Bands on the Bricks returns to the Republic of Boulder for the summer

The republic to the northwest — you know, Boulder — is really at its best in the summertime, when the forward-thinking city’s groovy vibe moves outdoors where everyone can share it. Summer in Boulder? It’s where those now-ubiquitous outdoor film screenings first caught on and music sounds better in Chautauqua’s…

Reader: There are lots of hidden art gems in RiNo

Denver has lots of wonderful galleries that deserve to be seen — and then, as Tiffany Fitzgerald revealed in her list of “Five hidden Denver art galleries,” there are great spaces hiding in plain sight — in the back of bigger galleries. The Back Room at Zip 37, for example…

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Clyfford Still. For the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, founding director Dean Sobel has installed a career survey of the great artist. Clyfford Still: Inaugural Exhibition 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…

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In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play. Playwright Sarah Ruhl uses the orgasm as the prism through which she views the entire Victorian world — and, by extension, our own. From the orgasm, entirely misunderstood and invisible in those repressive times, emanate ripples that change not only the relationships…

Visit the Denver Zoo, as seen by Instagram users

Instagram is the latest, and obviously the hippest, photo-sharing app; it allows anyone with a smartphone to play amateur photographer, transforming regular old snapshots into filtered, fogged and color-tinted works of art at the touch of a finger. Search “Denver” on Statigram, one of the app’s web-based viewing platforms, and…

Juneteenth Music Festival to be the biggest and best yet

Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, effectively ending slavery for all Americans. But the news did not reach Texas until June of 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger stormed into Galveston with 2,000 troops to tell the people of Texas that, under General Order No. 3,…

Filmmaker Hunter Weeks on Where the Yellowstone Goes

Boulder-based filmmaker Hunter Weeks is bringing his new film, Where the Yellowstone Goes, to the Denver FilmCenter tonight at 7 p.m.; the screening will be followed by a Q&A session. Weeks and his crew — including his wife, Sarah Hall, and Denver-based filmmaker Mike Dion, a frequent collaborator — spent…

Photos: Love, murder and death, illustrated, at Emmanuel Gallery

José Guadalupe Posada’s engravings adorned everything from National Enquirer-style stories of monsters and grisly crimes to devout religious pamphlets. Today, artist Jerry Vigil creates three-dimensional wood carvings that translate Posada’s style for a modern age, just as the Mexican engraver translated the day’s news into unforgettable illustrations. The two artists…

Summer Guide 2012: Lakeside Amusement Park

Steeped in local lore, Lakeside Amusement Park, at 4601 Sheridan Boulevard, is an art-deco wonderland. Framed by mature trees and blinking lights, the classic theme park is one of the oldest still in operation in the country…

Art-Plant presents art by Caleb Stout at City, O’ City

Art and food have been an item for a long time, but some places do it better than others. City, O’ City is a case in point, where a partnership with the nonprofit Art-Plant, which curates shows by emerging artists for the eatery, keeps things interesting with work that isn’t…

Turn Me On, Dammit! explores coming of age in the Norwegian boonies

Set in the Norwegian boonies, Jannicke Systad Jacobsen’s first fiction feature (based on Olaug Nilssen’s 2005 novel) introduces its fifteen-year-old protagonist, Alma (Helene Bergsholm), with her hand down her pants, furiously coming as she listens to a phone-sex operator. Yet the opening scene’s promising boldness is soon undermined by cutaway…

Tom Cruise leads an all-star sing-along in Rock of Ages

Rock of Ages, a new star-clogged pop-musical diversion, is a cinematic event. It’s not every day, after all, that you get to see two great American traditions — guitar/bass/drums rock music and Tin Pan Alley musical theater — so thoroughly, mutually degraded. This mess originated as a stage production, first…

Summer Guide 2012: Film on the Rocks

Some things — such as the growing trend of fried butter on a stick — are surreal in a terrible way, while others can be surreal in a fantastic way. Watching movies outdoors definitely qualifies in the latter category, but most drive-in movie theaters have gone the way of the…

“Box Guy” Daniel Nilsson and stranger get boxed in for art

Perhaps it was their shared propensity for posting weird ads on Craigslist that was fated to bring them, like so many missed connections, together. Or maybe they’re just two weird dudes. Whatever it is, there’s something approaching ironic about the fact that Daniel Nilsson — who had been looking via…