Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi solidifies his status as one of cinema’s finest living dramatists with The Past, a superb followup to 2011’s Oscar-winning A Separation that again situates audiences amid interpersonal, familial and household crises. Working from a script that incisively plumbs a thicket of logistical and emotional complications, Farhadi’s…
Jillian Schlesinger’s Maidentrip condenses fourteen-year-old Laura Dekker’s quest to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world down to a breezy eighty minutes, which isn’t to say it’s all killer, no filler. Though certainly inspirational, the film could hardly be called probing: The range of emotions exhibited by…
The entrance to Edge Theatre is in a small, gray Lakewood strip mall, but once you open the door and step inside, you encounter a warm, colorful space that includes three rooms serving as galleries for local artists, a bar and — of course — the auditorium, cunningly curtained and…
Matthew Lopez’s The Legend of Georgia McBride, now receiving its world premiere at the Denver Center Theatre, began as a staged reading at last year’s New Play Summit. Lopez has two plays running in Denver right now, and both feature original and intriguing central concepts. In The Whipping Man, currently…
Though contemporary art went fully international more than a generation ago, certain qualifiers related to country, culture, history, sexuality, gender and ethnicity, among a raft of other factors, persist, and there is no indication that they will give way to some kind of worldwide sameness. This idea came to mind…
There are four good things we can say about I, Frankenstein, another muscles-and-rubble comic book adaptation just un-terrible enough not to alienate its core audience, yet never consistently grand or surprising enough to win over anyone else. First, Aaron Eckhart brings it, scowling like a champ beneath his jigsawed scar…
For Robert Redford, Sundance’s opening day was a bummer. He woke up to learn that the Academy had snubbed him for a (deserved) Best Actor nod for the sparse yachting drama All Is Lost, and had to spend his typically triumphant morning press conference swatting down questions about being sad…
In 1992, Armistead Maupin, author of the much-loved Tales of the City series, refused to visit Colorado on a book tour; the state had just passed a bill repealing anti-discrimination laws against gay people and been derided nationwide as the “hate state.” But now we’ve redeemed ourselves, and Maupin will…
In the absence this year of One Book, One Denver — a citywide book club promoted by the mayor’s office — there was a void that needed filling to get the community reading. Enter The Big Read. The National Endowment for the Arts program, in conjunction with Lighthouse Writers Workshop,…
The new art show from Good Thieves Press is all about the artists stealing — or at least borrowing — from each other. “Because we’re a co-op and there are six members, all of us have our own styles and artistic approaches,” says Good Thieves’s Corrina Espinosa. “We decided that…
“I’m not sure that there’s any music out there that exists that imbues more utter passion and depth of feeling than Edith Piaf’s,” says musician Britta Laree. “Her entire life was about living and loving to the fullest, and, boy, she paid the price in a lot of ways. But…
The Winter Park Carnival pays homage to Mary Jane, a legendary madam who resided in the area toward the end of the nineteenth century and is the namesake for Mary Jane Mountain. And this year’s 38th-birthday bash, which kicks off at the Yager House at Devil’s Thumb Ranch and continues…
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the timeless cautionary tale of man meddling with nature and forbidden knowledge, has seen countless adaptations in just about every conceivable medium. Now, one of its best incarnations is coming to the Denver Film Society: the National Theatre’s award-winning staging, directed by Danny Boyle (28 Days Later,…
Craft Tech / Coded Media: Women, Art and Technology, an exhibition of digital, photographic and handmade work by artists working in various mediums and time frames, decodes — and sometimes debunks — gender stereotypes regarding technology. Curated by Deanne Pytlinski, assistant chair of the art department at Metropolitan State University…
With its cast of shady arms dealers and child soldiers, animated television series Jormungand is a far cry from the fantastic flights of imagination in much of the anime world. That’s not to say that its stylized spycraft is completely divorced from the anime mainstream, however. “It’s about a child…
The Winter X Games, which get started today at the base of Aspen’s Buttermilk Mountain, always go hard, with big air and high style. Thirteen of the Games’ eighteen seasons have taken place in Colorado, with the premier action-sports showcase attracting high-profile athletes and fans of all ages from around…
The Mousetrap, Agatha Christie’s notorious whodunit, is the longest continually running play in the history of the world — which makes director Pat Payne’s job a tall order. However, he’s up to the challenge. “I was once told by a mentor: ‘Pick a good script and cast good people, and…
People go to horror movies to enjoy the mayhem on screen without ever experiencing any real danger. That makes Lamberto Bava’s splatter classic Demons, which features a group of horror devotees whose trip to the movies becomes an all-too-real fight for survival, the perfect cautionary tale. “It’s a fun little…
Pump and Dump rule number one: No stinkin’ kids. “We talk a lot about children, but they are not welcome,” says comedian Shayna Ferm of the monthly mom-comedy night out at Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret. “We drink. We swear. We are pretty inappropriate.” And that’s all any mommy desperate for a…
Michael Paglia visited the William Havu Gallery and the MSU Center for Visual Art for this week’s review, taking in two shows focusing on contemporary art. The show at Havu, titled Modern Vistas, features work from Colorado artists Sushe Felix and her husband, Tracy Felix. It also features sculptures from…
Womenswear never takes a day off — because stylish, modern women are always on the go. This week we spotted a graphic look sported by budding cosmetologist Chloe Jarisch. With her multi-colored hair and Andy Warhol-printed bag, it’s clear that Chloe understands color theory well. Continue reading to learn her…
Femcees: Lyrics Decoded, at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art Thursday, January 23, will bring artists and academics together to talk about two things: women and hip-hop. Expounding on the museum’s current exhibition, Craft Tech / Coded Media: Women, Art and Technology, and specifically, Kelly Monico’s multimedia installation, “Bitches n’…
