Not ever having been pregnant and, likely, never having to worry about getting pregnant, I have to admit, the whole thing sort of weirds me out. My sister gave birth to the two cutest kids in the whole world. For real, though. Cutest kids in the whole, entire world. Hands…
What a brooding pleasure it is to return to Christopher Nolan’s Gotham City — if “pleasure” is the right word for a movie that gazes so deeply and sometimes despairingly into the souls of restless men. In The Dark Knight, the continuation of Nolan’s superb 2005 reboot of the Batman…
Spare yet tactile, a mysterious mixture of lightness and gravity, Alexander Sokurov’s Alexandra is founded on contradiction. Musing on war in general and the Russian occupation of Chechnya in particular, this is a movie in which combat is never shown. The star, octogenarian Galina Vishnevskaya, is an opera diva who…
I’ve always enjoyed ABBA — not in that post-hoc, so-bad-it’s-good hip way, but innocently, the way I like Phil Spector. To this day, howling along in my car to that echoing, cascading, multiply-overdubbed wall of sound makes me feel like a member of some dippy but joyous cathedral choir. So…
Honus and Me. Adapted by playwright Steven Dietz from a young adult novel by Dan Gutman, Honus and Me tells the story of Joey, a young boy who’s passionate about baseball but too insecure and distracted to succeed as a player. He’s particularly troubled by his parents’ divorce. At his…
Jack Balas has built a national reputation the hard way. He lives in a small town in northern Colorado, and his style is a very idiosyncratic version of post-pop that’s often messy and crammed with incongruous imagery and text. And if that’s not enough, his chief subject matter — the…
The Robischon Gallery (1740 Wazee Street, 303-298-7788, www.robischongallery.com) is currently featuring Tattoo Detour, one of two solos in town by Jack Balas (see review, page 45), but there’s a good deal more happening at the gallery as well. In the center space is William Lamson: Experiment, which is the East…
About Us… et al. In the West Gallery at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is About Us…, put together by freelance curator Mark Addison, who brought in two dozen works of conceptual realism by a raft of internationally known artists in addition to pieces from his own collection. Addison…
Whether or not you think war is the answer, most people would agree that those individuals who join the military — many in search of a better education and future for themselves — deserve praise and respect. The sad truth is, many of our country’s enlisted try to make a…
Denver’s a pretty nifty place, full of killer views and happy people and slightly-lower-than-the-national-average gas prices, but it’s missing one thing: nautical miscellanea. No early-morning fog rolling in as unseen ship bells clank their solemn dirges. No ancient seafood shacks wafting aromatic promises of fried clams and chowder. No salty…
What do you believe about yourself? Jesse Jackson’s call-and-response poem “I Am — Somebody” has inspired the folks at Fresh City Life to ask Denverites that very question; their answers will be revealed in a short documentary, I Am a Library, and composed into lyrics by David Amram for a…
When Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” he knew those words spoke a truth about the human condition across the ages. Reading Walden today seems more relevant than ever with its prescription for living authentically and simply in harmony with nature. Thoreau didn’t…
Tonight’s premiere of The Hot L Baltimore was timed perfectly. “We’re all homeless now with the housing crisis,” says director Terry Dodd. “This is environmental theater with a really big, beating heart.” The play, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson in 1973, will be staged in the lobby of…
No one embodies the glitz, the glamour or the glib insanity of Las Vegas like Wayne Newton. “I just think, whether you like him or not, he’s a cultural icon,” says Vonalda Utterback of the Theater Company of Lafayette. “He’s Mr. Las Vegas, by his own admission.” Now Mr. Las…
This weekend’s Welcome Table symposium at the Iliff School of Theology should prove that activism can lead to delicious food and honest creative expression just as easily as it encourages the cessation of such pleasures. The symposium was created by the Veterans of Hope organization, which focuses on collecting oral…
As an artist, Eric Matelski is always looking for new ways to promote his work. After attending classes through Denver Urban Gardens, he came up with the idea to merge two of his passions into a series of garden shows called Art Farm. “It’s pretty cool, because it’s just a…
“Eating before practice helps a lot.” With a mouthful of homemade pizza, drummer Sam Spitzer is explaining the secret of the Hollyfelds’ camaraderie. Before each rehearsal, the quintet sits down to a meal at the Spitzers’ home. What started as carryout has evolved to delicious home-cooked meals, compliments of Spitzer’s…
One of the outstanding educational programs at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities (6901 Wadsworth Boulevard, 720-898-7200, www.arvadacenter.org) is in the field of ceramics. The center offers classes and workshops about clay that are geared to either children or adults, and sometimes both. In a few weeks —…
Some rock photographers have it, others don’t, but Lynn Goldsmith is the pinnacle to which they all should aspire. A photographer since childhood and, perhaps more important, a career fan, she has a loving way with the lens that infuses her celebrity prints with surging, active life. That she loves…
You might already know about StoryCorps, a national initiative (featured every Friday on NPR’s Morning Edition) to document everyday history and the unique stories of hundreds — if not thousands — of Americans. But did you know that starting today and continuing through August 8, the StoryCorps MobileBooth (an Airstream…
We’re all embracing it these days, yet there’s more to the local food movement than meets the eye. After all, it’s nice to know that your food has a shortened carbon footprint and all, but did you ever stop to think about where it actually comes from? On Zweck’s Farm,…
Few writers reach the notoriety of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. He was a character and a legend, the founder of gonzo journalism and a living, breathing contradiction — a peace-lover who was also obsessed with firearms, for starters. To take on a biography of Thompson’s life is a task of…
