Three Things to Do for Free in Denver This Week, August 17-20

Enjoy the great outdoors while you can: This week’s free events include a showing of adventure films outside in Boulder. But you can also catch a free film indoors at Mutiny Information Cafe, as well as a free event combining comedy/wrestling/craft beer. Check out the Westword calendar for more events,…

Pianist Hank Troy Closes Silent Film Season at Chautauqua Monday

Hank Troy is taken aback. It’s just been pointed out to him that he’s created musical accompaniment for silent films a decade longer than the Silent Era itself lasted. “Hmm, I never thought about that,” says the gentle, friendly musician. “I’m going to have to think about that one!” Tonight, Troy…

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Is a Charming Throwback

In a world gone mad for superhero movies, what chance does the light spy caper have? When a whole city can be blasted to smithereens thanks to special effects, a picture that’s actually shot in Rome doesn’t hold a candle. Are modern audiences ready for the stylish, artfully ridiculous delights…

Get Ready, Hunties: Drag Starz Fan Favs Hotties Coming to Denver

The runaway success of RuPaul’s Drag Race has put the spotlight on the subculture of drag queens, introducing the world to dozens of talented performers who have battled it out for seven seasons for the honor of being crowned the “next drag superstar.” Many of these personalities have crossed Denver…

Gallery Sketches: Four New Shows in Denver August 14-16

Alternative ideas and alternative spaces both play a part in new gallery shows this week, proving that you never know where you’re going to find topnotch art in Denver on a Friday night. Here are some ways to enjoy new work and shop till you drop at the same time…

Street Style: Scott Snyder Spotted in Paisley in Cherry Creek North

Cherry Creek North is making a stylish splash. At last Saturday’s Cherry Creek North Food & Wine bash that filled a block of Fillmore with tables from more than twenty local restaurants and other food-friendly ventures, we spotted a globe-trotting trendsetter sporting a paisley-printed look. And it turned out that businessman…

Julie Carr Curated Tonight’s Line Break Performance of Feminist Poetry

Of all starving artists, poets may be the most starving. A challenging art form that demands a type of time and engagement most people just aren’t willing to give, poetry tends to get sidelined even in communities dedicated to nurturing challenging art that demands time and engagement, relegated instead to…

You Don’t Need to Be a Teen Girl to Love Supernatural

If you know of the CW show Supernatural at all, you probably have a pretty low opinion of it: “What, that trashy CW monster show with the two pretty boys? Do I look like a teenage girl to you?” (No disrespect to any teenage girls who might be reading.) But I’m here…

Xavier Dolan’s Tom at the Farm Harvests a Fresh Cinematic Voice

Chances are good that you don’t know the works of writer/director/actor Xavier Dolan — and that is a crying shame. Dolan is Quebec’s wunderkind of cinema who, since turning nineteen, has put out five amazing pieces of film that show the practice, originality and power of someone much older and…

Ten Ways to Tell the Difference Between Street Art and Graffiti

On July 25, Mayor Michael Hancock, Denver Partners Against Graffiti and 200-plus volunteers took to the streets of Capitol Hill to “buff out” some of the graffiti surrounding East High School. This was the sixth annual “Brush Off Graffiti” event, celebrating another year of working to keep Denver beautiful, as DPAG’s…

Kelsie Huff on Ranch Dressing and the Moment When the Mask Slips Off

Kelsie Huff was a mess, a co-dependent drunk from a family of drunks who’d made a shambles of everything in her life. But she’ll tell you that herself — that and a whole lot more about her struggles with alcoholism and her dysfunctional past in Ranch Dressing & Other Coping Mechanisms,…

Cop Car Starts Well, But Doesn’t Get Anywhere

Promising and disappointing all at once, Jon Watts’s backroads thriller Cop Car heralds the arrival of a significant director, one adept not just at the usual action and suspense but also at the fleet, affecting depiction of lives as they’re actually lived. In the opening scenes, the camera glides alongside…

Review: Contemporary Art Takes Shape at Rule Gallery

A handful of galleries mounted shows this summer that were meant to coincide with Denver’s Biennial of the Americas and its one-size-fits-all theme of “now.” Rule Gallery got on board and invited guest curator Hayley Richardson to come up with Nothing Belongs to Us, an exhibit intended to reflect what…

Playbill: Three Front Range Plays and Performances for August 12-16

Global pageantry, dance and history, and a hilarious comedy all have a place on local stages this week, whisking you off to faraway places or taking on all-American pop-culture controversies. Here are the details: Terracotta Warriors 3-D Newman Center for the Performing Arts Through September 6 8 p.m. Tuesdays through…

Review: Pump Boys and Dinettes Is a Tasty, Slight Snack

Pump Boys and Dinettes isn’t so much a play as it is a collection of songs spun around a concept so thin it’s hardly there. The place is a small town on Highway 57 “somewhere between Frog Level and Smyrna,” and the protagonists are four guys who work at a…

Emily Coates on Summer Camp and the Denver Improv Community

Spearheaded by Grafenberg Productions, Camp Atlas is a weekly comedy show at the Atlas Theatre that follows the lives of the fictional camp’s counselors and campers as they navigate their hilarious way through “wacky shenanigans.” The cast features local improvisers Peter Nesbitt, Rachel Walker, JuLee Simmons, Dexter Schiller, Trista Charnas, Castle…

The End of the Tour Finds Just Enough of David Foster Wallace

“This conversation is the best one I ever had,” David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) says as The End of the Tour wraps up, and the movie, a pleasantly talky chamber piece, gives us welcome bursts of conversations. That long chat, with a David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) abashed by the success…