“There are some tough films on the program,” says Boulder Jewish Film Festival artistic director Kathryn Bernheimer. “I can program challenging movies because we have a really great audience that is willing to engage intellectually and is adventurous artistically.” The third annual edition of the week-long celebration of films focusing on…
Collin Parson, the exhibition manager and curator at the Arvada Center, always seems to come up with shows that both highlight the local scene and push the art dialogue of the community forward. That’s certainly the case with rePOPulated: Contemporary Perspectives on Pop Art, an impressive two-part group show, along…
“Mark Twain once said that boxing is the only sport where a slave, if he’s successful, can rub shoulders with royalty,” says former heavyweight Mike Tyson, who once knocked out nineteen opponents in a row. “Can you imagine that? Just by fighting another human being, he can meet a king,…
The season five debut of Game of Thrones is still a month away, which leaves you plenty of time to catch up and/or get reacquainted with its complex and detailed interweaving storylines. One great chance to do exactly that is Saturday, March 14, when the Denver Public Library’s Fresh City…
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…
On Friday, March 13, the Sie FilmCenter will present a special fortieth anniversary screening of Ken Russell’s 1975 phantasmagorical musical Tommy. Based on the “rock opera” by The Who, the film was a mind scramble of an adaptation of the band’s own wild concert tour for the piece, which told the…
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…
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…
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 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…
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 —…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
Book it! This week’s literary events include looks at both the best and worst of the natural world, as well as another book filled with beautiful photographs showing how micro-loans can change the lives of the poorest of the poor. The Wilderness Act at 50: A Celebration of Colorado Wilderness…
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. Thane Benson studied illustration at Syracuse University before computers ruled the world…
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…
We all lost an hour of sleep on Sunday, and it’s going to take a while to get used all the extra sunshine in our days. But you should be able to adjust quickly to all the free fun available this week, when you can welcome the Month of Photography,…
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…
It’s an ironic truth that directors fascinated by robots tend to make inhuman movies. From Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner to last year’s Transcendence, these stories that ponder the gap between man and machine often reveal filmmakers unsure of where they fit in — they get so involved in the question…
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…
