Locals launch their way into Dew Tour through Open Qualifiers

The Dew Tour is downright democratic compared to the X Games and other invitational pro snowboarding events: Any Fred Shred or Insane Jane who fights their way through the Open Qualifiers gets to throw down in Prelims, against the likes of Shaun White and Kelly Clark (last year’s Dew Cup…

Classic Climb: The Naked Edge

On Monday, my colleague Ted Alvarez posted a video link to Erik Weihenmayer ascending the Naked Edge. The Edge, as many people call it, is a truly striking line that grabs the eye of every climber entering Eldorado Canyon. From the road at the parking lot, it looks much like…

Reporter: Snow-exaggeration controversy “blew up”

Longtime mountain reporter Bob Berwyn has seen his name in headlines almost as much as in bylines in recent weeks. After criticizing the ski industry in the Summit Daily News for hyping a snowstorm on the Front Range when the weather was clear in the high country, Berwyn got an…

Remembering three Colorado contemporary artists

Based on my experience — and my files — I figure there are 300 serious contemporary artists in Colorado. I make note of this because three of them died in November, which strikes me as a pretty high number. On November 8, Elaine Calzolari succumbed to cancer (Artbeat, November 19);…

Now Showing

Barnaby Furnas: Floods. Furnas is a New York artist who’s been exhibiting his work since 2000, and this exhibit, in the MCA’s Large Works Gallery, is made up entirely of his large abstract paintings. A unique feature of Furnas’s personal history is his early embrace of watercolors as his medium…

Now Playing

Absurd Person Singular. The Denver Center Theatre Company should be applauded for selecting Absurd Person Singular, Alan Ayckbourn’s dark comedy, as one of its Christmas offerings. Ayckbourn’s trademark is intensely clever, laugh-out-loud farce capering over the surface of a sad and penetrating cynicism, and it’s the perfect antidote to the…

The End of Poverty?

“Colonialism is always part of the expansion of capitalism,” opines Bolivian vice president Álvaro García Linera in The End of Poverty?, director Philippe Diaz’s devastating, radical critique of the colonialist enterprise as inextricable from the current global economic model. While most state-of-the-world docs are content to map the state of…

Avatar

The money is on the screen in Avatar, James Cameron’s mega-3-D, mondo-CGI, more-than-a-quarter-billion-dollar baby, and, like the Hope Diamond waved in front of your nose, the bling is almost blinding. For the first 45 minutes, I’m thinking: Metropolis! — and wondering how to amend ballots already cast in polls of…

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

The joke’s on someone in Werner Herzog’s awkwardly titled Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Possibly Abel Ferrara who, exploding in fury when he learned that the German conquistador was planning to remake his 1992 career movie, opined that Herzog and his accomplices (among them, an original Bad Lieutenant…

The Santaland Diaries wraps up the holiday in humor

For ten years, Gary Culig starred in The Santaland Diaries — a one-man, one-act play based on an essay by David Sedaris — at the Bug Theatre, but last December he delivered his final performance here and toddled back to New York. Now the Boulder Ensemble has taken up the…

Thoroughly Modern

Sometimes at Christmas, it’s the little things we appreciate most. And Jill Warner of Mod Livin’ knows that better than most folks: She says it’s the little things, most of them priced under $100, that fly out of the mid-century modern emporium each holiday season. Here are a few of…

Party Arty

Take two superstar jurists, throw in everyone else, shake it all up with a year’s worth of fantastic art seen at galleries on Santa Fe Drive, and you’ve got Art District Best of 2009, a confetti-ready celebration of one of Denver’s most popular artwalk destinations and all the fine artists…

Warmest Greetings

Getting my husband to go to holiday light displays after dark in December is like pulling a whole mouthful of wisdom teeth simultaneously: If it’s one degree below 45, the kid and I can just as well forget about it. Excuses, excuses. However, in the interest of more satisfying holiday…

The Word Is Out

Good movies move people. Granted, the emotional effect sometimes lasts no longer than the film itself — that is, unless you’re Denver Film Society program manager Keith Garcia and the film in question is Word Is Out, the 1977 documentary Garcia selected as this week’s installment of DFS’s monthly Cinema…

Read ‘Em and Eat

It’s the season for giving, but also for receiving. That’s why the Printed Page Bookshop’s Food for Thought drive for the East Denver FISH food bank is perfect: You give food and receive great new reading material in exchange. Everything from cookbooks to bestsellers are included, and you can bring…

This Chanukah Cook-off Is One Hot Potato

If you’ve ever slung latkes — from the grated potatoes and onions to the hot oil — you know how labor-intensive it would be to cook 150 of them. But if you’ve ever eaten a plate full of these mouth-watering potato pancakes, you also know how quickly they disappear. A…

Get Schnockered in Jolly Style

Bar crawls are tough to plan. Some people do it by selecting all the spots in advance, contacting the bars to arrange drink specials and then inviting all of their friends. Some don’t. But these crawls are notoriously unsuccessful because the route sucks, the drink specials don’t materialize, friends bail…

The Miracle of Christmas Humor

The ridiculousness of Christmas has been fodder for comedians since, oh, the genesis of the holiday in the Middle Ages. But the past few decades have brought an abundant new source of yuletide yucks: popular culture. From cinema to commercials, the birth of Christ has been hijacked by the pious…

Oscar Wild

It’s that time of year again. No, not the holiday season: It’s time for you to get your ass in gear and watch all of the Oscar-nominated films so you can appear to be the educated one at your annual Academy Awards viewing party. “But how will I ever find…