When Freyda Thomas’s adaptation of Molire’s Tartuffe was shown at Circle in the Square a decade ago, it received a dismissive review from the New York Times. The seventeenth-century classic is about a religious con man whose false piety ensnares a prominent householder, almost destroying his home and family; translating…
Charity Hope Valentine is a loving and trusting soul, perpetually betrayed by the men she loves but always willing to give her heart again. She works at a dance hall, flirting and dancing for money. Sweet Charity, with a book by Neil Simon and songs by Cy Coleman and Dorothy…
I Am My Own Wife. The subject of I Am My Own Wife is German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, born Lothar Berfelde in 1928 Berlin, a collector of antiques who survived both World War II and the Communist years in East Germany. But the play is as much about author…
LocoRoco arrived with impossibly high expectations. This ridiculously cute new game for the PlayStation Portable debuted as a demo in April, and since then, the gaming press has tripped over itself to anoint it the successor to Katamari Damacy or Guitar Hero. Now the game’s finally here, and at first…
The Proposition (First Look) There’s an old saying about Ginger Rogers, who did everything Fred Astaire did — but backwards and in heels. This Australian western seems to be saying something similar about gritty American westerns: You think that’s hard? Try living in the Outback. The Proposition mucks about in…
After Sex (New Yorker) Bob & Tom Radio: The Comedy Tour (Image) The Boris Karloff Collection (Universal) Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (Strand) 8th & Ocean: The Complete First Season (Paramount) Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema (Wolfe) Gilmore Girls: The Complete Sixth Season (Warner Bros.) Go for…
When cops from the Aurora Police Department and officers from the Colorado Department of Corrections converge tonight at the DIA Holiday Inn, 15500 East 40th Avenue, it won’t be to transfer a high-risk inmate or make a huge arrest. They’re getting together for the first Let the Jailhouse Rock boxing…
Where has the summer gone? Were you stuck in your office all season? Did you miss the boat for that cruise around the world? Were your kids limited to playing in the sprinklers all summer? If you weren’t able to escape the greater metro area, don’t despair: The Northern Aurora…
For Brian Friedman, a choreographer and judge for So You Think You Can Dance — the hit Fox reality show whose live version arrives tonight — one of the best things about the program is the chance to see dancers in the spotlight instead of just being background for other…
It’s 100% Illegal Fun tonight at the Oriental Theater, 4335 West 44th Avenue. Goldenchyld and Troublemaker will make their Denver debuts on the tables. The 1979 film The Warrior will get deconstructed by a passel of local VJs. The Polarity Twins are hosting their Swap Meet. Fashion Denver is presenting…
The weather outside might be frightful, but inside Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret, 1601 Arapahoe Street, the ladies of Burlesque As It Was will be setting the stage on fire — so delightful! It’s time once again for Brrrrrlesque! Lovely Ladies in a Winter Wonderland, a most entertaining show complete with champagne-hat…
Directed by Brian De Palma from the novel by neo-noirist James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia is a true-crime policier unfolding in late-’40s Los Angeles somewhere between the neighborhoods of Chinatown and Mulholland Drive. The premise involves one of L.A.’s most notorious unsolved homicides. In early 1947, the naked corpse of…
The Rock — formerly known as “Flex Kavana” and, a bit later, as “Rocky Maivia” — was a practicing actor long before he turned to movies and started taking down $12 million paychecks. The happily deluded throngs who used to watch him lay signature moves like the People’s Elbow or…
Viva Pedro: A Festival of the Best of Pedro Almodovar raises some questions — namely, which Almodovar? The Pedro gloriously festivaled and happily familiar now to middle-class film-goers is an aging, camp-centric teddy bear, a man who has made transgender game-playing and comic vamping safe for the arthouses and has…
Even curriculum-clutchers might rather leave a child behind than let her learn from Half Nelson’s Mr. Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling), a Brooklyn junior-high teacher whose off-the-cuff history lessons are based — brace yourself, Bushies — on dialectical theory. History is change, and change, the white teacher tells the kids, most…
Those twenty-somethings, poor dears, can never catch a break in the movies. First this maligned generation is told, in countless gritty indies and perky studio comedies, that they’re rowing through life without oars. Now director Tony Goldwyn’s admirably understated handling of dispiritingly slender material suggests that if you’re pushing thirty,…
An act, more than anything, of due homage and genuflection to David Mamet the ’70s-’80s theatrical provocateur (as opposed to Mamet the ’90s-’00s screenplay doodler), the film version of his 1983 one-act play Edmond is a pleasant actor’s spectacle. You never have to get involved; like so much of Mamet’s…
Granted, this may seem like a jarringly odd comparison, but like the recent dud Phat Girlz, Heading South deals with the hot-button issue of middle-aged women discovering their sexuality anew thanks to the efforts of muscular black men with exotic accents whose standards of female beauty are more flexible than…
Released last year, the Oscar-nominated Sophie Scholl: The Final Days recalls the dark days of Nazi Germany in a fresh and disturbing new way — through the ordeal of an intelligent, idealistic university student (Julia Jentsch) who challenges the regime by distributing anti-Nazi leaflets in a classroom building. In February…
Last month I wrote a piece about the Civic Center Conservancy in which I implied that the group’s members were a bunch of clowns (“Civic Circus,” August 10). In the weeks since, I’ve really come to regret that metaphor and feel a little guilty. After all, clowning is an honorable…
Daniel Libeskind’s ideas for Denver’s Civic Center are off the wall (see review,) but equally bizarre — though in a positive way — is the launching of the Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar (404 South Upham, 303-742-1520) with an opening on Saturday, September 16, from 2 to 9…
Emilio Lobato and Martha Daniels. The solos that open the season at William Havu Gallery combine the disparate work of two of the area’s best-known and well-regarded artists. On the walls is Emilio Lobato: Desde Siempre (Since Forever), which comprises the artist’s signature abstractions. The title refers to Lobato’s self-exploration…
