By all accounts, the only living creatures who’ve never taken in a stage production of The Phantom of the Opera are Osama bin Laden and Uncle Elmer’s deaf hound dog, Bart — which means that everyone else on the planet has an opinion about how Joel Schumacher’s zillion-dollar movie version…
The parade of real-life figures strolling into the googolplex has been endless this year: Look, there’s Jamie Foxx as musical Mount Rushmore Ray Charles; Johnny Depp as Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie; Kevin Spacey as forgotten teeny-popper Bobby Darin; Liam Neeson as sexologist Alfred Kinsey; Kevin Kline as standards composer…
When your movie gets riotous laughter from endless utterances of the word “Focker,” it doesn’t have to try very hard. So it’s no surprise that much of Meet the Fockers, the inevitable sequel to the 2000 hit Meet the Parents, barely breaks a sweat. When in doubt, after all, just…
“I know why I hate integrity,” moans Jeremy Irons late in Callas Forever. “It’s great for the person who has it; it’s pure hell for those around it.” Indeed. As tacky, ponytailed impresario Larry Kelly, Irons makes for one seriously deranged philosopher, but his dedication to the late opera legend…
The critic who takes notes during The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou will ultimately fill a notepad only with scribbled details: “All the crewmen wear red stocking caps with their tuxedos”; “Some names of Zissou’s movies: The Battling Eels of Antibes, Shadow Creatures of the Lurisia Archipelago, Island Cats!”; “One…
Released in 1960, La Dolce Vita is the film that gave currency to the term “Fellini-esque” — and a name to a lot of lousy Italian restaurants in the rural Midwest. The most famous and most accessible of Federico Fellini’s works, it’s a heady mixture of Catholic iconography and sexual…
You may not hear “Fly Me to the Moon,” but Sinatra’s about the only crooner who won’t be sounding off at Denver International Airport over the next few days. Long before 9/11 upped the ante on jittery nerves, DIA hired Meredith Gabow to coordinate the International Performance Series, a performing-arts…
Thursday, December 23 Whether you’re feeling insecure about that ditty you wrote your girlfriend for Christmas or you just have a few loose tunes you’d like to try out on an audience, Swallow Hill Cafe’s monthly Songwriters Open Stage is the perfect proving ground. Held at 7 p.m. on the…
There’s nothing worse than awakening from a long winter’s nap, rolling out of bed and discovering it’s Christmas morning — and not a creature is stirring his coffee, not even at Starbucks. But you’d better not cry, and you don’t need to pout, because plenty of holiday hoopla is available…
People collect the oddest things: photographs of WWII bombings of Papua New Guinea, salt shakers, monk figurines. Despite the time, effort and money involved in acquiring such collections, however, they’re usually doomed to mantelpieces and basement shelves, never to be seen by anyone but an eccentric grandmother or a nosy…
SAT, 12/25 After his all-night gift-bearing bender, Santa will cool his heels today at the Cherry Creek North ice rink — still in the spirit of giving. Proceeds from the day will be donated to Project Angel Heart, a metro-area community-supported charity that delivers fresh meals to people with HIV/AIDS,…
The phrase “Suburban Empire” conjures a wealth of ideas: It could be the title of a spectacularly sick and twisted violent video game making its way to shelves this Christmas, or it could be the name of the last film George Lucas is allowed to pitch before he gets checked…
WED, 12/29 Of all the rock stars who made their marks in the ’70s, Rickie Lee Jones was one of the easiest to imagine someday settling down and shunning the public eye. Strutting more grit than glam, she swept the end of that decade with a string of Grammy nominations…
Denver artist Jeff Starr became famous locally in the ’80s, but in the late ’90s, he took a powder and disappeared. Last year he made a big comeback when his work was selected for the 2003 biennial at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Artists step in and out of the…
Earlier this fall, the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver (1275 19th Street, 303-298-7554) launched a program called “NEW PIC” that highlights the work of worthwhile emerging artists in the area. Selected artists, who must live in Colorado and be under the age of thirty, are given a six-month residency at the…
ANGST. Though unified by the title ANGST, this duet put together by Lisbeth Neergaard Kohloff at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center is actually a pair of freestanding solos: IMAGING ACROPHOBIA and NIGHTWALK. IMAGING ACROPHOBIA is Colorado photographer Andrew Beckham’s exploration of his fear of heights in a series of large-scale…
The conversion of Scrooge at the end of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol always delights, whether you’re reading about it or seeing it on a stage. I remember Alistair Sim in the iconic 1951 movie, capering around the room in his nightgown, startling the maid on the stairs by insisting…
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 them also a…
At the end of last month, Brian Freeland, whose LIDA Project has been a vital presence on the Denver theater scene for the past ten years, sent out a press release announcing that the group is leaving town. They had intended, he said, “to reinvent theatre as a vehicle for…
Boston Marriage. For the entire first act, Boston Marriage is pure enjoyment. It’s light and fast, and the language is dizzyingly clever and cleverly self-punctuating. The plot concerns two nineteenth-century women who live together in an arrangement termed a “Boston marriage.” One of them, Anna, has snared a rich lover…
In Spanglish, which is less a story than a snapshot of a crumbling marriage populated by sitcom characters, Adam Sandler plays John Clasky, an average man with an above-average life. With his burgeoning double chin always covered in a slight shadow of stubble, he’s a celebrated chef who runs his…
This much can be said for the movie version of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events: Its villain, Count Olaf, just might be Jim Carrey’s finest screen role. A bitter, would-be master thespian who delights in donning ridiculous disguises and adopting funny accents, he doesn’t seem that far removed…
