The blood-spattered French thriller Demonlover offers about as blunt an indictment of international business culture as you’ll see in any movie. With a dedication that borders on mania, writer-director Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Les Destinees) attacks what he sees as the greed, ruthless ambition and Byzantine chicanery lurking behind high-powered…
It seems like everybody’s raving up Mexican cinema these days — either as a merit badge of self-conscious hipness or because the stuff is impressive, and sometimes both — but the excitement is definitely merited with Herod’s Law (La Ley de Herodes). This movie kicks the feisty Y Tu Mam´…
In the Starz FilmCenter’s “Language of Film” series, which starts on Tuesday, October 7, Denver filmmaker Alexandre Philippe will examine three great films from a storyteller’s point of view, deconstructing narrative to reveal what he calls the movies’ “hidden anatomy.” Certainly, he will have superb material to work with. On…
A good mystery series has to fit like a well-worn glove. It’s that utilitarian undertone of familiarity that sucks the most loyal readers in — that sense of time, place and enduring character that pulls all the plots together again and again. Once you really know Philip Marlowe or Spencer…
Thursday, October 2 Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was a groundbreaker in every sense of the word during her tenure under President Clinton, not only as the first woman to serve in her office, but as an integral peacemaker in Kosovo and the Middle East. Now her accomplishments…
Denver is abuzz in anticipation of the arrival of El Greco to Picasso from the Phillips Collection, with its romantic images, impressionist wonders and strong cubist portrayals. Opening this Saturday at the Denver Art Museum, El Greco to Picasso consists of 53 world-famous paintings and sculptures. “I don’t think we’ve…
WED, 10/8 Captain Jack Sparrow may still be sailing the seven seas in search of lost fortune, but plenty of bona fide booty can be found at tonight’s Erotica Aquatica Fashion Show at the Boulder Theater. Designers and boutiques including Buffalo Exchange, Tricia Russell, Common Era, Fascinations and the Ritz…
WED, 10/8 Tina Basich, one of the world’s first professional female snowboarders, chronicles her pioneering life in Pretty Good for a Girl: The Autobiography of a Snowboarding Pioneer. Basich, whose unconventional family once lived in a tepee on the front lawn, became a pro boarder at seventeen “because it was…
SUN, 10/5 Some would say the books of Peter Sís aren’t children’s books at all. And yet you’ll find them — complicated mazes of lavishly illustrated visual information and sophisticated themes — on the shelves of children’s libraries or among the juvenile picture books at your local bookstore. It’s no…
FRI, 10/3 Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver curator Cydney Payton has a love affair with art’s cutting edge: Always seeking ways to straddle it, she’s continuing that streak with BLOOD: Lines & Connections, an ambitious exhibit of global proportions opening tonight with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. at the…
THURS, 10/2 In the early scenes of Gus Edwards’s Louie and Ophelia, the title characters are crazy about each other. By the final scene, though, they’ve nearly driven each other nuts — and have come to terms with some of the psychic demons that hinder their ability to love. Louie…
When the Cordell Taylor Gallery opened its doors in Denver in the fall of 2001, its specialty was contemporary art from Utah, and all of the represented artists were holdovers from the days when the business was located in Salt Lake City. These out-of-state artists were unknown around here and…
Bobbi Walker forces visitors to her gallery, Walker Fine Art (300 West 11th Avenue, 303-355-8955), to suspend their aesthetic sensibilities. At issue is the hideous high-rise — the Prado — in which the gallery is located. Loving buildings as I do, it took me a long time to build up…
Barbara Ehrenreich published Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America in 2001 partly as a response to President Clinton’s 1996 reorganization of welfare, which kicked recipients off the rolls if they had not gone to work after two years. Before doing research for the book, Ehrenreich already knew…
The strongest things in the Shadow Theatre Company’s ambitious production of Macbeth are Jeffrey Nickelson’s performance in the title role and the way director Buddy Butler deals with the supernatural elements. Macbeth’s witches always present a problem. They’re sometimes portrayed as wrinkled hags and sometimes as beautiful young women; sometimes…
The publicity materials sent in advance of the at-long-last release of The Kids Are Alright on DVD suggest that the maker of the 1979 documentary about The Who has been on the lam–in the rock-and-roll witness relocation program, perhaps, far from the long windmilling arm of justice. A “recluse” is…
The dumbed-down movie version of Frances Mayes’s best-selling travel memoir Under the Tuscan Sun is a virtual case study of Hollywood’s irrepressible urge to lower the bar in the hopes of upping the take. Mayes’s 1996 book is a nicely written, carefully observed meditation on buying a decrepit Italian villa…
Recently, ornithologists in Antarctica made a startling discovery: Female emperor penguins, being forced against their wills to endure stern patriarchal societal norms, tend to practice iffy mating habits. Close scrutiny revealed that most adult females go bonkers struggling to choose between an exciting-but-destructive “bad-boy” penguin and a dependable-but-boring “good-boy” penguin,…
The naked guys call their performance “the ancient Australian art of genital origami”; a Denver law firm declares that the show is protected by the First Amendment; and at first, the city didn’t know what to make of such a public display. But on Tuesday, September 30, a Puppetry of…
Thursday, September 25 Top toques from Wolfgang Puck’s Cafe, Maggiano’s Little Italy, the Broadmoor and McCormick’s Fish House & Bar will put their best food forward today by working wonders with basic grub — a mystery mixture of food-bank staples — when they go apron to apron from 10:30 a.m…
The Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble is putting a new spin on an old story with its September 25 premiere of Orfeu Negro: The Legend of Black Orpheus Re-Told. The production, about lovers who are reunited after death, will launch the company’s 33rd season with exhilarating leaps and bounds. “It…
THURS, 9/25 The organizers of Denver’s 22nd annual Great American Beer Festival know what you want: “Three days. 320 breweries. 1,400 Beers. 144,000 square feet of total beer heaven.” That’s what the banners say. That’s what’s repeated over and over again on the Web sites. And other than, maybe, a…
