It’s the tail end of the 1996 California primary election, and incumbent Democratic senator Jay Bulworth (Warren Beatty) is having a nervous breakdown. Sleepless for days, famished, he channel-surfs aimlessly in the darkness of his office, where in a rare moment of lucidity he has an inspiration: He arranges to…
Not since the death of Diana has there been a pop phenomenon as cataclysmic as the demise of Seinfeld. The surrounding hoopla has reached such proportions that it has turned the series’ saturnine co-creator–balding, bespectacled Larry David–into a cult celebrity. The press has presented David as a mysterious demigod who…
On the folk scene, one way you can separate the newer singer-songwriter fans from the well-rooted moldy figs is to play a song. If everyone in the room sings along, they probably belong to the latter group. And if you do it, too, chances are you’re old enough to remember…
Thursday May 7 It’s a good Thursday to go dancing, with a couple of concert offerings guaranteed to put some oomph in your step. New Orleans’s unshakable Funky Meters provide nonstop R&B grooves tonight at 10 at the Aggie Theater, 204 College Ave. in Fort Collins. True classics of their…
Here’s to the girlie-girls of bygone days. Beginning in the 1920s, their doe eyes and impossible dimensions began to grace all persuasions of advertising, from laundry-aid promos to nightclub matchbook covers, finally culminating in the unself-consciously lush and ridiculous Vargas Girls of the Forties. Nowadays that seething sexuality seems soft,…
Robin Rule, director of the Rule Modern and Contemporary Gallery, is on cloud nine, thanks to the nine abstract paintings that make up the gorgeous Dale Chisman: New Paintings exhibit that just opened at Rule. Not only is this show an aesthetic triumph for Chisman, the well-known contemporary master, but…
Contemporary dramatists don’t typically direct their own plays, mostly because of the notion that at some point, all writers lose a sense of objectivity concerning their own ideas. Lately, though, more playwrights have chosen to direct their own transparent confessions. And in the Denver Center Theatre Company’s world premiere of…
There’s no one more qualified to examine the pretensions of theater professionals and their critics than England’s greatest living playwright, Tom Stoppard, who began his illustrious career as an itinerant drama reviewer. The surreal sense of humor Stoppard displays in The Real Inspector Hound is perfect for taking the air…
Chinese Box arrives with one of the weirdest hybrid pedigrees in living memory. The writing credits include–in addition to the film’s director Wayne Wang–Jean-Claude Carriere, who worked on most of the best films of Luis Bunuel’s late period (Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Phantom of Liberty, Belle de Jour); classy…
One of the few seemingly spontaneous bursts of energy at the recent Oscars ceremony was provided by motor-mouthing Dutch director Mike van Diem, who seemed genuinely surprised to have won the award for best foreign film for his debut feature, Character. If the commercial popularity and Oscar sweep for Titanic…
Moviemakers have been making themselves miserable wrestling with Les Miserables for almost ninety years. The very first American feature film was a 1909 silent adaptation of Victor Hugo’s dark masterpiece, and it’s been reprised on the screen at least half a dozen times since then. Most memorable? The 1935 version,…
The focus of documentarian Barbara Kopple’s Wild Man Blues is Woody Allen the clarinet player. Not Woody Allen the comedian and filmmaker, not the cradle-robber, not even Woody the world-class worrywart. Kopple’s subject, plain and simple, is the Woody Allen who can knock out a passable version of “Down by…
The professor wears high-top sneakers. One’s black, one’s white; both look well-broken in. It’s the kind of statement trumpet player Ron Miles seems fond of making: No big deal, it just is–but doesn’t it look really, really good? Miles is sweet-tempered and rumpled and always thinking, in his quiet way,…
Thursday April 30 During the Holocaust, Oskar Schindler wasn’t the only guy with a list. Varian Fry, an American, helped a select group of thinkers, scientists and artists escape Nazi Germany’s death-hold on Europe during World War II; among them were such cultural luminaries as Marc Chagall and Marcel Duchamp…
International Dawn Chorus Day developed as a lay introduction to International Migratory Bird Day, when really serious birders convene to count the various species that pass through the region each spring. But taking part in the dawn chorus requires no special gear, manuals or fancy binoculars. It’s simple, and it’s…
There’s good news and bad news these days at the Denver Art Museum. We’ll start with the good: After years of being on the road or in storage, the DAM’s own stash of modern and contemporary art is back on display with the opening of Welcome Back! Selections From the…
The conducting style of Richard Strauss stood in marked contrast to the flamboyant antics of other twentieth-century maestros. In fact, violinist Yehudi Menuhin once noted, when Strauss took to the podium, there was very little evidence that the great German musician was actually conducting. Nevertheless, a close look at vintage…
Near the end of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll House, Nora is compelled to choose between living with her patronizing husband or leaving him (and her adoring children) in order to pursue an independent life of self-realization. After a gut-wrenching, twenty-minute battle of wills with her befuddled mate, Nora…
From its very first frame, Neil Jordan’s The Butcher Boy whooshes us inside the rollicking, deranged world of twelve-year-old Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens). Francie is a redheaded roustabout who lives with his alcoholic “Da” (Stephen Rea) and screw-loose mother (Aisling O’Sullivan) in a small town in northern Ireland in the…
The single joke that has to power The Big Hit from start to finish is that the nice, polite suburban boy who wants everybody to like him and who meekly takes guff from the nerdy clerk at the video store is also a cold-blooded hitman who has whacked a hundred…
It was just a matter of time until hoops junkie and courtside loudmouth Spike Lee got around to making a basketball picture. It’s called He Got Game, and it means to be, in part, Lee’s antidote to his bluntly stated claim that “most sports movies suck.” It takes a talent…
Angel Vigil is a walking, talking, Hispanic-culture-spoutin’ machine of a man. Best of all, he’s powered by his mom’s secret chile recipe–the only product of folk wisdom he’s not more than happy to divulge. That one might get him into trouble, but the rest is what he lives for. Vigil…
