When group members split to form separate projects, the results frequently add up to less than the original sum – but not in the case of Mat Brooke and Ben Bridwell. The pair teamed in Carissa’s Wierd, a sometimes entertaining but often erratic Seattle act, before joining forces again in…
When Thoreau said that most men will lead lives of quiet desperation, going to the grave with the song still in them, it’s obvious that he never met someone like Guy Clark, a troubadour who’s been penning odes of quiet desperation for over thirty years and shows absolutely no signs…
“Eating before practice helps a lot.” With a mouthful of homemade pizza, drummer Sam Spitzer is explaining the secret of the Hollyfelds’ camaraderie. Before each rehearsal, the quintet sits down to a meal at the Spitzers’ home. What started as carryout has evolved to delicious home-cooked meals, compliments of Spitzer’s…
While Gil Mantera’s Party Dream makes more-or-less sincere and angst-filled electro-emo, you’d never guess it from the duo’s live shows. On stage, the brothers from Youngstown, Ohio, dance, prance and make general asses of themselves with giddy, homoerotic abandon and total disregard for any hang-ups the audience might have. Gil…
Love him or hate him, with six Grammys to his name and having sold hundreds of millions of records worldwide, Billy Joel has a pedigree that’s impossible to ignore. Although he’s known primarily for crafting shamelessly catchy pop melodies with an ear for the British Invasion and a fondness for…
Brittany Spears puts on a great show. Her dynamic performances have impressed crowds all over the country, consistently earning her awards while helping build a fan base that should only grow bigger by the year. And she has yet to spend any time in a psych ward. Unlike her famous…
Every day Westword receptionist Steve Burge gives you the fashionable view from the front desk. These firemen came in and I knew, immediately, I had my Look of the Day. I could talk about “men in uniform…” or “the look of a hero.” I could. But, see, there’s something much…
Every day Westword receptionist Steve Burge gives you the fashionable view from the front desk. Denver’s resident Diva, Ms. Karen Slack is an All-American girl from the shoulders down, sporting a simple black sweater and, a staple in every American’s wardrobe, a pair of blue jeans. Ms. Slack adds a…
Do you have the crazy?” a wild-eyed zombie fighter demands of his duct-taped captive. The Signal has the crazy all right, bless its cold and sick little heart. A roundelay/tag-team triptych by three directors, filmed in the hitherto-untapped zombie haven of Atlanta, this uneven but impressive shot-on-digital shocker earns a…
Like most wannabe heroes of the eager-to-please teen comedy, poor little rich boy Charlie Bartlett is charming and quirky. Too charming by half and not nearly quirky enough, as played by an artfully rumpled and wide-eyed Anton Yelchin. Blazered, briefcased and blitzed, Charlie comes to us newly expelled from his…
The pleasures of Be Kind Rewind do not extend far beyond the promise of its premise: Jack Black, magnetized and manic (yawn), erases every single videotape in the rental store where he hangs out and has to reshoot the movies with pal Mos Def. Theirs becomes a ramshackle filmography of…
Remember the 1985 movie version of the Parker Brothers whodunit board game Clue, with its pre-DVD-era gimmick of multiple endings? Well, Vantage Point is like that, only instead of multiple endings, it gives us multiple beginnings. Oh, and Vantage Point, to the best of my knowledge, isn’t supposed to be…
Let’s just get it out right now: “Devil May Cry” is a weak-ass name for a wicked action game. But what’s in a name? In three previous outings, the brutal, hella-challenging series has consistently delivered some of the greatest hack-and-slash thrills in the genre. Sure, the setup’s as old as…
Margot at the Wedding(Paramount)Margot (Nicole Kidman, or someone who looks just like her) is a fiction writer whose tales are based, uncomfortably and unkindly, on the real-life family for whom she seems to care very little. Hence sister Pauline’s (Jennifer Jason Leigh) late discovery that Margot’s a “monster” — late…
Black Water (Sony) Catacombs (Lionsgate) Chaos (Lionsgate) Cops: 20th Anniversary Edition (Fox) The Death of Adolf Hitler (Koch Vision) The Easter Bunny Is Comin’ to Town (1977) (Warner Bros.) The Final Inquiry (Fox) Gangsters: The Ultimate Film Collection (Universal) German Expressionism Collection (Kino) In the Valley of Elah (Warner Bros.)…
Is there anyone who doesn’t remember the two central figures in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men — quick-witted, enterprising George and his friend Lennie, who possesses a child’s mind in the body of a hulking, preternaturally strong man, and who tends to kill small, smooth-furred things like mice and…
It’s amazing what legs a lighthearted spoof can have. Little Shop of Horrors got its start in 1960 as a seventy-minute black-and-white movie, featuring Jack Nicholson in a small role and shot by director Roger Corman in two days — either on a bet, or because he still had three…
A Body of Water. In Lee Blessing’s play, two middle-aged people wake up one morning in a beautiful house near a lake — or perhaps the shimmering they glimpse through the windows comes from more than one lake or inlet; they’re never quite sure. They have no idea who or where…
There’s another big blockbuster show coming that’s guaranteed to bring throngs of the great unwashed masses to the Denver Art Museum. They’ll be drawn to the place by the one-two punch of Old Masters and Impressionists, whose paintings and drawings are being showcased in Inspiring Impressionism, opening this weekend. Oh,…
The blockbuster Inspiring Impressionism (see review), at the Denver Art Museum (100 West 14th Avenue Parkway, 720-865-5000, www.denverartmuseum.org), posits the idea that the widely admired style both signaled a clear break with the past and, strangely enough, represented a straightforward continuation of Old Master traditions. Another show at the DAM,…
Clyfford Still Unveiled. A master and pioneer of mid-twentieth-century abstract expressionism, painter Clyfford Still was something of an eccentric in the artist-as-egomaniac stripe. His antisocial behavior led to a situation where 94 percent of his artworks remained together after he died — a staggeringly complete chronicle of his oeuvre that…
The year is 1950; the location is Harmony, a small town in Alabama. Piano player Tyrone Purvis (Danny Glover) is the proprieter of the Honeydripper lounge, but he’s on the brink of losing the joint, and everything that can go wrong for Purvis is going wrong for Purvis. He owes…
