Life Lessons

From its opening scene, when a homeless man commits suicide after being refused a dollar by a passing businessman, to the close, where two naked men leap from the water like dolphins, director Tatia Rosenthal’s $9.99 is one odd duck. The film takes a look at the lives of the…

Square Deal

Have you ever thought about just how many phrases involve the word “square?” Boulder artist Cha Cha has: She curated a new exhibit that opens tonight at the Boulder Public Library called Squareplay: Colorado Metal Artists, in which “the concept was to invite jewelers and artists to create pieces of…

Flick Pick

Being a young actress in Hollywood can be a horror show even for performers who achieve something akin to stardom – a condition that’s temporary for all too many of them. Consider the case of Mischa Barton. She was a sizzling property in 2003 upon the arrival of The O.C.,…

Twisted Logic

Ivar Zeile of Plus Gallery first observed R. Justin Stewart in action in 2007 at the Plus intern gallery, Object + Thought, where the invited artist impressed Zeile with his ability to work quickly and brilliantly, despite time limitations and a lack of familiarity with the site. Now Stewart has…

A Real Rojo

The Museo de las Américas is one of Denver’s cultural treasures, a museum that aims to promote the art of North and South America with a decidedly Latino slant. In line with this is the institution’s annual fundraising party, this year called Rojo Kermés. The unusual name comes from neighborhood…

Wild Style

In an area with as much Wild West history as ours, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to bring back yesterday’s entertainment to dazzle audiences of today. That’s the premise behind Immundo’s Wild West Meets Classic Burlesque, an extravagant event featuring some of our city’s premier…

Mommy Dearest

When Violet Weston’s husband walks off into the summer night, her three adult daughters and their families decide to return home to Oklahoma to comfort their wounded, vindictive mother. This is the premise of August: Osage County, a dark comedy that has won both the Pulitzer Prize and a Tony…

Wheel Fun

Starting at Skyline Park and continuing through five checkpoints, the Urban Assault Ride is part bike race, part scavenger hunt and part elementary-school field day rolled into one healthy, fun-filled event. However, unlike your traditional bike race, all the checkpoints are available beforehand, allowing each team to plot its own…

A Rat in the Kitchen

Inside Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen, Westword food critic Jason Sheehan gets to talk about his favorite two things: food and himself. “They’re stories that I’ve never gotten a chance to tell in my seven years of writing almost exclusively about myself…

Straight Shooting

When Kirsten Wilson took on the task of molding a multimedia performance around the theme of Boulder’s Sesquicentennial celebration, she clearly chose the hard road, partly by studying the town’s formation in terms of its iniquities. The resulting work, Rocks Karma Arrows, strays in and out of Boulder’s 150-year past,…

Hawaii 5-0

Denver’s well-run Colorado Dragon Boat Festival, now in its ninth year, is still growing, and that’s good for us and all the thousands of people who flock there each year to taste the quality ethnic food, shop the vendor booths, take in the cultural performances and demonstrations and root for…

The Royal Treatment

There are a lot of bonuses to summertime outdoor movies: the stars twinkling overhead, the soft grass underneath, the atmosphere of magic. Of course, that atmosphere is shattered every time a driver honks a car horn. And then there are the flies committing suicide in your beer and the sweltering…

Dancing Machines

Dancing has always been an integral part of the human experience, from tribal rituals thousands of years ago to the moonwalk — a gift given to us from the recently departed Michael Jackson — which defined dance for an entire generation. And when it comes to moving to the beat,…

Slaid Back

Open your ears for a tasty midsummer double-up tonight at Swallow Hill Music Hall: Slaid Cleaves, an Americana keeper currently touring to promote Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away, will offer up a platter of songs from the new Gurf Morlix-produced album on the homegrown DIY label Music Road…

The Doctor Is In

Cherry Creek High School grad Matt Iseman has covered as lot of ground since leaving the Creek behind for Princeton, then med school at Columbia and a residency back home at CU. That’s when he pulled the old switcheroo and quit doctoring altogether to stand up and tell jokes in…

Getting Real

Group shows that include several artists in a gallery’s stable of talent are summertime standards in the art world. It’s easy for gallery directors to simply pull stuff out of the racks in the back room during the downtime of the dog days. But that doesn’t mean these exhibits aren’t…

Life Is Short, Art Is Long

In 1991, Russell Bay McKlayer — then known simply as Russell Bay, since he hadn’t yet added the made up “McKlayer” part — came together with Ken Petersen and Mark Brasuell to launch the Edge Gallery co-op, and he put on a solo exhibit there every year until he died…

Flick Pick

The astronaut drama Countdown is a curio from both a historical and filmic standpoint. The movie, co-starring James Caan and Robert Duvall, both pre-Godfather, arrived in 1968, a year before the initial moon landing, but at a point when it was clear the United States was on the verge of…

Back to the Future

For anyone who was around to witness the Apollo 11 lunar landing forty years ago on this date, the moment was unforgettable – a physical and visual embodiment of the nation’s collective desire to, well, fly to the moon. And the whole Neil Armstrong “giant step for mankind” sensibility was,…

In the Haus

The folks at CultureHaus, the Denver Art Museum’s social and educational group for a younger adult demographic, are always looking for a new way to raise money or have a good time, and the resulting parties never fail to raise the bar on hip entertainment. So expect their latest tony…

Food Fête

It’s back to basics this year at the annual Taste of the Nation benefit for Share Our Strength: thirty presenting restaurants, a compendium of sips from Colorado breweries and wineries from across the nation, a silent auction and some live entertainment. There’ll be no stuffy sit-down dinner, either; instead, you’ll…

Buddha Speaks

“I’m not so interested in giving answers as I am in posing questions,” says writer/actor Evan Brenner about his one-man play The Buddha — In His Own Words. “The Sutras were originally an oral tradition, and I’m interested in the process of making these scriptures oral again.” In this ninety-minute…