Like Memento, The Escapist, screening as part of the University of Colorado’s International Film Series, freshens what could have been a genre exercise by fiddling about with the overall structure. At its most basic level, director/co-writer Rupert Wyatt’s offering is a standard get-out-of-jail-and-be-free tale, in which a group of fairly…
Set in the bucolic suburbs of early nineteenth-century London, as fresh and dewy as a newly mowed lawn, Jane Campion’s Bright Star recounts the love affair between a tubercular young poet and the fashionable teenager next door. It’s more conventionally romantic than wildly Romantic — but no less touching for…
Yankee Tavern introduces us to Adam, a young man working in what used to be his father’s bar. He’s arguing with his fiancée, Janet, because the names he provided for her save-the-date notices were fictitious, and she’s furious. Adam’s father committed suicide here — or rather, we think it was…
For a few days last month, Denver and the Front Range were shrouded in a smoky haze, courtesy of the forest fires in California. It was more than a little unsettling, lending the town a doomsday quality right out of a disaster movie. But fires are a natural part of…
They say we have a beautiful weekend approaching, and there are few places in the state more beautiful this time of year than the environs of Delta County, where the wine grapes and orchards are peaking. And Colorado Art Ranch, the rootless organization that hosts “Artposiums” twice yearly at changing…
Bats aren’t just for Halloween anymore. The only flying mammal is actually a vital part of the world’s ecosystem — not to mention pretty darn cute when you get a good look at them. And you can do just that today at the Live Bat Presentation at the Wildlife Experience…
What could you create in the time it takes for Earth to revolve on its axis? If the answer is “not much,” then you’re selling yourself short. Every year, teams of filmmakers create a short, seven-minute film in only one day for the annual Shoot Out Boulder, which kicked off…
Although it might seem like an exaggeration, photographer Jim Narcy changes lives on a daily basis: He takes pin-up photographs of women wanting to express themselves in a different, beautiful way. “It’s really empowering,” Narcy says. “It’s a delight for them to see themselves as beautiful, and that’s a really…
Like a hypodermic needle to the eyeball, the paintings of Barnaby Furnas are not meant for easy viewing. Nor are you intended to come away from them without a sting: At times amusing, anxious and apocalyptic, the New York-based artist specializes in a kinetic, frenetic expressionism that wields abstraction like…
The former local theater group Next Stage Denver was the first to host MisCast as a fundraiser in Denver, but after that troupe dissolved last summer, Paragon Theatre stepped in and asked for permission to pick up the ball and keep running with it. And it’s not hard to see…
Regardless of your personal faith, music is food for the soul. That said, it isn’t just your soul that will get fed at the Comedy Works’ No Joke Gospel Brunch. As the name says, there isn’t anything funny about the monthly event, which gets resurrected Sunday at Comedy Works’ Landmark…
Boulder is one urban-farming kinda town. Locavores sprout like weeds there — delicious, edible weeds — and it seems like everyone in town is hiding a few chickens in the back yard. No wonder, then, that Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art curator Kirsten Gerdes Stoltz liked what she heard when…
Fans of Stories on Stage already know and love the format: A collection of prominent actors, some local and some national, take to the stage for dramatic readings from literature, all chosen with a specific theme in mind. And they also know how well it really works. There’s a little…
After debuting roughly 7,000 plays over 21 years, Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, the flagship project of the Chicago-based theatre group the Neo-Futurists, arrives in Denver for a one-night-only performance at Curious Theatre Company. Based on the concepts of Italian futurists, dada and surrealism, Too Much is…
Driving eastbound on I-70, Ellison Park has one hand on the wheel while the other navigates an iPod mounted to his dash. Scrolling through the songs, Park makes his way to the batch of demos he recorded on his MacBook and pushes play. As his voice pours from the speakers…
During her 24 years in Congress, Pat Schroeder was always quick with a quip. But as Confessions of a Political Spouse makes clear, Jim Schroeder was much more than Pat’s straight man during their 47 years of marriage. The book, which grew out of a journal Jim started keeping after…
The Colorado Center for Public Humanities at the University of Colorado Denver is hosting a lecture series called “Islam in American Culture.” The idea, partly inspired by President Barack Obama’s outreach to the Muslim community, will look at the connections between American culture and the Islamic world. The second lecture…
No, you can’t try every beer. That’s the bad news. The good news? You can give it shot. The Great American Beer Festival is back, and as always, it showcases the best of what breweries across the country have to offer. Nearly 500 brewers will be here, serving 2,100 different…
Ballet Nouveau Colorado will kick off its 2009 season with the original company production POP, featuring a blend of contemporary dance and popular music by such artists as Rufus Wainwright, the Knife and Joanna Newsom. “We are starting the season with a bang, as POP will feature three world premieres…
Books and painting share equal space in the heart of Arts at Denver gallery owner Paula Colette Conley, and the venue’s current exhibit, Cover Art, is the direct result of those twin affections: a series of paintings inspired by literature. “I truly do love books just as much as I…
Making a list of David Cross’s enemies might be easier than making a list of his friends. Never afraid to ruffle feathers or start feuds, the notoriously ribald comic has lobbed bombs at everyone from Larry the Cable Guy to Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton, not to mention…
One of the city’s great cultural treasures, the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art is the brainchild of founder Hugh Grant, who started it a few years ago to display the work of one of the state’s greatest modern artists, Vance Kirkland. But Grant quickly expanded its mandate to…
