100 Colorado Creatives: Cortney Lane Stell

#58: Cortney Lane Stell Cortney Lane Stell quietly goes about her work as gallery director at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, but her work has real impact: Stell consistently mounts exhibits at RMCAD that display global ideas and cutting-edge trends in art, bringing work by international artists…

Science-fiction film: Are we on the cusp of a golden age?

Welcome to a new column called Geek Speak, in which we take on an aspect of geek culture each week. Pacific Rim, a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters, is about to open in hundreds of theaters nationwide, released by a major studio and accompanied by a gigantic ad…

Now Showing

Catalyst. The beautiful grounds of the Denver Botanic Gardens are the ideal place to mount an outdoor sculpture show, and over the past few years, there has been one such presentation after another. This year, the theme is contemporary sculptors in Colorado. The pieces are picturesquely sited throughout in clearings…

Now Playing

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged). The Colorado Shakespeare Festival staged a pretty good version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)five years ago, so we’re not sure why the CSF decided to bring it back this season. The show, written in 1987 by Adam Long, Daniel Singer…

Two local galleries explore three dimensions of contemporary art

Two-dimensional works dominate contemporary art — and not just paintings, prints and watercolors, but videos and films, too. But three-dimensional pieces in the form of sculptures and installations are undeniably on the up-swing, and the evidence is all around us this summer. There’s the spectacular Catalyst, at the Denver Botanic…

Heritage Square puts a proud end to the Loud series

Heritage Square Music Hall will close down at the end of the year, after more than two decades of hilarity in its eccentric Golden home. The building is an Old West opera house, authentic except for the fact that it’s two-thirds the normal size of one and was built in…

What Does It Mean for a Film to Be Transgressive Today?

In 1997, the programmers of the Making Scenes queer film and video festival in Ottawa, Ontario, received an unmarked package in the mail. It contained a videotape of an original film and no return address or contact information of any kind. The film, a five-minute short shot on video in…

The Directors of The Way, Way Back on Art Imitating Life

Nat Faxon and Jim Rash didn’t set out to make a comedy about divorce. Eight years ago, when the improv-comedians-turned-actors-turned-Oscar-winning-screenwriters started writing a coming-of-age script based on a particularly upsetting moment from Rash’s childhood, they just wanted a happy ending. Yet almost all of the characters in The Way, Way…

Adam Sandler Movies: Everything Old Is New Again

Adam Sandler is successful because he’s lazy. Not in the sense that he has no ambition, or doesn’t want to work hard to maintain his status as America’s big-screen comedy king. But in the sense that he has built an empire by doing the same things with the same people,…

The unbearable lightness of Grown Ups 2

Adam Sandler pats his own back for being loyal in Grown Ups 2, an excuse for the star to hang out with his friends while he plays a Hollywood bigwig who’s celebrated for moving back home so he can hang out with his friends. Like its 2010 predecessor, Dennis Dugan’s…

Digital Magic

Denver Digerati’s Friday Flash series of experimental digital media and animation displays in the Denver Theatre District continues tonight with The World Is !Flati>, a nod to the female perspective. The short program, which begins screening outdoors at 6:30 p.m. on the district’s giant LED screen at 14th and Champa…

Beer Creativity

Shawn Gascoyne-Bowman is an outlaw crafter, a rebel with the simple cause of bringing handmade joy to as many people as possible. Hence her blog (and book) Criminal Crafts, which offers dozens of crafts for the outlaw in you. Her newest book, Beer Crafts: Making the Most of Your Cans,…

Sale Away

International Resale Day is on — and Plum Consignment is leading the charge in Colorado by organizing the first-ever Consignment Crawl. The business, which opened less than a year ago, has partnered with 22 up-cycle boutiques in Denver, Boulder, Arvada, Castle Rock, Brighton and other cities across the state for…

About to Rock

Imagine learning to play an instrument, assembling a band with total strangers, writing music together and performing it in front of a live audience — all in less than a week. This is what the young women of Girls Rock Denver do each summer, and today you can witness the…

Know Your Beans

There are a lot of ways to screw up coffee, from picking unripe beans to over-roasting to simple bad brewing. But Josh McNeilly, who owns Black Black Coffee and is a barista at Crema, says he’s noticed that many shops in Denver are doing things right and are committed to…

Bugging Out

There are classic-car shows, and then there are classic-Volkswagen shows. Today’s seventh annual Syndicate VW Car Show is all about the celebration of the iconic, 76-year-old brand, which finds new fanatics each year. “It’s a car that has kind of a smile, a characteristic shape and a long history that…

Flick Pick: Watching Far Out Isn’t Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story

In his children’s books, Tomi Ungerer practiced his belief that books “should give children a taste for life, even if it tastes bad.” Bad taste is relative, as Ungerer discovered when sidelines in erotica and political commentary clashed with his reputation as a beloved children’s illustrator.Watching Far Out Isn’t Far…