It’s High Time Denver Offered Tourists Information About Pot

The city’s mascots — the dreaded Dinger with his belly still hanging out, the Big Blue Bear looking strangely small, and a few more walking fake fur balls in need of a good vacuuming — all gathered around Mayor Michael Hancock at Monday’s grand-opening festivities for the new, high-tech Tourism…

Theater Review: In the Red and Brown Water Is Hit and Myth at Curious

Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney grew up in a Miami housing project, attended graduate school at Yale, where he worked as August Wilson’s assistant, and went on to fame and acclamation as an entirely new voice in theater while still in his twenties. Curious Theatre Company staged McCraney’s The Brothers Size…

Ballet 422 Is a Stirring Portrait of Deep Focus in Creative Work

It seems as if, for every ten issue-oriented documentaries that essentially function as long-form magazine articles with images attached, we get perhaps one doc that exemplifies the methods of “direct cinema” — the observational mode of documentary filmmaking that allows audiences to observe from a detached remove. That mode is…

Review: Ain’t Misbehavin’ Hits All the Right Notes

Talk about a reefer of five feet long Not too fat and not too strong You get high, but not for long If you’re a viper. Or — as sung by Leonard E. Barrett, on a luxuriously long exhale in Ain’t Misbehavin’ — a vipah. This number, performed with languid,…

The Amazing Randi Debunks Again in the Sprightly An Honest Liar

“The public really doesn’t listen when they’re being told straightforward facts,” says the Amazing Randi. The magician, escape artist and tiny lion of principled skepticism, now north of eighty, leans forward in a black chair, all knees and elbows and Old Testament beard. If it weren’t for that sharp’s suit…

Timbuktu: Visually Stunning, Quietly Moving

To the idle viewer, the small acts of resistance on display in Timbuktu might seem ready-made for Upworthy, little liberal lessons just waiting to be parceled out to anyone who “won’t believe what happens next.” Yet that type of self-righteous sentimentality — and its opposing straw man, knee-jerk cynicism —…

Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella Is Safe for Both Kids and Adults

There’s no empowerment message embedded in Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella, no “Girls can do anything!” cheerleader vibe. That’s why it’s wonderful. This is a straight, no-chaser fairy story, a picture to be downed with pleasure. It worries little about sending the wrong message and instead trusts us to decode its politics,…

“Denver Lily” Blooms at Denver International Airport

Spring has sprung at Denver International Airport, where “Denver Lily,” by local artist Ted Davis, is blooming in the center of the Jeppesen Terminal — on the very spot where the misfiring “Mountain Mirage” once stood, and some Audi tent igloos were installed until five days ago. The flower, made…

The Mayday Experiment: Chip Off the Old Block

My relationship to carpentry is complicated. My dad was a master carpenter. He built everything from custom, hand-carved gun stocks to a beautiful easel for my 24th birthday. I grew up with him building dune buggies, sewing fringed buckskin suits with antler buttons from deer he killed himself, and putting custom…

Tattered Cover’s Highlands Ranch Location Moving to Aspen Grove

First Aspen Grove snagged the area’s first Alamo Drafthouse. Now it’s getting the Tattered Cover, which will be packing up its Highlands Ranch store and moving to the outdoor shopping center off Santa Fe Drive in Littleton next month. “While we are grateful to have served the Highlands Ranch community…

Ben Roy on Those Who Can’t, His New Album and Leaving Denver

Those who’ve only seen Denver comedian and Westword cover boy Ben Roy his brief television appearances are missing the singular experience of watching him perform live, when they can hear his jokes in their windy entirety. But between moonlighting as the frontman for local music-scene champions Spells and winging his way across…

To Get Its New Game Running, Puzzah Had to Solve a Few Puzzles of Its Own

If you’ve ever dreamed of starring in a real-life heist film, Puzzah’s newest challenge is for you. The LoDo-based venue’s latest “puzzle room” — an hour-long interactive game that mashes up a live escape room with electromechanical puzzles — puts players in the shoes of a team of thieves tasked…

Month of Photography 2015: Ten Not-to-Miss Shows in March and April

Photographs are our journal of life, manipulated through a myriad of personal lenses and rendered by technology and technique. They capture moments and unfold fantastical vignettes, retell history, bring us to tears and leave us breathless with beauty. That’s why we have a Month of Photography — to celebrate artists…

MHM Gear and CO.ALITION Packs Host Opening Party in Berkeley Tonight

Jeff Popp and Casey Lorenzen founded their backpack brand Mile High Mountaineering — now known simply as MHM — in 2009, and have since grown it into a full line of innovative and award-winning backcountry packs for hiking, backpacking, skiing and snowboarding. Last year they launched a successful Kickstarter campaign…