Who owns our culture? Should ideas and creations be locked into gilded cages to maximize profit, or set free to breed strange new forms? That’s the central question in RIP: A Remix Manifesto, screening tonight at Denver Open Media. The film centers on the work of Gregg Gillis, the sample-mashing,…
The Squabble is a seemingly simple tale of two small-town friends driven apart when one calls the other a goose. “It’s a comedy,” says Buntport player Brian Colonna. “It’s very absurd, but the absurdity is like real life, where people have a falling out and then spend the rest of…
Time to don your ten-gallon hat, some spurs, maybe some ass-less chaps (over your rugged jeans, of course), your gold pan, your six-shooter, a fair maiden and your favorite horse, and head on down to Four Mile Historic Park for a good old-fashioned box social. Okay, I exhausted just about…
Lily Burana began her writing career as a columnist and editor for punk and alternative zines. She was also a stripper, starting off in punk-inspired Times Square peep shows and even taking a battle for strippers’ rights to the courts. In other words, she’s not the kind of woman most…
May brings spring flowers and the start of Denver’s growing season, but you won’t find the delicate orchids used for traditional Hawaiian leis growing anywhere around these parts. For a true tropical experience, head to the Second Annual Lei Day Celebration this evening at the Denver Police Protective Association Event…
Here’s what’s to love about a muscle car: candy colors, waxy gloss, racing stripes and beefy but aerodynamic lines. Each one is like a rolling metal-and-leather vial of testosterone that can’t help but point out in all directions. And vintage Camaros and Mustangs? They’re bullies on wheels, but works of…
Former Bronco and Channel 4 weekend sports anchor Reggie Rivers says he pulled a Jay Cutler before Jay Cutler: “The day I got cut from the Broncos, I refused to go in because I knew it was coming.” When he told that story recently to playwright Steven Cole Hughes, it…
In Chapter 17 of The Feast of Love, Charles Baxter’s meta-narrative about the complicated — sometimes sweet, sometimes erotic and perverse — sex and love lives of a group of severely confused characters, pierced barista Chloe is told that her attempt to make extra cash by breaking into the amateur…
The mysteries of the ancient inhabitants of Mesa Verde have enthralled archaeologists and tourists for decades, but there is one good way to travel back in time 1,400 years: birds. The same species who called southwestern Colorado home when the ancestral Puebloans built these dwellings — including hawks, owls, hummingbirds,…
The term “painter’s painter” is bandied about quite a bit — I use it myself from time to time — and we all know what it means: an artist who may not be appreciated by the public but has earned the respect of other artists, the highest form of flattery…
Director Carlos Saura is an elegant stylist with a passion for song and dance that comes through in every frame of Fados, opening Friday, May 8, at Starz FilmCenter. The movie is essentially a series of music videos that are linked sonically — all of the material is derived from…
T. S. Eliot wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in 1917, while the First World War was devastating Europe and imperial absolutes were beginning to crumble. It was the year of the Russian revolution; in two more years, the victorious powers would meet in Paris to reconfigure the…
It’s difficult for this longtime Trekkie to review J.J. Abrams’s relaunching of the U.S.S. Enterprise. It’s difficult to dispassionately dole out compliments and complaints per the job description. Because, yes, the professional critic understands: This is Paramount Pictures’ latest effort to jump-start a profitable but long-stalled franchise, to do for…
At 73, the Memphis-born actor, stuntman, former U.S. Marine and Golden Gloves boxer Red West has the stoic, leathery repose of a barfly on a John Ford or Howard Hawks saloon wall. He doesn’t talk much, and when he does, he reveals even less, but there’s an abyss of longing…
Eccentricities of a Nightingale. It’s fascinating to observe the different acting styles on stage in this production, and to think about the ways they work with Tennessee Williams’s characters and dialogue. Brian Landis Folkins subsumes his personality to the role he’s playing. Minute by minute, the outlines of the character…
Damien Hirst. You’d have to be living under a rock — or have absolutely no interest in contemporary art — not to know that Damien Hirst is a superstar, and that everything he makes is worth millions of dollars apiece. The tight solo at MCA Denver (formerly known as the…
It’s okay if you’re confused. “What,” you’re probably wondering, “is the difference between Ignite Denver and Pecha Kucha Night?” The answer is: a little and a lot. Rotate slide. Pecha Kucha began in Tokyo circa 2003 as a way for designers to showcase their work; it limits presenters to twenty…
As a graphic designer, Andrew Hoffman often finds himself “on the computer, doing really modern, visual graphic design.” So he describes his upcoming art show at the Shoppe, Oxymoron, as “kind of a reaction against myself, in a way. A digital designer doing classical oil paintings which also have contemporary…
When Baltimore native Taj Moore moved from San Francisco to Denver two years ago, he immediately began searching for an area that felt like the Mission District. Oddly, no one he asked mentioned East Colfax. “I’d hear people bag on it and say, ‘Parts of it are dirty,’” explains Moore,…
World travelers are always nattering on and on about how fabulous it is to immerse oneself in the culture of another country. And that’s true, but there’s so much culture within the confines of this country that it’s not necessary to get your passport stamped to have a cultural experience…
To call local photographer DD Creech a narcissistic, maladjusted misanthrope would be like calling Denver weather fickle: an incredible understatement. To wit: He once stalked a squirrel stealing veggies from his garden, shot it in the head and shaved it. Then he used a surgical scalpel to carve the number…
If sampling artisan chocolates while sipping a chocolate martini and sniffing a chocolate-scented candle sounds like almost enough chocolate to satisfy your craving, then you need to check out the Colorado Chocolate Festival. According to show organizer Dana Cain, tonight’s preview celebration is “a good date night or ladies’ night…
