I have always judged places by certain things. A doctor’s office gets kudos if they have good fashion magazines. I won’t go to a nightclub if the name is a one-syllable noun. And I have never had my hair cut at a salon with a title I didn’t approve of…
Kelli Modica, our local designer for this week, has only been in Denver for about seven months but she’s already created some impressive and original fashion with the help of The Other Side Arts complex, which we mentioned in this profile of designer Jonathan Applegate. Kelli’s designs for her lable,…
Last week, we here at Westword took a cue from MTV and threw a big bash celebrating Denver’s local music scene, complete with a music awards ceremony honoring the best of Denver’s best. To be honest, I don’t really remember a whole helluva lot about it because when the people…
Let’s get one thing straight: American Girl — the inspiration for Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, the just-released movie starring Abigail Breslin — is a product. It’s a company. It’s a money-making enterprise. It’s owned by Mattel now. That alone speaks volumes. What it’s not is the sum total of…
I have spent much of the past week researching 1858 fashions for a Colorado Inside Out show that goes back in time, and as anyone who tunes in to KBDI: Channel 12 tonight at 8 p.m. will see, the results are not pretty (see above) Rumor has it that 150…
In a nation of frightened dullards, there is always a sorry shortage of outlaws, and those few who make the grade are always welcome.” So wrote Hunter S. Thompson of the Hells Angels after riding with California’s motor-psycho Mongol hordes in the mid-1960s, a feat of embedded journalism that left…
The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis as a dead man, was M. Night Shyamalan’s breakthrough, but its followup, Unbreakable, starring Bruce Willis as the walking dead reborn as a superhero, was the filmmaker’s masterpiece. It remains the most quietly influential of all recent superhero movies, the unacknowledged template for directors…
Macbeth is one of the most familiar of Shakespeare’s plays, and with each new production, I look to see what the director has accomplished in the way of re-interpretation, depth of understanding or clarification. For this Colorado Shakespeare Festival production, Lynne Collins has added a number of interpretive touches. Early…
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…
Painting is making its umpteenth comeback right now after having been declared dead an equal number of times over the years. The reason that paintings haven’t been supplanted permanently by videos, installations and the like is that artists refuse to cooperate. As a result, collectors and curators won’t let go,…
There are a bunch of shows at Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173, www.edgeart.org) that link up with one another pretty well. The buzz, however, has zeroed in on the most ambitious of the group: Timmy Flynn’s Hardware Store, which occupies the front gallery. The show, Flynn’s homage to a…
Abstraction. A group of untitled abstracts by Ania Gola-Kumor launches this exhibit, which was organized by Sally Perisho. Gola-Kumor is little known around here; in fact, she could be called the best unknown artist in Denver, though she had her first show in town back in 1982. She’s represented here…
Andrew Goldfarb — aka the Slow Poisoner — is unlike any one-man vaudevillian musical act you’ve ever seen. First of all, he gets his inspiration from B horror movies, absinthe-induced hallucinations, dreams, nightmares and the mutterings of San Francisco’s homeless schizophrenic population. Second, he’s got a miracle tonic available only…
Tambien will be right in the belly of the beast this weekend as the Cherry Creek Arts Festival swallows up the area surrounding the restaurant at 250 Steele Street. So Tambien’s owners have decided to keep that belly very, very full. Today through Sunday, they’re offering the Mexican barbecue and…
Anyone who knows me well will tell you without hesitation that I’m a puzzle freak. My boyfriend sighs when he sees me walk in the door with a new book of logic problems; it means he won’t be able to talk to me for at least a couple of days…
Along with the site’s rustic auditorium, the 1898 dining hall is one of two original buildings at Boulder’s historic Colorado Chautauqua, which was created at the turn of the last century as a summer stopover for a then-vigorous Chautauqua Movement circuit that brought entertainment, lecturers and artists to pastoral resorts…
How much cooler can East Colfax Avenue get? We can’t guess; all we know is that this neighborhood just keeps getting sweeter. See for yourself at the Super Fresh Block Party organized by Fabric Lab/Shoppe mastermind Tran Wills. “I’m totally community-oriented,” explains Wills, “and we wanted the whole neighborhood involved.”…
Cyndi Lauper sang openly about love, masturbation and (of course) unusual women in her 1983 hit album She’s So Unusual; now, nearly 25 years later, she’s bringing her message of acceptance to Red Rocks Amphitheatre on her True Colors Tour. The concert will feature Lauper, the B-52s, Rosie O’Donnell and…
Sure, barbecues and fireworks are great — but this year, why not celebrate your patriotism with a real bang? In honor of Independence Day, Burlesque As It Was will shimmy and shake it in red, white and blue in their USO Burlesque Show: Stars and Striptease tonight at 8 p.m…
If you’re looking to get away to where sand tickles your feet and bronzed men and women strut around all well-muscled and half naked, then look no further than the AVP Crocs Slam Boulder. Starting today at 10 a.m. and continuing through Sunday at Folsom Field, 29th Street and Colorado…
Ten million children in sub-Saharan Africa have lost both of their parents to AIDS. “You read the statistics, but because the numbers are so huge, it doesn’t register until you can personalize it and see the life of one child,” says Kathy Burr, outreach director for Cherry Hills Community Church…
The characters who populate Daniel Grandbois’s collection Unlucky Lucky Days, which he’ll share tonight, are a wee bit eccentric. Take Carl, a man who removes his teeth with a pair of pliers, runs them through his washer and dryer and then reinserts them into his mouth, all because he ran…
