Becoming van Gogh. Timothy Standring, the Denver Art Museum’s curator of painting and sculpture, is the brains behind the very compelling, very interesting and, most of all, very successful Becoming van Gogh, on display now. When we think of van Gogh, we are actually only thinking of the work of…
42nd Street. A big, glitzy show filled with great songs and requiring dozens of tapping feet, 42nd Streetis one of those musicals that spoofs the genre while at the same time providing all its shmaltzy pleasures. Peggy is a star-struck youngster who arrives in New York to audition for a…
If you knew you were dying, and it was Halloween, your first impulse might not be to gather your whole estranged family together for one last night of spooky, costumed tomfoolery. Christmas is this whole other deal. From Michael Keaton’s dead dad in Jack Frost to Ed Asner’s dying father…
In his 2005 novel One Shot, writer Lee Child lays out nine rules for surviving a five-against-one alley fight, a challenge his hero, the ex-Army cop Jack Reacher, is about to face. These include “Be on your feet and ready.” “Identify the ringleader.” “Don’t break the furniture.” Rule number nine…
Sadly, country songwriters stand as nearly the only entertainers in our popular culture who craft memorable art on the subject of marriage, the state in which just fewer than half of Americans spend the majority of their lives. A few years back, Brad Paisley, one of Nashville’s best, wrote and…
David Sedaris introduced Crumpet the Elf to the world on NPR in 1992 in an essay called The SantaLand Diaries, which described his experiences working at Macy’s over Christmas. The piece was adapted for the stage by Joe Mantello in 1996, and the play — rueful, cynical, smart and hilarious,…
More than ever, boiling this concluding year down to the 10 “best” movies feels both arbitrary and reductive. Ideally, I’d have 25 unnumbered slots. I’d cite another five, formally varied non-fiction films: Tchoupitoulas, Detropia, The Ambassador, Only the Young and How to Survive a Plague. And were I crafting this…
Mile High Sci-Fi gives bad films a second chance by brightening them up with a little live comedy. In advance of December 21, which could be Earth’s last day, the group is screening a free film tonight. But there’s a twist. “Every Christmas, we decide generally to do a film…
Carla Ladd of Denver Black Pages says that local artists Phaedra High, Kalina Ross and Dominique Renshaw of Urban Cipher wanted to create an event where people could buy last-minute holiday gifts and small businesses could get their names out. The result, co-sponsored by the Black Pages, is the Sip…
With predictions of doom dancing in his head, Kevin Larson has created a synthetic version of the apocalypse in Civic Center Park, portraying doomsday in a three-level art installation, with asteroids on level one, Mayan warriors on level two, and a post-apocalyptic bunker in level three — all soundtracked by…
Sports-card collectors and collectibles dealers from around the Rocky Mountain region will gather today for some last-minute holiday wheeling and dealing at the Sports Collectible Show, which offers a spread of local team and Hall of Fame-related memorabilia, just in the nick of time. Promoter Christian Bakken, a dealer himself…
“We’re celebrating the end of the world as we know it,” says Chris Kermiet, one of the organizers of the 27th annual Winter Solabration, a celebration of Christmas and Yuletide customs that humans have used to usher in longer days and shorter nights for hundreds of years. And Kermiet has…
Tired of being tempted by a kickass trailer full of action, intrigue and general awesomeness, only to have the actual movie fall flat? The solution to such disappointment is obvious: a feature-length highlight reel that strings together the very best parts of the world’s weirdest, wildest and most obscure genre…
From the Muppets to Mr. Magoo, Charles Dickens’s redemptive holiday tale, A Christmas Carol, has been adapted in many in-carnations. But the WreckingBall Theater Lab and Band of Toughs musical spectacular Moulin Scrooge is perhaps the first to take Ebenezer Scrooge to a Parisian cabaret. Written by The Colbert Report’s…
Ready to feel the earth move? The holidays aren’t really the holidays in downtown Denver until the annual TubaChristmas Concert has been heard from. The multi-generational oompah band featuring more than 300 tubas will once again hold forth, sunshine or frost, under the direction of the University of Colorado’s Bill…
It’s a Wonderful Life – quite possibly the ultimate in cinematic comfort food — is getting a makeover this year, and the new radio-play format is coming to the Sherman Street Event Center. The production involves seven actors playing thirty roles, all costumed in the garb of George Bailey’s 1940s…
It’s ironic enough for the biggest Jewish event of the year to fall on Christmas Eve, says promoter Eric Elkins, but this year, it’s happening in a church. The Church, that is — the multi-leveled nightclub known as much for its stained glass and gothic arches as for its nightly…
’Tis the season for jolly men in fake white beards and red costumes, and you can see a whole slew of them if you head to the mountains. Bundled-up Santas are all over Colorado resorts right now. “It’s a good time for families to get together,” says Colorado Ski Country’s…
We Denverites tend to get stuck in our ways, especially with regard to our holiday entertainment. At this point, we’ve come to expect that the Denver Center Theatre Company will be serving up A Christmas Carol. This year, though, the DCTC is changing its tune for something more upbeat and…
When five black and Latino teenagers were charged with the attack and rape of a female jogger in Central Park in 1989 — falsely, it turned out — the mood in New York City was one of deep-seated fear. The Central Park Five, a documentary by Ken and Sarah Burns,…
“Pangloss” refers to Dr. Pangloss, the talkative optimist in the Voltaire classic Candide. And “Gravitron” is the name of a spinning amusement-park ride with a high thrill level. Mashed together, Pangloss Gravitron is a Denver artists’ collective informally spun around a concept. “The general idea is about invested hope,” explains…
The December 31 Noon Year’s Eve party at the Children’s Museum of Denver gives the traditionally adult-oriented holiday a kid-friendly touch. With a ball drop every hour from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., little ones get to share in the celebration with glitter and confetti — and bubble wrap. Yes,…
