Get Your Naughty On

If you love sexy pin-up photography, don’t miss tonight’s Naughty Mambo Pin-Up Party. In addition to in-the-flesh pin-up babes, the party will feature a fashion show, art, music, dance, comedy and more. For more information, click here…

Look of the Day – Paulina Szafranski

Madonna called. She wants her boots back. Lotus Entertainment’s marketing director, Paulina Szafranski, dropped by the office, channeling Madonna’s Vanity Fair cover (and maybe a little bit of Julia in Pretty Woman) in a pair of crazy-fierce, over-the-knee boots. You want a pair? Too bad. They will, eventually, be available…

Spotlight on Mom

It certainly doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg to show Mom you care this Mother’s Day — although if you have the cash, you sure can score some beautiful, keepsake items. In case you haven’t done your shopping yet, here are few fashionable ideas for Mom…

Speed Racer

Converting a fondly remembered cartoon series — one of the first Japanese animes syndicated on American TV — into a prospective franchise, the Matrix masters, Larry and Andy Wachowski, have taken another step toward the total cyborganization of the cinema. Even more than most summer-season f/x fests, Speed Racer is…

The Duchess of Langeais

Having returned from the center of Africa, “held prisoner by savages for two years before fleeing,” the Marquis de Montriveau (Guillaume Depardieu) is the talk of Paris society. “How very amusing,” deadpans the unflappable Duchess of Langeais (Jeanne Balibar). “None is more dull or somber,” a friend sighs before consenting…

Redbelt

David Mamet’s Redbelt is a tricky bar brawl: Call it the Roundhouse of Games. The writer-director has scarcely abandoned his sense of the movies as an innately duplicitous medium, one best suited to stories that play out as conspiratorial chess matches. But with his tenth feature — an entertaining tale…

Still Lapping It Up

This year marks the 16th birthday of Mario Kart, the landmark Nintendo franchise that consists of eight identical racing games and legions of fans who buy every one of them. And 16 years later, nobody really has a problem with this. True to form, Mario Kart Wii offers no significant…

Arcadia

There’s so much richness to Arcadia that once you’ve seen it, you want to acquire and read the text, ask your mathematician friends to explain the science, re-read Byron, study the history of the English garden, and generally try to plumb all the ideas that Tom Stoppard has set whirling…

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)

These are the complete works of William Shakespeare, but not exactly as he wrote them. The Boulder Ensemble Theatre actors — Geoffrey Kent, Matthew Mueller and Stephen Weitz — spend around ten minutes on Romeo and Juliet, complete with lots of mock fighting and a hilarious rendition of Juliet’s puzzlement…

Now Playing

The Baseball Show. Evil, malaprop-prone Vincent Vascombe, owner of the Beloit Bulldogs, is determined to hold on to his star player, Bill “The Bomber” Dawson. But Dawson — aided by his smart, competent fiancée, Helen — has plans for the majors, and there’s a talent scout hanging around. So Vascombe…

Sandy Carson Gallery

Sandy Carson Gallery is featuring two sculpture shows in the front and a large print show in the back — the latter being a late addition intended as an introduction to the gallery’s new owners and a new era there. I’ve covered the changes previously, but here’s a recap: Sandy…

Now Showing

Dale Chisman. Since Dale Chisman is among the greatest abstract painters who ever plied their trade in Colorado, this show is unquestionably one of the most significant of the year. Recent Paintings by Dale Chisman is also a rare chance to see his work in depth, as it has been…

Three in One

Art offerings along Santa Fe Drive are uneven, at best, but a few places always seem to have something worth looking at. There’s the Sandy Carson Gallery, of course, the ArtDistrict’s flagship. But there is also Space Gallery (765 Santa Fe Drive, 720-904-1088, www.spacegallery.org), directly across the street. Space ordinarily…

Rik’s Trip

Rik Reppe’s Glorious Noise, which bows tonight at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts, deals in large part with New Orleans’s struggle to recover in the wake of Hurricane Katrina — a subject that seems like a downer. “I tell folks about it, and when I walk away, I…

With a Flourish

Flourish “focuses on nature’s full spectrum,” says Debra Demosthenes, gallerist at Robischon Gallery, where the exhibition of paintings, prints and sculptures is being unveiled today. “It’s not only leafy things, but dormant things and floral forms, all alluding to the concept of thriving and growth itself.” An artistic nonet contributes…

Street Dreams

When the golden day is done, Through the closing portal, Child and garden, flower and sun, Vanish all things mortal. — From Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses A dozen paintings by street artists have already sprouted as part of the Denver Botanic Gardens’ Urban Nature exhibit, and…

Googie Nights

Call it what you like: Populuxe, Doo-Wop, Coffee Shop Modern, Jet Age, Space Age. The mid-century Southern California architectural style, with its ski-jump roofs, starbursts and kidney-shaped signs, is still all Googie to me. Named for the jet-age lines of John Lautner’s famous 1949 Googie’s coffee shop at the corner…

Perfect Revenge

I’m far from being the perfect mom. I work full-time, I no longer love to cook, and my house looks like Ground Zero, only worse. Clearly, a new book called The Woman Who Is Always Tan and Has a Flat Stomach (and Other Annoying People) was written just for me…

Brain Food

“What the hell is a search engine?” might seem like a funny question today, but in late 1998, Charlie Ayers had no idea what he was getting into when he applied for the chef position at a small dot-com endeavor. Ten years later, the iconic Google has expanded exponentially, and…

This Old House

Why would anyone want to live in a dwelling that looks exactly like every other structure within spitting distance? Old homes have so much more character than the cookie-cutter houses that plague recent developments. Unfortunately, old houses also come with their share of problems. But I’d still take a 1920s…

Sexy Mama

Tonight’s Naughty Mambo Pin-Up Party is a celebration of mothers — albeit an unusual, racy celebration. Paper Dolls and Westword contributing photographer Jim J. Narcy have been shooting sexy frames of contestants for several weeks; tonight’s bash will crown the winners of Paper Dolls’ Mother’s Day Pin-Up Contest. Shooting the…

Funeral Righteous

Are you in the market for an automobile with plenty of room for kids as well as cadavers? Need a comfortable sedan that will strike terror in the hearts of elderly neighbors? Are you tired of that new-car smell because you’d really rather impress friends with the old-corpse smell? Does…