The Perfect Party. Tony, the protagonist, is a middle-aged professor, steeped in American history and literature. He has quit his job in pursuit of a single overwhelming passion — to host the perfect party — and has invited Lois, a critic from a “major New York newspaper,” to witness and…
I’ve sometimes been criticized for promoting our own art scene too much, though my detractors often misunderstand my position. It’s not that I want our local institutions to feature only artists from around here, but rather to better integrate them into their exhibition schedules. In championing this cause over the…
Some time ago, Bobbi Walker, owner of Walker Fine Art, accused me of always making fun of her titles. I strongly made the claim that she was wrong. Honestly, I don’t always do it, just most of the time. But, come on, she makes it so easy. This time the…
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…
Casino Royale (Sony) James Bond gets a stirring shake-up in the best — yeah, Goldfinger fans, the best — film in the series’ 44-year history. Daniel Craig’s 007 has more going on above the neck and below the waist than even Sean Connery’s. He’s a genuinely compelling character — a…
Whether it’s slaying dragons in Zelda, zapping aliens in Halo, or inserting foot A into ass B in Virtua Fighter, the best games are the ones that offer some level of wish fulfillment. Grand Theft Auto added “Help yourself to a car” and “Drive it on the sidewalk” to the…
American Cousins (BFS) Appetite for Deconstruction: A Punk Rockumentary (MVD) Barbie Fairytopia: Magic of the Rainbow (Universal) Bloody Reunion (Tartan) Blood Trails (Lions Gate) The Ed Wood Collection: A Salute to Incompetence (Passport) Favela Rising (Netflix) Fires on the Plain: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) The Gene Autry 100th Anniversary Collection…
Cat may have found a new obsession: the Hyundai QarmaQ. The concept car, which debuted this week at the Geneva Motor Show, is just a prototype overseas, but it looks super sleek, and the skin is made from recycled plastic. Plus, it has a diesel engine in it, so you…
Michael J. Duran, artistic director for Boulder’s Dinner Theatre, lured Jeffrey Nickelson — artistic director and founder of Shadow Theatre Company — to the Dinner Theatre stage along with six other Shadow actors. The bait: Ragtime, a play that requires a diversity that the primarily African-American theater troupe was able…
To all who suffered through the 88 minutes of torture that was Beyoncé’s 2001 flop, Carmen: A Hip Hopera, and to all who endured — chapter by merciless chapter — all twelve segments of R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet, I offer this solace: Your hunger for hip-hop theater that…
Maybe it’s their suspenders. Or their ladder-climbing, hose-wrangling, pole-sliding panache. Hell, saving kittens from trees and babies from burning buildings doesn’t hurt, either. It really doesn’t matter what that je ne sais quoi quality is; the fact is, firefighters are damn sexy, and during tonight’s Fire Chief Ale date auction,…
If your pooch only knows how to sit and roll over, he’s so 2006. Time to teach him the two-step, the foxtrot — maybe even the rumba. All over YouTube, there’s a growing number of clips featuring real live dogs bopping through routines ranging from Grease’s “You’re the One that…
America clearly has talent. But if shows such as American Idol have taught us anything, it’s that Americans aren’t always clear on whether they actually have it or not. For this reason, talent shows are cursed to forever feature the clueless — if not the totally talentless and the downright…
Irish culture in Denver seems limited to the long list of Irish-themed bars and our massive St. Patrick’s Day Parade (the largest west of the Mississippi!) — but as attendees to J.K. Mullen’s Irish Denver Tour will discover, there’s much more to our Celtic history than booze and step dancing…
Peggy Markel was one of the first people to bring the slow-food movement to the United States. It started in Italy, where the Boulder resident designs and directs culinary tours. Italians saw fast food taking over America and wanted to protect their trattorias and mom-and-pop restaurants from being overrun by…
If the models at tonight’s Art Directors Club of Denver fashion show are in danger of anything, it’s not being stuck by pins or having their zippers snag; rather, it’s the likelihood of getting a paper cut. But Susan Burnett, administrative director for the ADCD, says she’s not aware of…
Genocide and alienation are two topics that seem more depressing than inspirational. But Lemon Sponge Cake choreographer Robert Sher-Machherndl carves beautiful ballets from such dark subjects. His latest work, Leopoldstadt 22, recalls his childhood in Austria and the aftereffects of World War II. “It’s a comment on the Holocaust,” acknowledges…
Long ago, there reigned a clan of Speedo-wearing militaristic psychopaths called the Spartans. They lived beneath a copper-colored sky, on a copper-colored land, amid copper-colored fields, in copper-colored homes made from copper-colored stone. Legend has it that they would outline their copper-colored pecs and abs with ash to enhance their…
I am sorry to say that Peter did not feel very well that evening. His mother put him to bed and gave him a dose of chamomile tea. ‘One tablespoon to be taken at bedtime.’ But Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper. — Beatrix…
A dozen years ago, Kelly Reichardt made her feature debut with a wonderfully desultory, nearly avant-garde riff on the last romantic couple. Reichardt’s River of Grass was a comic, slacker Bonnie and Clyde, set on the edge of the Everglades. Her belated followup, the more elegiac but no less site-specific…
Gross-out horror is never far from comedy, and The Host, Bong Joon-ho’s giddy creature feature, has an anarchic mess factor worthy of a pile of old Mad magazines. A broadly played clown show full of lowbrow antics, Bong’s big splat is itself a sort of monster — the top-grossing movie…
Alberto Lattuada’s tricky-to-parse Mafioso dates from 1962, but with its abrupt tonal shifts and disturbing existential premise, the nearly forgotten dark comedy could be the most modern (or at least modernist) movie in town. Released by Rialto on the heels of its triumphantly rediscovered Army of Shadows, Lattuada’s tale of…
