Depending on whom you ask, thrift store shopping is either a thrilling exploration to find treasures untold, or it’s a huge, time-sucking pain in the ass to locate one good vintage t-shirt. Thriftonista, a new Denver company, subscribes to both world views. TaRosa Jacobs and Rebekah Adams, two new mothers…
If Diane Keaton were a comer in 2007, she’d likely be stuck in romantic comedies cooked up in movie-studio test kitchens. No Godfather for her. No Annie Hall, no Shoot the Moon, no Reds. Filmmakers who now use Katherine Heigl as their go-to girl would be flummoxed by the willowy…
I do think the writing is pessimistic — all that stuff about life being a tragic experience,” says Angela Stark (played by newcomer Hayley Atwell) early in Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream. An actress talking about the play she’s appearing in at a small London theater, Stark could just as well…
Unreal Tournament III is ideal for overcaffeinated teenage boys with PlayStation 3s, broadband internet connections, extensive online friend lists, hours and hours of time to blow, and — just for good measure — a deep appreciation of the steroid-addled dystopian sci-fi aesthetic. You know, the one where men are 450…
Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest(Fox)As someone with no use for Seth MacFarlane’s potty-mouthed Simpsons rip, I’ll admit to choking out a few giggles during his Star Wars send-up — though, truth be told, it’s slightly less daring than Spaceballs and, sure, Porn Wars. Stunningly faithful to the 30-year-old franchise, MacFarlane’s…
Alex Haley’s Queen (Warner Bros.) Amazing Planet Earth (Questar) The Attic (Allumination) Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (Warner Bros.) Breaker Morant (Image) Extras: The Complete Series (HBO) Dora the Explorer: Undercover Dora (Paramount) DragonLance: Dragons of the Autumn Twilight (Paramount) Good Luck Chuck (Lionsgate) In the Heat of the Night:…
For most Americans, the first Gulf War was a video-game war. We knew it only as television images of blurry streaks across greenish skies, talking heads, excited voices giving a play-by-play on tactics and military decisions; we found it impossible to understand what was happening on the ground, who was…
Life was rough for the average white male in 1950s America. Although few women had jobs and fewer still had any semblance of power in the political or business world, women actually ran the entire country. At home, they psychologically emasculated their husbands and sons. Outside the house, they helped…
Last summer, I was part of a panel discussion about the role that our local scenery plays in both contemporary and traditional art, especially — though not exclusively — in the art that’s done in the region. At one point, artist Don Stinson, who was in the audience, made a…
The walls of the William Havu Gallery (1040 Cherokee Street, 303-893-2360, (www.williamhavugallery.com) are covered by The Nature of Things, combining the work of Tracy and Sushe Felix (see review). A second exhibit, Erick C. Johnson, has been installed around the edges, in the corners and outside, with one of the…
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…
According to filmmaker and actor Ash Christian, I am a fat girl. So is he. As explained in Christian’s debut film, Fat Girls, anyone can be a fat girl, regardless of gender or body mass index. A fat girl is anyone who doesn’t fit in, who’s too quirky for the…
Tonight’s e-town installment features two acts who are in the heyday of their careers: Shawn Mullins and Puerto Plata. Mullins, a solo artist, started playing the drums when he was four and recording his tunes on a tape recorder when he was in the seventh grade. Perhaps one of the…
True story: The first two seasons of Sesame Street: Old School were released on DVD with a parental warning. Apparently the Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird’s imaginary friend, Mr. Snuffleupagus, aren’t politically correct enough for today’s children. With the PC police sanitizing entertainment into bland, creepy oblivion,…
You can’t really call yourself an American until you’ve traveled a stretch of U.S. Route 66 (also known as the Will Rogers Highway, the Main Street of America and the Mother Road). Established in 1926, the thoroughfare stretched from Los Angeles to Chicago and was a major path for Dust…
Whether he’s painting a world leader such as Gandhi or a fantastic character such as General Grievous, Delton Demarest’s iconoclastic work is always eye-catching, thought-provoking and full of subconscious emotional resonance. His unique style recalls elements of pop art, surrealism and those lurid black-velvet paintings found at flea markets. Demarest…
The surrealist movement spawned a host of recognized artists, but you might not have heard of Vilem Kriz. The Czech photographer had a host of roadblocks thrown in the path of his reputation, including a move to the United States, stormy gallery relations and a decade-plus period during which he…
It’s generally agreed that the Who’s Pete Townshend birthed the rock opera: If you’ve seen the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, you’ve seen that band perform “A Quick One, While He’s Away,” a sparkling 1966 trial-run-in-miniature that paved the way for Townshend’s major works, Tommy and Quadrophenia. After that,…
As a child, I once got as far as mouthing the syllables “Mark David Cha—” before my aunt Mary told me that no one was ever to mention that name. The egomaniacal lunatic who robbed the world of John Lennon on December 8, 1980, was never to be referred to…
Richard Kelly shoots the moon with his rich, strange, and very funny sci-fi social satire, Southland Tales. The political phantasmagoria unfolds in an alternately pre- and post-apocalyptic universe in which Abilene, Texas, was nuked on July 5, 2005. Since then, oil prices have spiked and an absurd German multinational has…
Jerry González was nineteen years old when he started playing with Dizzy Gillespie’s band. Not a bad gig for a guy just out of high school. González — who’s equally skilled on trumpet and congas — then went on to record and perform with Afro-Cuban giants Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri…
The following is addressed to girls only: Remember your first diary, the one with the key kept stashed in the underwear drawer, where all your tender, pre-pubescent secrets unfolded in private, away from the prying, super-egoist eyes of your mother and that nasty clique of eighth-graders who got to wear…
