Indian tabla drums have delicate clay discs at the centers of their membranes that can easily be destroyed under the wrong hands. The drums — which originated in the sixth century B.C. — echo and reverberate, producing unexpectedly melodic tones far beyond basic percussion. Masters such as Zakir Hussain can…
The Denver Center Theatre is topping off its season with an all-out ode to the hat — or, more precisely, to a voluminous collection of those ornately bedecked scalp-schooners that are so integral to the African-American church-lady experience. Crowns, an adaptation by Regina Taylor from the book by Michael Cunningham…
Art, meet fashion. Fashion, meet art. Now go mingle and produce a beautiful union. That’s the idea, at least, of the second annual Shoe Ball benefiting the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver. “We see this as a crossover event between art and fashion, worlds that intersect so often,” says the museum’s…
“Our purpose is to encourage young filmmakers,” says Donna Marek, creator and founder of the Boulder Youth Film Festival and the Boulder Independent Film Festival, which share screen time today. “But we also want to encourage filmmakers of all ages.” This egalitarian approach is evident throughout the BYFF/BIFF lineup. The…
Animal lovers of Denver, it’s time to put your money where your mouth is. At today’s BowWow Benefit Brunch at Sax Galleries, 3019 East Second Avenue in Cherry Creek, you can dine on delectable fare, participate in canine crafts and browse dog-inspired artwork for sale. Fork over just $20 for…
Somewhere in the world, there’s a place where neighborhood kids can go after school to create art and receive skills training as well as participate in open discussions about such looming youth issues as drugs and alcohol, a place that’s open every day during the week, is free and welcomes…
World-weary skeptics might be tempted to pass on Icíar Bollaín’s Take My Eyes the moment they learn its heroine is yet another victim of domestic violence. But that would be a mistake. The brilliant Spanish filmmaker who directed and co-wrote this harrowing look at a sick marriage has no interest…
If some religious extremists in India had gotten their way, the gorgeous fury of Deepa Mehta’s Water never would have reached the screen. As it is, these self-appointed censors shut down the production for years by staging demonstrations, torching Mehta’s sets and threatening her life. Eventually, the filmmaker moved her…
Coming closer even than Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers to resembling the Chinese cover art for an Iron Butterfly album, Chen Kaige’s The Promise is psychedelia extremis. Hardly a minute of it passes without a concentrated dose of digital frou-frou and lavish cartoon-poetic imagery: floating ocean goddesses, flying swordsmen,…
It seldom fails. Every year, just in time for the Oscar deadline, a movie is released that doesn’t necessarily have a remarkable plot or director, but does feature an aging master (or mistress) thespian from the U.K., whom one might assume is an automatic shoo-in for an award nomination, ensuring…
Let’s say you’re a teenage boy dying of cancer. A well-known charity dedicated to helping people like you offers to make your fondest wish come true — as long as it’s something realistic, as opposed to, say, finding a cure for cancer. Would you choose a VIP pass to Disneyland…
The most important thing to know about the new movie Hoot, adapted from the children’s book by Carl Hiaasen, is that it’s co-produced by Jimmy Buffett, who also appears in a small role and provides new music for the soundtrack. Middle-aged drunks and boat owners might possibly rejoice at the…
Among Warners Brothers’ classic gangster movies, the post-war gem White Heat (1949) may outrank even Little Caesar, I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang and Scarface, thanks in large part to aging James Cagney’s spectacular performance as a psychopath who has such a thing for his sour, hard-bitten mother…
Among the standard features of the visual arts, two attributes rise above the others: what something looks like, and what it means. The rise of modernism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was, to a great extent, all about appearances, with formalism providing a kind of conceptual justification…
Ivar Zeile, director of + Gallery (2350 Lawrence Street, 303-296-0927), went to college in Utah and during his student days became friends with painter Jean Arnold. As so often happens, the two friends drifted apart after school. When Zeile recently came upon Arnold’s work on the Internet, it had been…
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…
There was a moment in Chess that undid me completely. It occurred when the heroine, Florence, met the man she believed to be her father — the father she had last seen in 1956 when, as a terrified little girl, she’d been torn from his arms by the Hungarian revolution…
The death penalty is an obscenity in itself, and the ways in which it’s applied are equally vile: the endless waiting on death row, where prisoners can sometimes see fellow inmates led to slaughter or hear the readying of the death equipment; the capriciousness of the appeals process; the countdown…
After Ashley. We first meet Ashley while she’s watching one of those smarmy television shrinks with her teenage son, Justin. The shrink, Dr. Bob, is giving advice to a sexually incompatible couple, and this leads Ashley to reveal far more than Justin wants to know about her relationship with his…
Tennessee Williams Film Collection (Warner Bros.) All that’s missing from this boxed set — six movies, one doc, eight discs — is a jar of sweat; even Williams is here, in a 1973 documentary. Then there’s Brando, Beatty, Newman, Taylor, Burton, Gardner, Leigh, Malden, Huston, Kazan — the last of…
BTK Killer (Lions Gate) Chubby Hubby Workout (On Air Video) Dinosaurs: The Complete First and Second Seasons (Disney) The Family Stone (Fox) Flight 93: The Movie (UAV) Jargo (Picture This!) King of Thieves (Picture This!) Last Holiday (Paramount) Lie With Me (Lance) Life in the Undergrowth (BBC) Misaki Chronicles: Volume…
The biggest innovation videogaming saw in the past decade or so was the invention of the “sandbox”: Programmers create settings and consequences, but give you, the user, free license to do with them what you want. Grand Theft Auto is certainly the best-known of these games. The carjackings, the hookers,…
