The Ring, Gore Verbinski’s 2002 remake of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, offered sufficient closure, so it didn’t exactly demand a sequel. The horror lay in wondering why a mysterious videotape kills viewers seven days after they watch it; to a lesser extent, there was the mystery of the creepy girl, face…
The heroine of Alain Corneau’s culture-clash comedy Fear and Trembling (2003) is a Japanese-born Belgian career girl, Amélie (the always-animated Sylvie Testud), who pursues her goal of becoming “a real Japanese” by submitting to a series of hideous chores — including endless photolcopying and bathroom work — even though she’s…
You could never call Thaddeus Phillips boring. The New York-based East High and Colorado College grad has become the toast of the fringe-theater crowd, and he’s done it all by his lonesome, with little more than a healthy imagination and a knapsack full of props that come to life in…
Thursday, March 17 You won’t find a better St. Paddy’s Day party in town than tonight’s Green Tie Event, a benefit gala for the Metro Community Provider Network, Family Tree and Helen’s Hope, hosted in the Irish spirit by former district attorneys Dave Thomas, Bill Ritter, Jim Peters and Bob…
“Popular music, and especially blues- influenced music, has been a really important venue for women to express their wilder side,” says Boulder-based author Buzzy Jackson. “Unfortunately, they do pay a price for it. It’s not an easy road to go down.” Evidence of this contention can be found on practically…
Most mothers of small children know the score: They shyly finger the racks at Oilily or April Cornell, purposely ignoring the price tags and, well, dreaming. Because unless they’ve got hundreds of bucks to throw away on a gorgeous ensemble their kid will outgrow next month, they know they’ve got…
WED, 3/23 “I am awakened at Dingboche by a sound drifting in from the edge of consciousness,” writes Peter Potterfield in his new book, Classic Hikes of the World, about getting acclimated at the foot of Mt. Everest. “Soothing and exotic, but not identifiable. As sleep fades, my oxygen-starved brain…
FRI, 3/18 Charles Dickens once said that “home is a name, a word,” but for the students at P.S.1, the concept of “home” can also be expressed in images. For the past month, more than a dozen students from the charter school have been working with digital storytellers Daniel Weinshenker,…
THURS, 3/17 As a veterinary doctor, Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald has appeared on Animal Planet’s Emergency Vet hundreds of times. As a standup comedian, he’s opened for no less than Emmylou Harris, the Temptations and, oh, yeah, Bob freakin’ Hope. He’s appeared on NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, been on…
The Museo de las Américas has had a bumpy ride over the past few years, and surely many in the art community thought the small but significant institution was headed for the trash heap of Denver history. Luckily, that hasn’t happened, and the Museo looks as though it’s on the…
The members of Denver’s oldest artist cooperative, Spark Gallery (900 Santa Fe Drive, 720-889-2200), have had a hard time figuring out how to effectively use the 1,200-square-foot space that they moved into last year. Every show I’ve seen there has been awkwardly installed, because there’s not even one good wall…
BOCTOK. Steve Antonio is not a former Soviet artist, although his large paintings at Capsule, the gallery part of Pod, might make you think he is one, since these neo-pop compositions depict the first generation of Soviet cosmonauts. The little room at Capsule looks great and is perfectly filled by…
It’s hard to assign a genre to John Guare’s Landscape of the Body, currently being produced by Paper Cat Theatre. It’s absurdist and unrealistic; it mingles horror and slapstick. “I’d like a laugh track around my life,” says Betty Yearn, being interrogated as a suspect in the murder of her…
I’m a huge fan of the Heritage Square Music Hall. Going there to review feels like a break from school and from all those plays — whether deep and thoughtful or annoyingly pretentious — to which I have to give serious critical consideration. Heritage provides solace for mind and spirit,…
Always…Patsy Cline. Always Patsy Cline is a light, mildly entertaining evening. You get an efficiently evocative set that’s divided into three parts: a down-home apartment; an old-fashioned country bar, complete with jukebox; and, in the center, the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. There are two skilled singer-performers, one of…
The chilling oddity of Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall is not limited to the fact that it is the first mainstream German film to grapple with Adolf Hitler — six decades after his death. Set, for the most part, in the underground Berlin bunker where the Nazi dictator spent his last days,…
Everyone with a TV remembers President Bush in the flight suit, landing on that aircraft carrier, standing in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner and triumphantly declaring that major combat operations in Iraq were over. Two years on, many feel like asking what, exactly, he meant by that. Gunner Palace…
If you’re looking for an escapist shoot-’em-up action adventure and figure a Bruce Willis flick is a reliable option, think twice. Hostage certainly delivers violence and heroics, but not in a way everyone will enjoy. Children and dogs die brutally, and the villains are so thoroughly hateful that even the…
“From the creators of Ice Age,” boasts the poster for Robots, which is no ringing endorsement. That 2002 animated feature, a sort of Three Mammals and a Baby in a prehistoric setting, looked and felt every bit as frigid as its snowbound scenery. It was impossible to warm to a…
Almost as wide as he is tall, with a round but unremarkable face, Schultze doesn’t look like a rebel. Truthfully, he looks like Curly of Three Stooges fame or, less kindly, a mass murderer (well, he does bear a passing but disturbing resemblance to John Wayne Gacy). Schultze — whether…
The late director Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) was long regarded as the “most Japanese” of all Japanese filmmakers, a fact that sometimes alienated younger audiences as dramatically as it enthralled traditionalists. A three-film series at Starz called Celebrating Ozu now gives lovers of world cinema a rare opportunity to revisit the…
Just as sounds and symbols are organized to create meaning in language, so, too, does the built environment give structure to our everyday lives. From the Ballpark Lofts to the abandoned Evans School to the Qwest tower, each building projects a certain meaning that contributes to our urban experience. To…
