The basic origin of the phrase “It’s on like Donkey Kong” is clear enough: the 1981 video game, in which said large ape somewhat inexplicably terrorizes a construction site. What’s less clear, though, is how that ape went from mindlessly slinging 8-bit barrels at Mario to an icon for getting…
Jennifer Garner, the director of Metro State’s Center for Visual Art (965 Santa Fe Drive, 303-294-5207, www.metrostatecva.org) has organized Reclamation, featuring pieces made from trash. “It’s not recycling,” Garner points out. “It’s reuse.” Garner had conceived Reclamation as a group show, but there’s an unexpected solo within it. Ann Weber,…
15 Colorado Artists. The Kirkland Museum is presenting a historical show that tracks the beginnings of post-war modernism in Denver using the artist group 15 Colorado Artists as an index. The story goes that the Denver Artists Guild was hostile to modernism at the time. This led to a split,…
Cats. There’s not much of a plot to Cats. You meet the Jellicles, with their cheerful faces and bright black eyes, who dance “under the light of the Jellicle moon”; the Ming-vase-smashing cat burglars, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer; fat, elegant, gentleman’s club-haunting Bustopher Jones; and contrary-minded Rum Tum Tugger. The show’s…
In the first scene of Crazy, Stupid, Love., Emily (Julianne Moore) tells Cal (Steve Carell), her high-school sweetheart and husband of twenty-plus years, that she wants a divorce. She goes on to mention that she had an affair with a co-worker named Dave Lindhagen (Kevin Bacon), at which point Cal…
So much petty drama has clouded the release of Michael Rapaport’s A Tribe Called Quest documentary. One version of the backstory casts the first-time director as a doofus actor wannabe (arguably best known for his role as Phoebe’s boyfriend in Friends) who persuades the seminal, but privately splintered, hip-hop crew…
A Touch of Spring starts out as such a charming romantic comedy that it’s a shame when it dissolves into a diffuse and wordy second act. Samuel Taylor’s rarely performed 1968 play has one foot in the ’50s (it’s set in 1959) and another in the late ’60s, that era…
Jake has always been a batterer — when he was a boy, he stomped a little goat he loved — and he always feels terrible afterward, alternating between denial and a crippling sense of guilt and grief. As A Lie of the Mind opens, we hear a voice talking in…
José (Fernando Luján) has been divorced from Nora for twenty years. They were married at least as long. Now he keeps an apartment across from hers; she keeps binoculars. And when, just before Passover, she succeeds after decades of suicide attempts, José is convinced she planned for him to discover…
The Victorians — despite their tendency to straitjacket themselves into whalebone corsets, waistcoats, petticoats, fancy hats and stiffly starched, high-collared blouses — perversely also loved to commune with nature in all its glory, high and low. It’s perfectly natural, then, for the Colorado Steampunks to lend their presence to the…
In “the Internet is getting more terrifying everyday” news, Google recently bought facial recognition technology company PittPatt. This kind of snappy identification application isn’t new by any means, but the creep factor definitely got kicked up a notch when Google (which has probably farmed and aggregated more personal information about…
Although IKEA didn’t even allow people to start lining up outside its doors for Wednesday’s grand opening until 9 o’clock this morning, it’s been more than 30 hours since the line effectively started forming in the parking lot across the street. The Swedish home-ware retailer, of course, is offering a…
There’s something about the nurse in popular culture — and while hospital-based programming has fallen from popularity in recent years, the image of the workday nurse in all its forms has been one that anyone who’s spent time in the ER or recovery room knows, whether via a hazy, drug-induced…
New Belgium is well-known as maybe the world’s foremost purveyor of goofy bike-related events that is also a beer brewer, and the Urban Assault Ride is at least a contender for the crown jewel of that lineup. This weekend, hundreds of people who enjoy both bikes and beers competed against…
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is often regarded as one of the most scientifically sound science-fiction movies out there. Working closely with author Arthur C. Clarke, Kubrick met with plenty of scientific experts to ensure the film would be as authentic as possible, regardless of the inevitable filming complications…
David Roberts, author of Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer, researched the life, writings and artwork of the young adventurer who vanished somewhere in the American Southwest in the 1930s, and has written the first true biography of the young man. Roberts (and…
If you’re going to align yourself with a ridiculous (albeit in ways both great and not-so-great) place like Boulder, the least you can do is have a sense of humor about it. Then again, one of the many things that makes that city ridiculous is that so few Boulderites have…
Dave Foley is not gay. “Some people get mad if I say that I’m not gay. They think it’s homophobic,” the comic said. “If I sleep with a woman, well, that’s just a hate crime. Some people thought we were all gay on the Kids in the Hall because we…
There might be a simple solution to America’s fat problem, and it might just be fun: Go outside and play. That’s the idea, at any rate, behind Keen Footwear’s Recess Revolution Tour, which is criss-crossing the country in five cities trying to tear adults away from their computer screens for…
We love pop-up shops. Just as we love this weekend’s Vintage Renewal Pop+Up Eco-Boutique, which opens tonight at Hinterland, we’re also nuts about such past and coming temporary outlets as Gimme Gimme Pillow Toast, Yespleasemore and I ♥ Denver, and next weekend’s Denver Handmade Alliance Pop-Up Shop at the Denver…
Tomorrow night, Ginger Sexton and the Sexton drag empire take over the Gothic Theatre for the second annual Apocalyptic Ball, a celebration of life and a fundraiser for the Colorado AIDS Walk. Sexton — who by day is known as make-up artist Briceson Ducharme — started up the variety showcase…
There’s an element of truth to every stereotype, and that particularly goes for Boulder, a place so preoccupied with its own righteousness that even its Pop Tarts must be certified organic. Our man Thorin Klosowski recently returned from a stint in the People’s Republic, and he brought back some observations…
