Last weekend, during the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) convention in Denver, the Denver Art Museum announced the hiring of Darrin Alfred (pictured) to the newly created post of AIGA assistant curator of graphic design. He was introduced by DAM director Lewis Sharp and AIGA executive director Richard Grefé…
Artisans & Kings. For its first extravaganza of the season, the Denver Art Museum has unveiled a sprawling blockbuster in the Frederic C. Hamilton Building that focuses on the royal collections from the Louvre. You don’t have to know much about art to have heard of the Louvre, so Artisans…
When Pumpkin King Jack Skellington stumbles from Halloween Town to Christmas Land, no one — except, perhaps, his perceptive little friend Sally — can foresee the impending disaster that will arrive when Jack attempts to take over Christmas for a year. He gets the Halloween Townspeople to help create toys…
“Who doesn’t want to put on cowboy boots and swing around a couple of six-shooters?” asks director Geoffrey Kent about a new production of Macbeth that has undergone a downright do-over. An eighteen-member boots- and bridle-shuckin’ Colorado cast, led by William Hahn and Karen Slack, has carved the classic Shakespearean…
Already got your board and boots waiting by the front door? Take a break from watching snow reports to view something that’s sure to make you even more frantic for the season’s start: the Denver premiere of Enjoy, the newest ski film from Rage Productions, which takes place tonight at…
When fashion crosses over into art, the subtle collision really hits on why we care about what we wear in the first place: It’s an aesthetic choice we make every day that keeps us in touch with our creative innards. What happens when fashion designers cross over to become fine…
Ever wondered what a Björk song would sound like interpreted by a barbershop quartet? Or what if someone decided to play Philip Glass using glasses filled with water? These are just some of the many original musical performances that have taken place in the past two years during the School…
An accident in I-70’s Eisenhower Tunnel uncovers a forty-year-old conspiracy at the heart of American history in the first chapters of The Mongoose Deception, the latest CJ Floyd mystery. Floyd is up against the biggest mystery of his life, and perhaps the biggest of all time: Who really killed JFK?…
Maybe it sounds like bad sci-fi, but I’m writing today because of an extraterrestrial alien. Forget mind-control beams or flying saucers: My alien involved an eighth-grade science project in which everyone designed an ET evolved to a specific foreign environment. I mark that assignment as the moment I started taking…
In the past, author Richard Russo, the guest of honor at a book-signing tonight, has described himself as essentially a comic writer. Nonetheless, Bridge of Sighs, his newest offering, is “a deeply melancholy book,” he concedes. “This is the first book of mine that’s probably tipped over into, if not…
Most Americans know the late Mario Moreno, aka Cantinflas, from 1956’s Around the World in Eighty Days. But his resumé is much longer in his native Mexico, where he was a beloved performer once dubbed “the world’s greatest comedian” by Charlie Chaplin. According to Su Teatro artistic director Tony Garcia,…
According to PlatteForum founder and artistic director Judy Anderson, current resident artist Rory Golden is a fascinating character who paints into the wee hours, creating images drenched in an honest, egoless interest in righting wrongs and taking on social issues. A book artist with branches, Golden works with unusual materials:…
Today’s FastFilm Festival in Boulder is so quickly paced that filmmakers will enjoy just ten minutes of fame rather than the requisite fifteen. But that’s kind of the point. The compendium of seven-minute films (with three minutes at the end of each movie for a mini Q&A session) is the…
The capital-punishment issue has rarely been handled more poignantly than in Sister Helen Prejean’s book, Dead Man Walking, and its 1995 film version, directed by Tim Robbins and amply brought to life by the tour-de-force performances of Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon. Both, too, were spun from the very stuff…
Fade in. Three twelve-year-old Mississippi boys find themselves enraptured by the 1981 Lucas/Spielberg classic Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s summer, and they’ve yet to discover girls. Or maybe it’s the girls who have yet to do the discovering. The guys rent a video camera and enlist anyone willing to…
Who doesn’t love a scary story this time of year — especially one that was written by the king of creepy, Edgar Allan Poe? That’s why the Hunger Artists Ensemble Theatre’s presentation of An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe is so brilliant. Director Maggie Stillman moved the Halloween favorite to…
Each October, the Mercury Motley Players put together an original dramedy to entertain the masses. This year’s Allied Witches: Hot Colombian Nights is no exception — though the Players may have outdone themselves in terms of scope and meaning. “It’s about the drug war in Colombia, it’s kind of about…
There’s nothing funny about Denver’s sequential art storytelling scene (that’s comics to the layperson). A local community of cartoonists has been rising slowly in recent years, thanks in part to projects like the Denver 24-Hour Comics Challenge. “Every little thing like this can help,” says Jim Brown of Enchanted Grounds…
The tenth annual Denver Public Library Booklovers’ Ball revolves around the theme “Elements,” so it’s no surprise that the DPL is attempting to make the event as green as possible. The menu comprises either locally grown or organic food, the ball’s organizers will compost and recycle absolutely everything they can,…
Suddenly, Denver’s looking good. The most sedate businessmen have taken to sporting hip glasses that echo those angular peepers sported by Daniel Libeskind, the architect who’s already done so much to change Denver’s skyline. Is he the reason that men here are suddenly making spectacles of themselves? Not so those…
The estranged brothers Whitman have reunited for a journey on board The Darjeeling Limited, a colorful old locomotive traversing the Rajasthan region of India. Along the way, they will stop to visit temples (“Probably one of the most spiritual places on earth!”) and shop for souvenirs (slippers, cobras, pepper spray),…
Will you leave your kingdom to a heretic?” That was the question posed to a dying Queen Mary in 1998’s Elizabeth, director Shekhar Kapur’s grim and dingy film now viewed in retrospect as the origin story of a superhero: the Armored Virgin Queen, faster than a speeding lead pellet, more…
