The Campaign begins with an on-screen quote attributed to Ross Perot: “War has rules. Mud-wrestling has rules. Politics has no rules.” The Texas billionaire/private-campaign-financing pioneer dropped this truism not during his historic third-party run for the presidency in 1992, but in the midst of his far less successful 1996 campaign…
Edward Albee’s brilliant The Play About the Baby is really a play about age, life and experience. It’s mesmerizing to watch, raising all kinds of associations — comfortable and familiar, uncomfortable but still familiar — along with echoes of things you know and other things your thoughts have only touched…
Founded last year by Keith Rabin as a part of Lucent Performing Arts, Ignite Theatre is signaling great seriousness of intention, lining up an ambitious production schedule for the coming year that includes Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and the Pulitzer winner about mental illness,…
In mid-August, the most ambitious mission to Mars thus far landed on the red planet. The Curiosity Rover is on a two-year mission to look for signs of life, study its climate and geology, and collect data that might help future manned missions. To get in the spirit, we’ve combed…
For many, especially black people who see in her a mockery of our own grandmothers, Tyler Perry’s Madea is little more than a mammy — an insult to the matriarchal community figure that Perry claims to celebrate. And unforgivably, when compared to Flip Wilson’s Geraldine or even Martin Lawrence’s Big…
“I’ll just tell you straight out: Killer Joe is the most disturbing film I’ve ever made,” William Friedkin admits. This is really something coming from a filmmaker who has spent much of an eclectic career testing audience limits. The Exorcist riled Catholics and had theaters stocking barf bags in 1973;…
“My son is sick right now, covered in zits. It’s not contagious—I mean, it’s contagious, but don’t worry: Grownups don’t catch it. It’s called mouth-foot-and-butt disease or something.” Julie Delpy materializes on the patio of Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont on a wave of nervous energy. Hair pinned up away from her…
Like antidepressants, artificial sugars, Botox, and other miracle inventions of the past century, corporate culture became an omnipresent fact of life before anyone could know how it would affect the human body and brain on an extended timeline. One way to look at writer/director Craig Zobel’s second feature, Compliance—a pot-stirrer…
Just because it made loads of money, stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, and features a three-titted mutant doesn’t mean Total Recall isn’t ruggedly individualistic art. Just look at its outsider pedigree: Total Recall was loosely based on a 1966 short story from the flushed mind of Philip K. Dick, produced by the…
In anticipation of the remake of the 1976 girl-group melodrama I (which didn’t screen in time for our deadline)—Whitney Houston’s posthumous film appearance and her return to movies after a fifteen-year absence—we look back at the handful of celluloid performances by the woman once known as “the Voice.” Houston’s pipes…
It’s patio season, in case you hadn’t noticed, and rooftops all over town are buzzing. But one rooftop blast is about to pop up where you’d least expect it: in a parking lot atop the Denver FilmCenter, in the Lowenstein CulturePlex. FilmCenter director Ryan Oestreich, who dreamed up the idea…
One of the most interesting things about Cosmopolis, writer/director David Cronenberg’s extraordinary adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel by the same name, is that it’s based on the first script Cronenberg has both written and shot since 1999’s eXistenZ. Additionally, Cronenberg’s adaptation of Cosmopolis marks the first time he has adapted…
For the 2012 version of her annual fundraiser for the Colorado AIDS Walk, drag queen Ginger Sexton wanted to get all her anger about being HIV-positive out on the table — hence the title, Apocalyptic Ball 3: The Rage. “The ball represents the final year of being in the darkness;…
When east meets west, it usually results in a clash of creative energy, and that’s exactly what’s in store for attendees of Saturday night’s East Meets West bash at NORAD. Headlining is New York City-born and -bred Manik, who was named on DJ Mag’s “Hot to Watch 2011” list and…
At some point during the Found Footage Festival’s latest show — maybe when the masturbation how-to segment comes on — you’re going to ask yourself how the hell all this weird stuff came to exist. “I think it was kind of a gold rush,” explains Nick Prueher, who co-founded the…
Four years from now, when the Summer Olympics return to beam in from Rio, rugby — last played as an Olympic sport in 1924 — will make an auspicious return to the world games. Prepare for pure action when it does: Olympic rugby will be strictly sevens rugby — the…
A weekend can go by fast, but sometimes you can accomplish a lot. Just ask the fifty-plus teams who each wrote, shot and edited an entire film in that time. Then watch the fruits of their labor today at the 48 Hour Film Project Premiere Screenings. “It’s such an incredible…
Today, pie-eaters, canners, crafters, foodies and the competitively hirsute head back to the Denver County Fair. With fourteen indoor pavilions, this year’s fair is a marathon of weird, old-fashioned fun, with performances, rides and competitions that anoint everything from the best beard to the best cake. Kids, geeks, drag queens,…
Jenny Lawson grew up in West Texas as the daughter of a taxidermist and a lunch lady -– a childhood that loaded her with bizarre experiences, from her father bringing home dangerous wild animals to using a dead squirrel as a hand puppet. And although she was often embarrassed as…
Wanting to stay relevant in response to the DIY, class-conscious London punk scene, the Rolling Stones’ 1978 U.S. tour was a bare-bones, music-focused affair that did away with the conceptual stage sets and inflatable penises of their previous visit to the States. Unseen for 33 years, a 16mm documentation of…
The overwhelming success of the first annual Denver Comic Con provides the perfect segue for Comic Con con Comedy, Theater Company of Lafayette’s new collection of fourteen original short sketches inspired by comic-book superheroes, spandex and competitive dressing up. The plays, chosen from hundreds of submissions from across the nation,…
This year, yoga advocate Erik Vienneau is taking his flagship event, Yoga Rocks the Park, to a whole new level. But current fans of the weekly yoga practice and concert have nothing to fear: The core idea, rotating instructors and musicians who provide a different vibe every week, remains the…
