Terry Maker is one of Colorado’s most relentlessly innovative artists, constantly changing approaches. Over the years, she’s exhibited hard-edged paintings, sculptures made of old books, and beach balls covered in latex and wax. For heaven’s sake, she even did an installation inside a travel trailer. Her latest wild creations are…
There’s a lot of charm, humor and zest in director Anthony Powell’s production of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost. It’s an odd play — short on plot and long on punning and wordplay, full of courtship and poetry, but for the most part skirting any deeper conception of love. Ferdinand, King…
Sylvia is about a middle-aged man, mildly depressed by his companionably routine marriage and meaningless job, who finds a stray pup in the park and brings her home. The pup, Sylvia, is enchanting, distracting, puzzling and endearing, and naturally, his wife doesn’t like her at all. The plot concerns the…
Tony Grisoni can always tell when his old friend Terry Gilliam, the visionary who sees too far for his own good, is in pain: He laughs. The worse the pain, the harder the laughter. If that is the case, then the Terry Gilliam seen throughout Lost in La Mancha, Keith…
Right-wing pundits will be coming out of the woodwork to holler about this one. Bad enough, they’ll say, that The Life of David Gale attacks the death penalty; it also features a caricature Governor of Texas with big ears and a familiar, Scripture-quoting smirk. There’s a character who notes that…
Someone’s got to say it, so let’s start here: We’ve underestimated Will Ferrell. Honestly, it wasn’t that hard to do. His Saturday Night Live stint was never hugely impressive, as he’d often fall back on the same shtick of yelling his lines with detailed enunciation in a passive-aggressive tone that…
Colorado Springs is certainly not the first place that comes to mind when you think “avant-garde.” But Christopher May, the founder and primary curator of that city’s International Experimental Cinema Exposition, may have found a filmmaker who reconciles conservative values and artistic ferment. At 8 p.m. Saturday, Frank Biesendorfer will…
Opera and crime fighting are more alike than you’d think. Both brim with the stuff of life: drama, angst, raw humanity, intense emotions, murder and mayhem. You name it, they’ve both got it. Just ask renowned tenor and former Miami-Dade police officer Jorge Antonio Pita, who’s lived in both worlds…
Thursday, February 13 As a last-minute prelude to Valentine’s Day, soprano Jana Edwards and pianist Kevin Kennedy will make beautiful music together when the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities’ Music With a View Concert Series presents Love Through the Ages. It will feature romantic ditties from the likes…
Denver’s Industrial Arts Theatre Company has been alive and kicking for over fifteen years. The resilient troupe has called more than one inner-city venue home during that time, and the recent demise of the Denver Civic Theatre — its most recent roost — isn’t going to change things. The folks…
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate…” While a William Shakespeare sonnet is always good for stirring up romance, why not really knock your Valentine’s socks off by composing an original verse to declare your undying love — and then read it…
Do you think your little Fido is the greatest doggie ever? All owners do, but we’ll see who really is the “Best in Show” at the Rocky Mountain Cluster Dog Show, held this weekend at the National Western Stock Show Complex. “The agility and obedience competitions are great, with dogs…
“Xeriscape” may be a weird word, but it may become increasingly familiar. To conserve water and keep Denver from looking like a giant dust bowl this summer, the concept of using indigenous and drought-tolerant plants in landscaping is something that we’re all going to have to get used to. To…
New York City is not just the center of the art world; it’s the center of American culture. That was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt almost a year and a half ago by the tragic events that occurred on 9/11. With that event, the city’s place in the…
The Museo de las Américas (861 Santa Fe Drive, 303-571-4401) is hosting Frida Kahlo, a photography show documenting the life of the iconic Mexican painter, who died almost fifty years ago. During her short life, Kahlo was hugely famous, but she is even more famous now. Celebrities such as Madonna…
Titus Andronicus has always bothered Shakespeare scholars, some of whom simply refused to believe that the great man actually wrote the blood-drenched monstrosity. In his famous Tales From Shakespeare, Charles Lamb noted that Titus was “not acknowledged” by the critics whose assessment of dates he used, “nor indeed by any…
It was supposed to be make-believe, a disturbing but ultimately uplifting work of science-fiction from a celebrated author of grim futurama and glorious fantasy. The subject matter of Orbiter, a hardback graphic novel about a spaceship that disappears for years and returns sheathed in skin after visits to faraway places…
Anybody who’s cracked open a recent Disney G-rated DVD has probably witnessed the ultimate in sequelmania. On the Lilo & Stitch release, for instance, the feature was preceded — skippably, thank God — by Inspector Gadget 2, trailers for The Jungle Book 2, Atlantis 2: Milo’s Return, 101 Dalmatians II:…
From the ashes of the late Denver Jazz on Film Festival rises the Denver Jazz on Film Series, a slightly shorter — but no less syncopated — bow to a great American art form as interpreted by moviemakers around the world. The series, which features twelve films ranging from a…
The Radio City Rockettes have been kicking up their heels for over 75 years, but those long-legged beauties had better not get too comfortable in their dancing shoes, because the Arvada Senior Center Rockyettes are stepping up with some serious competition. They’re no spring chickens, but if you swing by…
Frank Caeti spends much of his time on the road: living in hotels, hanging out in airports, traveling in buses and inciting audiences to bust their guts. As a member of one of three Second City Touring Company ensembles that orbit the Second City Theater Company’s home offices in Chicago…
Everyone knows that jalapeños are very hot and frozen lakes are very cold. Combine both with some wacky races, and you’ve got this Saturday’s Fire and Ice Winter Festival at the Aurora Reservoir. The highlight of the day will be the Polar Plunge Pentathlon, a series of goofy outdoor competitions…
