From the outside, the Denver Art Museum’s Frederic C. Hamilton Building is among the best pieces of Colorado architecture, and its design has many supporters. But Daniel Libeskind’s masterpiece also has many detractors, especially when it comes to the interior. The ground floor, which sets the tone for the rest…
Allen True’s West. Allen Tupper True was Denver’s premier muralist during the first third of the twentieth century. Sadly, many of his commissions have been painted over or were lost when the buildings they were in were demolished. In an act of cooperation, the three big cultural institutions on the…
Big Love. In a plot lifted from Aeschylus, fifty sisters have been promised by their father to fifty cousins; on their wedding day, they flee from Greece to Italy in search of sanctuary. They land at the home of hyper-civilized Piero, who wants to help but doesn’t want trouble —…
The Devil, apparently, lives in an out-of-the-way gingerbread Victorian, just past the cemetery, where college sophomore Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) is lured for overnight housesitting by an elegant, forbidding couple (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov, both queerly over-intimate). Though its poster and opening-title freeze frames threaten ’80s kitsch, House of the…
The Road, Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, Oprah-endorsed post-apocalyptic survivalist prose poem — in which a father and his ten-year-old son traverse a despoiled landscape of unspeakable horror — was a quick, lacerating read. John Hillcoat’s literal adaptation, which arrives one Thanksgiving past its original release date is, by contrast, a long,…
I have to applaud the Denver Center Theatre Company 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 his work is the perfect antidote to the…
In the early to mid-’80s, Australian exploitation cinema produced some of the finest, most insanely excessive movies ever to grace the Grindhouse and cheap VHS tapes. They starred people you never heard of, were shot in fantastically exotic Australian locales, and packed in more blood, guts and explosive glory per…
World AIDS Day is a somber event, but you can still mark it in fabulous style at the Red Ball: A Night of Frost and Fire. Although raising funds for the Colorado AIDS Project is at the heart of the event, the soul is all about enjoying hot local fashions…
“When the Buckingham Square Mall first opened, it’s said that there was a Santa Claus convention in town,” says Gayle Jetchick of On Havana Street. “So the Santas all decided to go out bar-hopping at the end of the day, and they wound up at the mall. They walked right…
The snow in Crested Butte this year is “fantastic!,” says Janelle Smiley of the Crested Butte Nordic Center. Last week, two feet fell at Lily Lake, a popular site for Nordic skiers, and that bodes well for the center’s annual Thanksgiving Training Camp, an invigorating weekend refresher that offers classes…
This season hasn’t been stellar for the Buffs — and the Cornhuskers haven’t exactly been tearing up the field in 2009, either. But that’s no reason to throw in the towel when you can still party hearty at the Millennium Harvest House Saturday Afternoon Club’s Last Buffs Tailgate in the…
When the Broncos face off against the New York Giants tonight, it will be the first time since 1963 — and only the third time ever — that Denver has hosted a Thanksgiving game. And that’s awesome. Significantly less awesome, the Donkeys have never won a Thanksgiving game at home…
I’ve always been a house-watcher. Luckily, Denver has a wonderful trove of old homes to watch: Blessed with a built-in elegance, the city’s many choice Victorians, Denver Squares, Arts and Crafts bungalows and sweet cottages glow with an inner beauty that must often be brought back to life by the…
Farolito lighting has long been a holiday tradition in Santa Fe, New Mexico — but Colorado’s own Fort restaurant in Morrison has been hosting a similar tradition for at least the past twenty years. “The event itself is kind of trifold,” explains Sarah Shirazi, director of development for the Tesoro…
Many adults in Denver, including Snooze owner/manager Jon Schlegel, fondly remember attending the Parade of Lights, a tradition for the last 35 years, when they were kids. So when Schlegel, whose famous Ballpark neighborhood breakfast eatery draws huge crowds every weekend (and spawned a sibling this summer on Colorado Boulevard),…
Tired of those overhyped “family” Christmas shows? The Avenue Theater’s Santa’s Big Red Sack is an opportunity for you to enjoy some adult holiday fun, and for Santa to stop taking himself so seriously. “We like to call it the ‘Holiday Show You Shouldn’t Take Your Kids To,’” says theater…
The traditional highlights of downtown’s annual Grand Illumination, which begins tonight at 6 p.m., are the two extravaganzas at either end of the 16th Street Mall: the Denver City and County Building light display that will be switched on with much hoopla at 6:30 p.m., and the Union Station light-up,…
In addition to its luscious organic cuisine, the Mercury Cafe has always been known for its live music – everything from punk in the ’80s to alternative rock (including Radiohead’s ill-fated first Denver concert, believe it or not) in the ’90s to the quieter sounds of the last few years,…
After you’ve eaten all the turkey and watched all the games and fought with your relatives, Bass Pro Shops gives you reason to be thankful this Thanksgiving: The store, at 7970 East 49th Avenue, will be open until 6 p.m. today, with sporting goods and gun and game shopping for…
The dichotomy between fire and ice has inspired everything from Robert Browning poems to a 1983 film to prom themes to Copper Mountain’s En Fuego celebration, complete with bonfires and street performers spinning flames in the pristine (if frostbitten) air. And Copper Mountain is really firing up tonight’s En Fuego…
What do you get when you add alternative rock music to a controversial 1891 German play? In the case of Spring Awakening, which injected Duncan Sheik’s score and Steven Sater’s lyrics into Frank Wedekind’s original script, you get eleven Tony Award nominations and eight awards, including top honors for Best…
The Devil, apparently, lives in an out-of-the-way gingerbread Victorian, just past the cemetery, where college sophomore Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) is lured for overnight housesitting by an elegant, forbidding couple (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov, both queerly over-intimate). Though its poster and opening-title freeze frames threaten ’80s kitsch, House of the…
