The annual Shining Ball at the notoriously haunted Stanley Hotel celebrates the building’s ties to the Stephen King novel and Stanley Kubrick film. In 1974, King stayed in room 217, where he allegedly was visited by spirits while he was sleeping. According to hotel staff legend, the horror writer was…
The most wonderful day of the year is almost here! Halloween will be here — and gone! — before we know it, but there’s still time to go hard on the holiday’s best tradition — spooky movies. Since I typically spend the entire month of October binging on horror movies,…
Before Anthony Bourdain published Kitchen Confidential, in 2000, mere mortals who simply eat in restaurants had little idea about the drinking, debauchery and drug use rampant among the folks responsible for getting their fettuccine Alfredo to the table. The book was eye-opening if true, and a rambunctious, vicarious pleasure even…
The Colorado Photographic Art Center’s annual benefit event Fashion/Culture 2.0 brought live music, Tivoli Brewing Company beers and an eye-candy fashion show inspired by icons of fashion and music to the Tivoli Turnhalle on Saturday, October 24. All photos by Ken Hamblin III. Now see the full Fashion/Culture 2.0 slide…
I grew up in a not-very-big house in Virginia Village where I shared a room with one of my siblings for most of my childhood. Even though we had pretty tight living quarters to begin with, my parents still opened our little home to anyone who needed it — throughout…
For its fall offerings, the Arvada Center is hosting three shows connected not by style or theme, but in how the works included in each were made. The subjects of the three shows — unified under the banner of FIRED — are iron, ceramics and glass, with the iron having…
When Uncalled Four began, few people would have guessed that a bar show featuring Denver comics riffing on Cards Against Humanity-style prompts would grow into one of the scene’s most popular nights. The show, which pits comedians against one another in a race to the gutters of irreverence, has been featured…
Scary stories about madness, S&M and the ghosty tales of our youth are popping up on stages all around town. ’Tis the season for indoor entertainment with maybe a touch of the spooky. Trick or treat: Here are three new shows this weekend: Equus Avenue Theater October 29, through November…
Being a parent to a preschooler is never easy, but it’s even harder if your job and creative outlet terrifies your poor offspring, as local cartoonist Stan Yan discovered when his son was three. “I have all this zombie art hanging from the walls [in the basement] and our laundry…
Thanks to the Denver Center Theatre Company’s New Play Summit, we had the privilege of seeing Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale — which had a reading at the DCTC in 2011 and earned a full production by the company a year later — before it became a major success in…
The most effective scene in James Vanderbilt’s brisk, outraged Truth is one that will be familiar to anyone who has ever sat in a room where editors and reporters are breaking down an investigative story. The reporters — here, 60 Minutes researchers played by Dennis Quaid, Elisabeth Moss and Topher…
Thirty-six-year-old Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva, the writer-director and star of the comedy Nasty Baby, is himself an enfant terrible. In eight years he’s made six eclectic films, his own wicked twists disguised in what looked like the usual arthouse tropes. The Maid, his American breakthrough, looked like a benign Latin…
Sci-fi nerds of every stripe turned out last weekend for Denver’s oldest and most literary sci-fi convention, MileHiCon. Photographer Danielle Lirette was there to capture all the action — and the costumes. Now see Westword’s full MileHiCon 47 slide show…
This is my fiftieth post — after one year, two months and about seventeen days of building the tiny house. The structure is now finished, and the next step is the stairs and siding. To mark this milestone (and because I am working on a large-scale commission with an insane…
#6: Michelle Ellsworth Michelle Ellsworth ushers performance beyond the 21st century with a multimedia flourish that’s distinctly her own. Movement, installation, video, text and web design are among the tools she wields in producing fascinating, funny, sharp-witted works that dissect modern problems. A professor in dance and interdisciplinary arts at…
To paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy families are alike; each dysfunctional family is dysfunctional in its own way. The family at the center of Nina Raine’s Tribes is dysfunctional in a highly verbal, entertaining and also dismaying way. Father Christopher is a writer and critic whose loud carping spills over into…
David Gordon Green’s Our Brand Is Crisis is a horror film wrapped in fast-talking political comedy. Watching Sandra Bullock, as ruthless campaign manager Jane, flog her uncharismatic candidate for Bolivia’s next president, I snickered at her knowing quips. Asked by an off-screen TV interviewer (the film’s awkward framing device) to…
Lenny Abrahamson’s shattering drama Room borrows its fictional plot from the tabloids and strips it of sensationalism. Seven years ago, Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) snatched seventeen-year-old Joy (Brie Larson) and stashed her in his backyard shed. Two years later, she bore their son. The door stayed locked. Now five, Jack…
Die-hard Rocky Horror fans got the full treatment when Colorado’s Elusive Ingredient stage re-enactors did the Time Warp again at Saturday night’s screening of the campy cult classic. Photographer Brandon Marshall caught these pics of all the fun. ]Now see the full Rocky Horror Picture Show slide show. …
Indie design blogger Jeanne Connolly loves to see how creative people put their houses together. In this series, she shares some of her favorite homes, taking us inside unique private spaces in Denver and beyond. Dorothy Tanner harnesses light and sound to transport her audience into another realm of reality. Her…
Heroes both local and international, operating in a variety of arenas, are in the spotlight at book events in the Denver area this week, from Naropa stalwart Barbara Dilley and superstar Michael Jackson to a Canadian environmental crusader who took on Encana by suing over the contamination of her well…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we’ll be looking at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. Anna Peckham lived in Alaska until she was four years old, and…
