Neil Gaiman seems to be obsessed with “Daisy Bell,” a song from 1892. The antiquated tune pops up like a resurgent weed in several of his short stories and novels. During a phone conversation from his home in Minneapolis, he tries to suss out its significance. “When I was a…
FRI, 9/23 The IMAX feature Mystic India: An Incredible Journey of Inspiration might not be as steamy as HBO’s new series, Rome — it’s a family flick, after all — but its visual pageantry, shown four stories high, can’t be beat. The film, opening today at the Phipps IMAX Theater…
SAT, 9/24 There’s a fine art to selecting your fighting name. It’s got to be something aggressive, but a potential pugilist can’t fly off half-cocked and just hurl out a bunch of words. For instance, the novice brawler can’t pick something like Tom “Once Ripped Out a Guy’s Eyeball in…
FRI, 9/23 Last year, on August 29, KGNU made history. The stalwart, Boulder-based independent radio station — Colorado’s home for such lauded syndicated shows as Democracy Now! — purchased the broadcast frequency of 1430 AM in Denver, expanding its potential audience by millions. “It’s a process, and we’re just barely…
THURS, 9/22 Musicians may have been temporarily silenced in New Orleans, but local acts are making lots of noise on their behalf. Help unsink the South when the Colorado Hip-Hop Coalition hosts Kickin’ Katrina to the Curb!, a two-night fundraiser that runs from 6 p.m. today to 1 a.m. tomorrow…
Da Ali G Show (HBO Home Video) Sacha Baron Cohen’s inching closer to Tom Green territory; come this time next year, his HBO show is likely to be on the pop-culture junk pile. Which isn’t to say this double-disc set doesn’t hold up; it’s just wearing thin, as evidenced by…
After Sex (New Yorker Video) Ben-Hur: Four-Disc Collector’s Edition (Warner Bros.) Candlemass: The Curse of Candlemass (Navarre) Carlito’s Way: Ultimate Edition (Universal) Escaflowne: The Movie — Ultimate Edition (Bandai Entertainment) Everybody Loves Raymond: The Complete Fourth Season (HBO Home Video) Fever Pitch (20th Century Fox) Happily Ever After (Kino International)…
I know the fall run just started this past week, but I don’t think it’s too early to say that FULL: New Paintings by Bruce Price, at + Gallery, is one of the best shows of the 2005-2006 season. I’m an old hand at these matters, and I’m certain nothing…
Last month, I made some comments about the Original Aurora Arts District (“In Black and White,” August 25) that struck a nerve with Kim Harrell and Lani Sloss, owners of East End Applied Arts. In response, they sent Westword a letter, which was published last week. I described the area,…
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…
Assassins seethes through the mind like an unsettling wind, hurling aside platitude and raising a host of tormenting questions. This brilliant musical by John Weidman and Stephen Sondheim is exactly the kind of project local companies should be taking on — and kudos to Next Stage for doing so. Sondheim…
In the ladies’ room during the intermission of The Dead Guy, I heard one woman say to another, “Every play they do here has some kind of message.” “What do you see as the message of this one?” asked her friend. A pause. “Oh, you know, how shallow television is.”…
The Fourth Wall. Playwright A.R. Gurney is a courteous, upper-crust kind of guy, so when he found himself enraged by national politics, he didn’t respond with agitprop or searing realism. Instead he imagined a comfortably middle-class housewife, Peggy, who — by way of protest — rearranges all the furniture in…
If you’re a character in a movie and the rain is coming down so heavily that you cannot see out of your car’s windshield, for the love of God, don’t drive! Mack truck drivers interpret such conditions as carte blanche to be reckless and will assume that honking their horn…
Back in the mid-’90s, when MTV still flirted with (intentional) comedy shows, it ran one called The State, which featured performers who now appear on the Comedy Central hit Reno 911. There wasn’t all that much worth remembering about The State, but the show did make one significant attempt at…
Andrew Niccol’s first two films as writer-director, 1997’s Gattaca and 2002’s S1m0ne, were hollow, sterile sci-fi masquerading as earnest satire: The former told of a near future in which parents could genetically engineer perfect children; the latter proffered an actress who became the most famous and beloved movie star in…
Ain’t nothing in this world more tedious than highbrow erotica, which works itself into a lather and then wipes off the sweat before anyone notices how awfully and inappropriately worked up it got. Asylum, adapted by Closer’s Patrick Marber and Chrysanthy Balis from the novel by Patrick McGrath, is just…
If The Memory of a Killer were not mostly in Flemish, it would be easy to mistake for a Hollywood movie. The story of a hit man with a conscience and the cop who’s always a step or two behind him as they pursue the same villains, it’s full of…
It seems just about any movie featuring a positively gay character scares the bejeezus out of religious film critics like Michael Medved and Ted Baehr. So it was merely a matter of time before someone embraced that notion and made an all-out (pun intended) gay film that’s deliberately scary. That’s…
Not only does the Carioca Cafe boast an Eye Opener Special during its 7 a.m. happy hour (a Bloody Mary shot and a draw of Pabst for $2.25), but it’s also home to a jukebox that emphasizes honky-tonk. In honor of country icon Hank Williams, the rail-thin legend who fell…
Thursday, September 15 Daredevil swoopers will be falling from the sky by the dozens through Sunday at the Go Fast! Parachuting Challenge, a monster skydiving event at the Mile-Hi Skydiving Center that’s billed as the largest congregation of its kind to date. The heart of it, called “swooping” (an extension…
“When you get to the highest levels of the entertainment business,” says banjo expert Pete Wernick, “you never know what to expect.” The Coloradan is experiencing this truism firsthand. Since making his recorded debut in 1971 with a band called Country Cooking, the self-proclaimed Dr. Banjo has distinguished himself in…
