Don’t utter the word “downsized” around Jim DeLutes: The new director of the troubled Downtown Denver Arts Festival has been working his tail off to rebuild the fest, which returned Friday to the Denver Pavilions in a fresh incarnation for its ninth Memorial Day Weekend run. “There’s not a lot…
“Schizophrenic” wouldn’t be the word. More like multi-dimensional. Yes, that’s it: The Opus Fantasy Arts Festival is multi-dimensional. “Opus is live bands, an indie film festival, costume contests, film, drama, art, literature classes and workshops, and hands-on interaction with people who have defined a generation of imagination,” says Opus Arts…
So you’ve got a watercolor self-portrait you’re obsessed with showing people, huh? Or maybe it’s that black-and-white photo of your girlfriend’s navel, or a mosaic of Time magazine snippets forming a head shot of the commander-in-chief, or elbow macaroni pasted in the shape of a llama, or a sticky bun…
Cat is out today, working on a photo shoot for Westword’s annual Summer Guide, which comes out on June 7. The entire guide features fashions by local designers and from local shops. You won’t want to miss it. In the meantime, here’s a sage piece of advice from one of…
The perfect pair of jeans, the ones that make your bum look pert and thighs slim, are elusive. A mythical creature, almost. Like a fashion-industry unicorn. Sure, there’s always the promise that if you just pay the three figures for the Sevens or the Paper Denim & Cloth they’ll take…
Some of Denver’s favorite local boutiques made the New York Times Travel section on Sunday. There was a great deal of buzz and excitement when the photographer and reporter were out here a few months ago, and after all the waiting for our fifteen minutes of fame, here’s what the…
While Cat’s on the Vogue kick, here are a few of the ads that just popped. I mean, seriously, don’t we all read fashion mags for the ads, anyway? The words are sort of incidental. (Although, Cat always flips immediately and directly to Vogue’s “Nostalgia” column. The pieces are always…
Cat spent a good portion of last night sitting in a hospital room, waiting for her friend Dominique to pop out her first sprog. Let’s just say it wasn’t easy going, so Cat had plenty of time to finally read the May Vogue. And by read, Cat means flip through…
The other big shocker of Wednesday night was Jaslene taking home the America’s Next Top Model contract. Cat didn’t really have any opinion either way — she was pretty meh on this cycle all together — but odds makers were not favoring the lovely Latina lady. So yay for her!…
Scenes from Rick Owens’s Spring 2007 collection. (Photos by First Look.) Last night’s National Design Awards were a shocker, at least in the fashion category: Rick Owens beat out both Narciso Rodriguez and Phillip Lim for the ten-year-old honor bestowed by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. (More photos after…
Coming out of Shrek the Third, I asked the two smart preteen girls I had in tow what they had liked about the picture. Projectile vomiting and multiple farts, they said promptly, best Shrek ever. Ordinarily I’m not big on puking and flatulence, but in this instance I sympathized; there’s…
Awash in daily news of mass savagery, collective memory grows short. We feel for the women of Afghanistan, but who these days remembers the war widows and rape victims of the 1992-1995 civil war that sent Yugoslavia to hell and brought it back a divided country? Now comes the young…
Colorado’s own TIE, The International Experimental Cinema Exposition, exists to illuminate what curator and founder Christopher May calls the truest form of cinema: the experimental. On May 23, TIE brings the old guard of the avant-garde to a one-night-only screening in the Tears McFarlane Mansion in Cheesman Park. Super-8 Summer…
There it is. The last, ear-punishing note of the very last song, and the cast comes onto the stage for the curtain call. First the lesser characters form a smiling line that prompts a couple of people in the audience to stand up. Then the bigger fish rush forward and…
According to Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, major changes occur when members of Charles Schultz’s well-loved Peanuts gang reach their teens: Pigpen becomes a sex-obsessed, homophobic jock; Lucy’s in a psych ward because she set the little red-haired girl’s hair on fire; Linus, having been forcibly deprived…
Dead Man Walking. We are one of the last Western nations to retain the death penalty, but you don’t hear much about it these days. Where executions were once front-page news, they’re now relegated to single paragraphs far back in the paper — if they’re mentioned at all. In an…
In the late summer of 2002, Tyler Aiello and Monica Petty Aiello burst onto the Denver art scene as full-blown players. They pulled off this difficult feat by opening Studio Aiello in the nether reaches of what is now the River North Arts District, north of downtown. Studio Aiello was…
A month or so ago, I received a call from John Davenport, a noted local photographer and a boardmember of the Colorado Photographic Arts Center. He was annoyed because although CPAC had organized one show and co-organized another among the exhibits that had received Best of Denver awards in March,…
Altar Girls. Two very different exhibits roughly collide into one another in the middle of the Museo de las Américas. One part, put together by Museo curator Kristi Martens, is an extravaganza of santos made mostly in Colorado, Mexico and New Mexico, and primarily culled from a recent gift to…
Army of Shadows: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) Arthur & the Invisibles (Genius) Bill/Bill on His Own (Brentwood) Bunny Whipped (Think) Caddyshack: 20th Anniversary (Warner Bros.) Chasing Liberty (Warner Bros.) Curse of the Zodiac (Lionsgate) The Dead Girl (First Look) Denzel Washington: Spotlight Collection (Universal) ER: The Complete Seventh Season (Warner…
If you’re looking for a laugh, find a kid raised on Grand Theft Auto and introduce him to Pac-Man for the first time. As he stares at you blankly, explain the addictive joy of eating dots and the simplistic genius of the neon-blue maze. When he sneers, “That’s it? It’s…
Pan’s Labyrinth (New Line) Guillermo Del Toro has made a career of mixing slam-bang special effects (Hellboy, Blade II) with creepy atmospheres (Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone). But with Pan’s Labyrinth, he’s used his entire palette for what will likely be remembered as his masterpiece. Mixing Franco’s Spain with fairy tales,…
