Wayne Wang’s astonishing little film Smoke sneaks up on the viewer in wonderful ways. Superficially, it’s a “slice of life”–half a dozen related slices, actually–about the people who frequent a Brooklyn cigar store in 1990. But just underneath a deceptively simple surface, we come upon serious matters: the need to…
Devotees–and detractors–of the underground comics pioneer R. Crumb may be startled to learn that this trafficker in headless female sex objects, anxiety-ridden male outcasts and pornographic kitty cats was probably the happiest member of his family. That’s just one of the things we learn in the course of Terry Zwigoff’s…
Wednesday June 28 ‘Poke folks: “This ain’t exactly a New York poetry slam,” or so says Carson Reed, one of the hosts for A Night at the Kitchen Table, the first of a series of tale-telling events to be held twice each month at the Wynkoop Brewing Company. The focus…
Wednesday June 21 Horn of plenty: The Creative Music Works wraps up its swell jazz and improvisation series at Vartan Jazz in appropriate style. Trumpet player Leslie Drayton, who’s been heard out in the real world working with everyone from Marvin Gaye to Nancy Wilson to Earth, Wind and Fire,…
Kathy Andrews was named curator for the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities only about a year ago. But she’s already come through with a must-see show. A Gathering of Galleries/A Gathering of Artists is an exciting look at the art market in Denver. Andrews, who says she wanted…
Being a bear of very little brain, Winnie the Pooh could hardly be expected to figure out his problems for himself. And in Winnie the Pooh, playwright Kristin Sergel’s version of the children’s favorite, Pooh needs all his friends to help him. Sergel melds a number of A.A. Milne’s stories…
If it were television, it might be a soap opera; if it were an old movie, it might be what they used to call a “chick flick.” Joanna M. Glass’s Artichoke is all about a sensitive woman caught between a male world and an irrational morality that keeps her down…
What can you say? Apparently, that’s a hundred million dollars’ worth of darting laser ray, jet-powered car and black rubber suit up there, and if the whole shebang goes in one eye and out the other before you even get back to the parking lot, that’s too bad. They probably…
Steven Soderbergh’s directing career has hit a couple of snags since he enlivened the independent filmmaking scene five years ago with a cool-tempered study of yuppie obsession called sex, lies & videotape. Since then, Soderbergh’s gloomy Kafka has probably played best in Prague, and his beautifully wrought adaptation of A.E…
Wednesday June 14 Down in the valley: Even if you can’t attend the Telluride Bluegrass Festival (this weekend at the lofty resort town), there’s one part of it you can still enjoy: the inordinate number of popular acts, acoustic and otherwise, that tend to hang out–and sometimes even perform–in the…
Odd as it may seem, Denver hasn’t always been the art-making hub of Colorado. From the nineteenth century up to the 1970s, Colorado Springs was the home of our most important contemporary art scene. And it was there that a loosely affiliated group formed the state’s first true artist cooperatives–years…
Everyone on earth has a purpose, homeless Betty declares, and hers is to act as a mirror–the one you can’t get away from when you leave the bathroom. In her is reflected the whole human condition, and playwright Joe Turner Cantu wants us to gaze long and hard into that…
The Industrial Arts Theatre Company’s Goddesses is equal parts sense and nonsense. Written by company member Mary Guzzy-Siegel in collaboration with five other women in the company, it can be witty and charming at times and embarrassing and didactic at others. The liberties this feminist piece takes with history and…
For now, citizens of the New Russia have more important things to do than revitalize their creaky old movie industry. Like keeping the St. Petersburg mafia at bay. Getting the telephones to work. Importing millions of hair dryers, brassieres and car alarms that play the lambada, usually from the United…
If the star of your summer fantasy/adventure movie happens to be a gorilla–or rather, a gorilla suit with a tiny actress stuffed inside–you naturally get a little stingy with the rest of the casting. That’s what the makers of Congo have done. The bogus primate is called Amy, and she…
Wednesday June 7 Taping measures: Local jazz vocalist Lynn Skinner will be in fine company tonight when she performs with two of Denver’s best instrumentalists–guitarist and master of chordal changes Dale Bruning and open-minded trumpet player Ron Miles–at Vartan Jazz, 231 Milwaukee St. The 8 p.m. show–which promises to smoke…
In Denver, like everywhere else, there are two highly distinct and opposing camps when it comes to the fine arts. There are the artists associated with a number of contemporary movements, and there are those who embrace more traditional styles. The rivalry between the two is anything but friendly: Traditionalists…
Four women inhabit a mansion in hell (provincial France circa the 1930s), and the horror they experience there is as dark as it gets on earth. Wendy Kesselman’s relentless exploration of class hatred and oppression in My Sister in This House amounts to an important modern tragedy of almost mythic…
It doesn’t matter how sappy the music is, the kids are what sells Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic The Sound of Music. The Country Dinner Playhouse’s revival features seven terrific kids, and every time they’re on stage, the whole production lifts a notch. Blatantly sentimental, the show has a few minor…
Hal Hartley’s Amateur flirts with pretension, but Hartley always pulls its head out of the clouds with dark humor. Consider: A French ex-nun named Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert), who believes the Virgin Mary has appeared to her, is now living in New York, writing pornographic sketches for a skin magazine. A…
Trying to squeeze the goo out of Robert James Waller’s romantic bestseller, The Bridges of Madison County, must have been like cleaning up the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Wherever you look, there’s another mess. Clint Eastwood, a man of few words, and screenwriter Richard LaGravenese, a man of patience, have…
Wednesday May 31 Bottom of the month: A favorite mingle–the Denver Art Museum’s Top of the Week spring music series–comes to a close tonight. And what a swinging finale it’ll be–with the Queen City Jazz Band’s spirited Dixieland-style music accompanying a stroll through selected museum exhibits. Top of the Week…
