“China was awarded the right to host the 2008 Summer Olympics — with the condition that it improve its human-rights record ahead of the Games,” says Susan Prager, outreach director of the Human Rights Torch Relay USA. “Instead, China escalated its human-rights abuses, which include rampant political incarcerations of so-called…
Plain dumb fearlessness. That’s exactly what you’d expect from a guy who’s spent a good part of his young life globe-trotting between war zones in places like Burma and Rwanda. Doug Fine is all that — adventurer, journalist, comic observer, NPR commentator, Alaskan mountain man — but he now wears…
When Time recently featured George Clooney on its cover accompanied by the headline “The Last Movie Star” — note not even a question mark at the end — you didn’t have to read the article to know where it was coming from. After all, stars of the post-pubescent variety are…
Mick Jagger’s most essential physical feature, according to Martin Scorsese: his bellystache. On the poster for Shine a Light, the big-shot director’s Rolling Stones concert film, Sir Mick is frozen in mid-song aerobics, his back arched, his half-shirt raised, that yawning navel and faint hairline more prominently showcased than his…
With ski season winding down, there seem to be fewer and fewer reasons to load up the car, buckle in and head for the high country and a weekend of scenery and excitement. But forget snow: This week, the Vail Film Festival is the only reason you need to spend…
As a kid, I spent countless hours thumbing through a dog-eared copy of The Guinness Book of World Records, determined to find just the right stupid human trick to vault me into freak-show history. Turns out I didn’t need to waste all those years stretching my neck with metal rings;…
I passed the first act of My Fair Lady in a haze of pleasure. This is the touring version of Trevor Nunn’s acclaimed London production, complete with high-tech values, stunningly beautiful costumes, and leads who have significant and impressive resumés. The direction is inventive, making many of the familiar songs…
There is one intensely effective passage in Elyzabeth Wilder’s Gee’s Bend. Against her husband’s wishes, the protagonist, Sadie, has gone to Selma to march with Martin Luther King Jr. She returns, bloodied and half blinded by tear gas, to find that her husband has locked her out of the house…
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…
Over the years, I’ve often seen the truth in the old saying “One person can make a difference.” Often it’s for the good — for instance, the way Hugh Grant at the Kirkland Museum has almost single-handedly raised public awareness about the history of Colorado art, or the way Clark…
Monroe Hodder really gets around. In the past twenty years she’s lived in New York, San Francisco, Rome and — get this — Almaty, which is in Kazakhstan. Currently the painter is dividing her time between her permanent residence in London and Steamboat Springs, where she has a second home…
George Carlson. Put together by curator Ann Daley, who has shaped and defined the Western collection at the Denver Art Museum, George Carlson: Heart of the West deals with the career of an accomplished neo-traditional artist who looks to the century-old Impressionist style for inspiration. The Carlson exhibit includes nearly…
If you took a bunch of Gary Buseys and locked them in a room with an equal number of typewriters, a buffet of psychedelics and an infinite amount of time, they probably wouldn’t re-create the works of Shakespeare. However, they’d have a damn good shot at nailing The House of…
I’ll let you in on a little secret: Firefighters are super-hot. Maybe it’s the aura of heroism about them in all their pulling-small-children-and-pets-from-burning-buildings glory. Or maybe it’s just their rock-hard abs and bulging biceps. Whatever that je ne sais quoi quality, there’s no denying that firefighters are sexy, sexy beasts…
It may not inspire widespread, degenerate gambling like its basketball counterpart, but the NCAA Frozen Four Hockey Tournament still boasts one of the most exciting post-seasons in collegiate sports, and this year marks the return to its ancestral home of Colorado. The first ten Men’s Hockey Championships were played in…
Last year, Tony Shawcross won a Westword MasterMinds award for the amazing work being done at Deproduction/Denver Open Media — and it just gets more amazing, as tonight’s Open Source/Sustainability Party at the studio at 700 Kalamath Street will prove. “It’s going to be awesome,” Shawcross promises. But then, how…
That Denver’s Chicano Humanities and Arts Council is celebrating thirty years on the local arts scene is no surprise. Few grassroots non-profit arts organizations have as much wherewithal when it comes to sticking to the plan. Now as entrenched as an ancient tire rut burned into a road paved with…
College hoops fans have been in the grips of March Madness all week as the annual NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship series heads toward its pinnacle on Monday. But the Final Four games will be played today in San Antonio, Texas, between the sport’s best teams, and the match-ups are expected…
By most measures, Colorado isn’t any more liberal than other western states. So how come the state has managed to put to death only one prisoner in the past forty years, while some of its neighbors — Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma — have kept their execution chambers hopping? One reason is…
I have a love-hate relationship with bacon. I love stand-alone bacon, crispy-fried on a side plate. But I hate bacon in my entrees; I don’t do bacon in salads as a general rule, because then my entire salad tastes like nothing but bacon. I feel the same way about bacon…
In club lingo, a “mash-up” is two or more seemingly dissimilar popular songs combined into a unified creation. “Bootie” is a double entendre, referring to the illegal nature of said pirated songs and what you shake when you hear them. Maybe this sounds too much like those tired rock/rap remixes…
Conceptual artist Laurie Anderson didn’t name her new production Homeland on a whim. Tonight’s multimedia presentation uses the word as a jumping-off point for an exploration of current cultural preoccupations — including the title term itself. “‘Homeland’ now has so many quotation marks around it that nobody really knows what…
