Top five flicks at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival

With over fifty films screening, the Colorado Environmental Film Festival is seeking to inspire audiences into action. The fest runs Thursday through Saturday in Golden at the American Mountaineering Center with flicks about environmental issues from organic farming to energy conservation. “I hope that people will walk away from this…

Shipwrecked! An Entertainment could float your boat

The Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company is presenting Shipwrecked! An Entertainment. The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (as Told by Himself) through February 25 at the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company. Juliet Wittman caught the production last weekend; here’s her review: We’re all fascinated by talented fakers. I once foolishly allowed…

Andrew Skurka unpacks The Ultimate Hiker’s Gear Guide

The greatest adventures are always more about the journey than the destination, but that truism can be easy to forget when you can’t wait to get that heavy pack off your back. If the actual hiking isn’t the most enjoyable part of your backpacking trips, then you just might be…

Heather Doyle-Maier examines Her (un)Doing

Artist Heather Doyle-Maier is stripping a common ritual to its most basic components. In two current shows in the Navajo Arts District, she explores the meaning of getting dressed and undressed. Doyle-Maier is featured in Lovesick at Zip 37, and she has an installation in the back room of Edge,…

Shit Girls in Denver Say is funny and shows the trend won’t die

The latest local version of the Shit Girls Say viral video trend is “Shit Girls in Denver Say,” starring Erin Streets, a 25-year-old fashion designer and stylist who utters cliches and catch phrases for a good three minutes. It’s funny. Watch the video below and read Street’s reaction to its…

It’s okay to eat, drink and be merry on Fat Tuesday

Fat Tuesday is the traditional day when folks are allowed to indulge — before Ash Wednesday shuts all the enjoyment down and Lent begins. Fortunately, you don’t have to be Catholic to get into the spirit of Mardi Gras’s last hurrah, and while Colorado is far from the French Quarter,…

Who’s creepier? Danielle Ate the Sandwich or Noah van Sciver?

We sent Noah van Sciver, author of our weekly Four Questions comic, to Artopia on Saturday night and asked him to come up with a graphic (literally) impression of that orgy of arts, music, performance, fashion…and drinking. And as it turns out, he paid particular attention to Danielle Ate the…

Icebreaker 3 presents a mix of little-known and established artists

This year’s juried annual at Ice Cube Gallery, Icebreaker3, includes works selected by Denver Art Museum curator Gwen Chanzit, who also designed the installation. Though Chanzit took an inclusive approach, she laid out the show coherently by grouping together works with stylistic affinities. Owing, no doubt, to Chanzit’s position, a…

Now Showing

AB EX. Several Denver art venues are presenting shows to salute the opening this past fall of the Clyfford Still Museum, with most featuring displays anchored by abstracts. A stunningly beautiful example of this is AB EX: Positions and Dispositions, at the capacious Robischon Gallery. The exhibit comprises five discrete…

Wanderlust has some gut-bustingly funny moments

There’s no one way to live our lives,” hopes the displaced, adrift couple at the center of Wanderlust. Shopping between the prefab identity options available to them — squeezed, stressed urban professionalism; suburban McMansion soul death; rural counterculture opting out — George and Linda (Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston) are…

Rampart tracks the downward spiral of an LAPD cop

Directed by Oren Moverman (The Messenger) from a script by Moverman and L.A. noir master James Ellroy, Rampart tracks the downward spiral of LAPD cop Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson). A Vietnam vet whose personal code allows for extreme bad behavior in the name of a hazily defined greater good, Brown…

Declaration of War turns autobiography into thrilling expressionist art

The gorgeously scruffy Juliette (director/co-writer Valérie Donzelli) and Roméo (co-writer Jérémie Elkaïm) — yes, the improbability is noted — move from dive-bar love-at-first-sight to proud parents of a newborn boy in the first few minutes of Declaration of War. Then their eighteen-month-old son, Adam, is diagnosed with a brain tumor…