Growing up, I spent at least twenty Decembers covered with pine needles and sticky with sap, working my family’s Christmas-tree lot in Scottsdale, Arizona. Even today, the lot is a much loved, and missed, part of my childhood, one that’s inextricably linked to my concept of Christmas. I try not…
SUN, 12/12 This is a season for giving, and there will be plenty of it at the Swallow Hill Music Association Benefit Holiday Show featuring Denver chanteuse Celeste Krenz and the folk trio Dakota Blonde. They take the stage tonight to help raise funds for 25-year-old Nicholas Huber, who is…
Daniel Libeskind must be happy with Denver since, unlike in New York, the Polish-born American architect has been allowed to follow his vision to its logical conclusion. In New York, Libeskind’s Freedom Tower, which will be erected on the site where the World Trade Center once stood, was neutered and…
Well-established Denver artist Michael Brohman takes an idiosyncratic route to contemporary sculpture in his solo, ME AND MY SHADOW, now at Pirate (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058). Brohman has a preference for working in old-fashioned ways, using metal casting as his method and the nude human figure as his subject. However,…
Anxiety and Desire. Clare Cornell, assistant professor of digital imaging at the Metropolitan State College of Denver, put together Anxiety and Desire, an exhibit of photo-based pieces that address psychological concepts. He included work from an array of artists from around the country, each working in their own ways, though…
No one goes to see a play in a vacuum, so let me put the evening I attended Cats in context: It came at the end of a week spent alternately reading student papers (in my other life, I teach writing at CU) and conferencing with the authors of those…
Beirut. In Alan Browne’s play, Beirut is the name given to New York’s East Village, where, in a futuristic dystopia, HIV-positive people are quarantined (the play doesn’t use the terms “AIDS” or “HIV,” but the references are clear). Outside of this area, the world has changed. Sex is forbidden on…
The new Mike Nichols film, Closer, is a boiling pot of lust, mistrust and double-dealing that we might take for outright soap opera or, in quite a few places, soft-core porn, were it not for the sophisticated gleam of its well-heeled London desperadoes and the vicious dazzle of its dialogue…
Movies pushing the indomitablity of human nature tend to make me want to puke, mainly because they’re often created with a palpable self-congratulatory air by film-biz insiders whose real-life concept of “suffering” extends to being brought an incorrectly prepared frappuccino. This emetic response is doubled when the featured indomitable human…
One of the most compelling films of 2004, first-time indie director Joshua Marston’s Maria Full of Grace is a drug movie that has no machine guns and no car chases, just an unforgettable portrait of a sixteen-year-old Colombian girl (played by the extraordinary Catalina Sandino Moreno) forced by circumstance to…
In 1986, Jack Kemp spoke out before the United States Congress against a resolution backing an American bid to host the World Cup. “I think it is important for all those young out there who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it and kick it and run…
Thursday, December 2 Gift shopping has never been better than at the annual Junior League Holiday Mart, a gargantuan, high-quality marketplace running today through Sunday at the Wings Over the Rockies Museum, Hangar #1, 7711 East Academy Parkway in Lowry. The Mart will spotlight nearly 200 vendors, including seventy artists…
John Heffron is doing his best to enjoy a rare day off at his home in Los Angeles, but it’s proving rather difficult. At the tail end of an exhausting seven-month tour, the standup comedian has only been awake a few minutes and is already on his third interview of…
FRI, 12/3 For the past three months, Metropolitan State College’s Social Action Through Art class has been studying urban arts, including graffiti and hip-hop culture. “We even had some breakdance instructors come in,” remembers student Nicole Aragon. “It was quite the experience. It was a lot of fun, but I…
FRI, 12/3 Snow makes a great cushion — especially when snowmobilers land on it after doing backflips across a sixty-foot gap. That’s one use of frozen water to expect at the FSX-Freestyle Snocross, which takes place inside the Denver Coliseum. “This is a two-hour show with incredibly high energy,” says…
SUN, 12/5 For someone like Richard Nelson, who grew up in the small northeast-plains town of Peetz, Colorado, East High must have seemed a far cry from the schoolhouses of his youth. His first shock came when he walked into the mammoth school as the new English teacher in 1964…
SAT, 12/4 Neal Conan may know radio, but he can’t keep a beat. The Talk of the Nation host was once a peppy percussionist who was asked to permanently retire his drumsticks by his high school bandleader, ultimately diverting Conan to a distinguished career in broadcast journalism. Luckily for us,…
One of the Denver Art Museum’s greatest strengths is its New World department, which houses two distinct collections: Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial. For more than two decades, the department’s founder, visionary curator Robert Stroessner, enthusiastically collected relevant material way ahead of supporting scholarship. He was buying things before anyone –…
Brandon Borchert’s Random Art Two, currently at Capsule @ Pod (554 Santa Fe Drive, 303-623-3460), is one of this season’s hottest prospects. Though Borchert has shown around for the past several years, he was little known until earlier this season. His big breakthrough came with an appearance in this summer’s…
Anxiety and Desire. Clare Cornell, assistant professor of digital imaging at the Metropolitan State College of Denver, put together Anxiety and Desire, an exhibit of photo-based pieces that address psychological concepts. He included work from an array of artists from around the country, each working in their own ways, though…
These are brilliant songs. They’re wonderfully performed at the Theatre Cafe by four singers and three musicians. And that’s all you need for an evening of pleasure and insight — along with a glass of wine, a table with a white cloth, and a single red rose for your hair…
Beirut. In Alan Browne’s play, Beirut is the name given to New York’s East Village, where, in a futuristic dystopia, HIV-positive people are quarantined (the play doesn’t use the terms “AIDS” or “HIV,” but the references are clear). Outside of this area, the world has changed. Sex is forbidden on…
