On the Wall

Art lovers in search of a bargain buy would do well to drop by Open Space Gallery, 2914 West 25th Avenue, today for the last day of a benefit sale of art and collectibles hosted by local artist/entrepreneur Mary Mackey, with proceeds going to Mi Casa Resource Center for Women…

Hungry, Thirsty and Blue

Bet you can’t guess what happens at the third annual Blues, Brews & BBQ Festival. Here are a couple of hints to get you started: It doesn’t have anything to do with squirrel hunting or heavy metal, and the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover” doesn’t stand a…

Talking Shop

So you’re fair, fat and forty? Your raven locks have all gone gray? Whatever. Once you hit a certain plateau, it all starts to go south, and who cares? You had your bikini-clad day in the sun, and it’s time to simply enjoy yourself — a pastime that just got…

Culture Stock

When you’re lucky enough to have a natural resource such as Mesa Verde National Park in your back yard, it’s easy to take good fortune for granted. Readers of Condé Nast Traveler voted Mesa Verde the number-one historic monument in the world, and National Geographic Traveler has cited the park…

Jock Stories

Last year, Boulderite John Georgis bought a school bus on eBay that came from Moline, Illinois. He tore off the roof and added logs, wood paneling — recycled, of course — and a rubber chicken. Inside, he installed saddles, recliners, a couch and disco balls. Thus, Banjo Billy’s Bus Tours…

Give Me Munny

The Munny has no face, though it does boast some innate character. It’s seven inches tall, comes in black, white or glow-in-the-dark, with or without accessories, and in the small world of limited-edition vinyl art toys, it’s the ultimate invitation to decorate as you please. Plastic Chapel, a toy nook…

Lucky X III

When kids of all ages discuss comic books and superheroes, there is inevitably one question that comes up time and again: If that one guy and that other guy had a fight, who would win? Comics companies occasionally indulge these debates with special issues pitting Thing against Hulk, or Wolverine…

My Mother the Fraud

Such is the currency of lies these days that “Based on an Untrue Story” might well be a shrewd tagline, if an unusually honest one. Still, the recent discovery that teen-prostitute-turned-hardcore-memoirist J.T. LeRoy is merely the fanciful invention of failed-musician-turned-moneymaking-writer Laura Albert won’t necessarily boost the box office of The…

Confessions of a Horndog

Most memoirs, like off-brand hot dogs, should come with labels that list their suspect ingredients. Outrage over James Frey aside, does anyone still believe that a person’s reconstructed narrative of his or her life isn’t going to mix some snouts or tails among the meat? The best one can hope…

24 Hour Party People

The pleasures of Michael Winterbottom’s relentlessly hip 24 Hour Party People, released in 2002, still reside in what Village Voice critic Dennis Lim called the film’s “brazen impatience.” The place is Manchester, between 1976 and 1992, and the ruling presence — loud, pompous, delightfully full of himself — is Factory…

Colorado Dreaming

The swank David Cook Fine Art has been riding the recent wave of interest in the art of the American West, a formerly untapped treasure trove. One way the gallery has done this is by presenting consistently great shows on the subject, filling them to the brim with first-rate pieces…

Wallflowers & Pinups

Surely one of the city’s funkiest, grungiest, edgiest and strangest art galleries is Capsule (554 Santa Fe Drive, 303-623-3460), the brainchild of artist Lauri Lynnxe Murphy. I don’t see every show presented here, but I’ve seen enough to know that whatever’s on view will at least be interesting, if not…

Sketches

Apparition. The brand-new Gallery Severn, which is owned by art collector and retired executive Andy Dodd, aims to be what he has called a “launch pad” for emerging artists. This specialty in fresh faces instantly makes the place interesting. Also interesting is Dodd’s decision to feature only one artist at…

Dear Diary

The first scene of Fiction pulls off a telling bit of trickery. Two people argue and banter over espressos in a Paris cafe. Playful, self-conscious and hyperliterate, they seem a long-married couple. But as they rise to leave the cafe, the woman extends her hand in farewell, and we realize…

Band of Brothers

A dreary scene confronts us on the small, square stage: a counter with knives and a cleaver, a dirty bucket, blood splashed against the back wall, on the floor. It’s 1990, the first Intifada is in process, and a pair of Palestinian brothers, Chaled and Na’im, are arguing in a…

Now Playing

Impulse Theater. Basements and comedy go together like beer and nuts or toddlers and sandboxes. The basement of the Wynkoop Brewing Co., where Impulse Theater performs, is crowded, loud and energetic. Impulse does no prepared skits, nothing but pure improv — which means that what you see changes every night,…

Your Show of Shows

Boston Legal: Season One(Fox) David E. Kelley’s latest legal drama is nothing more than a TV show about TV shows; hence the casting of Captain Kirk and Murphy Brown, with guest shots by Diane Chambers, Golden Girl Rose Nylund, and Alex Keaton. It’s like a Nick at Night mash-up, with…

Our top DVD picks for the week of May 25, 2006.

Africa Screams (Image) April’s Shower (Liberation) Back Door to Hell (Fox) Bloodrayne (Uwe Boll Productions) The Closer: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) Deadwood: The Complete Second Season (HBO) The Devil’s Miner (First Run) The Dirty Dozen: Two-Disc Special Edition (Warner Bros.) The 4400: The Complete Second Season (Paramount) Game…

Next Big Things

Yet another Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) has come and gone, and this one was the biggest yet. Exhibitors know all too well that a strong showing at E3 — an event heavily covered by both industry and mainstream press — can turn a great product into a blockbuster and a…

Barks and Crafts

The French painter Louis Wain so loved cats that he devoted his entire artistic career to them, depicting felines at dinner parties, dancing jigs, and wearing bonnets and demonic grins. And although Denver’s Dogmata collective draws its inspiration from the cats’ mortal enemy — the dog — its members display…

Fourteen Carats of Class

Twenty-two-year-old Luke Mueller describes himself as “good-looking and charismatic,” calls himself a “salesman with ADHD,” and says he and his business partner, Kevin Rice, “make an outstanding team.” But when Mueller and Rice first began searching for models to form the Denver Diamond Girls, they didn’t have a lot of…

Immigration Blues

North High School theater coach José Mercado loves working with his kids, but he occasionally gives adult actors the benefit of his directing skills. His latest effort, Beyond the Border, is a labor of love that pushed him to piece together an exploration of illegal immigration and cultural identity for…