Hugh Grant, director of the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, has relentlessly carried the torch for Colorado’s art history, doing more to promote awareness of this important legacy than anyone ever has. He began his promotion with the work of Vance Kirkland, for whom the museum has been…
In the front gallery at Walker Fine Art (300 West 11th Avenue, 303-355-8955, www.walkerfineart.com), owner Bobbi Walker has paired up painter Don Quade and sculptor James Dixon, both from Denver, for the exhibit Natural Abstractions. The show’s title is somewhat general in its implications, if not quite a catch-all, because…
Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The fall opener at the Center for Visual Art is a conscientious survey of the careers of Christo and Jeanne-Claude as seen through their personal print collection documenting their pioneering conceptual work that began in the 1960s. The exhibit, which includes more than a hundred works of…
Filmmaker Les Blank might be best known for his documentary portraits of American musicians, but many critics believe his masterpiece is Burden of Dreams, which catalogued the filming of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. The fact remains that Blank is one of the most creative and insightful documentary filmmakers working today, which…
David Mamet wrote Glengarry Glen Ross more than twenty years ago, but this study of unscrupulous salesmen pitching worthless plots in Florida is acutely relevant today. The hustlers who helped create the current financial meltdown by persuading thousands of working people to buy houses they couldn’t afford must be very…
It’s a few days before the election, and Charles Smith, the sitting president, is hoping for a second term. Trouble is, his poll numbers are in the toilet (or, as the script has it, “lower than Gandhi’s cholesterol”), he’s intensely incompetent, no one takes him seriously (even his Secret Service…
Pride and Glory doesn’t make any effort to disguise precisely what it is: a barely-held-together string of vignettes lifted from every cop movie ever made, save perhaps Turner & Hooch. It serves up cliches bound together by a flimsy, bored-out-of-its-own-skull story about bad cops, black sheep, good sons and a…
Les Misérables. This huge, sprawling musical is based on Victor Hugo’s novel, and the plot centers on the merciless pursuit of a freed prisoner, Jean Valjean, by a bitter police detective, Javert. In the course of the chase, which continues over several decades, we encounter everything from revolutionaries at the…
Anne Hathaway makes a compelling bad girl in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married. Those who believe that Jonathan Demme went all soft with Philadelphia and never recovered may not be reassured by his latest movie, an ensemble tale of family pathology gussied up with verité camera work, world music and…
Tiffany Smyth hangs with belly dancers, fire performers, the Ren Fest crowd and the tribal psychedelic rock band Kan’nal, but first and foremost, she’s a mask-maker of enormous talent, working in leather, beads and feathers to create art nouveau-inspired organic disguises unlike anything you’ve ever seen. She owes some of…
Once upon a time, indefatigable self-promoter David Booker fronted The Captain and the Red Hot Flames, one of the most popular Colorado acts of the ’80s — and he’s about to go back to the future. The group, also featuring saxophonist Sonny Gunn, drummer Kyle “Big Chief” Roberts, keyboardist Paul…
One of the many centerpieces of New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee’s celebrated and fascinating literary foodie fling, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, is the author’s exploration of “Why Chow Mein Is the Chosen Food of the Chosen People: The Great Kosher Duck…
A six-foot-tall Venus flytrap. An elaborate scene from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Maybe just some spider webs and a jack-o-lantern. There’s no telling how volunteers and businesses will decorate their trunks for the City of Thornton’s second annual Trunk or Treat event. “It’s something that obviously touches a nerve with…
When the movers and shakers behind Wine Country International magazine — which has been based in Colorado for the past five years — were in Chile, they were asked by the owner of a Chilean winery why all the wine festivals in Colorado take place in the mountains. “We checked,…
Eight years ago, a group of transgendered Christians at the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in San Francisco created the world’s first transgender gospel choir to shatter the view that there’s something unholy about changing one’s gender. “We began with a desire to express spirituality, that there’s God…
Paula Poundstone is lucky. If she wasn’t so funny, she’d be that crazy lady at the end of the street who plays board games with her cats (which would number in the double digits). Instead, she’s been on the road for almost thirty years winning audiences over with her standup…
The girlish pink-and-black curlicued, marquee-style sign in front says it all. When the decision was made to move downtown Littleton stalwart and favorite lady’s store Details Boutique across the street to roomier digs in the storefront at 2396 West Main Street earlier this year, the new building’s colorful past as…
I searched for years, scouring police auctions and websites, for the bike I coveted as a kid: a Bridgestone RB-1 road bike. I found the elusive frame within twenty minutes at my first Denver VeloSwap & Sports Expo. Another hour at the National Western Complex, 4655 Humboldt Street, netted me…
It’s becoming increasingly acceptable to dress your pets up for Halloween, but with the plethora of dog-friendly parties popping up in the area, however will you choose which one will best appreciate Fluffy’s exotic-dancer getup? Why not go by sheer altruism? Dr. Edward A. Garcia has spent thousands of dollars…
How is this year different from all other years at the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture? The former Leah Cohen Festival of Jewish Books and Authors, the organi-zation’s long-running annual combination Jewish book fair and author series, has morphed into the Jewish Arts, Authors, Movies and Music Festival, a…
You may have seen the banners on lampposts around town. Or maybe you’re on one of the forty-odd teams competing — perhaps the eloquently monikered Off Like a Prom Dress or The Power of Cheese. Whoever you are, odds are you know that the Red Bull Soapbox Race is finally…
Centuries ago, the Aztecs celebrated their dead for an entire month during the summer; the festivities were overseen by their goddess of the dead, Mictlantecutli, who was often depicted with a skull-like face. When the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, their Catholic sensibilities merged the Aztec tradition with All Souls’ Day…
