In 1919 rancher J. Frank Norfleet got swindled twice by a roving group of slick con artists, who cleaned him out of $45,000 with a fake stock-exchange scam similar to the “Big Con” operation in The Sting. But rather than embrace defeat, Norfleet became the “boomerang sucker.” He spent the…
UPDATE: Mondo won, as you know. Read all about it here: “It’s a celebration, bitches! Mondo Guerra wins Project Runway All Stars”Denver designer Mondo Guerra is about to emerge from the Project Runway vortex after a two-year stay, and he’ll be the latest personality to try and prove that there…
For this spring’s Logan Lecture series at the Denver Art Museum, Modern & Contemporary curator Gwen Chanzit chose to focus on five artists whose primary concern is for the materials they work with. Postminimalist artist Richard Tuttle, whose sculptural works weave in and out of various mediums and techniques while…
We now take a break from all the Zak Bagans is/isn’t a douche discussion to salute a real arts happening in this city: The Bringing Back the Arts concert Sunday night at the Bluebird Theatre, a project spearheaded by First Lady Mary Louise Lee that featured eight groups from Denver…
Once a film reaches the status of Casablanca — retired to the vault of such designations as “classic,” “legendary,” “timeless” — fans begin looking at the picture through the lens of their own memory. As with Star Wars or The Big Lebowski, devotees of Casablanca will always remember the first…
Artist Kym Bloom takes playing with her food to the next level by making art out of Peeps, Chicklets, candy hearts and Jolly Ranchers (among other candies). Bloom melts the candies with a butane torch, molds the melted forms together on a surface and finally coats the piece in resin…
Raise your hand if you’ve had this (or a similar) experience before: You walk into a retail store and approach a group of salespeople. They are talking to each other in their seemingly normal voices, but when you ask a question of the group, you get a response from one…
Everyone’s favorite eccentric Renaissance man, William Shatner, is in Denver for his one-man performance of Shatner’s World: We Just Live In It this evening at the Buell Theatre. For Shat-nerds, seeing this show will be a lot like making it with an alien hottie. And for everyone else who needs…
On a Tuesday night on the cusp of spring, when a young man’s fancy turns and the cruelest month looms just days away, you could do worse than head to Lakewood to hear great verse declaimed at the seventh annual Poetry Out Loud state finals. Declaimed, emoted, and embraced –…
If social media is the communication tool of the future, the Denver Public Library doesn’t want to be left in the dust, and that’s why the library will launch its ambitious Creating Your Community (CYC) social archive — a participatory opportunity for people to share stories of their Colorado heritage…
Fans of Zak Bagans jumped to his defense after Tiffany Fitzgerald suggested that the Ghost Adventures host didn’t act very professional in last Friday night’s segment, which featured several Denver landmarks — including the Peabody Mansion, the Tivoli and Phil Goodstein. “Phil Goodstein is a goddamn national treasure,” she wrote,…
There are usually interesting shows on view near the corner of 37th Avenue and Navajo Street, but rarely as interesting as those on view at two galleries right now. Nate Baldwin: Commanding Comprehension, on display at Pirate (3655 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058, www.pirateartonline.com), is made up a single painting — a…
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…
The Drowsy Chaperone. The role of the Man in the Chair is the spine for The Drowsy Chaperone, and the primary reason that this lighthearted, inconsequential and very silly show is so much fun to watch: Without him, it would just float off into the ether. But with him, we’re…
Director Joshua Marston demonstrated his ability to sustain almost unbearable dramatic tension in his debut feature film, Maria Full of Grace. His sophomore effort, The Forgiveness of Blood, illustrates an impressive deepening of that skill. Working from a script co-written by Andamion Murataj and with a cast of non-professional actors…
If no one watches, then they don’t have a game,” a teenager says in this faithful if cautious adaptation of the first volume of Suzanne Collins’s astronomically successful dystopic YA trilogy. A withering indictment of omnipresent screens, endless spectacle and debased celebrity culture, The Hunger Games was inspired, the author…
Written and directed by Paul Weitz, Being Flynn is an adaptation of Nick Flynn’s 2004 memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, which explored the author’s pivotal experience working at the Boston homeless shelter where his down-and-out dad, Jonathan, was a frequent guest. In the movie, Paul Dano and Robert…
Artists and arts lovers alike turned out for Friday night’s Start the Art benefit concert — to talk, listen to performances by local musicians Terry Sandoval of the Hunger Artist, ScaTTer GaTHer and headliner Joshua Novak, and promote the cause of arts education for kids, with the goal of raising…
I’ve written about almost all of Colorado’s homegrown snowboard companies over the last year or so, but Highlands Ranch-based Origin Snowboards wasn’t even on my radar until earlier this month when my kids discovered it. With grom-sized boards starting at just 85cm and the biggest board in the line maxing…
This poster by Nakatomi caused the kid behind me to say: “Dad, I want the giant squid poster. Now.” Flatstock is a dangerous place to be with a credit card. This year, Flatstock 33 (presented by the American Poster Institute) featured over 100 artists with enough completely badass concert posters…
PHAMALY is an amazing asset to the Colorado arts scene, a theater company composed entirely of performers facing a wide variety of physical challenges. The group’s goal is to provide professional theater opportunities and artistic development for performers with disabilities and to promote the inclusion of people with disabilities in…
I will not say that Ghost Adventures host Zak Bagans (referred to in the Urban Dictionary as “Douche Bagans”) is the douchiest guy to ever host his own TV show, that he’s a certifiable uber-chad, that he looks like Ryan Seacrest and Ty Pennington’s love child, or that the way…
