The plane lands in Aspen at a quarter after four; I’m late. Outside the terminal, which doubles as a café for sharp-dressed skiers and businessmen, D.J. Watkins is waiting in his heavy-breathing ’89 Subaru Legacy. The 29-year-old Kansas native moved to Aspen five years ago, determined to preserve Hunter S…
The 2013 Best of Denver is now on stands (and online), and in its 196 pages you’ll find Westword’s picks for the best arts events and institutions around town. Along the way, we asked you to nominate and then vote for your favorites in dozens of categories; halfway through the…
Westword’s 2013 Best of Denver issue hit the streets yesterday.This year’s prize for Best New Public Art? “Bridge,” by Stephen Shachtman, a work located near Fort Logan in southwest Denver. How does this choice fit with our picks of the last ten years? Some pieces are still controversial, years later;…
When Chuck Roy first began working on his new comedy night, Altered Schtick, he had inclusion in mind. Seeing several up-and-coming comics — Mona Lott, Jordan Wieleba and Penny from Heaven — around town, working on their material while also trying to find a place in the Denver scene, Roy…
If real life were like Wrong, Quentin Dupieux’s sweetly unnerving experiment in ambient fucked-uppedness, your phone would ring before you’ve finished this sentence, and the words you haven’t gotten to yet would be read aloud to you by a voice you’ve never heard before. Then, while you’re at lunch someplace,…
Again and again, movies show you killing, but it’s one in a thousand on-screen killings that might get you to feel something of what killing is actually like. The same goes for fucking, but there the numbers are worse: Whether it’s Hollywood’s quick-cut, nothing-below-the-waist bedroom montages, or the mechanized chug…
“All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun” goes Jean-Luc Godard’s quip. Add to that a few more girls and their bikinis, and you have the rough formula for Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, which looks like the most expensive Girls Gone Wild video ever made…
What must Bruce Willis have felt when he discovered that his seven or so minutes of G.I. Joe: Retaliation screen time offer much more agreeable Bruce Willis-ness than the entirety of A Good Day to Die Hard? Or that his cameo, shot two years back and rich with quips and…
The members of the Bra Brigade will march on Denver tonight, and they want your undergarments, ladies. The event, a sale and bra drive hosted by Birds and Belles Boutique, benefits Free the Girls, a nonprofit working to help victims of human trafficking in Africa. The store is collecting anything…
“It’s the question of the decade: What is a feminist?” So says Los Angeles-based artist Ellina Kevorkian, who is guest-blogging for the MCA Denver this spring and will be one of several speakers at “Feminist Bloggers,” tonight’s edition of the museum’s Feminism & Co series. As always, the presentation will…
Measured aesthetics meet childhood fun tonight at NEXT Gallery’s latest collaborative event, A Playdate With Kidrobot. More than just a typical art show, the evening will combine the unveiling of a new toy from Kidrobot with Truth or Dare: Folklore and Mythologies, an exhibit of new work from Tammi Brazee,…
When they met a few years ago, Ken Arkind and Charly Fasano became fast friends. Both performed poetry at rock-and-roll shows, where they’d take turns reading in between sets by up-and-coming bands like Achille Lauro and Hot Congress. “People would come up to me and say, ‘That was cool, but,…
Last year’s Fancy Plants Vegan Prom was such a success that even the proprietress of the host establishment, Marilyn Megenity of the Mercury Cafe, said she wanted to see a second incarnation. Organizer Joshua LaBure and his cohorts were happy to oblige. “One big difference this year is that we…
Earlier this year, Denver Zine Library co-founder Kelly Shortandqueer started an Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign to help him pay for “top surgery,” which is similar to a double mastectomy and the final stage of his transition from a woman to a man. Shortandqueer had also planned a benefit to help raise…
Steampunk, that oddball literary and art movement that injects elements of science fiction and the fantastic into the Victorian era, continues to evolve as it ages. Once easily — if not entirely accurately — pigeonholed as ray guns and airships in Olde England, the genre is expanding its scope both…
New York collagist Charles Wilkin entered the world of cut-and-paste by accident. When he forgot to bring the correct art materials to a college drawing class, his teacher let him cut up a pack of photos from another class to create collages — and he discovered he had an affinity…
Denver’s slam poetry community is hitting the gas: As the dates for the August National Poetry Slam in Boston draw near, competition is heating up up for spots on a local team. For the poets of Slam Nuba, whose team took first place at the nationals in 2011, tonight is…
In a bow to Month of Photography, the Sie FilmCenter is partnering with the Colorado Photographic Arts Center to present Double Exposure: The World of Photography in Film, a five-program series in April that turns its focus on films that channel photography, whether through subject matter or the sheer beauty-driven…
Tonight’s film: Ravenous. For Theresa Mercado, there’s never a bad time for horror movies. While most people were planning backyard barbecues, she was launching her Cruel Summer horror film series. Now, as the weather turns cold, it’s time to launch Cruel Winter with the Stephen King/David Cronenberg collaboration The Dead…
As RTD prepares to debut its long-awaited west rail line at the end of April and interest in the region’s long history of mass transit is at a peak, it might be a good time to pick up a copy of Riding Denver’s Rails: A Mile High Streetcar History, Denver…
Week after week, the tension has been ratcheting up on TV’s The Walking Dead, and now it’s time for the final showdown. After all the negotiation, confrontation and betrayal, the big payoff is coming, and a big payoff calls for a big stage. That’s just what you’ll find at Not…
The intersection of craft and art is where you’ll find the Ladies Fancywork Society. The artist collective, made up of mostly anonymous members, turns traditional crafting techniques such as knitting and needlework into full-on guerrilla art. Exhibit A: the short-lived ball and chain the group famously added to the Big…
