On January 30, the second annual Westword Whiteout will kick off Denver’s 2014 fashion season at the McNichols Building. The evening — which raises funds for the American Transplant Association — will include live music, specialty vendors, classic cocktails and some of the city’s top designers in a signature runway…
There’s nothing stuffy about Adam Lerner, whose whimsical yet intellectual sensibility propels everything that happens at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, where he’s the museum’s director and “Chief Animator.” The same goes for his annual holiday message to MCA visitors, supporters and friends. This year’s greeting, entitled “Caffeinated History,”…
If you’re not yet in the holiday spirit, this weekend will get you there. Denver’s stocking is stuffed with festive events, from Santa conventions to Christmas tuba concerts to holiday burlesque, and none of these activities will cost you more than $10. Check out the Westword calendar for more events,…
Smiles for the frowners / Salutes to the uppers / Boosts for the downers / May the day be the bowl of cherriest / And to all, the Merriest! — June Christy My Westword cohort Josiah Hesse just wrote a screed about why you should boycott Christmas — and I…
Headed for the hills for the holidays? Here are a few suggestions for how to make the most of the winter break on the slopes, including big news from CBMR, one of Colorado’s best worst-kept secrets. See also: Get the Edge on winter fun in Colorado…
While there are dozens of great markets and fairs highlighting Denver’s burgeoning artisan and craft scene during the holidays, Kalina Ross wanted more. The event planner saw a need for something other than just a place for shoppers and creators to cross paths — she wanted to see direct connections…
Joaquin Phoenix in Her.On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, this paper’s film critics talk about Spike Jonze’s Her and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, in addition to the wave of films all coming out before the year’s over. Listen to it on iTunes or below on Soundcloud:…
Designer, seamstress and girl-about-town Baily Rose makes dreamy, dressy dresses that are truly one-of-a-kind and wrap themselves around your personality like a bed of ethereal fairy clover. Really. And because the holidays are nigh and the days are short, she’s opening the doors of her Maison de Rose for Don…
I don’t love anything/ no, not even Christmas/ especially not that — Belle & Sebastian It’s not so much that I hate Christmas. I like what Dickens was about in A Christmas Carol, putting forth the idea that charity, celebration and sincere human connection are more important than wealth and…
In less than two weeks, 2013 will come to a close. That means it’s time for that most joyous of traditions — the year-end list! Everywhere you turn, lists of the best, the worst, the most and the least are springing up, informing you about all the cool shit that…
After five weeks of competition, on Tuesday night at Suite 200, six designers competed for bragging rights and a $1,000 prize in the finale of the In the Cut fashion competition. The finalists — Lisa Wear Designs, Maddie Haenel, Parasite Eve Designs, Robbi Sayuri, Sno Couture and Moderne Madame –…
The best movies about con artists work a bit of flimflammery themselves. They’re not necessarily dishonest; they just can’t resist making the truth shinier than it is in real life. There may not be much behind the sparkling tinsel curtain of David O. Russell’s extraordinarily entertaining American Hustle. But what…
The audience that shows up for a comedy is the most tyrannical of all. Their very presence is the equivalent of a schoolyard bully’s challenge: “Go ahead — make me laugh.” Which is why there’s danger in following up a hit comedy with a sequel, even nine years after the…
Gifted is in many ways a standard family drama, complete with child-parent misunderstandings, sibling squabbles and the perpetual battle between wife and mother-in-law. But the interest level is decisively heightened by the fact that this is a mixed-race family — and we all know the fascinating stuff that happens when…
Folk music is supposed to be the music of the people. Yet at the heart of Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis, set in New York in the winter of 1961, is a folksinger with no feeling for people. The Llewyn Davis of the title, played by Oscar Isaac,…
The marquee offering among the winter shows at Robischon is David Kimball Anderson: Altitude, the California artist’s first Denver solo. The spaces are filled with installations meant to evoke the journey of twentieth-century Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Viewers could hardly be expected to know this, because the references…
Clark Richert. In the few years it’s been in business, Gildar Gallery has mostly showcased young and up-and-coming artists, but with Dimension and Symmetry: Clark Richert, the intimate space on Broadway has moved to Denver’s big time, as Richert is among the best-known artists in the state. The show comes…
A Christmas Carol. The power of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol — and the reason it keeps getting resurrected in so many forms, Christmas after Christmas — stems from the depths of sorrow that underlie the joyously optimistic resolution. Ebenezer Scrooge lives in a London where poor people face the…
Here’s where I write about how hard it is to draw up a ten-best list at the end of the year. Except it isn’t: I think of drawing up a list as an honor and a necessity, a way of putting twelve months of movie-going into some sort of perspective…
I could write a Shakespearean sonnet about each film on my Top 10 of 2013, but we know we’re all here for the agreements and arguments. (Plus, have you tried writing about Joe Swanberg in iambic pentameter?) Ladies and gentlemen, let’s begin. The Act of Killing ― The year’s best…
In 2013, there were a thousand bright lights and no strong center ― even with Gravity, which ranked No. 8 on our tally of nearly 100 critics’ bests. results in this year’s Village VoiceFilm Poll, like the decisions arrived at by critics’ circles around the country, suggest that consensus is…
As awards season draws nearer and best-of-the-year lists keep rolling in, there’s only one thing left to do: get excited about what comes next. Here are ten films you won’t want to miss in 2014. 1. Adieu au Language (directed by Jean-Luc Godard) Jean-Luc Godard, former master of the French…
