Upon finding out that The Private Life of Henry VIII was made in 1933, my roommate’s first reaction was “Dude, this is gonna suck.” I had higher hopes, thinking it would be kitschy, maybe, or at least slightly amusing because of the historical context. But good, probably not. How could…
The Colorado Shakespeare Festival has been so thuddingly mediocre for so many years that I approached the opening night of A Midsummer Night’s Dream filled with skepticism. And nothing I heard at the gala preceding the performance — as new artistic director Philip C. Sneed pontificated on the history of…
The Victorians were increasingly fascinated with stories of adventure, as technological advances in travel made their world smaller and more accessible. It didn’t hurt that so much of that world map was colored an imperial red. In his famous novel Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne makes fun…
Corteo. Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo is a fine experience — visually gorgeous, musically exhilarating and filled with acts of athleticism that take your breath away. The costumes and sets are lovely and evocative, with the kind of fanciful curlicues you imagine adorning a fairy-tale palace or a miraculous child’s birthday…
Curator Gwen Chanzit is the world’s foremost authority on the late artist Herbert Bayer, and she has put this knowledge to good use over the past couple of decades as the keeper of the Herbert Bayer Archive and Collection held by the Denver Art Museum. It was started while Bayer…
The contemporary art scene in Denver is made up of scores of galleries, but until thirty years ago, there were only a handful of exhibition spaces in town. It was in the 1970s that the foundations for what we have now were first laid. This was the time of the…
Gary Lynch. The Emmanuel Gallery, in association with the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, presents Gary Lynch: A Memorial Retrospective. Lynch, a Denver native who was born in 1953, died unexpectedly in the fall of 2005. A well-known fine-art photographer who served on the board of CPAC, Lynch took up the…
Black Snake Moan (Paramount) The best place to see Craig Brewer’s mash-up of blood-boiling exploitation elements would be a Mississippi drive-in circa 1972. His tale of a black bluesman (Samuel L. Jackson) who chains up a seething, scantily clad cracker nympho (Christina Ricci) would’ve had the lot under martial law…
Everyone’s got a different sense of what makes a killer party. For kids, maybe it’s whacking a piñata and overdosing on cake. For adults, it could be sticking a beer bong down your gullet and declaring yourself Mayor of Schlitz City. But since 1999, the Mario Party series has served…
The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: The Complete Series (Shout!) Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (Anchor Bay) Dead Silence (Universal) Echo & the Bunnymen: Dancing Horses (MVD) Film School (Docurama) Frankenstein Conquers the World (Tokyo Shock) Going Under: Unrated Version (Blue Underground) High School Musical: The…
Mike Schleipfer, also known as DJMC, has amassed a lot of strangely compelling music during his eight years at KGNU — and now he’s got a new place to put it. Beginning at midnight tonight, and continuing every second and fourth Wednesday night/Thursday morning, A to Z With DJMC will…
Of all the DJs in all the world, Mark Farina, who spins a free set today at Twist & Shout, may be the most musically accessible. On a series of discs released under the Mushroom Jazz banner beginning in 1996, he helped establish the sonic template for Om Records, the…
For the most part, real-life robots are lame. They just sit around doing boring-ass jobs like assembling cars and vacuuming floors. They don’t do any of the cool things my childhood obsession with pulp sci-fi led me to expect: no transforming into fighter jets, no plotting to overthrow their human…
Fourteen years have passed since sixteen-year-old Troy Chavez was dropped off at the hospital after being shot, a victim of gangland crossfire. Although no one was ever charged in the case, the Chavez family was able to find some closure in the Troy Chavez Memorial Peace Garden. There may be…
If you think Samurai swordsmanship is as outdated as the transistor radio, or is useful only as an entertaining way to chop watermelons in half, or you really just want to look like John Belushi’s grunting samurai character from old Saturday Night Live skits, then you’ll be surprised to hear…
If Lakeside Amusement Park was taken over by artists and crafters, it would look something like Monkey See, Monkey Do: A Do-It-Yourself Carnival. Today at Capsule Art & Event Center, 560 Santa Fe Drive, rather than hopping on the Tilt-A-Whirl or the Whip, folks will trade in tickets to try…
Everyone has a handful of movies they watched over and over and over when they were young. Mine were The Neverending Story and Labyrinth — you know, that flick with Jim Henson’s weird and wild puppets, David Bowie playing Jareth the sinister Goblin King, and Jennifer Connelly as Sarah, a…
Most Front Range folks don’t know we have a musician as remarkable as Wu Fei in our midst. The Boulder-based Chinese guzheng virtuoso is equally handy at performing the traditional music she’s worked on since the age of six and the contemporary fusion styles she embraces as a graduate of…
It’s been five years since Tran and Josh Wills took a look around and discovered that there was no outlet for sartorially creative souls — despite the overwhelming amount of talent and style in Denver. Enter the Fabric Lab, the Wills’s brainchild of a boutique that puts only local designers…
Even though the first Denver Poets Day took place in 1976, today’s installment is only the tenth version. “The first one was dedicated to Neal Cassady by many of the people who were friends with him,” explains poet Ken Arkind. The day was resurrected in 1999 and has featured such…
Anyone who’s lived in Colorado for longer than two seconds knows about the Cherry Creek Arts Festival (CCAF) and how it’s nationally recognized as one of the best arts festivals in all of time and space, yadda yadda yadda. It’s one of the don’t-miss happenings of the summer. But not…
I’m not ashamed to admit that I carry what some people might consider an unhealthy affinity for Harry Potter. Although the copies my parents bought were intended for my youngest brother, somehow the books spirited themselves into my bedroom whenever I was home for a visit. (It must have been…
