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…
It will no doubt be said time and again of Michael Clayton: best John Grisham adaptation ever. Only, of course, it did not spring from the billion-dollar mind of the attorney-turned-franchise, but from Tony Gilroy, who made his big-screen bow fifteen years ago as the screenwriter of the ice-skating melodrama…
What’s left to say about Halo 3? How about this: All the pomp and circumstance surrounding its launch sure have been distracting. Commercials that look like clips from a Hollywood movie, extravagant collectors’ sets that sell for $130, limited-edition Xbox 360s with a green-and-gold Halo-inspired color scheme, and a midnight…
You Kill Me(Genius) Funny thing seeing Philip Baker Hall in You Kill Me, as he’s already played the role of a drunken hit man’s boss in The Matador, to which this feels like a slapshtick-noir sequel. It’s also the photo-negative of Sexy Beast: Once more Ben Kingsley plays a killer…
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Three (Universal) Black Sheep Unrated (Genius) Bob Mould: Circle of Friends (Granary) Bruce Springsteen: Under Review-1978-82: Tales of the Working Man (Sexy Intellectual) Concert for Diana (Universal) CSI New York: The Third Season (Paramount) Man Push Cart (Koch Lorber) The Marx Brothers Collection (Passport) Meerkat Manor:…
Any play by John Patrick Shanley is worthwhile, but Defiance is a far slighter script than other works of his that I’ve seen. The second play in a projected trilogy (the first is Doubt, which took the Pulitzer Prize and will be staged by the Denver Center Theatre Company in…
In 1936, the year it was written, You Can’t Take It With You would have been described as zany or madcap. It’s about the doings of a dotty, vaguely artistically inclined family. Penelope Sycamore writes plays because someone once left a typewriter on the doorstep. Her husband, Paul, makes fireworks…
How I Learned to Drive. “Look at me,” Uncle Peck pleads to his young niece, the narrator-protagonist of How I Learned to Drive. “Listen to me.” And that’s just what she does. Deeply and over a period of years, she ponders her relationship with the uncle who first molested her…
In August, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center unveiled its new wing, designed by Denver architect David Owen Tryba and his team. The addition is attached to the original John Gaw Meem building, which was built in 1936, a masterpiece of the art moderne that melds Pueblo-style design with early…
For his swan song as the outgoing director of the Phillip J. Steele Gallery at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design (1600 Pierce Street, 303-225-8575, www.rmcad.edu), Eric Shumake is presenting the spectacular Stefan Kleinschuster: 10 Ways to Kill a Hero. Kleinschuster is one of the area’s most exciting…
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…
During the early portion of his career, the late Syd Barrett, who named and led Pink Floyd, generally maintained his equilibrium while treading the fine line between genius and madness — but he couldn’t keep up this balancing act indefinitely. His slow-motion tumble into mental illness, and the strange, beautiful…
There’s possibly no better book to discuss at a library than Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s prophetic parable about a book-burning society of the future. The novel was an obvious choice for The Big Read, a nationwide initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts to encourage folks to read. And…
Jake La Botz has a lot of tattoos — so many he’s not even sure how many he has anymore. “It starts getting blurry when your whole back is covered,” he says. He also has a lot of friends in the tattoo business. And it also turns out that a…
