School is back in session – sorry, students; congratulations, parents – and before we know it, fall will be here, ushering in cooler weather and pumpkin spice everything. Whether you consider that good news or bad, we do still have a few precious weeks of summer to enjoy -and being…
As August ends, September ushers in a fall full of free fun. This week you can explore the city in search of art, learn about the local comedy scene and see plenty at a Nothing to See Here fundraiser. See all of this week’s featured activities in the online Westword calendar,…
The fear of losing your child or another loved one is a theme explored by two Colorado filmmakers in new films screening Monday, August 31, at the Sie FilmCenter — and for a good cause: The Rocky Mountain Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Sean S.J. Jourdan’s Teddy Boy explores a bereft couple’s…
Women artists are in the spotlight this weekend as an international star in performance art gets a major survey down south in Colorado Springs, while here in Denver, you’ll find new work at the Spark co-op and and art party in the boutique gallery, Super Ordinary. Be dazzled and have…
This week we discovered dancer, self-employed top-hat maker and production-company manager Domino Pastore in a vibrant outfit on 16th and Champa streets. “I do a lot of performances with other artists and my partner and I are about to start doing a play with aerialists and jugglers. Rather than a traditional theater,…
Challenge yourself to hit all ten of these events for a weekend of epic proportions. Bounce your way around from small and big-budget movies, comedy shows and sticky situations for a total of only $19 bucks this weekend. Drop us a comment if you’re hosting anything that should be on…
Denver’s landscape changes almost weekly, almost too quickly for nostalgia to congeal around lost favorites, beloved nooks and crannies as well as monumental icons that get trashed in the blink of an eye. The longer you’re been here, the more you realize that there are multiple Denvers – slices in…
At the moment, Matt Scobey’s back yard is his studio — and he’s been putting in ten-hour days there, laboring over the concrete forms he molds over things like grapefruit halves, basketballs, plastic water bottles and IKEA-shelving modules, getting ready for his solo showcase, Come Dig the Essence, which opens…
Space. The final frontier, and perhaps my very favorite setting for any and every kind of media. Big adventures in an almost limitless universe. Exploration, contact and conflict with aliens, rebel alliances versus evil empires — I love it all. Give me a spaceship, a crew — ragtag or highly…
Summer has been a great street-art season. The city has welcomed over 100 new murals this season, ranging from pieces done with Urban Arts Fund grants to the Namta Mural Project to private commissions. We scouted out every mural we could find, and narrowed down the offerings in this incredible…
Remake The Graduate today, and an adult might corner Benjamin Braddock and whisper, “Startups.” Debut director Max Joseph gives that a good shot, though the result — the EDM-fueled, drug-laced dream-crusher We Are Your Friends — is so sweaty and silly, people may not notice. Like Mike Nichols, Joseph wants…
There’s a strain of science-fiction writing that evokes a chilly kind of coziness, usually by introducing us to individuals or small groups of people who have found their way to the country in the hope of escaping encroaching doom. John Wyndham’s bleak, beautiful 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids…
It used to be that the art world in Denver took a breather in August, to mark the close of one season and allow galleries to gear up for the next one, which started after Labor Day — but that’s clearly not the case anymore. This month has seen a…
Ready to get back into nice, dark theater for a live performance? Small theaters around town are beginning to stir as new seasons get under way, while downtown Fort Collins will throw a Northern Colorado-centric Fringe Festival touting local talent. Say goodbye to summer with these theatrical events. Bright Ideas…
Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice, along with Amy Nicholson of the LA Weekly, run down the worst and best of the movies they saw this summer, which as summers go, wasn’t so terrible! Among the best performances were those by Sam Elliott, wonderful in two movies,…
In 2012, the year of the first Denver Comic Con, Pop Culture Classroom released its Storytelling Through Comics curriculum to Denver Public Schools. And for the past three years, proceeds from Denver Comic Con have funded both staffing and supplies for the Classroom, a local nonprofit founded in 2010 (as…
As a kid, Bob Baron would read all the cartoons he could find in the newspapers on the coffee table in the family room. His dad was a journalist, and there were always a few lying around. With the speed of the Flash, he’d consume Walt Kelly’s satirical strip “Pogo,”…
The witty, surprising dialogue is as tangled and twisty, as continually knotting and unfurling, as a ball of wool between the paws of a kitten. Nothing sounds serious, though there’s a whisper of something darker underlying the action, an acknowledgment of the anger and misunderstanding that underlie many marriages, a…
The force was with Colorado Rockies fans and Star Wars geeks alike on Star Wars Night at Coors Field, which included a costume parade, wandering characters and, down on the field, nine innings of baseball action as the Rockies battled the Mets. Sadly, the Empire State got the better of…
Brooke, Greta Gerwig’s latest Manhattan creation, is a hurricane gobbling up lives. She’s a singer, restaurateur, interior decorator, math coach, spinning instructor and self-described autodidact. When eighteen-year-old admirer Tracy (Lola Kirke), Brooke’s sister-to-be following their parents’ Thanksgiving wedding, squeaks that she wants to write short stories, Brooke devours that idea,…
Mean and vigorous men’s-adventure pulp throwback No Escape has everything going against it. It’s a late-August release whose leads, Owen Wilson and Lake Bell, tend to be the best things in movies you otherwise regret seeing. The trailers, teasing the story of a toothsome American family hunted by peasant rebels…
Thirty years ago, filmmaker John Hughes got the attention of a generation when he introduced us to the detention crew at Shermer High School, who start out socially separated strangers and end up thick as thieves as they work through their problems, differences and similarities during one extended day. Making…
