Despite a director with a case of the shouts and a hopelessly miscast leading lady, that prince of players, Anthony Hopkins, can still make magic. Richard Attenborough’s Shadowlands, a well-mannered tearjerker set at well-mannered Oxford in 1952, aspires to romantic tragedy and to the kind of Merchant/Ivory polish that keeps…
Everybody knows about instant photos–aim, shoot, and sixty seconds later a small square of photographic paper pops out and develops itself into an image of Aunt Rosie. Because there’s no negative, reprints, retouching and other arty effects aren’t possible: What you see is what you get. Even so, a number…
The intense love triangle at the heart of Chen Kaige’s sumptuous epic Farewell My Concubine could be the least of its concerns, but it’s not. As Rick Blaine told us, “the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world,” and it’s difficult…
Ever ready with a new theory, the social psychologists are saying that Western movies are making their current comeback because beleaguered Americans have a revived desire for law and order. Pin a star on an upright, fearless sheriff, let him clean the bad guys out of the local saloons, and…
When the second annual Celebrate Colorado Artists Festival returns to the Denver Performing Arts Complex this weekend, expect a few new artists, a few improvements — and a lot more of the same. If the success of last year’s event, which drew about 45,000 people, is any indication, that means…
In 1991, author Jane Smiley presented A Thousand Acres, a modernization of King Lear that became a national bestseller and earned a Pulitzer Prize. Given the two-tiered success of this highbrow opus (nothing says “important” like Shakespeare), it would seem that Smiley’s natural inclination would have been to get even…
The show’s title implies that the art history we were taught in school — in which every stylistic phase appears in a neat chronological order — has fallen by the wayside. Now anything goes, as tight representational imagery is hung side by side with non-objective compositions, abstract sculptures are paired…
Ethan Hunt complains to his boss about his new assignment: “It’s going to be difficult.” “It’s not mission difficult, Mr. Hunt,” the boss icily replies, “It’s mission impossible. ‘Difficult’ should be a walk…”
