The Western genre isn’t entirely comprised of spaghetti or John Wayne talking out the side of his mouth: From its earliest days, filmmakers were putting a comic spin on stories set on the dusty trail, with the genre hitting its apex between the mid ’70s and mid ’80s. We’ve gathered…
Now that Memorial Day weekend is over, Colorado’s summer tourism season is in full swing. And no part of the state is more eager to welcome visitors than the remote mountain regions that are finally thawing out after a long, isolated winter. The season kicked off in Silverton the first…
#78: Buntport Theater Brian Colonna, Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg, Erin Rollman, Samantha Schmitz and (sometimes) Evan Weissman are Buntport Theater, and it’s not too far off the mark to think of this sextet of personalities as a single entity — that’s just how they work, slinging ideas back and forth…
A solo show from Xi Zhang is always a beautiful treat, and Bone, which opens tonight at Plus Gallery, will double your pleasure. As Ivar Zeile of Plus notes, Zhang “paints with a lot of experimentation and has been evolving with several different styles over the last few years.” And…
By nearly all accounts, the New York City of the late ’70s and early ’80s was a complete shithole. Crime-ridden, rundown and sketchy as fuck, it was the kind of place where you didn’t want to find yourself alone late at night (or even in the middle of the day…
When the FBI tried to track down Cowboy Bob, a repeat bank robber in Texas, they had no idea that they were looking for a single, middle-aged woman who used her heists to fund her ailing mother’s health-care costs. Tallas was a modern-day outlaw, making her tale irresistible to both…
We’re still adjusting to Seth MacFarlane as a big-screen star. Not just because his breakneck absurdist humor often demands that viewers pause and rewind, but because the man himself looks like a hand-inked cartoon, with his black, pupil-less eyes and an alabaster baby face that appears to reflect light like…
Remarkable as it seems, there’s still poetry to be found in the idea of kids tooling around with nothing much to do. Whether you grew up in a small town or a midsized-to-large city, in 1962, 1982 or 2002, you probably remember getting into a car, unwisely, with the first…
The triptych of masculinities at the core of director Jim Mickle’s Sundance hit Cold in July (he co-wrote the screenplay with Nick Damici) pulls double duty; it leads the viewer down a nerve-racking rabbit hole of violence, gore and clever throwaway wisecracks while anchoring the film’s sly musing on what…
There are a lot of things to like about Shrek: The Musical at Boulder’s Dinner Theatre. Here are some of them: The Dragon. Manipulated by a handful of actors and with all her segments skillfully constructed and articulated, this Dragon is a major star, a riveting, literally huge presence. She’s…
Conceptual artist Tobias Fike, who’s been showing his creations around Denver for the past few years, is the subject of an elegant solo at David B. Smith Gallery titled Then and now and then. Fike is perhaps best known for his performances done with Matthew Harris, which are documented in…
1959. Dean Sobel, director of the Clyfford Still Museum, is the host curator for Modern Masters at the Denver Art Museum, and he’s done a companion exhibit at his own stamping grounds called 1959: The Albright-Knox Art Gallery Exhibition Recreated. (Special tickets allow visitors to see both.) The backstory for…
A Lie of the Mind. Thundery weather and a voice in the darkness: At the very beginning of A Lie of the Mind, Jake is on the phone telling his brother Frankie that he’s killed his wife. Over his brother’s protests, Frankie insists on visiting his sister-in-law to discover her…
Boil Maleficent down to one newt’s nose-sized piece of advice and you’d get this: Don’t dump Angelina Jolie. It’s not a problem most mortals will face, but as seen through director Robert Stromberg’s lens, the antlered arch-villain of Sleeping Beauty is a sympathetic scorned woman, equal parts Gloria Gaynor, Princess…
The wooing of young-professional audiences has become one of the most important trends in the marketing of cultural attractions, from art museums to the ballet. And if you’ve been watching, you’ll have noticed that many of our cultural institutions support philanthropic “in” clubs that blend mingling at fundraising events with…
Sexpot Comedy will celebrate the six-month anniversary of its showcases at the Oriental Theater by booking its biggest headliner yet. “I think bringing in a comic the caliber of Andy Kindler is a testament not only to the success of the Sexpot Comedy monthly shows at the Oriental, but to…
Art and science may seem like strange bedfellows, but the two fields cross over more often than most people imagine. Their intertwined relationship is the subject of Untitled 67: Chain Reaction, the latest installment in the Denver Art Museum’s Final Fridays series. “We took inspiration from our newly opened Western…
If you were to make a short list of the greatest bass players of all time, Bootsy Collins would surely be included. After firing his backing band in the late ’60s, James Brown hired Collins and his brother Catfish’s band, the Pacemakers, to back him up. Collins later became a…
A couple of guys had a crazy dream, and it all came together in a bar in Orlando. “We wanted to do some kind of a race, and decided to do something with inflatables,” recalls Insane Inflatable 5K co-creator Stuart Kaul. “The more beers we had, the crazier the ideas…
At tonight’s Aerial Acrobatic Arts Festival, spectators can catch sixteen of the country’s up-and-coming aerialists as they compete for inter-national honors in the hoop, strap, silk and trapeze categories. The festival was created as a place for aerial performers to display their skills for a panel of judges, many of…
After last September’s floods devastated Lyons, the focus was on rebuilding: lives, homes and spirits. At the time, no one was in the mood for fun and games. But they definitely could have used a beer — and Oskar Blues, which got its start in Lyons, was happy to help…
From the pen of one of the most prolific and revered living American playwrights comes the Bug Theatre’s new show, A Lie of the Mind. The 1986 drama, by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Sam Shepard, follows two dysfunctional families through the days following a serious act of domestic violence in which…
