The sad news came down this week: Blinky is gone. Russell Scott, aka Blinky the Clown, spent more than three decades on Denver TV, where he hosted Blinky’s Fun Club, a Channel 2 kiddie program, for 33 years — until the plug was pulled in 1998. Blinky died Monday at…
Although Colorado has a substantial ceramics scene right now, back in the second half of the twentieth century, the Centennial State was one of the places to be for artists who worked with clay. The cavalcade of international stars active then included Betty Woodman, Paul Soldner, Richard DeVore and that…
Continental Drift. To create Continental Drift, MCA Denver curator Nora Burnett Abrams and Aspen Art Museum curator Jacob Proctor looked at the work of more than 300 Colorado artists who had submitted portfolios. Abrams and Proctor then winnowed the hundreds of submitters down to a mere twenty and scheduled them…
Social media’s role in the would-be Iranian revolution of 2009 is by this point much hyped, but no one has yet covered it quite like Ali Samadi Ahadi in The Green Wave. In both form and content, the filmmaker refuses the orthodox, eschewing the official record in favor of narrated…
Calling back many of the same characters and more than a few of the same jokes, 2 Days in New York, Julie Delpy’s fourth film as writer-director, is a sequel to her 2007 2 Days in Paris. Itself a spinoff of sorts, Paris piggybacked on the popularity of 2004’s justly…
After its Sundance premiere, Compliance might be infamous as the film that inspired a woman to cry out “Rape is not entertainment!” However, writer/director Craig Zobel is not Daniel Tosh. Judging from the film itself, which keeps its final sexual assault entirely off-screen, Zobel seems to agree with that heckler/critic…
I was teaching a class on news reporting in 2002 when the Bush administration opened the prison at Guantánamo Bay and ruled that prisoners there would be designated enemy combatants. I asked my students if they knew what that implied. They weren’t a particularly well-informed group, but they understood the…
Reel Social Club’s second annual Summer Scream at Lakeside Amusement Park is all about fun for film buffs. Because it’s closed to the general public, the Denver Film Society’s biggest fundraiser of the year gives attendees free rein among the bumper cars, scooter boats, Tilt-A-Whirl and, of course, the Cyclone…
The show must go on — even as the clothes come off. “I have always been a musical theater junkie,” says burlesque star Tatiana TaTa, aka Adrienne Jadwinski. “Instead of listening to the radio, I’m typically found driving around listening to show tunes. And I have always wanted to produce…
The inaugural Denver Indie Fest packs a lot of variety into its three-day run, including low-budget zombie movies, foreign drama, timely documentaries and plenty of homegrown talent. The lineup is a handpicked selection of small-budget and self-financed films from Colorado and the rest of the world, with many of the…
Every year since 2007, when bike lover/entrepreneur Charles Youel started ARTCRANK in his home town of Minneapolis, the concept — a bike-centric exhibit and sale of hand-screened posters by regional artists — has gotten just a little bit bigger and spread to new cities, from St. Louis to London. Denver…
Khyentse James, the woman behind the massive 1940s World War II Ball (held in early June) and the 1940s White Christmas Ball (held over Christmas) isn’t through. This year, she’s also throwing the inaugural Voodoo Island 1950s Tiki Exotica Ball to celebrate cocktail, tiki and exotica culture. And this party…
An entire generation of film-goers knows Alec Guinness primarily as the original Obi-Wan Kenobi, but his work spans decades and genres, ranking with the most accomplished actors of his age. “ an actor I love, and one who is exceptionally good at playing a kind of quiet quirkiness bordering on…
Ian Robert McKown got kind of tired of the 24×30-inch canvases that are often used for artwork, so he invited his friends — and anyone else who wanted to participate — to think inside a 3×3-inch box. “The idea is that, ‘you may be a fine artist, you may be…
Now that Walter White has freed himself from the specter of death at the hands of Gustavo Fring, what comes next on his meth-fueled rise to absolute power and his corresponding fall into the depths of utter corruption? Find out among friends — or at least similarly obsessed fans —…
Here’s the upside to last year’s dismal snow season and all-around bum year for the snowsports industry: the annual Labor Day weekend Sniagrab and Ski Rex sales are offering bigger selections and deeper discounts. Translation: If you’re paying full price for your gear this year, you’re blowing it. “Given the…
In the world of slam poetry, competing as a team and competing as an individual are two different beasts, as Suzi Q. Smith, a member of this year’s Slam Nuba team (which made it to the national semi-finals last month, only to fall in a sudden-death slam-off), can attest. “When…
A Taste of Colorado is all about the rattlesnake brats this year — and pulled wild-boar sandwiches, curried goat, beet burgers and chocolate-covered bacon. “We’ve always been known for representing unusual foods, and now we’re seeing more game,” says Susan Kark of the Downtown Denver Partnership, which is hosting the…
After completing their award-winning documentary King Corn in 2007 – about their attempts to farm an acre of corn — filmmakers Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis decided that their next project should be to move to Brooklyn and grow something there despite the apparent lack of available arable land. The…
The late Stan Brakhage — a Colorado native and longtime Boulder fixture who’s recognized as a father of experimental filmmaking — spawned generations of visual rule-breakers. Although his work alone could easily fill a one-man retrospective, Brakhage is both a focus and a take-off point for the new Boulder Museum…
Fall is coming, slowly but surely. And while leaves aren’t yet turning in Denver, you can see the season shift in the clothes people are wearing. This week we present a double dose of women’s wear. One woman is dressed for a ball, the other for business. Keep reading to…
Something About the State of Being opens Friday, August 31, at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design’s Philip J. Steele Gallery. Curator Cortney Stell is bringing together six artists from around the world — all making their Colorado debut — with a show that explores the human figure,…
