Most of us remember the 1952 movie version of Singin’ in the Rain for the inspired partnership of Donald O’Connor and Gene Kelly and the infectiously upbeat songs of Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed. The plot revolves around Hollywood and the film industry just as America was discovering talking…
The repellent Casanova portrayed by Campbell Scott in Roger Dodger has an instinct for looking up skirts and down cleavages, but no capacity for looking in the mirror. Part salesman, part caveman, Madison Avenue copywriter Roger Swanson is, deep in his cynical heart, as loathsome to himself as he is…
With Frida — the story of profoundly passionate and uncompromising Mexican-Jewish painter Frida Kahlo — it’s evident that a few folks in marketing know how to work the demographics (it’ll be extremely PC, possibly mandatory, to gush in adoration of it). But that’s the first and last cynical comment of…
Three years on, the besieged phenomenon (the scourge, the Antichrist, the Vanilla Ice of the ’90s — take your pick) has been rendered beloved. When they, slick bizzers in suits with cell phones, speak of “Eminem” and “gross” in the same sentence, they’re talking only receipts, merchandise, profit. The man,…
Sometimes the pressures of being America’s Hero can get to you. That’s why Tom, who has spent half of his fifty years as a professional fireman, has a semi-secret hobby: He dresses up as Dr. Scott in a show featuring a rockin’ transvestite. “I need to blow off a little…
Growing up non-Mormon in Salt Lake City in the ’60s and ’70s, Denver artist Kirsten Easthope was not a social butterfly. Though her artistic talents gained her a modicum of popularity in school, she admits to having had few close friends. “You just didn’t belong, no matter how nice you…
Denver’s new Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building, by the Denver firms of David Owen Tryba Architects and RNL Design, is the latest monument to rise at the Civic Center — which, by the way, is Denver’s premier urban space. Because of its prominent location, designing a building here has…
The Victoria H. Myhren Gallery, in the Shwayder Art Building on the University of Denver’s campus (2121 East Asbury Avenue, 303-871-2846), is hosting an exquisite exhibit titled Ronald Davis: Recent Abstractions 2001-2002. The show, which runs through November 8, was organized by Gwen Chanzit, a professor of art history at…
The Full Monty began as one of those small, unassuming British movies about unemployed men in a gritty, industrial town — in this case, Sheffield, Yorkshire. These workers see their neighbors, wives and girlfriends rushing to a Chippendales-style male strip performance, and they decide to raise some money by staging…
There are evenings when my job seems like the best in town, and the Shadow Theatre Company’s Lady Day at Emerson¹s Bar and Grill provided one of them. The lights come up on a muted gray-green background, a piano, a nosegay of gardenias on a round table. Piano notes sound,…
Consider life’s unbreakable rules: Send Mom flowers on her birthday. Keep your fastball down. Never order lasagna in Des Moines. Don’t go sailing with people you can’t stand. Violation of this last rule has yielded some pretty fair books and movies over the years — Moby Dick and The Caine…
Now, here’s an innovative narrative: Two shticky goofs of different races get stuck with a ridiculous mission and must overcome their mutual antagonism to save the day. Been there? Done that? You bet! Yet somehow, amazingly, the new I Spy dishes out fresh and funny antics while simultaneously spewing forth…
Clear your throats, take a deep breath, and belt out the words with the Raging Grannies: (To the tune of “Frère Jacques”) Georgie Bush, Georgie Bush, Can you hear? Can you hear? No more nukes or bombings, No more nukes or bombings, Can you hear? No, it’s not the latest…
Classically trained actor Joshua Kane must have sold his soul for his voice: It’s a booming, heart-stopping theatrical instrument, even over the phone from New York. And it’s not like Kane and Beelzebub are complete strangers. One of Kane’s one-man stage shows, Date With the Devil, recalls “the many voices…
I said it just a few weeks ago: It’s hard to believe how many first-rate art shows this season are devoted to that old warhorse, abstract painting. There’s no question that the current positive reappraisal of abstraction — both of the historic and contemporary type — is a train that’s…
It’s strange to find a first-rate painting show on the second floor of a run-down warehouse near the National Western Stock Show Complex — but that’s exactly what’s there right now. The impressive exhibit is called hEMLOCK rOW: Paintings by Stephen batura, and it’s on display in a building known…
Time, that is intolerant Of the brave and innocent, And indifferent in a week, To a beautiful physique, Worships language and forgives Everyone by whom it lives. — W.H. Auden “My husband wanted to leave,” an attractive blond woman told me during the intermission for The Skin of Our Teeth,…
If you’re a fan of the baseball-cap-wearin’, Nader-votin’, muckrakin’, best-sellin’, corporation-confrontin’ son of a gun known as Michael Moore, all you need to know about his latest film, Bowling for Columbine is that it’s more of the same. You know: the mix of easy humor, political potshots, attempts (some successful,…
For American moviegoers with a blood lust for organized crime, the Boss of all Bosses has long been named Corleone. Is it Vito? Or Michael? That’s a matter of personal preference. In any event, so beloved and enduring are the Godfather films — the first and second, anyway — that…
Punch-Drunk Love is a Paul Thomas Anderson film — Paul Thomas Anderson of Magnolia and Boogie Nights fame. It is also an Adam Sandler film — Adam Sandler of Little Nicky and The Wedding Singer fame. In terms of story, it has far more in common with Sandler’s previous work…
In the aftermath of the deadly rampage at Columbine High School, Colorado became a media poster child for the effects of gun violence. And as shockwaves rippled from the April 20, 1999, tragedy, some blamed art — including movies — for igniting the killing spree. In turn, filmmakers examined violence…
Environmental sculptor Shan Wells grew up in southwestern Colorado, immersed in nature and the immediate landscape — which has become his artistic medium — all his life. It shows in the work: In Wells’s visual world, stones, leaves or flower parts might be arranged in patterns on the ground, sandstone…
