Because the Arvada Center for Arts and Humanities has such a great track record for tying all the loose ends together thematically, a trio of West-inspired photography shows in the galleries today — just in time for the regional influx of National Western Stock Show visitors and next week’s returning…
Girls Only. The trouble with Girls Only, a two-woman evening of conversation, skits, singing, improvisation and audience participation, is that it’s so relentlessly nice. Creator-performers Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein have worked together for many years; at some point, they read their early diaries to each other and were transfixed…
Comic books aren’t just for kids anymore. That’s really been true for a long, long time, from the day they started zipping comics up in plastic bags and calling them collectors’ items. But the rise in the last few decades of the graphic novel, an inventive form that covers endless…
David Shneer is a one-man dynamo when it’s come to bringing into focus the divergent cultural wings of the Jewish diaspora locally, in the past as a professor and director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver and currently in a similar role at CU-Boulder. And…
No writer ever gazed deeper or more despairingly into the prison of middle-class American conformity than Richard Yates, which may explain why none of his books sold more than 12,000 copies in his lifetime and why it’s taken more than forty years for one of them to reach the big…
Is it a sign of the Apocalypse? Something in the water? Or just the way the wind is blowing? Whatever the case, when our often-contentious quintet of film critics put their heads together about the best movies of 2008, they managed to agree (more or less) on a dozen they…
As far as Jeffrey Katzenberg is concerned, up until now there have been but two “revolutions” in the movie business: the mass introduction of sound, with 1927’s The Jazz Singer (itself a process thirty years in the making), and, a year later, the debut of The Viking, the first feature…
Michael Jacobs, a filmmaker based in San Francisco, is the director of a movie called Audience of One. It’s a documentary about a Pentecostal minister who says he’s gotten the divine green light to make a mega-budget, religious science-fiction epic. If you attended one of twenty-odd regional film festivals in…
Record company executives’ dislike of change is nothing new, as Denver-based author Steve Knopper discovered while researching Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age, a new book he’ll discuss and sign tonight and Thursday. In the early ’80s, when manufacturers tried to convince…
Having just moved to Colorado from Texas, I can make a few observations about the Lone Star and Square states: Both have a thing for bovines; both like drilling for oil; both have a lot of open spaces. There are differences, too: Y’all don’t use Velveeta in your cheese enchiladas,…
Isis Books & Gifts on East Colfax Avenue was a place where a person could wander and not get lost; the paths to self-realization were manifold. It was a groovy shop, to be certain, but housed in an odd little building that — despite the beaded curtains and incensed air…
All this snow doesn’t suck so much if you can do something fun on it, so dig out the car and head up to Copper to check out the hottest new snowboarding gear from Burton at the annual Burton Super Demo. “The Burton Super Demo is something we look forward…
I have to admit it: Every year, I look forward to chatting with Keystone’s head pastry chef, Ned Archibald, about his Chocolate Village. The man is just so darn enthusiastic about things like six-foot-tall white-chocolate trees with blown-sugar ornaments and his epic chocolate fountain (flowing better than ever this year,…
Wednesday night is now the time to party like it’s 1999 — at the Red Light Dance Party, hosted by Ghost Buffalo’s Marie Litton, aka DJ Lil Thunder. It’s a casual, fun night that features a cross-genre mix of the best dance-floor classics of the final decades of the twentieth…
Chase away that case of the Mondays at New Music Mondays, a weekly free-form dance party hosted by DJ Hot to Death, better known as Matt Fecher, co-founder of the Monolith Music Festival. Each week, Fecher brings in guest DJs from both the local and national scenes to play their…
Bhangra — a form of party dancing that originated with the Punjabi in India — has become increasingly popular in recent months, judging from the number of musicians (Jay-Z among them) who have incorporated a bhangra element into their work. “It’s got origins in the agricultural roots that the Punjabi…
In 1979, Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Iranian radicals seized the American embassy in Tehran, the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl for the second year in a row, Mr. Ed died, and Denver’s first cooperative art gallery was born. For thirty years now…
The 1859 Rush to the Rockies started out slow — and cold. On a frigid day in January 1859, prospector George Jackson was camped on a sand bar in Clear Creek when he noticed that the frozen ground laid bare by his fire was glittering. Jackson had been at the…
Master printer, teacher, artist, retailer – Patricia Branstead is all these things, but since she relocated here from Steamboat Springs and opened her tiny but fabulous emporium of handmade papers and printing supplies, Kozo (a Best of Denver winner last year), her focus seems to have been on building the…
Every Tuesday at Bovine Metropolis Theater, two improv teams battle for the audience’s affections — and votes. Only those rare comedic talents who can keep the laughs coming, winning for six consecutive weeks against new challengers, earn the coveted Battle Royale title. “It’s not easy,” says theater producer and sales…
Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble, one of Louisiana’s premier zydeco bands, gets a mile high tonight at the D Note, 7519 Grandview Avenue in Arvada. The five-piece band includes the piano accordion plus musical arrangements drawing on R&B, soul and urban blues. “When the music was first recorded, it was…
Today, teams of birdwatchers and chili lovers come together for the annual Holiday Bird Count, spending the day counting birds throughout the Denver metro area, including Roxborough State Park. The 3,339-acre park is a Colorado natural area and a national Natural Landmark, with breathtaking views of several beautiful rock formations,…
