Dutch Walla has been taking photos for over fifty years, beginning as a protegé of the late Denver photographer Otto Roach and eventually taking over the older man’s processing business, Roach Photography. Now, at the age of 75, Walla has turned the day-to-day operations of Roach Photography over to his…
It’s the ultimate question, the one that preoccupies all active minds: Why death? Why the inevitable, final dissolution? And why the process — nasty, smelly, embarrassing — by which we lose ourselves, degenerating bit by bit into squalling infants, with none of the charm of infants or their ability to…
Bad Santa, in which Billy Bob Thornton plays a drunken department-store Santa who repeatedly swears at children, pisses himself publicly, chain-smokes like an industrial plant and cracks safes on Christmas Eve, is the least sentimental holiday release ever made. No one is redeemed; no one comes to believe in the…
In director Ron Howard’s The Missing, Samuel Jones (Tommy Lee Jones) takes his place among the oldest archetypes in the Western genre — the white man who has lived among the Indians so long he has at last become one. This plot device, used in Hombre, Nevada Smith and myriad…
It was wise to wait two years to release September 11, a collection of eleven shorts, each eleven minutes, nine seconds and one frame in length. Even now, it’s hard to imagine the viewer whose gut will remain unwrenched. Emphasizing the global impact of the event before the retaliatory bombs…
On the phone, Tish Hinojosa is not long on words. But the Texas singer-songwriter, who weaves her tunes from a patchwork of folk, rock, country, swing and Tex-Mex influences and delivers them in a crystal-clear voice, seems to do most of her talking through her low-key and beautiful music. Over…
Thursday, November 27 Prior to giving — and giving and giving and giving — thanks at today’s dinner table, do yourself a big favor: Burn some pre-meal fat and work up an appetite at Huff-n-Puff Before You Stuff, Aurora Recreation’s annual invitation to battle holiday poundage before it starts. Bring…
Long before kids had actor Will Ferrell stuffed into yellow elf tights and pointed booties to laugh at, my brother, sister and I amused ourselves for hours on end dancing around the Christmas tree lip-synching to a cassette of kooky Christmas classics. My personal favorite was always “Grandma Got Run…
SUN, 11/30 In the Jewish tradition, books are central to life: The urge to study the world is ingrained among families, generation to generation, and a well-stocked bookshelf provides the impetus to learn in many Jewish homes. But while the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture’s annual Leah Cohen Festival…
FRI, 11/28 Break away from the shopping madness and glide into the holiday spirit at the Comfort Dental Ice Rink, opening today from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. at Fillmore Plaza, Second Avenue and Fillmore Street in Cherry Creek North. The University of Denver skating team will be on hand…
Boulder author Ying Chang Compestine, a native of Wuhan, China, has been at home in Colorado since coming to the University of Colorado in 1986. Now she’s about to move to California, and it’s a shame: Compestine’s departure is a loss for members of the area’s burgeoning Chinese-American community. But…
MON, 12/1 Since it premiered on December 1, 1989, as an artists’ response to World AIDS Day, A Day Without Art has gone through a lot of shape-shifting. Instead of closing galleries or draping artworks in black shrouds, artists now tend to speak out on AIDS in visual terms, by…
FRI, 11/28 As the Christmas season fast approaches, one cannot help but cringe at the inevitable onslaught of typical holiday productions. Buried neck-deep in Yuletide cheer, it’s nearly impossible to muster enthusiasm for yet another production of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Are audiences supposed to coo again and feel…
There’s a handsome show called Winter Exhibit: Murphy, Garcia, Jackson, Lee playing at the glitzy Fresh Art Gallery, and it’s a signature outing in a number of ways. As usual, everything was hand-selected by director and gallery owner Jeanie King. Also as usual, all of the artists on display explore…
Variations on the theme of contemporary portraiture are brought together in Heads, now at Studio Aiello (3563 Walnut Street, 303-297-8166). The show highlights six artists, four of whom have their work shown in depth. Gallery co-directors Tyler Aiello and Monica Petty Aiello organized the exhibit in cooperation with private dealer…
God’s Trombones is the title of a book by James Weldon Johnson, published in 1927 and consisting of seven poem-sermons. Johnson, best known for the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” was hugely influenced by African-American folk tradition and by the preachers he heard in church on Sundays, and his…
Oliver! is among the best musicals ever written. But in 1960, when Lionel Bart — then a young, working-class composer — prepared for its debut, many critics were dubious. Although Charles Dickens’s novel, Oliver Twist, on which the musical is based, is full of fascinating, eccentric and entirely original characters,…
If you’re hankering for a movie about an awkward yet lovable “outsider” type who wanders into a pastel mock-up of Middle America and cajoles the straights to get saucy, you’re in luck. It’s called Edward Scissorhands, and it’s been available on video for years. Renting it will absolve you of…
It took them four years, but Dark Castle — Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver’s horror division which puts out a movie every year around Halloween — have finally made something that’s genuinely scary. It may be no coincidence that, this time around, Silver has scored a higher-profile cast than usual,…
Director Jean-Luc Godard, once the enfant terrible of France’s New Wave, was never much known for his charm. The groundbreaking Breathless, made in 1959, was full of enchantments and innovations, but the later films of Godard’s most productive period, such as 1967’s La Chinoise and 1968’s Weekend, were seen by…
The city will give new meaning to the term “bling-bling” when it flips the switches on 500,000 jewel-like lights during the Downtown Denver Holiday Lighting ceremony this weekend. But don’t worry: There’s nothing gangsta about it. The local custom, presented by the RTD, the Downtown Denver Partnership and Larimer Square,…
Thursday, November 20 Butt out: If you’re tired of your butt freezing while you’re having a smoke outdoors in the dead of January, maybe it’s time you jumped on the wagon. You can join other puffers — and plenty of sympathetic company — at the Auraria campus for today’s Great…
