As an actor, John C. Reilly is the opposite of Mr. Cellophane. He doesn’t disappear into a role; roles disappear onto him — the unlikely porn sidekick of Boogie Nights, the inadequately adequate family man of The Hours, the cutup cowboy of A Prairie Home Companion, all stamped and imprinted…
Kites fly high over the San Francisco Bay and Kabul (okay, China), but not much else soars in Marc Forster’s flaccid adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s vivid 2002 novel, which covers three decades of Afghanistan’s misery under serial totalitarian rule. Arriving on the heels of Atonement, The Kite Runner tells a…
Simmering below the squeamish elder-care euphemism “uncharted territory” is a fearful awareness that when it comes to dealing with the growing army of senile parents, we have no idea what the hell we’re doing. Tamara Jenkins plumbs the depths of that terror in her new film, The Savages, and jacks…
Nothing says “holiday spirit” quite like stabbing a terrorist or hammering a goombah, as the hottest games this season invite us to do. But no matter how cutting-edge the stars of 2007 may be, they are also unmistakably familiar. This week, we stack the holiday hits of today against the…
Once (Fox)Easily the year’s most perfect pop album — damned good movie too, the finest “musical” of the past 20 years. The disc’s making-of refers to it as a “modern musical,” but Once is as old-fashioned as it gets: Guy (Glen Hansard) meets Girl (Markéta Irglová), they fall in love,…
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume Two — The War Years (Paramount) Alien Apocalypse (Anchor Bay) Balls of Fury (Universal) Black Moon Rising (Anchor Bay) Boy Eats Girl (Lionsgate) Braveheart: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) Bring It On: In It to Win It (Universal) Cinderella II: Dreams Come True Special…
Marley was dead.” Those are the first words of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, although he still pops up again a couple of times: Scrooge sees his old partner’s face in the door knocker, looking like “a bad lobster in a dark cellar,” and Marley’s ghost later appears festooned in…
La Cage Aux Folles. This is a big, splashy musical with lots of big, splashy song numbers. But unlike many such musicals, La Cage Aux Folles also has heart, humor and a good story to tell. In a time of intense mean-spiritedness and prejudice, it carries a message of tolerance…
The Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver opened its brand-new David Adjaye-designed building at the corner of 15th and Delgany streets less than two months ago. I love the building and the fact that the upstart institution managed to construct a high-style facility by an internationally famous architect, and I focused on…
American Art Invitational. Art, like politics, can be divided into liberal and conservative camps, with contemporary art representing the left and traditional art the right. But unlike politics, where the baton can pass back and forth between the two opposites, the art world has been run decisively by the liberals…
The idea for a quartet of solo shows at Sandy Carson Gallery (760 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-8585, www.sandycarsongallery.com) began when owner Sandy Carson decided she wanted to mount an exhibit devoted to Toronto hotshot Tony Scherman, one of the foremost encaustic painters anywhere. Encaustic, by the way, is a wax-based…
If you’re anything like me — thousands of miles away from your family, with no money for airfare and a girlfriend who flies home every Christmas — then you’re likely to get a little bitter around the holidays, with only your dog and reruns of A Christmas Story to keep…
The world is full of holiday-season art shows that fall before Christmas, not on the day after. But at South Broadway Christian Church, 23 Lincoln Street, they decided to do things a little differently. Based on the success of an Easter Stations of the Cross exhibit staged there for Easter…
Tonight is the winter solstice, the longest night of the year and a traditional time of celebration for almost every culture on the planet. Denverites can mark the imminent return of seeing the sun for more than a couple hours a day at the Dark Night Mysteries Solstice Celebration, tonight…
Embrace the ephemeral nature of beauty over the next three days during the Downtown Denver Partnership’s Ice Sculpting in Skyline Park. Meet in front of the holiday tree in Skyline Park, 1825 Arapahoe Street, at 10:30 a.m. today through Saturday to watch one of the most fleeting of all art…
Although there seem to be Santa Clauses everywhere at this time of year, they’re seldom accompanied by the Grinch and Cindy Lou Who. Today, however, all three take part in Movies With Santa, presented by the Shops at Northfield Stapleton, 8340 Northfield Boulevard. According to marketing director Joyce Rocha-Brown, the…
The title of Á Colorado en una Noche de Navidad (To Colorado on a Christmas Night), a musical-theater piece by El Centro Su Teatro that debuts tonight, is drawn from a new version of singer-songwriter Tish Hinojosa’s “From Texas for a Christmas Night” — and writer/director Anthony J. Garcia, who…
“It’s like storytime for grownups,” says Debbie Knapp, a performer for Colorado Homegrown Tales — a dramatic-reading series highlighting stories by local authors. “It’s a nice way to take a break from the holiday mayhem, harking back to the tradition of getting everyone together for the holidays and telling funny…
I grew up in Evergreen, so for me, it doesn’t feel like the holidays until I’ve taken a spin around Evergreen Lake on my ice skates. Luckily for me, I can still squeeze in a quick dose of wintertime exercise before I unwrap my presents this morning, because the lake…
Imagine for a moment that you are Mary, and you’re roundly pregnant with your first child — about to pop, as they say — and you and your husband are seeking shelter for the night in a strange town. But there are hundreds of others who need shelter, who have…
Since the lunar perigree (commonly known as the full moon) doesn’t technically come to fruition until tomorrow morning at 3:12, tonight’s Full Moon Ski and Skate won’t take place beneath a completely, 100 percent, no-holds-barred full moon — but the sky will still be bright enough to light the way…
Chocolate fiends and those with sweet teeth, take note: Keystone chef Ned Archibald’s Chocolate Village, which he (along with his helpers) installs every year in the lobby of Keystone Lodge, might look like a Wonka-esque wonderland filled with delicious delicacies — but seeing as how Archibald recycles the village each…
