As the seventeenth of eighteen children from a Honduran-based Mexican mama and German papa, it’s no wonder that Carlos Mencia has race on his mind — and that he knows how to get attention. The first time I watched Mind of Mencia, hearing so many taboos in a row made…
Spending a Thursday night in the corner office might not sound like a fabulous time — unless, of course, we’re talking about the Corner Office Restaurant and Martini Bar at 1401 Curtis Street and it’s the monthly Hip Chicks Out night, when Denver’s loveliest ladies gather to socialize, mingle and…
Mothers and mothers-to-be, now is the time to be BOLD, at Birth on Labor Day, which aims to improve the quality of maternity care. The day starts with the women-only Red Tent Event at 1 p.m. to get together and share birth experiences, create “birth art,” be hennaed and join…
Since 1993, the Dalhart Imperials have played both kinds of music — country and Western — better than just about any of their peers. Tonight, however, they’re playing their final show, and longtime frontman Les Cooper resists romanticizing the reasons behind the breakup. “I just decided to quit,” he says…
In the independent nation of Boulder, the foodies take all things raw, slow, organic, free-range and homegrown just a little too seriously. But if you brush away all the posturing about where your salad came from and what the cow ate before it became a steak, there is some sense…
Back before I wrote anything except awkward poetry or read anything except Beat writers or kissed a girl who wasn’t my mother or really knew why I hated the suburbs (except that I really hated them); back when I stole beer from people’s open garages in the summertime and dreamed…
What dedicated ski bum would even think of starting another season of sliding without prepping for it at Warren Miller’s annual screen paean to the sport? That’s right. None, and zero. The Hollywood-born Miller’s been slapping out his high-energy ski-adventure flicks like hockey pucks for nearly sixty years, and the…
Shortly after graduating from film school, I took a part-time job as the assistant to a successful movie and television director who told me I’d be handling a mix of personal and professional responsibilities. Not long after, I was put to work maintaining the good humor of the tenants at…
Masterfully edited and cumulatively walloping, Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight turns the well-known details of our monstrously bungled Iraq War into an enraging, apocalyptic litany of fuckups. You may have already heard some or all of the absurd, shameful, appalling details that Ferguson collects and still be driven to…
It seems fitting that a movie about debate competition should produce ambivalent feelings. As a master debater says early on in Jeffrey Blitz’s Rocket Science, a strong opinion is a luxury the great ones don’t allow themselves; it only gets in the way. What matters is being able to argue…
Back in 1995, Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise gave flesh to a Yank’s fantasy of worldly European womanhood: Julie Delpy’s Celine, a sprite who materialized on a passenger train for one sweet Viennese night of courtship and flirtation, as if willed from the fevered dreams above a thousand hostel beds. As…
Eight years ago, the philosophy professor-turned-cineast Bruno Dumont debuted his sophomore feature at the Cannes Film Festival. Set in a banal French village on the northeastern coast, the plot involved an investigation by police superintendent Pharaon, a repressed, mouth-breathing mama’s boy, into the rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl…
Modern Muse has kicked off its new season with All In the Timing, six one-acts by David Ives, a witty, sometimes brilliant word-spinner. The plays are all about language, communication and understanding, and also chance and fate. The dialogue is light and funny and fizzy, and it gets your frontal…
Sista’s and Storytellers. This is not a play, and it’s not exactly a cabaret act, either. It’s sort of a cross between a slumber party and a church service, as a group of women who sang together as children in a choir called the Heavenly Voices come together for a…
Even though Shannon Corrigan has been at the helm of the Emmanuel Gallery on the Auraria campus for a couple of years now, there’s still something of a breath of fresh air to the place — and she’s apparently the one who’s brought it. Why Emmanuel needed air in the…
Summer — especially as hot as this one’s been — strikes me as an odd time to be thinking about quilts, but that’s what’s on the mind of Judy Hagler, owner of Translations Gallery (773 Santa Fe Drive, 303-629-0713), in her new exhibit, Flow. Then again, the cloth pieces in…
The American Landscape and Carny. Rule Gallery has typically presented single solos since landing in its new space several months ago, but this time, there are two different shows in that long and narrow sales room. The two work well together, though, as both are made up of photographs about…
Most people are only interested in what’s inside their beer can. But most people aren’t members of the Brewery Collectibles Club of America (BCCA), the 4,000-member outfit that will hold its 37th annual CANvention today through September 1 at the Adam’s Mark Hotel, 1550 Court Place. Denver adman and beer…
“We got about a hundred feet by eight feet of painters’ tarp,” explains Dave Momper, “and we made an adult-sized Slip ‘n Slide. We stake it down at one end, and we get sprinkler heads arranged so the water’s landing on the slide. The secret is that you’ve gotta get…
Shoppers with an international flair can’t possibly miss today’s Global Market hosted by local Lutheran Family Services refugee and asylum programs. The market features an astounding outlay of exotic fair-trade goods that come from every corner of the earth, including the horn of Africa, southeast Asia, Central America and the…
During the first two years of Boulder’s International Fringe Festival, something about its “Pick of the Fringe” component didn’t seem right. A panel of judges chose the Fringe’s best works for an end-of-festival showcase, relying in part on audience votes that were prone to ballot-stuffing mischief — not the kind…
Milan Records operates in a niche, yet its diverse boundaries seem endless: Specializing in film soundtracks, along with Latin, electronic and generally uncategorizable musical varieties, Milan embraces the ambient nature of music like no other label. Accordingly, a Milan-inspired film festival is a complete no-brainer: Such a purveyor of music…
