Our top DVD picks for the week of May 22

Afro Samurai (Funimation) Airwolf: Season Three (Universal) Alone With Her (IFC) Breaking Point (Fox) The Complete Matrix Trilogy (Warner Bros.) Epic Movie (Fox) Escape to Canada (Disinformation) Fay Grim (Magnolia) The 40-Year-Old Virgin: Unrated 2-Disc Double Your Pleasure Edition (Universal) The Good German (Warner Bros.) The John Wayne Collection (Paramount)…

America Cannes

CANNES, France—The world’s preeminent film festival celebrated its 60th birthday party — the opening banquet catered by the world’s hippest, or is that once-hippest? — filmmaker. Hardly the disaster many feared, but far from the triumph others anticipated, Wong Kar-wai’s first English-language feature, My Blueberry Nights — starring Norah Jones…

Savage Love

CANNES, France—The Cannes Film Festival is chiefly revered as a showcase for prolific, careerist auteurs, so the appearance of Savage Grace, the first feature in 15 years by New Queer Cinema co-instigator Tom Kalin (Swoon), was certainly striking — not that a film in which Julianne Moore stars as a…

Ask Anything

I think Bill Graefe Jr., with the International Association of Gay Square Dance Clubs convention, put it best when he wrote in his newsletter that this is the “gayest Memorial Weekend Denver has ever seen.” Not only are the square dancers do-si-do-ing over at the Convention Center Hyatt this weekend,…

View to a Chill

There’s still time for a road trip this holiday weekend. Head up I-70 to the Buffalo Bill Museum on Lookout Mountain, a Denver facility that features not only fascinating displays devoted to William F. Cody’s life and times, but a terrific gift store and a spectacular view of the plains…

Volatile Mixture

In my humble, jam-band-loving opinion, all tickets to the Beer Show should come with a warning label that reads: This product contains potentially unstable elements that may explode when mixed together. Not that there’s anything wrong with ten metal bands and all-you-can-drink microbrews. Au contraire: Either one sounds like a…

Ask Anything

A party to celebrate Memorial Day weekend for gays — players with the North American Gay Volleyball Association receive $10 off the cover charge…

What About Bob?

Dewey Paul Moffitt is somewhat of a tribute giver extraordinaire. The co-owner of the Oriental Theater, 4335 West 44th Avenue, Moffitt has paid homage to Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits and the Band. But last year’s Bob Dylan tribute, Dylan65 (dubbed so because it was held on Dylan’s 65th…

Cheap Thrills

Ah, the joys of bargain hunting! Two of the most avid collector communities in the universe — bookworms and music lovers — come out of their lairs and collide this weekend at the Twisted and Tattered Tent Sale. But there should be plenty of room for everyone when the Tattered…

Growing Concern

Naturally, an experiential artist like Denver live art maverick Eric Matelski would be fascinated by the city’s bountiful network of community gardens. Gardening is a little like being an artist, after all, and galleries are like gardens. But how could Matelski blend the two separate communities? “I really wanted to…

Couture Cuisine

Homer Simpson might have once called them “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” but let’s face it: When it comes to cuisine, the French blow the rest of the world — with the possible exception of the Italians — completely out of the water. My most memorable meals have been almost exclusively consumed…

Slopes and Suds

“It’s snowing right now. It has been since about three o’clock yesterday,” Kristin Lee, marketing manager at Arapahoe Basin, said from her office last week. A-Basin is the only ski area still open, and it expects to stay open into June this year. Even the new Montezuma Bowl, which was…

Neighborhood Gone Wild

As one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, Lower East Highland possesses a personality as fluid as the Platte River it sits above. Once the province of Italian immigrants, then Latino families, the area is now as known for its hipster hangouts and high-priced eateries as for its Queen Anne cottages…

Life Begins at Thirty

I’m not thirty — yet. I’ll soon be passing from my mid-twenties into my late twenties, and I have a feeling that unlike eighteen or 21 or even 25, thirty is gonna sneak up on me and slap me upside my head. Then comes forty, then fifty — so, essentially,…

Cannes Can

Film critic turned novelist Sara Voorhees honed her love of cinema in these parts, as she notes in quirky fashion at the conclusion of The Lumiere Affair: A Novel of Cannes, which she’ll spotlight at a book signing event today. The tome’s acknowledgement section features her thank you to “the…

The Blunder Years

You’re scared and confused. The world spins queasily out of control, terrible menaces loom all around and you can’t remember who you’re supposed to be. No, you haven’t suffered a brain injury or even smoked too much pot: You’re going through a quarter-life crisis. An angst-ridden post-adolescent phase that’s seeming…

Air America

“Air guitar has allowed me to expand my musicianship in both the visible and invisible realms,” says Dan Crane, who co-stars in Air Guitar Nation, a documentary that screens today. Prior to 2003, when he competed in the first U.S. Air Guitar Championships, Crane, a Denver native, was losing his…

Climb Every Mountain

It’s been almost twenty years since Deckers Outdoor Corporation patented the three-part strapping system that elevated Tevas from just another sandal to the must-have sports sandal of the ’90s. Since then, Tevas have branched into flip flops, sneakers, water shoes and more — including some cute women’s styles more suited…

Watching the Detective

I’m an unrepentant mystery fanatic, but a selective one, and I like my authors neat, literate and hard boiled. One name that’ll never leave the top of my must read list is Michael Connelly, whose new books I long for, one after another. The poor man couldn’t possibly turn them…

Skating By

Bill Butler is admittedly arrogant about roller skating. The “Godfather of Roller Disco” has been skating for 64 years, since he was nine. He trained Olivia Newton John for Xanadu and still gets called in whenever a movie, show or commercial features skate dancing. His most recent project is a…

From the Ranch

Ever since I first heard about the Colorado Art Ranch, I’ve been thrilled. Now, we have our own writers’ and artists’ colony — except ours roves from small town to small town, experiencing all of the state’s artistic and cultural diversity. The first class of inductees was selected in April…

Fest in Peace

Memorial Day Weekend is when Front Rangers truly test the waters of summer. A lot of us take the first camping trip of the year or the first dive into the pool; still others haunt favorite watering holes of another kind or go out to dig in the garden. Whatever…