No more soccer!” declares small-time thug Sing (writer/director/star Stephen Chow) as he vigorously stomps on a child’s ball. In the context of Kung Fu Hustle, it’s a pathetic attempt by Sing to make himself look tough. The larger signal, however, is to followers of Chow’s work: It’s a direct reference…
If nothing else, give Dana Brown credit for enthusiasm. A documentary filmmaker in name only, he is really the camera- and microphone-equipped president of several booster clubs — among them what might be called the International Society of Beach Bums and, thanks to his latest exercise in hero worship, the…
Perhaps no filmmaker working today better exemplifies the great humanist tradition of Italian neo-realism than the gifted Kurdish-Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi, whose movies — A Time for Drunken Horses, Marooned in Iraq (aka Songs of My Motherland), and now Turtles Can Fly — deal with the plight of the Kurdish…
The Game of Their Lives is the second movie in the past three years with that title, and also the second about a major soccer upset during the World Cup. The first was a documentary about the North Korean team of 1966; while it was fascinating, it has yet to…
Among the many mysteries surrounding The Interpreter is the one that finds Sydney Pollack heralded as a major American director, a maker of Serious and Important Movies. His filmography, marked by mawkish mediocrities (Out of Africa, as vibrant as a coffee-table book; The Way We Were, its romance as plausible…
Amanda Peet. Ashton Kutcher. Romantic comedy. Who’d have thought it could work? And yet A Lot Like Love is an entertainment success, a triple threat of fresh writing, inspired directing and, yes, good acting. Fortified with a healthy dose of intelligence, it manages to leap clear across an entire field…
The Denver Art Museum’s beautifully chosen series The Art of Silent Film continues this week with a screening of Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), G.W. Pabst’s socially prophetic melodrama about a German pharmacist’s daughter (American Louise Brooks) whose big-city innocence leads her to a reformatory, then a brothel. Strategically…
What a difference a century makes. New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez was accused of bad sportsmanship and worse for trying to slap the ball out of Boston Red Sox hurler Bronson Arroyo’s glove in last year’s American League Championship Series. But in The Old Ball Game, a breezily incisive…
Thursday, April 21 If you build it, they will come: Tonight you have your choice of two local hard-hat tours, both of which will explore cutting-edge architectural projects in trendy parts of town. The Denver Architectural Foundation and Studio Completiva will host a Hard Hat Loft Tour of the Monarch…
“I’ve always found that writing about places is kind of the primal poetry,” says Jake Adam York. “I’m a big wanderer. For me, pathways are the most captivating things.” York knows a thing or two about pathways. The route of his own life has taken him across the map, from…
SAT, 4/23 The post-war brainchild of contractor-turned-designer Edward Hawkins, Englewood’s Arapahoe Acres neighborhood has seemingly existed in its own little world for more than half a century, the 124 unique homes hidden enough to remain unknown to most Denverites, yet considered by many to be jewels of mid-century architecture. You…
FRI, 4/22 Between all the free play and the bling-blinging of the machines, the 2005 Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown should be enough to make even the deaf, dumb and blind kid tilt. With more than one hundred games — from Elvis and Earthshaker to Lord of the Rings and Jungle…
THURS, 4/21 Dale Chihuly looks like a man of the earth, with his dashing eye patch, wild hair and blue-collar demeanor, so it’s not always easy to connect him with the torrid, delicate hand-blown fantasy worlds he creates from sand and fire. Chihuly could be called the swashbuckler of glass,…
THURS, 4/21 The heck with Elvis: What about trail-blazing rockabilly royalty Wanda Jackson? This little lady with a powerful voice came up around the same time and even shared stages with the King, who is said to have encouraged her to loosen up a little and take the rockin’ route…
The Center for Visual Art in LoDo is currently taking on the interesting — and risky — topic of “post-Chicano” art in the group exhibit Leaving Aztlán: Rethinking Contemporary Latino and Chicano Art. It’s interesting because many of the pieces in the show are great, risky because there’s an entire…
In the same way that the works at the Center for Visual Art may be described as post-Chicano (see review), three of the four artists in discourse & decadence at Studio Aiello (3563 Walnut Street, 303-297-8166) are doing what could be called “post-queer.” Addressing this particular topic is an act…
Balance. Rarely has Walker Fine Art come up with an exhibit as successful as Balance, which pairs recent abstract paintings by Denver artist Don Quade with abstract sculptures by Colorado Springs-based Bill Burgess. Quade was formerly at Fresh Art Gallery, but Walker picked him up when Fresh Art closed last…
Edmond, currently being staged by the Denver Repertory Theatre Company, is about as nasty a play as I can imagine. When I see something that angers me this much, I usually try to figure out some interpretation I may be missing, something that justifies the enterprise. But for the life…
Fire on the Mountain is an evocation of the lives of Appalachian coal miners in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Created for the Denver Center by Dan Wheetman and Randal Myler, who also directs, it is told primarily through song, with snatches of dialogue and narrative taken…
Cats. This company does as good a job with Cats as one can imagine. The dancing, choreographed by Stephen Bertles, who also directed, is seamless. The cast is lithe and graceful. They slither like snakes. They leap high and land without a sound. They’re wonderfully into character, batting at each…
Matthew Parkhill’s Dot the I is the kind of tricked-up mental exercise that may intrigue the most impressionable film-school students and a philosophy major here and there. But anyone who’s gotten through sophomore year is more likely to find it a pretentious load of crap. Set in contemporary London and…
Lost Embrace, by Argentinean director Daniel Burman, looks more like a handheld video by the purist Dogme school of Denmark. Centered in Buenos Aires, it’s an unevenly amusing comedy of family reconciliation that looks like a thumb in the eye and tastes of Europudding throughout. Ariel is a hangdog thirty-something…
