In A Tale of Two Cities, woe came to all those whom the villainess, Madame Defarge, encoded into her ubiquitous knitting, which never left her side. Click, click. Creepy. But there is something internal about the act of knitting that can, in better times, be put to positive use in…
Can it be summer already? I don’t know about anyone else, but for me this winter was both brutal and interminable, and spring has been too wet and cold to offer much relief. Maybe it’s just the combination of expensive heating oil and living in a poorly insulated house, but…
Sita Sings the Blues, an animated full-length feature, made its Denver debut at the Starz Denver International Film Festival last year, “and it was just one of the runaway hits,” remembers programming director Keith Garcia. “It’s just one of those movies that gets you; it’s highly original from beginning to…
I remember lower downtown before it was LoDo, dressed in red brick and laced together by crumbling viaducts that rose up between building faces to leave the sidewalks in looming shadow. Back then (and then wasn’t really so long ago — perhaps twenty years past), those now teeming streets were…
The Denver Botanic Gardens is living in the past this summer, beginning with the installation of dinosaurs, or at least a bevy of life-sized sculptures of same, which are strewn about the gardens in scary proximity to the pathways. And while Jurassic Gardens: Evolution and Extinction is clearly just there…
One of my favorite books of 2005 was the epic bestseller The Hummingbird’s Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea, a poet-turned-documentarian-turned-novelist whose first, amazing work of fiction boiled for twenty years before spilling onto the page, inspired by the true-life story of his great aunt, a curandera named Teresa. It turned…
Despite the plethora of film festivals open to the public in the metro area and beyond, there’s no festival quite like Telluride’s annual Mountainfilm extravaganza. “We’re about a lot more than mountaineering and climbing,” notes executive director Peter Kenworthy. “It started out in that world, and getting into the cultures…
Death Vessel is the brainchild of Brooklyn-based experimental folk artist Joel Thibodeau, the likes of whom we’ve heard from before. With a penchant for hushed electronic atmospherics serving as a backdrop to well-written, largely minimalist guitar melodies and earnest vocals, Thibodeau possesses a soprano singing voice that lends his introspective…
There’s a very handsome set of three interconnected shows at Space Gallery (765 Santa Fe Drive, 720-904-1088, www.spacegallery.com) that make up what is essentially a single group show, even if each of the artists involved is given solo status. All three work in variations of pure abstraction, where there is…
Curiouser. Singer Gallery director Simon Zalkind is one of the top curators in town, and one of the secrets to his success is presenting artists whose efforts are worthwhile but who for some reason rarely exhibit their work. That’s what’s happening now with the unusual show Curiouser: A Dozen Years…
52 Pick-Up. The central conceit of this love story involves a pack of cards that two actors scatter, then pick up, one by one, announcing what the card is and reading its caption, which is always something evocative and elliptical, like “What happened?” or “Cities.” That statement cues a brief…
The late Pauline Kael named her 1968 collection of film reviews Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in celebration of movies at their most visceral – the ones in which sex and violence and speed combine in ways that produce sheer sensation. Thirty years later, Run Lola Run, screening at midnight on…
At the tail end of The Da Vinci Code, having traipsed around scenic Paris and London for over two hours to find out whether the Holy Grail was just an old cup or the womanly seed of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, Tom Hanks’s Robert Langdon, ace symbologist, sloped off back…
Jim Jarmusch’s anonymous anti-hero hitman (French-Ivorian actor Isaach De Bankolé), identified in the credits of The Limits of Control as the Lone Man, exists only in terms of his unspecified mission. The Lone Man is introduced in an overhead shot doing tai chi in an airport toilet stall, then taking…
Bus Stop is set in a diner, where worldly-wise owner Grace supervises her high-school-aged waitress, Elma. On this particular night, a snowstorm has closed the road ahead, and a bus is stranded outside. Among those requiring doughnuts and coffee or bacon and eggs are driver Carl, who is Grace’s occasional…
The late Pauline Kael named her 1968 collection of film reviews Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in celebration of movies at their most visceral – the ones in which sex and violence and speed combine in ways that produce sheer sensation. Thirty years later, Run Lola Run, screening at midnight on…
The Colorado Colfax Marathon is, predictably, a really, really long running event that begins at the ass crack of dawn. And because it’s all USA Track and Field-certified — not to mention a qualifier for the Boston mary — swarms of sober endurance junkies will be in full effect with…
Young Coyotes has been around for less than a year. In that short time, however, the act has released two EPs, embarked on several cross-country tours, recorded a Daytrotter session, been hailed on numerous blogs and attracted a high-powered manager in Blee Music’s Brian Swartz (Rose Hill Drive). Seemingly milliseconds…
The Forney Museum of Transportation, like the multitude of ancient vehicles housed there, has been up and down a hilly road over time. And since the museum struggled through a massive move from its old digs in what is now the REI flagship store in the Central Platte Valley to…
According to Howard Szigeti, founder of the Unique Lives and Experiences lecture series almost twenty years ago in Toronto, it’s a girl thing: “The overall spirit of the concept is to bring compelling female role models to speak to a room filled nearly exclusively with women,” he says. “Women talking…
Are you curious about the current burlesque renaissance and the women who are learning to take it off? If so, you won’t want to miss A Wink and a Smile, a documentary opening tonight at Starz FilmCenter in the Tivoli, complete with an appearance by Denver’s own burlesque queen (and…
Claudia Jordan has always been partial to the Points. The owner of the Five Points Plaza office complex, Jordan says it’s always been a place for good food. “We’re trying to encourage restaurants to come and bring that portion of the community back to where it was and make it…
