Sometimes it’s the terrible ideas — say, a TV show about nothing, or stirring corn into your mashed potatoes — that turn out to be genius. Super Smash Bros. landed on the Nintendo 64 nearly 10 years ago, kicking off a concept that initially sounded nauseating: “lovable Nintendo characters in…
No Country for Old Men(Paramount)”A horror comedy chase” is how a grinning Tommy Lee Jones describes No Country for Old Men in the making-of — meanwhile, his fellow actors add to the list such adjectives as “a very primitive ride,” “a rabbit chase through Texas,” and “a very powerful story…
Stones in His Pockets is a small play — charming, wistful, not quite sure what it wants to be. It starts out as one of those clash-of-culture satires. A film company has plumped itself down in a village in rural County Kerry, Ireland, disrupting everyday life. Caroline Giovanni, the lead…
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…
When I woke up on the morning of March 3 and prepared to attend the unveiling of a design for a new downtown museum dedicated to abstract-expressionist genius Clyfford Still, my heart filled with dread. I really didn’t want to see it, and had even less interest in meeting its…
With all the excitement in this country about Chinese contemporary art, the fact that China is a police state is often forgotten. Leave it to the Chinese to remind us with some timely events that reveal the true conditions under which artists live and work there. A couple of weeks…
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…
“It’s going to be really interesting,” says Jillian Crandall, director of marketing and public relations for the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra. “The ballet style from Lemon Sponge Cake is obviously contemporary, not storybook ballet. It’s a high-class, New-York style event, if you will.” She’s talking about the BPO’s latest foray into…
Forget everything you thought you knew about quilts. Even Grandma’s most extreme quilting patterns never hinted at the possibilities realized in the work on display at Don’t Fence Me In: Contemporary Quilting, on view today through May 18 at the Longmont Museum and Cultural Center, 400 Quail Road in Longmont…
The glass ceiling in hip-hop remains to be broken. Back in the day, artists such as Queen Latifah and MC Lyte rocked the mike as hip-hop spread from the underground to the mainstream, and Denverite Day Acoli grew up with the music as other artists like Lauryn Hill represented for…
The future of art is in the hands of dorks. More accurately, in the hands of Dorkbot — an international organization of hackers, artists, builders, modders and makers — whose motto is “people doing strange things with electricity.” “I’ve always been into experimental electronic art,” explains Jane Crayton, founder of…
Take a multimedia tour through the jagged world of the deeply insane, exploring the aftermath of a broken mind’s civil war. In these twisted worlds, a jilted recluse keeps her wedding-day house untouched for thirty years — in case her fiancé finally shows up — and mad King George III…
Even the most accomplished guitarists do a double take when they hear Pat Donohue on A Prairie Home Companion, where the versatile finger-style picker has masterfully performed in the shadow of host Garrison Keillor for at least a decade. Donohue can finesse anything acoustic — jazz, blues, folk, you name…
Anybody can take a tour and be told what to think about a work of art. Alison Croney at the Museum of Contemporary Art would rather get adults — and their kids — thinking for themselves about what they see. Enter Smart Brunch Sundays. Every other week, Croney leads parents…
These days, most folks who attend standup gigs featuring British transplant John Oliver, who arrives for a two-night run today, know what to expect from his contributions to The Daily Show — and that’s lucky for him, since those who come in cold aren’t always as receptive. “You have to…
“Sassy, strong and relevant” is how the Urban Bush Women describe themselves. Since 1984, this New York City ensemble has sought to bring the untold and under-told histories and stories of the disenfranchised to light through dance. Their latest collaboration — in which they join the men of Compagnie Jant-Bi,…
“There’s an untold story about this guy who was a muse for several different social movements, and he was born and bred in Denver,” says KBDI Channel 12’s Heather Dalton. She’s talking, of course, about Neal Cassady, aka the notorious Dean Moriarty from Jack Kerouac’s Beat bible On the Road…
Zen master, artist and author John Daido Loori has a point to make. At a reception, film screening and gallery talk titled “Art and Environmental Activism” — which takes place tonight in conjunction with Loori’s fine-art photography exhibit, The Tao of Water — the artist says he’s going “to try…
The organizers of this year’s Bud Light Spring Jam in Aspen/Snowmass are pulling out all the stops. The eighth annual snowfest will extend over three weekends, continuing each Friday, Saturday and Sunday through April 6. Brand-spankin’-new this year is the Gretchen Bleiler Invitational, bringing together the world’s top female snowboarders…
When choosing this year’s MasterMinds — five arts groups that are changing the cultural landscape of Denver — Creative Music Works was a no-brainer. And that was before we knew that CMW — an unsung hero of the local scene that has been bringing great, far-from-mainstream acts to town for…
When George W. Bush was elected president, he promised to work with Republicans and Democrats alike. But former Colorado senator Gary Hart’s efforts to reach across the aisle were rebuffed, and he admits that he feels “silly, because it now turns out that they didn’t have even a thin idea…
Yup. It’s true. Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words, huh? Now if you’ll excuse me, I suddenly feel some pressure to go do about a bazillion crunches. — Steven J. Burge…
