Skideo Video

FRI, 10/21 It’s like a dropkick to your chakra, the feeling of your skateboard snapping off the concrete, locking into a long grind down a metal handrail and then riding away smooth. Hear your friends cheering? That’s what was buzzing through Glen Gillingham’s solar plexus when he jumped up from…

Grrls, Grrls, Grrls

TUES, 10/25 When the SuicideGirls come to town, the Denver Fire Department had better be standing by. The last time they were here, the fire marshal had to be called to the Larimer Lounge because the troupe had more than sold out the show, pushing the venue past capacity. The…

Poe Show

FRI, 10/21 In the age of slasher films, sometimes it’s nice to reach back into the roots of horror and experience to something that is truly frightening and shakes the psyche. Edgar Allan Poe’s works come to mind. He’s considered the first master of horror because he penned works dripping…

Why We Need DVDs

Arrested Development: Season Two (Fox Home Entertainment) The best show on TV — which you’d know, if you actually watched the thing — also serves as one of the best reasons for the existence of DVD: No show has ever rewarded multiple viewings the way Arrested Development does. The second…

Prophecy Not Fulfilled

Waking from a trance, you find yourself in the restroom of a diner. You just stabbed a complete stranger to death as he urinated. Blood is on everything — including you. And to make matters worse, a police officer is sitting outside, drinking coffee. Should you take the time to…

Westword‘s top DVD picks for the week of October 11.

Alicia Keys: Unplugged (J) Audioslave: Live in Cuba (Sony Music) The Best of the Chris Rock Show: Volumes 1 and 2 (Warner Bros.) Bomb the System (UMVD) The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Warner Bros.) The Dresden Dolls: Paradise (Fontana) 11:14 (Warner Bros.) The Ellen DeGeneres Collection: The Beginning/Here &…

Alternating Currents

Denver artist Julie Puma is on the cusp between being an emerging artist and an established one. With her installation Letters to Stanley in the Balcony Gallery at the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture, she moves one step closer to the latter. The show has been very well received…

Form & Fiction

Space Gallery (765 Santa Fe Drive, 303-623-1448) is one of a trio of connected art spaces; the other two are DEN Gallery (757 1/2 Santa Fe Drive, 303-507-6100), which is accessed through a passageway, and, up that dramatic staircase, KOUBOU a Deux (757 1/2 Santa Fe Drive, 720-203-1944). The three…

Sketches

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…

Writer’s Blockade

I’m not the best audience for a scary show. At the movies, I cover my eyes during the gory parts. I also find that, for the most part, the real world provides all the grief and terror I know how to handle. Nonetheless — despite some moments spent cringing in…

Near Myth

For this ambitious production, Su Teatro artistic director Anthony J. Garcia has transposed the story of Orpheus and Eurydice to modern-day Mexico, intertwining it with contemporary politics and elements of Aztec myth and adding music by composer Daniel Valdez. It’s a fascinating concept, and parts of it work well, but…

Now Playing

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,…

Exhuming McCarthy

Good Night, and Good Luck, a riveting movie that’s as entertaining as it is socially and politically important, could not have come at a more propitious time. But more than just the right film at the right moment, George Clooney’s sophomore directorial effort is dynamic filmmaking: brilliantly conceived, visually arresting,…

Crowe Flies Home

It happened almost with the first step off the airplane at the Toronto airport last month. Someone, a friend or merely a concerned stranger, would stop to warn you of impending peril. They would plead with you to avoid the danger ahead in Elizabethtown, the Cameron Crowe film that screened…

Truth Syrup

It’s the cover-up, stupid! It doomed Nixon during Watergate, got Clinton impeached, inspired outrage against the Catholic Church and apparently is part of the day-to-day operations at places such as Enron and Tyco. The initial crime is bad enough, but the conspiracy to hide it always ends up hurting more…

Keira Get Your Gun

Her name is Domino Harvey, and she is a bounty hunter. If you’ve seen even one TV spot or theatrical trailer for Domino, you’ve heard that message ground into your brain like an annoying jingle. What you might not know is that Domino Harvey was a real person, the daughter…

Edvard Munch

The anguished paintings of Edvard Munch, who was born in 1863, foreshadowed expressionism and provided uneasy visual correlatives to the horror and loneliness of the twentieth century. But it wasn’t until 1974 — three decades after the Norwegian painter’s death — that a filmmaker captured the spirit of Munch’s work…

Chris Elliott Rips a Yarn

After contractually agreeing to pen his fiction debut, The Shroud of the Thwacker, actor/comic/ writer Chris Elliott felt momentary elation followed by lingering panic. “I remember thinking, ‘I can’t fucking write a novel,'” he says. Fortunately for Elliott, who signs copies of his tome on Wednesday, October 19, at the…

Day-by-Day Picks

Thursday, October 13 The dreadlocked, multicultural hip-hop artist/poet/activist Michael Franti (late of the Beatnigs and now fronting Spearhead) voyaged in recent years to the Middle East to film a visual diary, with music chronicling his travels through Iraq, Israel and Palestine. There, armed with a guitar, he met with people…

To Lauri, With Love

When Rodney Wallace was badly injured in a motorcycle accident in 2002, fellow artist and gallery owner Lauri Lynnxe Murphy practically pounced at the opportunity to help him. “The first time she saw me in a wheelchair, she said, ‘I can do a fundraiser,'” Wallace recalls. “That was her first…

They Vant to Suck Your Blood

WED, 10/19 There’s nothing hotter than bisexual vampires — especially bisexual vampires played by the world’s most gorgeous celebrities. Susan Sarandon, Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie star in The Hunger, a slick 1983 horror flick that is one of five films in Starz FilmCenter’s Evil-ution of Horror cinematic monster mash…

Not Just for Meatheads

FRI, 10/14 Heeeeeeey, girlfriend. Trying to land a man in Denver but don’t seem to be having any luck? Well, don’t waste your time squeezing into clothing three times too small for you. And forget about trying to cook that hombre a delicious meal. The way to a guy’s heart…