Three artists merge works in Plus Gallery’s anniversary show

Plus Gallery’s Ivar Zeile was all ready to take a break in August, but instead, chance brought together a special end-of-summer show at Plus. Merge is something of an anomaly for the gallery: an exhibition of small, affordable works by three very different emerging artists — New Zealander Shannon Novak…

Reader: Batman has become a symbol, like the columbine

Why do people feel they need to share their thoughts about an incident as horrific as the Aurora shootings in social media? The Internet overflows with comments, as people try to come to grips with their emotions. But as Bree Davies wrote in Tuesday’s Breeality Bites, many of us seem…

Trishna sets Thomas Hardy’s Tess in modern-day India

Michael Winterbottom is multi-tasking — like that’s a surprise. He’s made a dozen films in the past decade, as varied as the Steve Coogan-as-Steve Coogan joints 24 Hour Party People and The Trip, the controversial Jim Thompson adaptation The Killer Inside Me, and two radically different assessments of the War…

In crime thriller Easy Money, no one gets away clean

As the general run of action films blithely defies the laws of gravity and consequence, what a pleasure to find a movie as grounded, physically and emotionally, as Daniel Espinosa’s downbeat pulper Easy Money. A hit in its native Sweden as Snabba Cash, the English title is a piece of…

Silhouette does justice to Deirdre O’Connor’s Jailbait

Claire and Emmy are fifteen, which means they’re right on the cusp: worldly and womanly in some respects — and certainly in their own minds — and confused children in others. They feel themselves wildly sophisticated as they chug down wine stolen from a parent’s liquor cabinet in Deirdre O’Connor’s…

Still Frame

Clyfford Still had, in the words of Denver Film Society’s Keith Garcia, “a lot of playful notions about movement.” Tonight, audiences at the Denver FilmCenter will examine Still’s relationship to an abstract expressionist of a different stripe, Russian avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, in Film/Still: Short Films of Maya Deren. The…

Quench Your Thirst

The annual Summer Brew Fest returns to Mile High Station today, featuring 125 different beers from around fifty breweries, many in Colorado, along with live music…and more bathrooms, something that co-organizer Amy de Leon says is very important at beer festivals. “We’ll have a larger outdoor area this year and…

Bill Maher Goes Off

“I secretly want Mitt Romney to win,” Bill Maher confessed in the “New Rules” segment of his HBO show Real Time earlier this month. “Look, I’m a comedian, and Mitt Romney is an ultra-Caucasian Mormon zillionaire who uses his dog as a hood ornament. For me to not want him…

Go Big with Arnold

Take one bad action movie, add a pair of smart-ass movie geeks riffing on it in real time, and you have the high-concept, low-brow comedic brilliance of Mile High Sci-Fi. This month the MHSF crew tackles the little-loved Arnold Schwarzenegger gem Raw Deal, a convoluted tale of Mafia dons, corruption…

Elliott Smith on Screen

While making his documentary Searching for Elliott Smith, director Gil Reyes discovered that the late musician’s story was a little different than he’d expected. “I approached the film thinking that he was a sensitive singer-songwriter who was all-around depressed most of the time,” says Reyes. “And he wasn’t.” By interviewing…

Fighting Fire with Cool

The recent wildfires in Colorado left several communities across the state grappling with profound losses, and Jacob Custer and his partner, Erin Sweeney, wanted to help. Enter Cease Fire, a local-centered music and art show happening today at the Oriental Theater. Although he wasn’t directly affected by the tragedy, Custer…

Phoning Home from Hooper

If you’re intrigued by the unearthly, the inexplicable and the just plain weird, then you’ll find friends at the 2012 UFO Conference at the UFO Watchtower near the town of Hooper. For two days, enthusiasts of esoteric research will gather to hear speakers tackle topics ranging from Sasquatch sightings to…

Wheels Down

Scooter kids from all over Colorado and out of state will unite tonight for Mile High Mayhem 15: Quinceañera, celebrating fifteen summers of rides, shows and two-wheeled camaraderie. This year’s three-day party begins with dinner at Casa Bonita, followed by a progressive group ride down Colfax Avenue as scooter clubs…

The Hills Are Alive

“The slopestyle course up here will blow you away, and the things these kids are doing on mountain bikes are just mind-boggling,” boasts Bob Holme, general manager of the Trestle Bike Park at Winter Park and the man behind its new signature event, the Colorado Freeride Festival. “Once people see…

Page Turner

Donald Kueck was a Mojave Desert hermit who had a way with bobcats, snakes, ravens and squirrels. He was also paranoid, doped up and lethal — “Dr. Dolittle with an assault rifle,” as author Deanne Stillman puts it. In 2003, Kueck gunned down a deputy sheriff outside his trailer for…

Flying High

For their fourteenth annual Aerial Dance Festival, Boulder’s Frequent Flyers will once again bring the best of aerial dancing from around the world to Colorado. In fact, the dancers are what Frequent Flyers founder and artistic director Nancy Smith calls “locally grown and internationally flown.” While the festival consists of…

Think for Yourself

Not to be confused with free will or freebasing or free-falling, Freethought is something you might want to look into if you’re a fan of Mr. Spock, Voltaire, Susan B. Anthony or Mark Twain, among others. Its driving force is a belief in logic and reason over dogma and authoritarianism,…

Girls’ Night Out

If you’re not worried about the hyper-sexualization of young girls, then you’ve probably never seen Toddlers & Tiaras. Instead of tuning into TLC, head over to the John Hand Theater in Lowry, where Silhouette Theatre Company’s staging of Dierdre O’Connor’s Jailbait, an acclaimed contemporary drama about two teenage girls who…

Opera for Everyone

So what if opera’s a bit melodramatic, ear-piercing and overlong? That doesn’t necessarily mean it deserves a bad rap — especially not in the case of the Central City Opera Festival, which springs up every summer in the historic mountain town and gambling haven. This year’s festival hits the slopes…

Couture Clash

2012 Westword MasterMind Dianne Denholm has presented exhibitions focusing on the fiber arts in nearly every aspect since opening the TACtile Textile Arts Center six years ago. But never before had she turned the magnifying glass on the fine art of dressmaking and couture, a subject that’s undergone a renaissance…