Bart Simpson was arbitrarily declared 32 years old today by Twitter trends, a designation that had something to do with the release of the first episode of The Simpsons in 1989 plus Bart’s age, which has always been ten years old. Except the show debuted on December 17, 1989 as…
This weekend, the best and worst of 2010 in film will be categorically determined (right…) by the Academy and Golden Raspberry Awards, respectively. And while statues are nice, everyone knows that money guides filmmaking to a much greater degree than accolades. So we were wondering — does the movie-going public…
Andy Libertone and Rob Watt. On the west side of Spark, Andy Libertone: Old Walls, New Floors includes the artist’s bas-reliefs from the ’70s and his recent freestanding sculptures — hence the old walls and new floors of the title. Though Libertone’s been around for decades, most of these early…
Denver the Last Dinosaur went through a two-season run back in the late ’80s. The show centered on a studiously diverse group of kids in L.A. who hatch a giant dino egg by crashing a BMX bike into it. They name their new pal Denver, and learning opportunities ensue. It’s…
One of last year’s best films, Lee Chang-dong’s rending, hyperventilating followup to 2002’s Oasis focuses on Shin-ae (Jeon Do-yeon), a willowy, not-too-pretty young mother relocating to the obscure burg her dead husband came from, for obscure reasons. Reserved and cagey, Shin-ae herself remains a mystery, as she resists the gang…
Rick and Fred (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis) are two domesticated husbands whose long marriages (to Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate, respectively) have achieved somnolent routine in suburban Providence, Rhode Island. Yet the wives worry. Rick is a girl watcher; Fred masturbates in the privacy of their parked Honda Odyssey…
Paramount, the distributor of David O. Russell’s The Fighter, celebrated its Best Director Oscar nomination by placing a “For Your Consideration” ad on the cover of Variety, touting Russell as “the comeback of the year.” It was an odd choice of phrasing, considering that The Fighter, Russell’s first feature to…
Oh, MTV. You are so smart. What better a way to preempt the shit show that is Jersey Shore than with a video premiere from the queen of shit shows herself, Britney Spears. After witnessing the boring breathlessness that is Brit’s “Hold It Against Me,” we pick back up at…
Comedy Central announced an awards show devoted to comedy today. It will be called The Comedy Awards and will air simultaneously on Comedy Central, VH1, Spike, TV Land and Nick at Nite on March 26. On one hand, comedy does tend to get boned in the other major awards, particularly…
Every Good Cowboy and Nate Baldwin. In the front space at Pirate, there’s an interesting collaborative show made up of neo-pop mixed-media pieces, most with a vaguely Western theme. The works on view include those done either by Matthew Doubek or by Samuel Mobley, as well as many others that…
Fifty years after Kim Ki-young’s postwar hothouse original, Im Sang-soo attempts a sleek, breathless update to the tale of a household riven by a sexy domestic. This time around, instead of a family-man music teacher getting ensnared, a bored, feckless maid (Jeon Do-yeon) is seduced by a rich scion and…
To age brutishly is Liam Neeson’s apparent career goal — with Taken, Clash of the Titans, The A-Team and now Unknown, the actor continues to follow the Nicolas Cage path from respected thespian to big-budget ass-kicker. In this tepid thriller from Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan), Neeson is Dr. Martin Harris, who,…
The late Canadian writer Mordecai Richler, best known south of the border for the film version of his 1959 novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, was a bellicose practitioner of Jewish fiction in the manner of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, with a mad helping of Joseph Heller. The joyfully…
Guess what? Ronnie and Sammi are fighting. Again. Still. At this point, anyone who stomachs this show has to hate her, because she’s turned Jersey Shore house into a petri dish of bizarre mind games, fighting and girlfriend doublespeak. The Situation has been sharing a room with the world’s most…
Collective Nouns and E. C. Cunningham. Metropolitan State College has a special place in Denver’s art world. Not only does it have the biggest set of visual-arts departments in the state, but it includes a mini-museum, the Center for Visual Art. These two factors only rarely come together, but they…
The theatrical release of the Oscar-nominated live-action and animated short films provides a fun peek into intriguing bite-sized cinema from across the globe. This year’s live-action entries are a diverse mix. The African-set drama Na Wewe is a rather obvious critique of cultural identity, while The Confession is a coming-of-age…
Fresh from Sundance, Miguel Arteta’s amiable Cedar Rapids is a mild comedy of embarrassment, set in the dark heart of Middle America and starring sitcom secundario Ed Helms (The Office’s obnoxious, angry salesman Andy Bernard) as Tim Lippe, a prematurely middle-aged man-child. Taking an airplane for the first time in…
The Eagle, directed by Kevin Macdonald and adapted from Rosemary Sutcliff’s 1954 historical novel, The Eagle of the Ninth, a best-selling tale of second-century Roman legions and youthful derring-do on the far side of Hadrian’s Wall, is a thunderous boys’ adventure of the old-school type: There’s not a female speaking…
The commercials of the Super Bowl are one of the biggest draws to the game for some people. Viewers love to see the somewhat witty, incredibly overproduced and expensive miniature films announcing that Volkswagen is the best, Detroit is better than where you are and Fox is the greatest station…
2011: Year in Preview. Bobbi Walker, owner of Walker Fine Art, has employed a clever way to create an automatic group show by putting together examples of work by all of the artists who will be featured in duets this year. The show looks good, but what’s really neat is…
Writer-director Javier Fuentes-León’s directorial debut, Undertow, is sublime. Set in a small, picturesque Peruvian fishing village, it’s less a coming-out tale than a magic realism-infused coming-of-consciousness love story. Miguel (Cristian Mercado), a happily married fisherman and soon-to-be father, insists he’s not “that way,” despite being head over heels in love…
In 1952, Manoel de Oliveira sketched a fable of impossible longing that became, finally, The Strange Case of Angelica. Though the automobile models in de Oliveira’s 2010 film are modern, many plot details remain of the period of its writing: On a torrentially rainy night, the Portas estate sends a…
