Despite its sharp cast, Quartet falls flat

A decorous gathering of dames and other knighted U.K. doyens, Quartet centers on the residents of Beecham House, a baronial residence for retired musicians. Former conductor Cedric (Michael Gambon), bedecked in a series of fantastic caftans and charged with organizing the annual gala fundraiser, determines that the reunion of the…

In Amour, death is both certain and compelling

There are two things that are certain in life. One is that death will come for every one of us. The other is that every film Michael Haneke makes will have a fair shot at the Cannes Palme d’Or. Amour, Haneke’s much-garlanded latest, is set almost entirely within a well-appointed…

Richard Stark’s Parker finally comes to the big screen

In George A. Romero’s deeply silly 1993 Stephen King adaptation The Dark Half, Timothy Hutton stars as Thad Beaumont, a writer whose highbrow pretensions don’t pay the bills. When Thad needs to make a quick buck, then, he seals himself into his study and grinds out a nihilistic thriller to…

Belly-Laugh Up To the Bar

Inclusion is the name of the game for tonight’s Comedy Show at the Bar, when host Chuck Roy will welcome one and all to a monthly showcase featuring both seasoned and fresh-faced comics from the GLBTQ community and beyond. Roy and fellow comic Penny From Heaven first kicked off this…

Let Us Play

When Thea Deley was growing up, she was told a lot of strange things by Protestant leaders. From a Sunday-school teacher proclaiming that only Satan worshippers used a particular brand of toothpaste to a minister making a special home visit to tell her that she couldn’t become a member of…

I’m Your Fan

In the concert film I’m Your Man, folksinger Leonard Cohen describes his childhood reading of the Torah as the earliest, and one of the strongest, influences on his poems and lyrics. And so it’s a wonder that it took so long for sometime to create a Jewish tribute concert to…

X Marks the Spot

Breckenridge’s Keri Herman is a favorite to win the women’s slopestyle event this weekend, when the Winter X Games return to Aspen’s Buttermilk Mountain for the eleventh consecutive year. A current leader on the FIS World Cup Freeskiing circuit, Herman is also likely to be a top candidate to represent…

Not-Nifty Fifties

The 1950s weren’t all sock hops, malt shops and boundless economic growth. There was a dark side of sexism, racism and xenophobia that’s scarcely acknowledged when people pine for the “good old days.” That dark side is at the thematic heart of Pleasantville, which sends ’90s-era teens into an idealized…

A Civil Discussion

Focusing on pivotal markers of the civil-rights movement, tonight’s inaugural session of FWD: 1963-2013 at History Colorado isn’t merely a lecture: It’s an invitation for a real, raw community discussion. “We’re talking about 150 years after the Emancipation Procla-mation and fifty years after the seminal events of 1963,” says curator…

Word for Word

Rooted in the found-text theories of such American conceptual heavyhitters of the ’60s and ’70s as Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre and Andy Warhol, the huge exhibit Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art, which opens tonight at MCA Denver, will fill several spaces in the museum, including a freight elevator and the…

Quartet

A decorous gathering of dames and other knighted U.K. doyens, Quartet centers on the residents of Beecham House, a baronial residence for retired musicians. Former conductor Cedric (Michael Gambon), bedecked in a series of fantastic caftans and charged with organizing the annual gala fundraiser, determines that the reunion of the…

Art is All Around

Philip J. Steele Gallery curator Cortney Stell spends a lot of time scouring the world for trends in art. It’s her passion, and it pays off: Stell continually charms international artists into visiting the Rocky Mountain School of Art & Design to exhibit and discuss their work. And her first…

Two-Faced, Take Two

You’d hardly expect a Robert Louis Stevenson story to provide fodder for a Broadway musical, but then again, there are zombies in Jane Austen novels now, and Abraham Lincoln is hunting vampires. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Jekyll & Hyde was nominated for four Tony Awards, and has proved…

Guess where I’m skateboarding near this old amphitheater

This week’s submission comes from local Meta Skateboards rider JJ Jensen, (whom you’ve also seen in the teaser for Meta’s forthcoming video “The Holy Crail” on this blog), and with the video comes a sweet skate swag package from Meta. If can you guess where Jensen is throwing down this…

Sundance 2013: America’s black indie film renaissance

Rachel MorrisonMichael B. Jordan (The Wire), who’s fully up to the challenge, in Fruitvale.You could hear a pin drop during the first Sundance screening of writer-director Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale, an enormously powerful and moving debut feature based on the shooting death of 22-year-old Oscar Grant by Oakland transit police in…