SUN, 10/30 The Walnut Room, 3131 Walnut Street, hosts the weekly Entertainment Industry Night to give film and music laborers a place to belly up to the bar with their own type. Most Sundays they bring in DJ K-Nee, and every fourth Sunday they feature “Movieoke,” where cinephiles can act…
FRI, 10/28 Quick, somebody in the audience give me a profession. Don’t ask, just do it, because I’m going to act like I’m somebody in that profession, and then my partner, who will come on stage later, will have to guess what I’m doing. What do you mean, why? Because…
It’s ugly to watch a grown man gush over a puppy. The kissing. The cooing. The “widdle-doggie” talk. Embarrassing stuff. So it was with trepidation that I approached Nintendogs, the cuddly dog-rearing sim for Nintendo DS. A million and a half people have already adopted virtual pooches, making the game…
Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997 (Warner Home Video) There’s good reason to be skeptical of an eight-disc Batman set that forces you to buy the campy Joel Schumacher movies (Batman Forever, its title a veiled threat, and Batman & Robin) when all you need are the dark Tim Burton…
The Adventures of Superman: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) American Movie Musicals Collection (Columbia/Tristar) Batman Begins (Warner Bros.) Bruce Lee: Ultimate Collection (Fox) The Care Bears: Big Wish Movie (Lions Gate) The Coen Brothers Collection (Universal) CSI New York: The Complete First Season (Paramount) Dark Shadows: The Complete Revival…
Sadly, the last of the exhibits at Studio Aiello are beginning to come on line, with December being the announced end date for the commercial-gallery portion of the art complex. Located at the north end of the upper Ballpark neighborhood, Studio Aiello was a fantasy made real by the artistic…
The Wilson Adams Gallery (1307 Bannock Street, 303-825-0950) opened this past summer in the same quaint little townhouse that used to be occupied by the Emil Nelson Gallery. The current show at the new place, Bottle in the Smoke: Photographs by Jonathan Bayer, is the kind of thing that could…
Andy Warhol’s Dream America. Hot on the heels of its smash hit, Chihuly, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is presenting yet another blockbuster devoted to the work of a household name in contemporary art: Andy Warhol’s Dream America. The exhibition was curated by Ben Mitchell of Wyoming’s Nicolaysen Museum…
Although the critical world seems almost united in proclaiming Death of a Salesman not only Arthur Miller’s best play, but one of the greatest twentieth-century dramas, I have always rather disliked it: the heavy symbolism, the self-consciously poetic language, the endless moralizing and the protagonist’s awful self-pity. To me, the…
The seven founders — and also writer-designer-director-performers — of Buntport Theater are exploring new territory. Known for a prankish and highly literate experimentalism, the team is currently showing Realism: The Mythical Brontosaurus, which, as the title suggests, is pretty much a realistic play. There are no lopped-off limbs here or…
Ain’t Misbehavin’. Five terrific performers and a slate of Fats Waller songs. How can you go wrong? Ain’t Misbehavin’, a jazzy, bluesy Waller showcase that brings the world of 1930s Harlem to life, is often staged in a broadly presentational style, with lots of humor, shtick, dancing and acting out,…
When we first see the protagonist of North Country, a working-class heroine portrayed by a deglamorized Charlize Theron, she’s sporting a black eye and a slight limp, the results of an encounter with her abusive husband. We soon learn that Josey Aimes is only now beginning to take her lumps…
This fall, the roll call of gigantic ghosts inhabiting cinematic biographies continues unabated, with Joaquin Phoenix as a shrunken Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, David Strathairn as an inscrutable Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the ambitiously manipulative Truman Capote in…
The protagonist of Lodge Kerrigan’s deeply moving, uncomfortably intimate Keane is the kind of pariah most urban dwellers will do anything to avoid. Rocking foot to foot, the poor man mutters angrily to himself or shouts at the air, a captive of demons that only he can hear. Eyes bloodshot,…
DreamWorks is so anxious to have you believe in its latest family movie that the words “Inspired by a True Story” are actually part of the title. Yep, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story is the proper name, and publicists have been well coached to say and write out the…
When watching Where the Truth Lies, a film noir about a young celebrity journalist’s obsession with a comedy duo from the 1950s, a single question arises again and again: Why? Why have the immense talents of Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth, both of whom are excellent in this movie, been…
Elijah Wood is not a believable tough guy. Probably this comes as no great revelation to you. There’s a reason that the Lord of the Rings video games tend to focus on Aragorn, Legolas, and Gandalf — Wood’s Frodo is a wuss, and everybody knows it. So any movie that’s…
For Western viewers willing to spend 143 minutes inside a cocoon-like Chinese theme park littered with scaled-down reproductions of the Eiffel Tower, the Piazza San Marco and the Taj Mahal, Jia Zhangke’s The World (2004) can be a rewarding experience. As with the bogus pyramids and ersatz Empire State Buildings…
Playwright José Cruz Gonz´lez grew up inside stories. His grandfather — a laborer from Mexico who moved wherever the work was, from Arizona to Southern California — told tales and riddles to help soften the hard realities of life in the United States. That legacy of imagination extends beautifully into…
Thursday, October 20 Actress Susan Lyles toiled in the theatrical field long enough to note that female roles and female playwrights are under-represented. The upshot? She formed the And Toto Too Theatre Company, dedicated to producing works by women only, an act she hopes will “level the playing field for…
Clive Barker is the Lord of Illusions. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on him, he shape-shifts. Infamous in the ’80s for hard-core horror films and fiction such as the Hellraiser and Books of Blood series, Barker turned mid-stream to produce kinder, gentler fantasy and fiction. He launched…
MON, 10/24 Though most everyone who cares knows perfectly well that Daniel Handler is Lemony Snicket, the prolific author of the popular A Series of Unfortunate Events books for kids, he still tries to pretend that he and Snicket aren’t one and the same. But no matter how bad a…
