question that filmmaking phenom Ondi Timoner (the only director…
