FRI, 4/8 Japanese painter Yumiko Kayukawa has earned a global reputation for fusing balance, harmony and…’ 80s butt rock. Inspired by a deep childhood connection with nature and her passion for bands like Cheap Trick and Motley Crüe, Kayukawa mixes lotus blossoms, kanji (Japanese calligraphy), quirky animals and a post-punk…
SUN, 4/10 Not even the best mix CD can compare with the musical diversity of singer and actress Sheryl Renee. A sample of her repertoire, which covers over 120 artists, will be on display tonight during Sheryl Renee and Her Salute to the Legends. Every Sunday this month, Renee will…
The landscape and the natural environment have long preoccupied artists. In a contemporary context, though, artists can’t simply record the scenery; they need to comment on it, transform it. Robischon Gallery is currently presenting a pair of solos featuring two Boulder artists whose reputations go way beyond the metro area…
Two contemporary abstraction artists, McKay Otto and Ethan Jantzer, have been given separate solos at + Gallery (2350 Lawrence Street, 303-296-0927). The two shows, Otto’s Every Place and Jantzer’s Bound, are very compatible, with both artists doing new work based on time-tested traditions in abstract art: expressionism and minimalism. Otto,…
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…
Paris on the Platte is a comic romp through early-nineteenth-century Denver history, focusing on Mayor Robert Speer and his dreams of “The City Beautiful.” The opening — a spoof on old-time melodrama — doesn’t quite work: It’s hard to tell exactly what’s being said by the yelling, gesticulating actors. But…
Polonio Castro, the protagonist of Thaddeus Phillips’s El Conquistador!, is a Colombian peasant living out a fantasy. Although there are similar Everyman characters in many cultures, Polonio reminds me of the humorous little men who populate Czech film and literature — not too great a stretch, given that Phillips’s theater…
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…
When the great playwright Arthur Miller died in February, many admirers took stock of his most enduring creation, Willy Loman. A delusional idealist who finds himself failed and felled by the American Dream, the tragic hero of Death of a Salesman has for half a century been the most discomfiting…
If nothing else, Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City, co-directed with Frank Miller (and Quentin Tarantino, for a few seconds), will be remembered as the most faithful comic-book adaptation ever put on film (or high-def video, anyway). Rodriguez uses Miller’s hyper-noir serial, published over a ten-year period, as storyboards for the movie,…
Does the world really need a new film from Woody Allen every single year? Yes, he is one of America’s great auteurs. Yes, he’s responsible for some very fine movies, many of them comedies (Annie Hall), several of them tragedies (Crimes and Misdemeanors, Another Woman), and some hovering in that…
A spinoff of a sequel, Beauty Shop plays like most Hollywood comedies these days: as tepid sitcom, benign product and cynical afterthought. If last year’s Barbershop 2: Back in Business was little more than a dilapidated retread of 2002’s charmingly lightweight hit Barbershop, consider this incarnation condemned for teardown. It’s…
“This show is political,” Margaret Cho says of her new comedy act, Assassin, which she performs at the Buell Theatre on Thursday, March 31. “Politics are inescapable. It’s really a broad thing, and it’s frustrating to me. It’s due to a conservative atmosphere — not only with the Bush administration,…
Thursday, March 31 Topping off a fine season with a rustic touch, the Denver Center Theatre Company presentation of Fire on the Mountain, a rootsy bow to the music and coal-miner culture of Appalachia, opens tonight at 8 p.m. for previews. The brainchild of Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman, creative…
Could any pleasure be more guilty than sitting around a saloon with good company, drinking up the news — and booze — of the day? That’s what a group of Denver journalists and ad men (and they were almost invariably men) did back in the ’50s and ’60s, when the…
TUES, 4/5 Ask any kid on the street who Charlie Chaplin was, and you’ll probably get a blank stare or, at the very least, a snicker about that retarded dude with the weird mustache and big feet. It’s just a fact of nature: The little guy on the flickering screen…
FRI, 4/1 In this season of puckless hockey and spotty snow, the good hosers to our north are helping fill the void with the Radical Reels Film Tour, a spinoff of the Banff Mountain Film Festival that is dedicated specifically to adrenaline-sports cinema. Five years ago, the decades-old BMFF found…
THURS, 3/31 The Yard Dogs Traveling Road Show is rolling back into town, ready to prove that a Yard Dog can, indeed, learn new tricks. “Nail your hat to your head and hide the wine,” says the carny’s barker, Eddy Joe Cotton. “Did I mention the Œdancing girls, dancing girls,…
THURS, 3/31 Imagine, if you will, a sardonic tale of a maniacal cowboy prospector who, with the help of a greedy group of financiers, senators and businessmen, conspires to overturn an entire village in his crazed obsession for oil. Sound familiar? Well, believe it or not, there’s not a single…
In the big box-office months of December and January, Mike Nichols’s Closer was overwhelmed by the likes of The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby. Now comes a second chance to catch this boiling pot of lust, mistrust and double-dealing, adapted from a play by talented Brit misanthrope Patrick Marber. It…
Not everything to come out of this here cattle town is a shoot-’em-up or a spaghetti Western. Denverite Richard Groskopf and Los Angles-based Mile High native Melissa Fouch plan to reveal the region’s wilder side at the opening reception for Denco Connected: The West Coast to the Rockies on Saturday,…
Thursday, March 24 Most guys discovered by Wynton Marsalis do pretty well for themselves. And Philly-born bassist Christian McBride was on his way up even before he met Marsalis at the age of fourteen: His father, Lee Smith, was a session bassist himself, whose timekeeping kept the Delfonics in the…
