It’s impossible to write about David Wain’s The Ten without first making passing reference to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. The former, originally made for Polish TV twenty years ago and first shown in the United States in 2000, offered a modern-day take on the…
No less than Spider-Man 3, Oren Rudavsky’s The Treatment is an urban fairy tale. It’s an Upper-West-Side story, adapted from publishing powerhouse Daniel Menaker’s well-reviewed 1998 novel, first published in the New Yorker, in which a smart-mouthed, if diffident, hero (Chris Eigeman) wins a wise, beautiful princess (the versatile, sometime…
Before I saw Central City Opera’s The Saint of Bleecker Street, my knowledge of Gian Carlo Menotti was confined to the Christmas classic Amahl and the Night Visitors and his short ballet The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore, about a poet and the three mythical animals that represent different…
I was so impressed by Next Stage’s Assassins that in Westword’s 2007 Best of Denver issue, it was named Best Production of a Musical. The current revival features most of the same cast members, and Sondheim’s score — which takes on such American idioms as ballads, hymns, rock music and…
All’s Well That Ends Well. This play isn’t Shakespeare’s best: It lacks the usual poetry and insight, and the plot is highly problematic. Helena, one of those smart, resourceful, charming heroines we’ve seen in other Shakespearean comedies, is in love with Bertram, son of the Countess who raised her, but…
What constitutes Western art has been a hot topic among curators over the past twenty years. The answer is obvious when applied to material from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it gets murkier and murkier after the 1930s. What caused the confusion, of course, was the rise of…
Denver artist Jason Appleton takes the role of the outré bohemian, the perfect pose for a longtime member of Pirate: A Contemporary Art Oasis (3656 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058, www.pirateart.org). Over the years, I’ve come to learn that although he’s always ambitious, he’s also always uneven; a typical Appleton show has…
The American Landscape and Carny. Rule Gallery has typically presented single solos since landing in its new space several months ago, but this time, there are two different shows in that long and narrow sales room. The two work well together, though, as both are made up of photographs about…
Taxi Driver: Collector’s Edition (Sony) “Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads: Here is a man who would not take it anymore.” Martin Scorsese’s 1976 vision of hell as city-of-night New York rips through the reverential treatment on this special edition like a hunter’s blade through deerskin. A second disc of eight…
Ask a random person five years ago what Sudoku was, and you’d be lucky if they mumbled something about Japanese ritual suicide. But go down any supermarket’s magazine aisle today, and you’ll find whole racks stuffed with cheapie newsprint books full of the addictive puzzles. People can’t get enough. They…
All Creatures Great & Small: The Complete Collection (BBC Warner) Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters for DVD (Turner) Back to School: Extra-Curricular Edition (MGM) The Black Widow (First Look) Charlie Chan Collection: Volume 3 (Fox) DangerMouse: The Complete Series (A&E) The Dark Crystal: 25th Anniversary Edition…
When I think of gospel tent shows and ice-cream socials, I think of small-town America, places where community actually means something, where everyone knows your name and is willing to share their hot-fudge sundae with you. Or at least tell you where you can get your own. The downside of…
I’m an enthusiastic believer in the theory that everything is better with monkeys. They’re cute, they’re clever and we can learn a lot from them: They spend their time playing, eating, sleeping and making hot monkey love. No jobs, no schools and no wars; when they get pissed off, they…
Deciding where to land as a “fringer” — a Boulder International Fringe Festival-goer — can be overwhelming, with the seventy-plus local and international artist groups performing in 350 live theater, dance, circus art, media art, cinema, visual art, spoken word, puppetry, workshop and storytelling events over twelve days. That’s why…
A cornerstone of New York City’s bohemian world in the mid-twentieth century, leftist painter and portraitist Alice Neel left behind a scrapbook of her cultural milieu in the form of insightful depictions of the famous (among them, poet Frank O’Hara, theater entrepreneur Joseph Papp, composer Virgil Thompson, New York Mayor…
When Fort Collins’ Solid Art Collective swept into town last spring to produce Femme Fatale 2, they proved they knew how to put on a successful eye-candy-filled event. So executive director dRe Williams and her cohorts immediately started planning their next art-and-performance party: Divine Intervention, happening tonight at the Oriental…
In Kama Sutra, the one-act play showing today at 3 p.m. at the Dangerous Theatre, 2620 West Second Avenue, the show’s two characters are nearly naked the entire time. And most of the action — including “action” of the illicit kind — takes place in bed. Not to mention the…
At last year’s Fringe Festival, Boulder-based TinHouse Experimental Dance Theatre’s site-specific experiential Pick of the Fringe performance in a parking lot, Under the Hood, could’ve been subtitled “Dances with Cars.” This year, the troupe is fixated on Eating and Dreaming. Conceived and choreographed by TinHouse artistic director Joanna Rotkin, the…
The art of Butoh is anything but self-explanatory: A post-war Japanese phenomenon, the discipline is neither traditional in nature nor definable by set rules, although its intent tends to run deep and, sometimes, dark. It’s a constantly morphing, expressionistic dance form that’s often, but not always, performed in whiteface. Butoh…
There is something inherently wrong with putt-putt golf: There is usually no beer involved. Apparently, putt-putt course owners don’t like to serve booze because of the young clientele that frequents their establishments. Once again, my right to being healthily inebriated is infringed upon in the name of family values. But…
The Mesgana Dancers, who’ll star in a benefit performance tonight and tomorrow, consist of Ethiopian girls ages seven to ten. Nonetheless, they’re handling the shock of touring a country totally unlike their own “with great aplomb,” says Jane Kurtz, the board president of Denver-based Ethiopia Reads, which is co-sponsoring the…
I grew up on Palisade peaches. My grandma lives in the area, and every summer we would have to make the excruciating journey out to see her. After five dreary hours on I-70 — being forced to endure Sting and Annie Lennox the entire time — Palisade’s peach groves would…
