The jazz vocalist was about as cool as the jazz accordion in the post-bop heyday of the ’50s and ’60s, but singers such as Abbie Lincoln, Nina Simone and Andy Bey loaned human faces and voices to that decade of avant-garde abstraction. And Bey is still keeping it real. After…
John Ashton, who’s directing a new production of Insignificance, doesn’t much like Nicholas Roeg’s 1985 film version of the play, which imagines a meeting of individuals who bear a striking resemblance to Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Senator Joseph McCarthy. “I hated Theresa Russell’s rendition of Marilyn,” he…
You may not yet have lost your ardor and respect for the pressure-point hammerblow Quentin Tarantino executed on American movies, but it’s difficult at this late date not to view him as an imperative inoculation with unfortunate side effects: gas, bloating, dizziness, delusions of cleverness. Imitators flock when coolness seems…
Calling Rian Johnson’s teen indie-drama Brick a piece of stuntwork might seem tantamount to hitting it with a pie, but it’s a high-speed wheelie of a strangely daring variety. Try this thumbnail definition on for size: a high school noir complete with a Dashiell Hammett-derived plot line and a fearless…
It’s difficult to tell from the image on the poster for Take the Lead, but that’s not star Antonio Banderas dancing in blue silhouette. In fact, the movie isn’t even about Banderas dancing — it’s about Banderas teaching teenagers to dance. You’d think that might be a dream come true…
We’ve all done it — killed an afternoon drinking in a pleasantly grungy roadhouse somewhere, boozily enjoying the illusion of having fallen off the grid, playing semi-forgotten blues songs on an outdated jukebox and thinking aloud, See, I should capture this feeling. This should be a movie. Sobered up, we…
The raunchy cult favorite Unholy Rollers (1972) features gorgeous Playboy Playmate Claudia Jennings as the rebellious star of a Roller Derby team that’s amply stocked with resentful teammates and bitter rivalries. The heroine’s good looks and singleminded pursuit of fame make her a target at every game, and it isn’t…
Some thirty years ago, Foothills Art Center in Golden established Colorado Clay as an annual juried exhibit to highlight ceramics being done in the state. But Jenny Cook, the center’s director, has decided to make the exhibit a biennial so she can open up the schedule for new programming. Colorado…
More often than not, members of the city’s art co-ops are not youngsters fresh out of art school, but established artists who’ve shown their work around here for years. This is true not only of the old-line spots, but also in the case of the newer ones, such as Sliding…
Denver’s Pictorial Photographer. The Colorado Photographic Art Center no longer has a permanent home, but it’s still going. The group has held on to its impressive permanent collection, which is where the material for Denver’s Pictorial Photographer at Gallery Roach comes from. The title refers to R. Ewing Stiffler’s work…
At the end of the nineteenth century, Sarah Bernhardt was the grande dame of French theater and Eleonora Duse her Italian counterpart. The two actresses had contrasting strengths. Bernhardt’s acting was glamorous and stylized; she posed prettily and had a self-consciously beautiful voice. Duse’s approach was more realistic; she believed…
“Poor Wandering One” is among the loveliest of Gilbert and Sullivan’s many lovely melodies, but you haven’t really lived until you’ve heard Johnette Toye singing it — as she does in Phantom of the Music Hall. Toye preens and staggers and makes her mouth into a dark, wide-open square from…
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,…
On paper, Black sounds like a sure hit: Criterion Studios (the developer behind the spectacular Burnout games) designs a first-person shooter that does away with all that boring sneaking and instead focuses on the pure pyrotechnic appeal of a Hollywood-style gun battle. The game promised sub-woofer-rattling explosions, frantic gunfire in…
The Mel Brooks Collection (Fox) Talk about taking the good with the bad; how else to describe a boxed set containing Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (Brooks’ silly masterpieces), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights and History of the World, Part 1 (both overrated, even by people who can’t stand…
Bee Season (Fox) Best of 3rd Rock From the Sun (Anchor Bay) The Big Question (THINKFilm) Bustin’ Bonaparte (Freestyle) Dawson’s Creek: The Complete Sixth Season (Sony) Dirty (Sony) The Fallen (Anthem) Far Side of the Moon (TLA) Gorillaz: Demon Days Live (Virgin) Judges (Anthem) Little Manhattan (Fox/Regency) Liza With a…
“Tree-hugger” has become an almost warmly pejorative term, conjuring images of feckless hippies and stoned CoPIRG canvassers on the 16th Street Mall. As such, it’s easy to forget the life-and-death struggle at the core of anti-logging movements, especially the one centered around the redwood forests of northern California. The area…
Since the summer of 2004, the Longmont-based humor quarterly American Drivel Review has been sticking it to the McSweeney’s mob by going beyond satire and the merely ironic to offer experimental, subversive and absurd humor that “runs the gamut from intellectual to intestinal,” according to founder and editor Tara Blaine…
Toga parties are, by most accounts, ridiculous. Then again, so are white-trash parties, pimp-and-ho parties and pretty much any other themed shindig that mandates costumes and the exorbitant consumption of alcohol. But ridiculous or not, we still go — we always go, because people in costumes tend to leave their…
Curious Theatre Company artistic director Chip Walton stole the idea, but give him a break: The Curious fundraiser Denver Stories is based on a similar event mounted at an independent theater in Atlanta, but the results are purely Denver-centric and amount to another well-deserved feather in Walton’s already heavily plumed…
Score points tonight at March Madness, a comedy and musical parody show presented by the Denver Cycle Sluts. With local drag queen/charity princess Nuclia Waste as the host, it’s sure to be a glittery, plastic-boob extravaganza that makes that three-breasted chick from Total Recall look like a poseur. “I think…
More than a hundred years ago, settlers edged the Arapaho Indians away from their home at the confluence of the Platte River and Cherry Creek. But every year, native people return to a spot just a few miles east of there for the Denver March Powwow, the region’s largest gathering…
