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…
Better not cry. Tonight I saw a woman shake and slap her sobbing daughter, yelling, “Goddamn it, Rachel, get on that man’s lap and smile, or I’ll give you something to cry about.” Meet “Crumpet,” a thirty-something jaded mall imp clad in striped tights and a worn green polyester smock…
SAT, 11/22 A group of women frustrated with the local lesbian dating scene are reviving the flower-speckled 1960s game show The Dating Game, with a twist. The MissKiss Game Show, premiering tonight in Boulder and hosted by comedienne Edith Weiss, will feature four single gay women — one MissKiss and…
SAT, 11/22 Nothing quite says “thankful” like pitching a little poultry at a couple of placid pilgrims. Copper Mountain’s Turkey Bowling hits the slopes today and on Thanksgiving Day to scratch up a little chicken feed for charity by encouraging mountain moguls to fling frozen turkeys down an icy lane…
Belle and the Beast, an updated version of the eighteenth-century fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, has waltzed into Boulder’s Nomad Theatre. “We always try to do something classic that appeals to families during the holidays,” says Nomad resident producer Theresa Klebert. “We want you to have a lighter,…
FRI, 11/21 While his contemporaries flocked to New York and Paris, twentieth-century painter Vance Kirkland chose to spend more than fifty years living and working in Denver. He was not only an innovative artist who painted his way through five major periods, but also an educator — teaching art at…
SUN, 11/23 The image of the perfectly appointed dark-haired beauty in a pillbox hat and blood-spattered pink suit is the first picture that comes to mind at the mention of Jackie Kennedy, the princess of Camelot who sat by her husband when he was shot and killed in Dallas forty…
It was at the end of the nineteenth century that the worldwide romance with the American West first got off the ground. This happened because, even as the earliest settlers were making their way here, the dramatic scenery of the region was attracting artists, particularly photographers and painters. These artists…
Right now, in the South Gallery of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (30 West Dale Street, Colorado Springs, 1-719-634-5583), there is a very good show called Gene Kloss: Southwestern Printmaker. The large exhibit, which has been handsomely installed, showcases the artist’s famous etchings and drypoints. Kloss was born in…
John Patrick Shanley’s Italian American Reconciliation is an amiable amble of a play that revolves around the friendship of two men in New York’s Little Italy. Aldo Scalicki (Tony Catanese) is a funny, fast-talking mama’s boy who has never managed to maintain a relationship with a woman. Huey Maximilian Bonfigliano…
I haven’t seen Eric Bogosian himself perform, and I haven’t read his work, so I really don’t know if his writing is as drop-dead funny as actor Alex Ray June’s performance makes it appear, or if June is as brilliant an actor as he seems to be when doing Bogosian’s…
In the annals of fraud and fakery, a discredited ex-magazine reporter named Stephen Glass will probably end up as a mere footnote. The people who forge van Goghs and the con artists who bilk naive grandmothers out of their life savings (not to mention certain fast-dancing corporate executives) more richly…
Russell Crowe to his agent: “More Oscar bait. Now.” Agent, considering his cut of Crowe’s $20 million payday: “Yes, sir.” A possible scenario, anyway. Thus, Crowe is back in another iconic, self-serious performance, and his beefy mug will stare down upon us from this season’s heroic movie posters until Tom…
The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, a collection of ten new films that address social and political unrest in Rwanda, the Middle East, Chile and Bosnia, among other places, will screen November 13-16 at the Starz FilmCenter in the Tivoli Building on the Auraria campus. Co-presented by Human Rights…
Lila Downs knows no boundaries. A striking beauty with powerhouse vocals that sound as though she swallowed an entire orchestra (heavy on the oboe), Downs has been recognized across the globe both for her extraordinary singing and for her talented storytelling through song. An entirely new and younger audience in…
Thursday, November 13 The ongoing El Centro Su Teatro Visiting Artist Series brings in a little Puerto Rican spice from the Big Apple this weekend when it presents El Apagn/The Blackout, a comedy with live music performed by New York’s Pregones Theater Company. Based on the short story “The Night…
