A Bitter End

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…

Up and Coming

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…

Macbeth

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…

Some Girls

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…

Now Playing

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…

Marecak Diptych

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…

Containers and Doug Wilson

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…

Now Showing

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…

Krazy Kollege Kids

Bongs, beers, Facebook and heartbreak. What is…me cowering in the corner of my dorm room freshman year? Nope, it’s actually a couple of the issues covered in KollegeTV, the new “webisode” series premiering today at www.kollegetv.com. KollegeTV features online clips that run about two minutes. The first season (roughly 25…

Well Fed

Most of us don’t think being audited is especially amusing — but perhaps we might if our accounts were being examined by David Waters, a tax collector who’s among the participants in tonight’s Denver’s Funniest Fed Finals. According to event organizer Scott Shirai, the executive director of metropolitan Denver’s Combined…

Hail to the King

Much like Ol’ Saint Nick, Elvis Presley was a giving man. As well as contributing to a long list of favorite charities, Elvis handed out cash, cars and even houses to friends and to strangers in need. That’s why Christmas was his favorite holiday, according to Chris Barber, aka the…

Visualizing Change

After watching the 1999 World Trade Organization protests unfold before their eyes in Seattle, Jill Dreier and some like-minded friends returned to Denver energized and ready to do something to further the message of the burgeoning anti-globalization movement. Dreier says that at any of these large protests, you can find…

Skyrockets in Flight

“Rocketman” Jimmy Descant and his wife moved to Salida in 2006 under less than auspicious circumstances. “I’d been a lifelong resident of New Orleans, but it was getting time for me to go out west somewhere,” Descant says. “When Katrina happened, we were at the end of a few-month trip…

Film and Food

About three years ago, Jimmie Lee Smith and his wife were having sandwiches and coffee at the cafe in New York’s Angelika Film Center. They wanted to take the sandwiches into the theater, but they weren’t allowed. Although Smith — a Denver native who spent sixteen years in New York…

Musical Mentors

Although a classic in its own right, Run-DMC’s version of “Walk This Way” isn’t the type of reimagining that the Marcus Roberts Trio has in mind. No disrespect to the guys sans shoelaces, but Re-Creative Fusion is a more complicated animal. Tonight, starting at 7:30 p.m. in Macky Auditorium on…

School of Rock

Swallow Hill has long been Denver’s main haven for folk, roots and acoustic music. But Chad Johnson, who’s been giving private drum lessons there for the past seven years, is throwing something a little heavier into the equation with Rock Academy, which he started in August. He wanted to teach…

Grateful Dead

So you’ve put away your Elmo costume, and you’re coming down off your candy-corn-fueled sugar high, and you’re asking yourself, “Why exactly do we go door to door in silly outfits, demanding that outright strangers give us vast quantities of candy?” If you’re looking for a macabre holiday with a…

Son Sets

Nirvana put out some of the most exciting and influential music of the past quarter-century, yet these sounds are nowhere to be heard in Kurt Cobain: About a Son. According to the documentary’s production materials, director AJ Schnack had been planning to use a single Nirvana tune near the film’s…

Fashion First

What started out as a little sample sale ten years ago — conceived as an opportunity to offer more one-of-a-kind prototypes to the public by collaborating designers Debi Belk of Lele Knitwear and Laura Woodward of Garden Girl — has turned into a holiday tradition. The dressmakers have been joined…

Out of the Trunk

The elephant journal is Boulder personified: Touted to be the town’s “guide to the mindful life,” it deals with all things natural, organic, ecological, indie, spiritual and yogic, with just the right level of laid-back, we’re-okay, let’s-jam temper we all expect of someone dispensing such Boulderiana. Well, when in Boulder,…

It’s a Potluck, My Dear Watson

It’s no mystery where the Sherlock Holmes aficionados will be tonight. Dr. Watson’s Neglected Patients’ annual Guy Fawkes Day Celebration is going on this evening at the French Quarter Condominiums Clubhouse, 155 South Monaco Parkway, from 5 to 9 p.m. The free annual event includes a potluck supper and a…

Hey Jude

Everyone’s complaining about the cost of health care, and the plight of people with no health insurance and medical bills to pay is very real. Take, for example, local photographer Judy Sanchez: Recently hospitalized, she ended up needing a cardiac arrhythmia procedure and was left owing a substantial amount of…