I haven’t bought anything from Wal-Mart in more than five years. Why? Because I believe in putting my money where my mouth is, and there are many aspects of the retail giant’s practices that I don’t like. It takes a little more time and research to find the same deals…
When asked about today’s screening of Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, Britta Erickson, director of industry relations for the Starz Denver Film Festival, says, “I can’t think of a more perfect film for ‘Saturday at the Movies,'” a fest event aimed at families. “It’s a film everyone can enjoy seeing —…
Sure, you’ll be snowed by all the deals at the sixteenth annual Colorado Ski & Snowboard Expo, which turns the Colorado Convention Center into a giant temporary ski shop (with 20,000 square feet of inventory, as well as info from all 25 Colorado resorts) today through November 11. But there’s…
It’s déjà vu all over again. In March 1988, Hollywood writers went on strike, and stayed on the picket line until August of that year. The issue then was pretty much the same issue as it is now in 2007, though dressed up in high-tech clothes. In ’88 it was…
View a larger image of the full wall. As always, it’s back to the CIA wall where RTD honcho ACEE, HOME from BTR crew and Double from GuerillaGarden have sprayed down an homage to the Dave Chappelle character Sir Smoke-A-Lot, from the 1998 cult classic, Half Baked. It’s the little…
It was a clothes call. On November 5, followers of local fashion were supposed to get a look at what some of Denver’s favorite independent designers are up to. On that day, Frock Out Denver: Independent Designers Challenge, a collaboration between the Denver Public Library and the Fabric Lab, was…
The writers’ strike started in Hollywood today. Hasn’t been one since 1988, when a five-month strike kept TV in reruns, and may have eventually brought about the rise of reality television. So what can we, the viewers, do without our favorite shows? Here are real-life ways to still enjoy ten…
In what has to be the coolest guerilla marketing campaign ever, Denver-based furniture fabricators Double Butter took it upon themselves to install their designs outside two of the most coveted locations the city has available to artists: The Denver Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art | Denver. Installation…
American Gangster is a movie with obvious gravitas and a familiar argument: Organized crime is outsider capitalism. As archetypal as its title, Ridley Scott’s would-be epic aspires to enshrine Harlem dope king Frank Lucas in Hollywood heaven, heir to Scarface and the Godfather. Or, as suggested by the Mark Jacobson…
John Cusack, who more or less began his career sneaking a peek at Molly Ringwald’s panties in Sixteen Candles, has finally become an on-screen daddy — only took, what, 23 years? Except he’s not exactly the most fortunate family man on film: First, in Martian Child, he plays a widower…
Wristcutters: A Love Story, a well-wrought indie written and directed by Goran Dukic, has to be the kewpie doll of current zombie flicks: Its walking dead are a bunch of attractive slackers whose wounds are largely internal. They’ve got attitude. Before the opening credits end, the movie’s glum protagonist has…
Pity the fool hired to scribble the DVD-jacket copy for Kurt Cobain: About a Son: The film sounds horrific on paper. It’s a 92-minute experimental documentary about the endlessly lionized “alternative” icon that doesn’t include a guitar lick of his music, a testimonial from anyone personally acquainted with the man,…
Before he snagged the lead in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1972 screen version of Anthony Shaffer’s 1970 stage play Sleuth, Laurence Olivier had, with his customary diplomatic finesse, dismissed the source material as “a piece of piss.” Two movie adaptations later, I’m inclined to agree with that assessment. Still, it’s not…
It must’ve been a scorching summer day when the game developer stared at his thermometer and realized, “Sweet sassy molassey, this would make a helluva game!” How else to explain the existence of the quirky puzzle series Mercury Meltdown? Debuting on the PSP, the original Mercury Meltdown turned Marble Madness…
No End in Sight(Magnolia)Charles Ferguson’s debut doc, easily the most important in a year full of notable fact-gathering films, assembles some of the key players behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq and seems to ask them but one question: “What went wrong?” In short: everything. But Ferguson’s doc is…
The Amicus Collection (Dark Sky) Angel: Complete Series Collector’s Set (Fox) Beastie Boys: The Complete Story (Video Music) Benny Hill: The Complete Megaset (A&E) A Christmas Story (Warner Bros.) CSI Miami: The Fifth Season (Paramount) The Cup (Festival Media) Day Watch (Fox) Dear Jesse (Sovereign) The Devil Came on Horseback…
This production of Macbeth, the first directorial effort by actor and fight choreographer Geoffrey Kent, promised to bring new life to Shakespeare’s tragedy by setting it in America’s frontier West — not the West of national myth, enshrined in John Wayne movies, but the grimmer and more violent terrain of…
Guy, now in his early forties, has a habit of loving and leaving his women. He holds out promises of long-term commitment but tends to vanish when things get serious or difficult. Shortly before his planned marriage to an almost-23-year-old nurse, he decides to look up four of his past…
Defiance. The second play in a projected trilogy (the first is Doubt, which took the Pulitzer Prize and will be staged at the Denver Center in spring), Defiance examines the state of the U.S. Marine Corps in 1971, when the Vietnam War had lost all vestige of legitimacy for most…
Twenty years ago, there was little if any interest in the history of Colorado art, aside from turn-of-the-last-century landscape painting; that stuff never got old, while everything else did. But as the 1990s dawned and people began to think of the imminence of the 21st century, there was a lot…
Sculptor Bob Mangold and his wife, Peggy, an art dealer, are both in their seventies, and given their many contributions to the local art world (including being among the founders of the Museum of Contemporary Art), they are living cultural treasures in Denver. That makes their gallery (which doubles as…
American Dreams. Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid were among the first artists to embrace conceptual realism in the 1960s. Although the two no longer collaborate, American Dreams, at the Singer Gallery, focuses on a body of work they did in the 1990s. The paintings and collages combine images of George…
