Competitors, get ready: The third annual Colorado Cutthroat Connection Fighter Frenzy tournament is on. To succeed, you’ll need catlike reflexes, quick thinking and the kind of meticulously conditioned thumbs you can only get from years of intensive controller training. A deep, instinctual knowledge of Halo 3, Soul Calibur 4, Super…
After battling the crowds at the stores on Black Friday, even cheery holiday lovers can find themselves bogged down with the bah-humbugs. Leave it to the Denver Center Theatre Company’s annual production of A Christmas Carol — and adjunct events — to help warm your already-weary heart. Directed by Bruce…
The African American Leadership Institute has a lot to be proud of. “We’ve graduated more than 220 adults and served more than 10,000 youths in our youth program,” says board chair James Ellis. “And we’ve done that with only two employees, which is absolutely incredible, but I think what it…
It’s all over: You came, saw and conquered the Thanksgiving feast — now what? Well, Christmas (and other accompanying holidays) is the obvious answer, so why not head to A Grande Finale Patisserie, 641 Main Street in Louisville, for Desserts Galore? “We tried it a couple of years ago for…
When the Wildlife Experience Museum decides to do something, it does it all the way. So it goes without saying that the venue’s first-ever holiday lighting attraction, Winter WonderLights, also goes a step further. Opening tonight at 5:30 p.m., the fledgling spectacle has both indoor and outdoor components that set…
A winter without the Blossoms of Light is like a world with no sun in my book, so I’ll admit I felt a catch in my throat when I heard that parking-garage construction and gardens torn up for irrigation replacement would preclude the possibility of accommodating the light-viewing crowds at…
Since November 4, even the most cynical lefties have been spotted chanting “USA, USA” — un-ironically! — and discussing the American Dream with the kind of gush they would have formerly dismissed as naive platitude. Has a new essence of optimism dawned with the election of what’s-his-’bama, or did liberals…
With the ongoing Big Bleu Cow 5 Comedy Variety Contest, you never know what you’re going to get. Every week, five acts compete, ranging from improv and standup to sketch comedy. One guy in costume claimed to have traveled through time from the 1800s to field audience questions. He didn’t…
It sounds like a preposterous moment in a cheesy and sentimental Western: A couple of artists out of New York City head from Denver to Mexico by wagon, break down and start an art colony that goes on strong for the next sixty years. It really does seem made up,…
There have been some big changes recently at the Denver Art Museum’s Petrie Institute of Western American Art. Last month, longtime associate curator Ann Daley stepped down after more than twenty years (Artbeat, October 9). And now, Petrie director Peter Hassrick (pictured) has announced his retirement effective next April. Hassrick…
Fat Pig. Neil LaBute’s plays are nasty, but they usually contain subtext, irony and ambiguity. Fat Pig has none of these. It’s flat and thin, a straightforward, almost schematic story with a quivering pink core. Tom, a shallow careerist male of the kind we remember from In the Company of…
Amid the cascade of Christmas Carol remounts, Hallmark family shows and limp holiday parodies, Peter Ekstrom’s An O. Henry Christmas, now being staged by Miners Alley, is a refreshing seasonal choice. We all remember “The Gift of the Magi”: A young couple, dirt poor and madly in love, have no…
Ovid, otherwise known as Publius, has been banished from Rome and is traveling with Tiresias, standing at a crossroads, sticking out his thumb. Actually, he’s packed Tiresias in his bag, which the blind seer fiercely resents. In a fit of fury, Ovid burned the single copy of his epic poem…
With his blazing white coat and pig-pink ears, to say nothing of the zigzag of lightning cut into his flank, the eponymous canine lead of Disney’s lively new animated movie Bolt looks a little bit real and a whole lot not. That’s not a failure of craft: Goofy and sweet…
Back in 2005, Dorothy Stang died thousands of miles away, in the Amazon jungle where the 73-year-old nun had spent decades trying to help poor settlers and save the Brazilian rainforest. But her story hit home with local filmmakers Daniel Junge and Henry Ansbacher, who followed Denver resident David Stang…
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Well, who wouldn’t in this economy, even if the currency in question is rupees and winning the loot means being pegged as a fraud, getting a firsthand education in “enhanced” interrogation methods and having to relive some of the most painful moments of your…
Kristin Scott Thomas has gotten so locked into playing tragic victims or frigid grandes dames that few remember the actress got her big break as a wistfully amused friend in Mike Newell’s Four Weddings and a Funeral, or that she played Plum Berkeley on Absolutely Fabulous. Thomas has mischief in…
Although Los Lonely Boys were heavily influenced by growing up in a family of musicians, they’re no Partridge Family. Moving with their dad and stepmom around the country — from living out of a tent in California to performing with their dad in smoky Nashville bars — in search of…
Director Matt Wolf first heard of Arthur Russell— the subject of Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, an impressive documentary that screens tonight and tomorrow as part of the Starz Denver Film Festival — back in 2003, more than a decade after the singer-songwriter’s death. Wolf recalls that a…
When graffiti artists Wiser and Keith White started their custom art company, Your Name in Graffiti, a couple of years ago, one of their goals was to educate people about graffiti as art. Their invitation to the Denver Botanic Gardens today as part of Denver Arts Week is a clear…
In the eyes of comedian Billy Gardell, life isn’t that complex, and there’s plenty of joy to be found in simple pleasures like drinking, bad food and giving people you love a hard time. His material mines a down-to-earth, common-sense vein of comedy based on his blue-collar Pittsburgh roots. From…
Full disclosure: I’ve never read Twilight, the 2005 young-adult novel by Stephenie Meyer that spawned three additional novels and a serious fan following. But I know dozens of people who are addicted to the series, from adults to my thirteen-year-old niece, who read Twilight “in, like, a day,” she says…
