Remember when Chris Rock was asked to host the 77th annual Academy Awards back in 2005? What was the Academy thinking? I mean, after his roles as Nat X, Onski, Buster Jenkins and Young Pop — not to mention his impersonations of celebrities Flavor Flav, Idi Amin Dada, M.C. Hammer,…
Contrived Ending. This play is local author Josh Hartwell’s homage to the movies and, in particular, to the old-fashioned art house. All the action takes place on a beautifully detailed and realistic facsimile of a cinema lobby, and the play actually sounds and feels like a lot of movies — Reality…
The best sports stories combine the classic elements of rooting for the underdog and the triumph of unflagging determination in the face of ceaseless adversity. Those aspects have rarely been displayed in a purer form than in the cases of the two disabled athletes who will share their inspiring true-life…
“It’s kind of like a live B-movie,” explains Michelle Scheffer (aka Fanny Fitztightlee). She’s talking about Ooh La La Presents…Decades: A Timeline of Tease, her show co-produced with Kitty Crimson that covers more than a century’s worth of sexiness. Starting with 1900, Scheffer says, they’ve coordinated two or three acts…
It’s one of the most dangerous spots in the world — the only place where God gets sauced with the devil, where Indians inhabit Old West towns forgotten by Hollywood and drug routes are passed from father to son. In the Sierra Madre Mountains, just twenty miles south of the…
I’ve felt a little jerked around by Project Runway this season. This mostly has to do with how they’ve treated dear Chris, whose fashion sense has not always wowed me, but I still just love the guy. I mean, have you caught a glimpse of his portfolio — the guy’s…
Every day Westword receptionist Steve Burge gives you the fashionable view from the front desk. Straight-to-Video Scream Queen (And one of my favorite people in the world), Laura “Bay” Bruner, was in town and looking fabulously low-key just recently. Of course, the price tag attached to “low-key” for a Hollywood…
Every day Westword receptionist Steve Burge gives you the fashionable view from the front desk. Remember college? That magical time when anything was possible? When you were sure you were going to rule the world? When you could wear your pajamas in public? Come to think of it, college was…
This past fall, The Band’s Visit made headlines after being disqualified as Israel’s foreign-language submission to the 2008 Academy Awards — an ironic fate, indeed, for a movie that takes language as its very subject. The official ruling of the Oscar referees was that too much of the film’s dialogue…
The extraordinary Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, more comfortably known as “that abortion movie that won this year’s Palme d’Or,” sheds its secrets slowly, a high-end realist drama quickening skillfully into a thriller. Though the frighteningly late-term abortion at its center hints at larger sins in…
Semi-Pro’s much better than Blades of Glory, which wasn’t nearly as good as Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which was a little better than Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, which was almost as funny as Old School, which was better than everything else Will Ferrell had done…
“When you sleep with the king, it ceases to be a private matter.” And so it comes to pass that young Mary Boleyn (Scarlett Johansson) must stand before her father, Sir Thomas (Mark Rylance), and her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk (David Morrissey), and report the nitty-gritty details of having…
Lost Odyssey wants to be Microsoft’s answer to Final Fantasy — not that that’s such a good idea. Like Star Wars, Final Fantasy survives as a power brand thanks to the shining stars of its past, rather than the overwrought installments of recent years. Final Fantasy XII — the most…
Justice League: The New Frontier(Warner Bros.)Based on Darwyn Cooke’s comic-book miniseries — a masterpiece starring all of DC Comics’ major-leaguers at the dawn of their immortality during the Cold War — this animated adaptation plays stronger, faster, and further than any direct-to-DVD in recent memory. It’s a grown-up superheroes story,…
Barbie: Mariposa and Her Butterfly Friends (Universal) Comanche Moon (Sony) Day Zero (First Look) Extras: The Extra Special Series Finale (HBO) Family Affair: Season Five (MPI) The Fugitive: Season One, Volume Two (Paramount) Goya’s Ghosts (Sony) Highlander: The Source (Lionsgate) Jesse Stone: Sea Change (Sony) The Last Emperor: The Criterion…
Although the play’s been around over thirty years, I’d never seen D.L. Coburn’s The Gin Game, and at the beginning, I expected it to be a heartwarmer. Two old people connect on the seldom-used porch of their retirement home, a dusty, cluttered place of battered chairs and cast-off household objects…
As you walk into the familiar Buntport space, the scent of popcorn envelops you. Contrived Ending, which is premiering here, is local playwright Josh Hartwell’s homage to the movies and, in particular, to the old-fashioned art house. All the action takes place on a beautifully detailed and realistic facsimile of…
The Last Five Years. This intimate two-person musical involves the breakup of a marriage. When Jamie and Cathy met in New York, he was an aspiring writer and she an actress. Success came for him fast, while she continued to inhabit the dreary, ego-pummeling world of auditions and summer stock —…
Though I try not to use the term “cutting edge” since it likens the art world to a knife as opposed to the soft, puddle-like thing it actually is, I sometimes do it anyway. The reason is because the term so handily describes the virtually indescribable, art-wise. Being on the…
Ivar Zeile is definitely a fan of conceptual art, and he has selected two interesting Colorado painters who work in that manner for a pair of solos on view at Plus Gallery (2350 Lawrence Street, 303-296-0927, www.plusgallery.com). In the front space is New Frontier, which highlights recent paintings by Dana…
George Carlson. Put together by curator Ann Daley, who has shaped and defined the Western collection at the Denver Art Museum, George Carlson: Heart of the West deals with the career of an accomplished neo-traditional artist who looks to the century-old Impressionist style for inspiration. The Carlson exhibit includes nearly…
The South African Children’s Mask Exhibit is most unconventional: All of the artists reside in the Agape Children’s Home in Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa, and all are orphans whose parents succumbed to AIDS. This artistic project evolved from support efforts from Denver’s Epworth Methodist Church and a Nashville church…
