On Saturday, May 3, local mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Maureen “Baby Face” Riordon will make her professional kickboxing debut with Glory Sports International, the top professional kickboxing league in the world. After being out of the fight scene for a year — she was seriously injured while training someone…
The first annual Art Makers Denver will present three days of interactive artist workshops at the McNichols Building September 14 through 16 — and registration is already under way. “It’s designed for anyone who has a desire to create,” explains Helen Rice, who owns Willow – An Artisan’s Market in…
Games have been good to me. I’ve been playing games, in one form or another, since before I started school. Board games, card games, video games, you name it, I love them all. In the grand scheme of pop-cultural pursuits, I consider games to be the equal of any other…
#87: Lisa Ramfjord Elstun Denver designer Lisa Ramfjord Elstun has it all going for her: A master seamstress with an eye for personalized, classic tailored designs, she also rocks an entrepreneurial business acumen that’s the epitome of professionalism. A 2014 Westword MasterMind in the fashion category, Elstun’s at work this…
Tonight at the world-famous Stanley Hotel, the Stanley Film Festival will kick off its second year with Alexandre O. Philippe’s look at zombie culture, Doc of the Dead. [Disclosure: I appear in Doc of the Dead.] Sunday, the fest closes with the horror comedy What We Do in the Shadows,…
“Sometimes we itch all over. We think it’s because of the gas leak,” says Timmy Moen, a lanky 27-year-old with bloodshot eyes glued to League of Legends, a multiplayer video game. When he turns on the heat, flames shoot from the vent, he complains to his 24-year-old roommate and best…
Has it ever occurred to contemporary commercial filmmakers that maybe audiences could take a movie’s word for it that a character has been tortured? That perhaps implication and skilled acting could communicate the idea with sufficient power, and that we might all be spared the screaming and limb-breaking and slow-motion…
At first, before the murders, the story might sound like some nihilistic last-century tropical sitcom. In 1929, German physician Friedrich Ritter, brain aflame with the promise of the superman, convinced his lover, Dore Strauch, to abandon Berlin in favor of a life of solitude, labor, and the triumphing of their…
Spamalot is a terrific musical, a hilarious romp through English myth and history — and a fine Aurora Fox production underlines its strengths. The fabled King Arthur sets forth accompanied by his faithful squire, Patsy, who serves as an overworked and underappreciated beast of burden. After a while, God himself…
Although it gets plenty of attention for blockbusters like Modern Masters, the Denver Art Museum always has a raft of smaller shows on display as well. Right now there are nearly twenty, including Re Branded: Polish Posters for American Westerns; All That Glistens: A Century of Japanese Lacquer; and Fracture:…
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…
Animal Crackers. Animal Crackers is a romp, a trifle — full of puns, malapropisms and visual jokes, and utterly, unabashedly silly. The plot is just an excuse for the crazy brothers, nominally playing actual characters, to visit a Long Island mansion and pull off a series of stunts. There are…
Liza Johnson’s proudly frustrating Hateship Loveship is a film you’ll long to like. As middle-aged virgin Johanna, buttoned-up, buttoned-lipped Kristen Wiig seems to have landed in the Midwest from Mars — she could be The Maid Who Fell to Earth. In real life, Johanna would be wearing mom jeans and…
Two years ago, friends Taylor Gonda and Kevin O’Brien realized that they didn’t just enjoy discussing popular culture, but that they also reveled in the High Fidelity spirit of connecting it to personal experiences. Thus the These Things Matter podcast was born, and Gonda and O’Brien began bringing special guests…
The decision to take over the Big Read national literary project — after the City of Denver chose to drop it — has worked out well for Lighthouse Writers Workshop and especially for its constituents, who’ve been offered compelling reasons to pick up a book (in this case, Marilynne Robinson’s…
Christopher Moore is one of those rare authors who can charm people who don’t particularly enjoy reading. His whimsical, irreverent style has been applied to vampires and demon lizards and even the story of Jesus Christ. In fact, one of Moore’s signature traits is his ability to take a well-known…
“The moment I saw one of the rehearsals of the Romero troupe, I knew it was a project I wanted to be involved with,” says anthropologist Michael Kilman, director of the feature documentary film Unbound: The Story of the Romero Theater Troupe, which premieres tonight at Su Teatro. “What they…
When author Preethi Burkholder was at a low point in her life, she turned to the library for comfort — and she found it. “I started reading about some of the most amazing women of our time, because I felt I needed to get out of my rut,” says Burkholder…
“How can we get people to engage with great music with fresh energy? How can we present this so that we can leave our prejudices and the stigma of classical music behind and get people engaged in listening and really having a good time?” asks David Rutherford, music director and…
In recent years, Denver artist Lauri Lynnxe Murphy has often turned to the natural world for inspiration, collaborating with bees on honeycomb sculptures and, last summer, attempting to make music by capturing frequencies emitted by fireflies. Some of these collaborations have yielded breathtaking results, others have crashed and burned, but…
Raising money isn’t easy, which is why Brent Heinze, the organizer of Flame 2014: Colorado Queer Music & Art Festival, tried to think of creative ways to get people to donate money to LGBTQ youth programs. “I wanted to do something that related to the gay community, and there’s such…
The Stanley Film Festival is back for its second year, with no sign of sophomore slump. The fest, which takes place at the historic Stanley Hotel, kicks off with the Colorado premiere of Alexandre Philippe’s Doc of the Dead, a comprehensive look at the zombie phenomenon in pop culture, and…
