Pure goodness tends to be less dramatic than evil — or even ordinary human frailty. It’s a truism that Milton’s Lucifer in Paradise Lost is far more interesting than his God. Gabriel’s Daughter tells the story of Clara Brown, a pioneering Colorado figure who endured slavery, was freed, and devoted…
David Wolstencroft moved from London to Los Angeles in November, and not only so he could rise each morning for a game of tennis–though there is that, and that might have been good enough. He made the trip, which is thus far temporary but may well prove permanent, for the…
Cremaster 3 is the final installment of Matthew Barney’s five-part Cremaster cycle. If that reads like a typo, be informed that, over the last decade, Barney has been filming and releasing the different episodes out of order, if the numbering has any real meaning — not that viewers are likely…
There’s magic in Northfork, both in the movie, by twin brothers Mark and Michael Polish, and in the Montana town soon to be drowned by the opening of the dam keeping the baptismal waters at bay. Northfork is a beguiling and bittersweet fantasy set in a netherworld where the living…
The fall of Roman Polanski’s career remains one of world cinema’s most tragic stories. By the late ’60s, this visionary was undeniably an American filmmaker, no longer a Pole on loan, who gave young Hollywood’s bold new spirit (Buon giorno, Don Corleone; may the Force be with you, Luke Skywalker)…
We use them every day — as closet organizers, drain un-cloggers and accessories for school projects and, at Halloween, for costumes. But how often do you really think about those vital pieces of twisted metal better known as hangers? Art-Gineer/I.D. Studio owner Kef Parker plans to change all that with…
Thursday, July 31 Programs providing opportunities for young artists and performers to learn their crafts and create new works are always welcome, but a program that also provides those opportunities to underserved kids does double duty in immeasurable ways. In that vein, Arts Street is the local workhorse, offering paid…
When Don Mauck, who is blind, was cast as the lead in this summer’s The Pajama Game, director Steve Wilson thought it would be compelling to make his character blind, as well. Typically, when the Physically Handicapped Amateur Musical Actors League (PHAMALy) puts on its annual full-scale musical production, the…
FRI, 8/1 The lowly limerick is “the Rodney Dangerfield of poetry,” according to the Limerick o’ the Day Web page. “Limericks proudly broke into what had been the one unbroachable frontier in proper English society: smut.” Smut is in the ear of the beholder, of course — and there was…
FRI, 8/1 Not every all-American girl dreams of becoming a musher, but for 21-time Iditarod Sled Dog Race competitor DeeDee Jonrowe, it was just a fact of life while growing up in a remote western Alaska backwater. “There are no roads out there,” she explains. “I always loved dogs, so…
THURS, 7/31 This weekend in Boulder, a unique kind of theater will hit the stage: The Peanut Butter Players’ new musical farce Bratrace is not exactly children’s theater, but it’s truly family theater, the term used by writer/director Jo Anne Lamun to describe the intergenerational entertainment experiment, a kid-sized satire…
SAT, 8/2 Slap on your saddle shoes, pile on the pomade, and head directly to LoDo where the sparks are flying at today’s Built for Speed: The Art of Kustom Kulture. The hep cats on 15th and Wazee streets are hooding the meters today and jamming the block with hot…
SUN, 8/3 Winnie Wenglewick brought more than her furniture with her when she moved to Denver from Orlando two years ago. The improv theater entrepreneur also brought a novel, breakneck idea: the Extreme Playwright’s Adventure, a patented concept of her own invention that pits a dauntless crew of playwrights of…
Mark Masuoka, director of the Carson Masuoka Gallery, has put together the very impressive Ambient Lux, a group show featuring installation art that can be readily compared to the installation-filled biennial now playing at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. As many will recall, Masuoka launched the MCA’s biennial series with…
The Colorado Photographic Arts Center (1513 Boulder Street, 303-455-8999) is presenting its annual summer feature, the members’ show; this year’s edition has the prosaic if eloquent title CPAC Members Juried Exhibit 2003. Membership in CPAC is not limited to serious photographers, meaning that amateurs are also represented in the ranks…
Director Robin McKee has made two risky choices for her production of The Taming of the Shrew. She has presented the play as pretty much an unadulterated love story, with Kate and Petruchio clearly gaga for each other from their very first encounter, despite all their subsequent yelling and jousting…
My primary conclusion after seeing Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci and Enrique Granados’s Goyescas at the Central City Opera was that hearing singers of this caliber in a reasonably-sized auditorium with good acoustics, their voices flowing freely and undistorted by mikes, is a rare privilege. Soprano Emily Pulley’s song about the…
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over continues a fine tradition of turning third installments of film series into three-dimensional efforts; Amityville 3-D and Jaws 3-D exploited the gimmick long before Robert Rodriguez made clever use of the numeral signifying the milking to death of a franchise. But what Rodriguez lacks –…
Like the wounded nation that loved him, he was uncertain and half crippled. So in the depths of the Great Depression, when a knock-kneed thoroughbred named Seabiscuit rose up to outrun the elite racehorses of the day, he became a folk hero suited to his moment and a fixture in…
Former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos’s infamous collection of shoes — over 1,500 pairs, some never even worn once — forever branded her an abomination when the revolution came a-knockin’ in 1986. Thank your lucky loafers, then, for Buckner Orphan Care International’s Shoes for Orphan Souls, a charity that has…
Thursday, July 24 Did you ever wonder what kind of artist will sit for hours, painstakingly reconstructing a fly’s eye or a parrot’s foot in super-real detail? It’s kind of like spending an afternoon counting the pores in your skin or snapping a slow close-up with nothing but your own…
“I don’t do standup,” Andy Dick insists by phone from Los Angeles. “Please! I stand there. I’m up on stage. But that’s about as close as I get to anything that’s called ‘standup.'” Best known from prime-time shows like Less Than Perfect and NewsRadio, in which he plays accident-prone dweebs,…
