From the Archives: the periodicals of pot

There are more medical marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks locations in town — and any number of publications that focus on the state’s booming MMJ business. The Auraria Library has an archive of these publications, as well as more historic materials dealing with cannabis…

Q&A: Buck Roetman on the aftermath of his plane crash

In over 35 years of flying, pilot Buck Roetman had never put so much as a scratch on a plane — until recently. While flying at an air-show preview in Idaho a few weeks ago, Roetman’s plane suffered a system failure and crashed, wrecking the aircraft but leaving the pilot…

Aspen Art Museum’s Fourth of July float spoofs on LACMA installation

The Aspen Art Museum will unveil its “Levitating Mass” float, featuring the work of Los Angeles-based guest artist Mungo Thomson, in Aspen’s Fourth of July parade tomorrow. Thomson’s “Levitating Mass” is a playful take on artist Michael Heizer’s “Levitated Mass” installation, a 340-ton granite megalith at the Los Angeles County…

Barbecue and craft beer tonight at Whole Foods in Glendale

The tiny town of Glendale has been doing a bang-up job of celebrating July 4th for years — though its festivities never a actually fell on Independence Day, since that would have competed with other municipalities that shot off their own spectaculars on the holiday proper. And a few years…

Savages deals a heavy hand, but skimps on soul

“Welcome to the recession, boys,” says John Travolta’s DEA-double-agent profiteer in Oliver Stone’s Savages, based on Don Winslow’s novel. Savages is a movie of its moment, though both its good guys and bad guys (if there’s really even a difference) are unquestionably the 1 percent of their industry — that…

Woody Allen presents a magical world in To Rome With Love

In Woody Allen’s new film, To Rome With Love, people — like, really young people — still talk, improbably, about “neuroses.” Horny middle-age businessmen actually stand around the water cooler and ogle the hot secretary, as in the Playboy cartoons of the ancients. In the Allen Legendarium, Freudian psychiatrists never…

Ethan Hawke cooly steers the crazy train in The Woman of the Fifth

The first film from emigré director Pawel Pawlikowski since 2004’s dreamy My Summer of Love, this thoroughly odd and brooding psycho-puzzle trains in on Ethan Hawke’s displaced American writer-academic, arrived in Paris to see his ex-wife and young daughter despite a restraining order, a recent hospital stay and a history…

The CSF’s Richard III includes several novel performances

The theater world is full of Richard IIIs quipping, posturing, lying and murdering their way through thickets of bodies to the English crown. The role is catnip to actors because it’s juicy and bigger than life, and the bloody monsters of twentieth-century history — Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet…

Havu Gallery gets whimsical with Dimensional Shifts

Summer is the time for group shows, especially those with a touch of whimsy — which is something that perfectly describes Dimensional Shifts, at the William Havu Gallery. For this thematically organized exhibit, gallery director Bill Havu selected artists who play with three-dimensional space, either by foreshortening it, elongating it…

Now Showing

Clyfford Still. For the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, director Dean Sobel has installed a career survey of the great artist that starts with the artist’s realist self-portrait and features his remarkable post-impressionist works from the 1920s. Next are Still’s works from the ’30s, with some odd takes on…

Karina Longworth talks movies with Woody, Penelope and Ellen

1979. Woody Allen has just had the biggest hit of his career with Manhattan — a love letter to the titular city, a romantic celebration of its timeless urban landscape set in a nostalgic-fantastic present, culminating in the gut-punch realization that what’s past is irretrievably past. Manhattan’s $39 million take…

Photos: Wenches of the Colorado Renaissance Festival 2012

Despite wildfires in the region, organizers of the Colorado Renaissance Festival assured that the festival would be open last weekend (June 29-July 1). We’ve hand-picked our favorite wenches (wench: a young woman, girl; or a female servant, according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary) of the Ren Fest — which goes on…

Photos: 2013 Colorado firefighter calendar photo shoot

The 2013 Colorado firefighter calendar photo shoot went down last week, and photographer Nathan Federico brings back these photos from the June 29 shoot, held at one of the metro area’s training facilities. “Everybody has to remember, (firefighters) have off-days too, and they are using their off-days — one of…

The Amazing Acro-Cats: Is my Munchkin cat Hollywood material?

Take a look at these cats: These are the Amazing Acro-Cats, which have skills that make even the cutest of house cats look like Garfield’s fatter, more sarcastic cousins. The second I saw this photo, I wondered (and then doubted) whether my cat has similar chops — whether she’s secretly…

Photos: Canine Olympians unleashed

It was a dog-gone good time at the Purina Pro Incredible Dog Challenge Saturday in City Park, where canine athletes competed in a variety of events. Check out photos of the event after the jump…..

Photos, Video: “Virga: The Sound Performance”

Dozens of art admirers gathered at the Delgany bridge by the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver Friday night to view “Virga: The Sound Performance,” a work that featured sound designed to complement Virga, the art piece on the bridge…

Zombies! Miniature horses! Iguana beauty contests! Robot wars!

The Denver County Fair — version 2.0 — is coming back to the National Western Complex on August 10, just over five weeks from now. We’ve just come from a mind-blowing powwow with DCF masterminds and will soon share all the fair’s new twists and turns. But first, there’s news…