As one of what novelist Stephen King calls his Constant Readers, I was as jazzed as every other monster-lovin’ geek when word came that filmmaker Frank Darabont was making a movie of King’s classic novella The Mist. Adapting King’s The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999) brought the…
Hard to believe that it’s been twenty years since the release of The Princess Bride, if only because it hasn’t aged a day — the mark of something truly, blessedly timeless. Bereft of the pop-culture gags that curdle the Shrek movies and absent the cynicism of most other kids’ films…
The unsettling tone is established early in Call of Duty 4, when the president of a Middle Eastern nation is publicly executed on the world stage, and you, the player, experience the deposed leader’s final minutes through his own eyes, witnessing — through the rear window of a car —…
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse(Paramount) At last available on DVD, Eleanor Coppola’s 1991 documentary about her husband’s tumultuous trek downriver remains, easily, the best film ever about the making of a movie and unmaking of a man. Francis Ford Coppola thought he was going to spend 16 weeks in…
Angel-A (Sony) The Batman: The Complete Fourth Season (Warner Bros.) Bill Maher: The Decider (HBO) Broken (First Look) Chappelle’s Show: The Series Collection (Paramount) CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: The Complete Seventh Season (Paramount) Eric Clapton: Crossroads Guitar Festival 2007 (Rhino) Gene Simmons Family Jewels: The Complete Season 2 (A&E) Hairspray…
Forget the 1950s play and movie about Anne Frank’s diary, the generations of schoolchildren assigned to read the book, the myths that have arisen around the image of Anne Frank herself, the controversies about the way she’s been represented. Just focus on Anne Frank’s words. After all these years —…
Sometimes I wonder if there’s a kind of thespian hell, in which actors who are clearly capable of so much more are stuck forever in stale shows as punishment for being bad in some way. If so, Plaid Tidings definitely qualifies. There are a few good things about this holiday…
For Better. Karen has just become engaged to Max. She’s met him face-to-face only once, but they’ve conducted a three-month relationship via cell-phone conversations, texting and instant messaging. Everyone in Karen’s small circle —- sister Francine, brother-in-law Michael, old friend Stuart (who’s secretly in love with her) and Francine’s best…
There’s nothing new about working at the intersection of art mediums, especially pieces that combine aspects of both painting and sculpture. Take, for instance, those bas-reliefs from antiquity. Since they are three-dimensional, they’re technically sculptures, but because they were meant to be viewed from one side only, they’re actually more…
With the opening of the Denver Art Museum’s Hamilton Building last year and the unveiling of the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver last month, the city’s gallery owners have really stepped up to compete. The happy result has been a season crammed with first-rate offerings — something that wasn’t so common…
Clyfford Still Unveiled. A master and pioneer of mid-twentieth-century abstract expressionism, painter Clyfford Still was something of an eccentric in the artist-as-egomaniac stripe. His antisocial behavior led to a situation where 94 percent of his artworks remained together after he died — a staggeringly complete chronicle of his oeuvre that…
Thanks to another year of early openings, the ski and ride season is officially here. If you’ve been dreaming about floating in powder or trying out telemark skis, now’s the time to get in line. The trend all over Colorado is steep and deep, with sky-scraping backcountry and extremes. Resorts…
The holiday shopping season is is in earnest full gear, but there’s more than one way to combat its exhaustive toll. For one, you could turn it into a mini vacation in your own town, a trick that just got easier thanks to a promotion sponsored by the Denver Metro…
Not unlike the homeless denizens of Barbara Lebow’s Tiny Tim Is Dead, the Theatre Group found itself on the street after being evicted last May from its longtime home, the Theatre On Broadway. But the troupe’s heavily gay-centric fan base from the old days at TOB aren’t the only folks…
How do you escape the pressures of the holidays, like, really quick? Bundle up, drop your packages in the trunk, pinch your cheeks until they glow and strap on a pair of silver skates, Hans Brinker, for a glide across the frozen expanse at one of the region’s many old-fashioned…
Tony and Tina must really love each other. After all, the two have been married hundreds — if not thousands — of times since Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding opened off Broadway in 1988. And although their wedding is a little different every time, it’s still the craziest, funniest affair you’re…
Improv is an art form. It takes skills to garner tidbits of information from audience members and weave them into a narrative that actually makes sense — and that’s actually funny — in spontaneous sketches and games. The folks at Bovine Metropolis Theater do improv very well — so well,…
My freshman year at Colorado College was peppered with disappointing social exchanges. I didn’t like keggers quite as much as I’d imagined, and yoga class turned out to be a bad way to meet boys. So when my roommate invited me to the hockey match against the University of Denver…
Each year around the holidays, the Colorado Ballet presents Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, and Gil Boggs, the company’s artistic director, notes that the latest version, which debuts today, isn’t terribly different than its predecessors. “As we like to say, we do your grandmother’s Nutcracker,” he concedes. Boggs insists that…
Thanksgiving doesn’t have enough TV specials. Oh, sure, it’s got Charlie Brown, but I covered how weak that is earlier. And there’s the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, but aside from seeing how cold and wet the Broadway dancers are going to be doing their thing in Herald Square, it’s basically just…
After 3 seasons of Project Runway, it seems evident that nobody does the wacky-artsy-type thing like an aspiring designer (though you can also catch some truly wacked-out antics on America’s Next Top Model, which is also on tonight). And nobody has perfected this craziness as much as this season’s yoga-lovin’,…
Okay, maybe not ever. I’m not counting aberrations like and It’s Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown, or You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown, or Try My Flugelhorn, Charlie Brown (and of those three, I only made one of them up). I’m talking about the big ones, the ones that we watched as kids…
