The Denver Victorian Playhouse production of The Weir is the third I’ve seen in six years, and it’s easily the best and most moving. One reason for this is director Terry Dodd’s strong and nuanced sense of place. The play is set in a rural pub in County Leitrim, Ireland,…
Occasionally, it’s really nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang, now at the Playwright Theatre, posits…
Amadeus. The Denver Center Theatre Company’s glittering, sumptuous version of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus focuses more on a clean, elegant delivery of the text than on the passion at the play’s core. The central figure, Antonio Salieri, was the best-known composer of eighteenth-century Vienna, an upright man dedicated to serving his…
Ice hockey isn’t for the weak of heart. It’s a bruising, fast-paced game, featuring large sticks, razor-sharp blades, and far too many angry Canadians. Of course, hockey’s scrappy style is exactly why people love the blue-collar sport. For chrissakes, Stanley Cup winners chug Labatt’s out of the trophy during the…
American Dreamz (Universal) Till this, Paul Weitz had a stellar filmography, a career in ascension: American Pie (good), About a Boy (great), In Good Company (absolutely perfect). But this, er, satire about a dumb American president (Dennis Quaid, channeling whassisname) trying to get smart, a cynical wannabe singer trying to…
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Two (Universal) Anytown USA (Film Movement/Repnet) Behind Enemy Lines II: Axis of Evil (Fox) The Big Black Comedy Show (Fox) Big Love: The Complete First Season (HBO) The Break-Up (Universal) Clean, Shaven: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) Feast: Unrated (Weinstein) Frankenhooker (Anthem) Charmed: The Complete Sixth Season…
A shout out to Dusty, who was spinning fire at Confluence Park on Sunday night with Maquette and the rest of the tribe who meet there to hang out, play with matches and enjoy each other’s company. We here at The Cat’s Pajamas love Dusty because the twelve-year-old already has…
Try this blog on for size: It’s the first installment of The Cat’s Pajamas, Amy Haimerl’s blog on fashion. The best part about fashion is its magic, its power to transform. To make you taller, stronger, smarter, wittier. The right dress, the sharpest heels, and you feel larger than life…
In 1990, Gregory Hines sat with Sammy Davis Jr. as Davis lay on his deathbed. Unable to speak, Davis tossed an imaginary ball at Hines, bequeathing the title of most-beloved American tap dancer. When Hines died in 2003, all eyes turned to Savion Glover, Hines’s former pupil and co-star in…
How do you make graffiti a collectible art form? By using magnets. They allow the Magnet Mafia to deftly straddle the street and gallery worlds, keeping the public-art aspect of tagging while creating something fans can collect. Tonight at the Fabric Lab, 3105 East Colfax Avenue, the Mafia hosts Magnet…
As a 23-year-old, Joe Thomas isn’t terribly interested in the death tax or Social Security — and he doubts his peers lie awake at night worrying about such topics, either. That’s why the Colorado Young Democrats are organizing an Ask the Experts educational forum that delves specifically into issues that…
Stephen Tebo’s garage is a veritable cornucopia of collector automobiles. More than 300 of them sit inside, gleaming with the sheen of pride that only a true car lover can apply. A triple coat of wax doesn’t hurt, either. Get a close look at the goods under Tebo’s hoods today…
What if everyone reading this sent me random words to incorporate into next week’s piece? Maybe “pimply chickens,” “East L.A.” and “diamond-studded toilet plungers” could define my day at the computer. Sounds tough, right? How about filming, acting, scoring and editing a movie in front of a live audience, or…
Executive director Anton Villatoro pulled out all the stops for the inaugural Denver Marathon. “Dave McGillivray, our race director, designed the course,” enthuses Villatoro. “He wanted to design a course that would highlight all of Denver’s major landmarks.” And how: McGillivray, director of the Boston Marathon, starts the course at…
The annual Westword Menu Affair is always a party. And I don’t say that lightly: The food is free, the booze flows freely, and at least one inappropriate pass is always made. The sixth edition, happening tonight, promises to be no different, with more than thirty local restaurants — including…
Everyone has a bad-date story. Some of us have lots of them. And singles coach Carolyn Ferber confesses that after her divorce, she “experienced a number of dating relationships in which lying on a bed of nails would have been more comfortable and less painful!” Last month, Ferber solicited bad-date…
The sad news is that tickets to Rojo, mi amor, tonight’s $100-a-head benefit gala at the Museo de las Américas, are scarce, if not completely gone. But the wonderful news? You can still get in on the less expensive and more youth-oriented Rojo, mi amor…the After Party at 10 p.m.,…
It’s time for Denver’s arts institutions to take a bow in the glow of Daniel Libeskind’s crazy new museum building. And three in particular — the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, Opera Colorado and Colorado Ballet — are taking a joint one today with Monsters in Art. The…
There is no way of sidestepping the issue, so why not jump right into it: Infamous, this year’s retelling of how Truman Capote wound up in Kansas writing his non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, never comes close to approaching the quiet, devastating brilliance of Capote, last year’s retelling of how…
The sex is real in John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus; only the setting — an animated New York cityscape, benignly overseen by a fluorescent Statue of Liberty — is fake. To an extent, that describes the movie: a sexually daring, dramatically timid roundelay that employs unsimulated twosomes, threesomes and even solos…
Barry Levinson hasn’t made a movie of note in almost a decade — since 1997’s Wag the Dog, to be precise, and even that was less a work of substantial relevance than a bit of lucky timing based on someone else’s better novel. Granted, it had its moments — at…
“This is a curated program of the best of the best — lefty video nonsense, fun and frolic,” says Scott Beibin (right), host of the Lost Film Fest, which makes three local stops this week. Philadelphia-based Beibin, who also runs Bloodlink Records, co-founded the fest in 1999 and began taking…
