The Eternal Gift. The Taylor Museum in the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is showing off some of its treasure in The Eternal Gift: Selections From the Fine Arts Center’s Permanent Collection. The Taylor’s inventory has many strengths, including modern art from the early to mid-twentieth century, which is what’s…
Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun originally opened on Broadway in 1959 — before the civil-rights movement found its full momentum and at a time when, as Hansberry said, “The intimacy of knowledge which the Negro may culturally have of white Americans does not exist in the reverse.” The…
I first heard Paul Robeson’s voice during the folk revival of the early 1960s, the days when Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were ascendant. Someone had put together a disc of folk songs from earlier in the century that included Robeson singing “Get on Board, Little Children.” It was an…
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…
At first (and second and maybe even third) glance, it’s all so familiar: Keanu Reeves shrouded in a black trench coat that flaps behind him like a superhero’s wings, moving between netherworlds and a real world used as a battleground, breeding ground and playground for higher beings amused and appalled…
Toward the end of Born Into Brothels, a superb and piercing documentary by directors Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, a twelve-year-old child examines a photograph. It’s beautiful, he says, because it shows us how its subjects live. Yes, they’re very poor, and the shot is hard to look at because…
A cynic might describe movies as the most depraved and fantastic system of exploitation ever devised. After all, they trade on the greed and hubris of the financiers, the beauty and allure of the stars and the trust (or, if you prefer, gullibility) of the audience. No one involved in…
It’s hard to know what to expect from Wayne Wang. The Hong Kong-raised director has made one gorgeous mood movie (Chinese Box) and two intelligent literary adaptations (Smoke and Anywhere but Here); he was also responsible, in his early days, for the overwrought sob-fest The Joy Luck Club. Then, in…
Movie cultists, rejoice. An eight-week-long Friday-night series called “Reel Late With Keith Garcia” opens Friday, February 18, with Adventures in Babysitting (1987). Chris Columbus’s debut comedy follows a teenage babysitter (Elisabeth Shue) who takes two kids with her to downtown Chicago to help get a friend out of a jam…
For Koren Zailckas, writing Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood was a sobering experience. “I’ve spent the last year thinking about every horrible thing I’ve done or said when I was drunk,” notes the author, who will be at the Tattered Cover in Cherry Creek on Thursday, February 17. “The…
Thursday, February 17 This weekend’s solidly sold-out NBA All-Star Game is carrying a panoply of hoopla and special events on its coattails, some private and some judiciously public, including a full-court press of concerts designed to appeal to Denver’s b-ball state of mind. The Fillmore Auditorium, for starters, will be…
“Now tell me,” begins the clueless commentator played by Fred Willard in Best in Show. “Which one of these dogs would you want to have as your wide receiver on your football team?” Though the question comes off as completely ridiculous in the film’s setting at the fictional Mayflower Dog…
Right off York Street and 14th Avenue, there’s a portal to the Old World. I had to make it down some narrow stairs and through a maze of hallways, but when I finally found Izba Spa, I was transported directly to St. Petersburg. Intricate hand-carved woodwork covered peeling paint, Slavic…
FRI, 2/18 Before Denver fell for the Nuggets — the original Nuggets of 1939, that is — fans loved the Pigs. The nickname was short for the Piggly Wigglys, one of the powerful, corporately sponsored teams that played in the prime of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). For a few…
FRI, 2/18 Snips and snails and puppy-dog tails. That’s what little boys are made of, right? Find out at Will Boys Be Boys?, a mixed-media show at the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver that probes the arena of modern boyology. The national touring exhibition, which was curated by the Whitney Museum…
MON, 2/21 The war in Afghanistan introduced Americans to a dirt-poor country peopled by fundamentalist mullahs, warlords, persecuted women hidden head to foot in the folds of heavy burkas — and little more. Even in the media spotlight, the country came across in glaring 2-D, with little insight offered into…
Richard Serra is one of the few living artists who can accurately be described as a modern master. He is best known for his monumental sculptures, which are installed in public places all over the world. But Serra has also long created works on paper. A group of these makes…
The Viewing Room Gallery in the back recesses of the Robischon Gallery (1740 Wazee Street, 303-298-7788) has an intimate atmosphere, sort of like somebody’s swank living room. But even though it’s small, it’s still big enough to present proper shows, such as Entelechy, a good-looking solo made up of recent…
The Eternal Gift. The Taylor Museum in the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is showing off some of its treasure in The Eternal Gift: Selections From the Fine Arts Center’s Permanent Collection. The Taylor’s inventory has many strengths, including modern art from the early to mid-twentieth century, which is what’s…
If you want to put on a first-rate production, you need to start with a strong script. And given how many of these there are to choose from, I’ve no idea why so many half-baked plays — ancient, creaking comedies, pretentious contemporary effusions, dated musicals — get staged around here…
I was thrilled when I first heard that the Denver Center Theatre Company intended to present Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex with the powerful Bill Christ in the title role. It seemed a perfect marriage of text and actor. In fact, the company has deployed many of its strongest performers for this…
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…
