For the past four years, artist, arts advocate and art impresario Eric Matelski has been presenting the monthly First Monday Art Talk at Dazzle. But all good things come to an end, and so it is with this series: Tonight’s installment is the last. “America is a great arts place,…
For 365 days of the past 23 years, my mother has given me nothing but unwavering love, guidance and support. And in return, I have given her nothing but the most sincere store-bought Mother’s Day cards on exactly one day of each of those years. That is to say, I…
WWII-era refugees-turned-textile-designers Zika and Lida Ascher took London by storm in the ’40s, creating screen-printed fabrics, Day-Glo mohairs and other mod innovations that remained popular in the world of couture through the early ’70s. But perhaps their most famous contribution came in the form of limited-edition scarves — they called…
It’s easy to watch the Boulder Kinetics videos on the KBCO website and dismiss the event as a bunch of wackos in weird costumes riding around in bizarre boats. But it’s way more fun than that. The “sculptures,” as the boats/land cruisers are known, must be lake-worthy and able to…
What is it with third installments of superhero film franchises? For whatever reason — and, oh, let’s just call it the lack of fresh ideas commingled with the love of money — they always strike out swinging. It happened with Superman, when Richard Pryor became a superfriend hatching the ridiculous…
Anyone who doubts that moviemaking is an essentially masturbatory endeavor would do well to come — preferably alone — to Jean-Claude Brisseau’s The Exterminating Angels. Women may often have the upper hand in this red-hot fantasy of distaff diddling, but the middle-aged French auteur — a former schoolteacher, believe it…
A reformist disciple of dogme, that earth- and camcorder-shaking movement wherein waves are broken and celebration is cause for alarm, Danish director Susanne Bier makes what you’d call emotional disaster movies. Her Open Hearts and Brothers, melodramas at once feverishly pitched and finely tuned, deploy paralysis and war, respectively, to…
In 1978, popular movies such as Star Wars dominated Denver theater marquees for six months at a time. There was no Internet, no downloading, no Netflix. “Blockbuster” was still a term used without irony by studio execs. And art-house cinema was difficult to come by. That same year, the Denver…
I always get a little worried when I hear that a theater is premiering the work of a local playwright. On principle, I applaud it — absolutely. How’s a writer to learn stagecraft and dramaturgy without collaborating with actors, directors and tech people? And how can a city have a…
Set in 1952, when Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson were vying for the presidency, Senator Joe McCarthy was busy with his anti-Communist witch hunts, and America was humming songs from South Pacific, Oklahoma! and The King and I, Red Herring is a piece of wit that exists on several…
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. This is one ugly family that’s gathered in Big Daddy’s Mississippi Delta home to celebrate the patriarch’s 65th birthday. What almost everyone except Big Daddy himself knows is that he’s dying of cancer. There’s Big Mama, operating in an acute state of denial; son…
The influence of Latin American culture, and Mexican in particular, is easy to find in Denver. For more than a generation, Chicano artists have been front and center here, creating a distinctive category of art based on ethnic, religious and cultural identity. Also a generation back, local visionary José Aguayo…
As an outsider, I’ve been worried about Pirate (3655 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058), the once-funky alternative space that during the past quarter-century became one of the city’s key art institutions. To put a fine point on it, the problem is the low quality of exhibits. Did anybody catch the anniversary show…
Breaking the Mold. In 2003, Connecticut collector Virginia Vogel Mattern donated some 300 pieces of contemporary American Indian art to the Denver Art Museum. For one of the special shows inaugurating the new Frederic C. Hamilton Building, Native Arts curator Nancy Blomberg has selected over a hundred works for the…
Little Children (New Line) In the eyes of Hollywood, our American suburbs are so filled with perversion and treachery that it seems the government ought to crack down on something. Until then, we can count on movies like Little Children to keep us informed. Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson are…
After starring in 20 years’ worth of video games, the Super Mario Brothers have been spread mighty thin. The mustachioed heroes’ latest outing, however, takes this concept to a literal extreme. Paradoxically, Super Paper Mario is like every Mario game you’ve ever played — and like nothing you’ve seen before…
Alpha Dog (Universal) An Officer and a Gentleman: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) The Best of the Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet (Shout) Beverly Hills 90210: The Second Season (Paramount) Clint Eastwood: Western Icon Collection (Universal) A Collection of 2006 Academy Award Nominated Short Films (Magnolia) Fletch: The Jane Doe Edition…
Shoe sale. Those are Cat’s two favorite words in the English language. And on Saturday, May 5, Strut at 3877 Tennyson Street is celebrating its birthday with 15 percent off and champagne. Woohoo! Owner Elyse Burja always has so many cute options that Cat can stock up and not have…
You wanna give peace a chance? The Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver is getting all technological and making it easy: Just visit the site to add your digital offering to its Peace Pile, the interactive portion of the museum’s current Peace Project exhibition. When Cat added her virtual symbol, 1,533 people…
It’s another stylish, stylish week here in D-Town, with lots of stuff Cat doesn’t want to miss. So leave those ball caps and hoodies at home, and hit the streets. WEDNESDAY, MAY 2 Transitions: A Fashion Benefit for UACK 8 p.m. Wynkoop Brewery (upstairs) $10 at the door; $8 in…
Kirsten Dunst has been lighting up the fashion blogosphere with her on-again-off-again relationship with style as she trounces through European press junkets promoting Spidey 3, trying ever so hard to convince crowds that she could, in fact, portray falling if shoved off a cliff. (Naturally, nobody believes her.) The snarky…
Museum of Contemorary Art/Denver director and curator Cydney Payton made her final choices in the Cydney Payton Design Challenge, in which eight designers from the Tamarac Square Fashion Project sketched her a “museum-opening oufit” (appropriate since the new MCA building opens this fall). Payton considered both the artistic and stylistic…
