In the Bedroom. First-time director Todd Field turns a dark tale by the late short-story master Andre Dubus into a precocious film masterpiece about murder, grief and repressed marital rage set in quiet Camden, Maine. Tom Wilkinson and likely Oscar nominee Sissy Spacek star as the highly civilized parents of…
Who would have guessed that 31 years after M*A*S*H, the film that made Robert Altman’s reputation, he would still be turning out movies as good as his latest release, Gosford Park? Full of the director’s usual energy, powered by the sense of controlled chaos that marks all of his ensemble…
Buntport Theater wants you to get out from in front of your TV set to enjoy some live midweek theater. And how do they implement that agenda? Well, they stage a serial sitcom with an enticingly affordable entry fee twice a month, from October through April, and hope they can…
Horace Walpole, who said that “life is a comedy to the man who thinks and a tragedy to the man who feels,” could not know how his words would echo in the waning days of 2001. The jarring events of the past few months have left most Americans hungry for…
When he first auditioned for Any Given Sunday director Oliver Stone to play quarterback Willie Beamen, an embittered bench-warmer prone to fits of vomiting before each snap, Jamie Foxx was sure he’d blown it. Stone, as subtle as an ice pick to the cornea, said as much–loud enough so Foxx,…
The touring production of Kiss Me, Kate at the Buell Theatre offers many pleasures, one of the foremost being Rachel York’s dazzling performance as Kate. The musical was first shown on Broadway in 1948. It’s a sexy romp, an assemblage of brilliant songs (the show represented Cole Porter’s triumphant return…
The most daunting role for an actor is to portray a god, and when the god comes equipped with a tangle of myths and the quickest left jab in history, the actor’s job can soon veer into guesswork. To Will Smith’s credit, he has managed to get at least partway…
The tricked-up charms of James Mangold’s Kate & Leopold may be precisely what the moment demands — as long as you accept the existence of chivalry, the possibility of time travel and the stream of bubbles emanating from Meg Ryan. Skeptics need not apply. Having toured the psychiatric ward in…
They haunt Christmas Eve afternoon, those hollow, credit-card-clutching wraiths who just plumb forgot: last-minute shoppers loaded down more by guilt than by packages to give. As far as we know, there is no rehab center where recovering Scrooges can check in and out. So the next best thing may be…
After nearly twenty years, the Museum of Outdoor Arts, whose collections have been buffeted from port to port looking for a final resting place, continues to experience growing pains. But since moving to airy new digs, the museum shows new confidence. It’s put down solid roots while still pursuing the…
David Salo’s colleagues and classmates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have absolutely no idea how he spends his free time. It’s not that the 32-year-old linguistics grad student is ashamed of his hobby (or obsession), which has occupied him for some 26 years. They simply cannot be bothered with it…
In past years, the Denver Art Museum has usually seen the holiday season as an appropriate time to close some of its galleries and partially shut down — strange, but true. In a dramatic change this year, however, all of the major galleries at the DAM are open, and the…
A lot of local art centers and even some galleries have put together special sales this year for the gift-giving season. An added feature of the Holiday Art Market at the Foothills Art Center (809 Fifteenth Street, Golden, 303-279-3922) is the absolutely perfect setting of the center itself, which is…
Oooohhhh! That’s the exclamation of disappointment from a woman standing behind me and applauding as the curtain closes, the house lights brighten and she realizes the ecstatically leaping, singing figures on the Arvada stage are irrevocably lost to her. Clearly, she’d have been happy to sway and clap along with…
Going to the Bug Theatre for The Santaland Diaries is like dropping in on a high-spirited Christmas party. People in Santa hats scurry about; every surface is crammed with toys and decorations. Pretty soon you find yourself singing along to “The Twelve Days of Christmas” while fellow guests mime the…
Since the horrors of the dominant Hollywood culture — destruction, devastation, dumb-assness — do not appear to be receding of their own accord, there’s a great poignancy to the new cinematic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The film succeeds as massive,…
The air of danger that surrounds Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl (À Ma Soeur) never lets up, which is unusual for a film that wasn’t meant to be a thriller. Rather, it’s a merciless look at adolescent insecurity, the mixed signals of emerging desire and the ruthlessness of carnal gamesmanship that,…
When Ursula Schletz was preparing to move to the United States from Berlin in 1984, she reached out and wrote someone. “I had lots of pen pals. That was the way I learned what Americans were like,” she says. “I found that conversing, even through letters, made me feel more…
The sight of adults slowly snaking about while holding antlers on their heads might strike you as a wee bit silly. But the Abbot’s Bromley Horn Dance, as it’s officially known, is no Monty Python skit — even if it also boasts an English pedigree, which dates at least to…
It is December 5, the day AOL Time Warner-owned DC Comics has been anxiously awaiting for almost 15 years–the day writer-illustrator Frank Miller once more dons cape and cowl to resurrect the Dark Knight, his fiercely rendered vision of an obscenely obsessed middle-aged Batman. Today, stores will finally open their…
It’s hard to believe, but it was only about five years ago that Denver painter Bruce Price first made a splash with his distinctive post-minimalist paintings. In Painting in the Age of Transparency, one of three exhibits at Ron Judish Fine Arts, Price shows off his latest batch of elaborate,…
Just in time for the gift-giving season, the Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173) is presenting its annual fundraiser, Blue Light Special, in which nothing costs more than $200, and a portion of each sale is donated to Edge. Although the Edge-sters want their alternative gallery to look like an…
