If you are unaware that the Democratic National Convention took place in Denver in 1908 — and again in 2008 – well, then, you’re beyond our help and should probably consider investing in some method of mass communication soon (a newspaper or radio would be a good, safe place to…
Join the green fairy for a special Halloween buzz at Holographic Universe 9, an all-night dance party at the Royal Peacock Absinthe Lounge, 5290 Arapahoe Avenue in Boulder. From 11 p.m. until 5 a.m., a host of DJs headlined by Buddhabomb will help you get down to a variety of…
Although Halloween is all about being something you’re not, a little authenticity is always appreciated. For example, would you rather spend the evening in a creepy yet chic clock tower, or a bar decorated with fake spiderwebs? “Looking at the other parties going on downtown, this is the coolest,” says…
Zoe and Kim Boekbinder aren’t like any duo of singing sisters you’ve seen before. While my siblings and I were imitating Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen’s White Christmas song and dance, the Boekbinder girls were honing their skills in clown boot camps and digging through dumps for instruments. Vermillion Lies, their…
It will be a very “Psycho Killer” Halloween when the Motet plays the Talking Heads. Just don’t expect anyone to show up in one of David Byrne’s big suits — the dress-up here is purely musical. “The first year it was the Beatles,” recalls Dave Watts, the band’s founder. “And…
TACtile Arts Center director Dianne Denholm can sew a pretty piece. But when she picked up a pair of needles recently to knit a pair of socks, something she’d never done before, she found herself less than impressed with the results. “I’m kind of stuck, and I don’t know anyone…
In Mexico, El Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is right up there with Christmas in terms of celebration. It’s a lot like The Nightmare Before Christmas, where no one is scared, gifts are given to the dead instead of the living, and candy skulls replace gingerbread…
There are some movies I can watch over and over again without getting sick of them, but horror movies do not fall under that category. I already know when Michael Myers is going to jump out and frighten the bejesus out of Laurie Strode, and the fact that it really…
In Pueblo mythology, Corn Mothers were sacred figures who sung the essence of all creation into existence. “About three years ago, my husband brought home this book called When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away,” remembers journalist and photographer Renee Fajardo-Anstine. “It was about the Corn Mothers and the…
There’s not a rock guitarist alive who can’t claim that at least a teensy bit of the Jimi Hendrix vibe flows in his veins; even today, the voodoo child’s screaming licks and dead-on phrasing still give ya the shivers, though he’s been dead for more than thirty years. That’s why…
“Maybe I could be the first rapper-slash-doctor!” As he applies to medical schools for next year, Nathaniel Motte — beatmaker and one half of Boulder crunk-rock duo 3OH!3 — is getting psyched about the cred this will win him in the hip-hop game. “Let’s put this down in ink,” he…
Hugh Grant, director of the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, has relentlessly carried the torch for Colorado’s art history, doing more to promote awareness of this important legacy than anyone ever has. He began his promotion with the work of Vance Kirkland, for whom the museum has been…
In the front gallery at Walker Fine Art (300 West 11th Avenue, 303-355-8955, www.walkerfineart.com), owner Bobbi Walker has paired up painter Don Quade and sculptor James Dixon, both from Denver, for the exhibit Natural Abstractions. The show’s title is somewhat general in its implications, if not quite a catch-all, because…
Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The fall opener at the Center for Visual Art is a conscientious survey of the careers of Christo and Jeanne-Claude as seen through their personal print collection documenting their pioneering conceptual work that began in the 1960s. The exhibit, which includes more than a hundred works of…
Filmmaker Les Blank might be best known for his documentary portraits of American musicians, but many critics believe his masterpiece is Burden of Dreams, which catalogued the filming of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. The fact remains that Blank is one of the most creative and insightful documentary filmmakers working today, which…
David Mamet wrote Glengarry Glen Ross more than twenty years ago, but this study of unscrupulous salesmen pitching worthless plots in Florida is acutely relevant today. The hustlers who helped create the current financial meltdown by persuading thousands of working people to buy houses they couldn’t afford must be very…
It’s a few days before the election, and Charles Smith, the sitting president, is hoping for a second term. Trouble is, his poll numbers are in the toilet (or, as the script has it, “lower than Gandhi’s cholesterol”), he’s intensely incompetent, no one takes him seriously (even his Secret Service…
Pride and Glory doesn’t make any effort to disguise precisely what it is: a barely-held-together string of vignettes lifted from every cop movie ever made, save perhaps Turner & Hooch. It serves up cliches bound together by a flimsy, bored-out-of-its-own-skull story about bad cops, black sheep, good sons and a…
Les Misérables. This huge, sprawling musical is based on Victor Hugo’s novel, and the plot centers on the merciless pursuit of a freed prisoner, Jean Valjean, by a bitter police detective, Javert. In the course of the chase, which continues over several decades, we encounter everything from revolutionaries at the…
Anne Hathaway makes a compelling bad girl in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married. Those who believe that Jonathan Demme went all soft with Philadelphia and never recovered may not be reassured by his latest movie, an ensemble tale of family pathology gussied up with verité camera work, world music and…
Tiffany Smyth hangs with belly dancers, fire performers, the Ren Fest crowd and the tribal psychedelic rock band Kan’nal, but first and foremost, she’s a mask-maker of enormous talent, working in leather, beads and feathers to create art nouveau-inspired organic disguises unlike anything you’ve ever seen. She owes some of…
Once upon a time, indefatigable self-promoter David Booker fronted The Captain and the Red Hot Flames, one of the most popular Colorado acts of the ’80s — and he’s about to go back to the future. The group, also featuring saxophonist Sonny Gunn, drummer Kyle “Big Chief” Roberts, keyboardist Paul…
