Colorado Modernism: 1930-1970. Though some believe that Colorado art doesn’t stand up to scrutiny because it’s so far behind the times, they’re wrong. Take modernist abstraction, for example: Local artists, especially those in Colorado Springs, were working in styles such as cubo-regionalism, surrealism and abstract expressionism as early as artists…
Making theater where there has been little or no theater before — the small towns east of Boulder, for example — is an exemplary activity, and finding new plays to produce is doubly so. But the process is also highly risky. It takes thousands of scripts that are so-so, spotty,…
Impulse Theater. Basements and comedy go together like beer and nuts or toddlers and sandboxes. The basement of the Wynkoop Brewing Co., where Impulse Theater performs, is crowded, loud and energetic. Impulse does no prepared skits, nothing but pure improv — which means that what you see changes every night,…
Have you ever looked into onrushing traffic and imagined how much damage you would cause with a simple crank of the steering wheel? If so, FlatOut 2 is the racing game for you. The latest entry in a genre best described as Evel Knievel meets NASCAR, FlatOut 2 lets you…
Arrested Development: Season Three (Fox) The final collection of Arrested Development discs feels sadly incomplete: only 13 episodes this time, the result of Fox’s inability to attract viewers to one of TV’s greatest comedies and the network’s unwillingness to give it a full farewell. But none of that diminishes the…
Akeelah and the Bee (Lions Gate) American Gun (IFC) The Castle of Cagliostro (Manga) Desperate Housewives: Season Two (Buena Vista) Stephen King’s Desperation (Lions Gate) Friends With Money (Sony) Iron Island (Kino) Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (Paramount) Lonesome Jim (IFC) Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (Warner Bros.)…
Gridlock jockeys along I-25 will be treated to a curious sight this afternoon: flying motorcycles. It’s part of Cyclefest, aka the Fay Myers Suzuki Supermoto Classic, a high-speed hybrid of motorcycle off-roading and road racing that’s taking over the parking lot at Invesco Field. “We’ve created a pretty fast track,”…
Short of Colfax and the Broncos, there’s nothing in this town that people are as passionate about as the Civic Center. And their hackles are up right now as they wait for Daniel Libeskind to reveal his preliminary designs for the hundred-year-old park, which the Civic Center Conservancy paid him…
Ever since the days of prehistoric man, words have been bandied about over broken bread, with the cave-dweller’s friendly “Ugh” slowly giving way to talk of love, current affairs, politics or simply what we did today. If you’ve ever had a hankering to bring something new to the table —…
“This festival is a gift to Swallow Hill,” says veteran musician and eminence grise Harry Tuft about the three-day Swallow Hill Folk Festival, which concludes today. “The services of the local performers are donated, and that allows money that’s raised to go directly to Swallow Hill.” This annual act of…
When collector/show promoter Dana Cain brought Denver the Baby Boomerama back in the ’90s, what she really wanted to celebrate was the retro spirit — that innocent belief in a bright, shiny future — in all its rich, expansive, pioneering entirety. But rather than produce an expo that waded knee-deep…
Climbing up the stairs to Club Evolution, 2300 Champa Street, is a little creepy, as if the Ghosts of Debauchery Past are going to appear from thin air to haunt me. Over yonder, in the corner, is where my best friend Senzelle met her future husband, who sat there writing…
One of the weakest and most ridiculous aspects of popular culture is its narcissistic now-ness. There’s often no then or later, and without past experience or the messy knowledge of life, modern entertainment media often seems poached in a neurotic teenage brainpan, entranced with its own ignorant tunnel vision. A…
Low — which is to say no — expectations can be a wonderful thing: Expect nothing, and maybe you’ll get that little outta-nowhere sumpin-sumpin that turns an otherwise unfulfilling occurrence into a vaguely rewarding experience. It’s not like Invincible boasts the most promising of credentials: a first-time filmmaker (Ericson Core,…
A first-time feature film about a failed indie rocker, his beautiful girlfriend and his sanctimonious nature-boy brother on a road trip: There are so many ways that The Puffy Chair could have gone wrong. But it doesn’t — not once. Like Funny Ha Ha, the casually raw 2002 faux-cinéma-verité indie…
There’s a fine line between artistic genius and pretentious wankery, and most cineastes will tell you that the films of Matthew Barney exist right around that line. Those who like his work usually admit that it’s almost too insufferably pretentious to bear; those with no patience for it generally acknowledge…
Snakes on a Plane represents the ideal of contemporary major-studio filmmaking, which is to say, major-studio marketing. Who needs word-of-mouth screenings or critics when you can sell the four-word pitch as written on a napkin? It points to a future that takes all the guesswork out of movie-going. A major-studio…
So you know how Parker Posey nearly always plays sarcastic, uptight smokers? In The Oh in Ohio, she finally stretches a bit: Here she’s a sarcastic, uptight career woman…who doesn’t smoke! Also, she wears her hair down, whereas it’s usually pulled back into some kind of tightly wound style more…
A one-night Denver premiere of Texas filmmaker Turk Pipkin’s Nobelity is scheduled at the Starz FilmCenter. A documentary that has been getting good buzz at film festivals and private screenings, it features conversations with nine Nobel laureates — including deceased nanotech pioneer Rick Smalley (Chemistry, 1996), cancer researcher Harold Varmus…
In a few weeks, the fall art season will get under way, and as I look into my crystal ball, I see an unprecedented tsunami of exhibitions and events. (I feel like I’m drowning already.) The October opening of the Frederic C. Hamilton Building at the Denver Art Museum is…
The Stay Gallery (3519 Brighton Boulevard, 303-408-3057), run by the husband-and-wife team of John and Amy Bodin, only recently opened; in fact, the current exhibition, UNDERGO, is only the third show to be presented there. UNDERGO is a solo featuring Justin Beard, one of Denver’s most interesting young artists, and…
CHAIN REACTION. For the third time in two years, there’s a major show in town addressing how traditional Chicano art has progressed into what’s been dubbed post-Chicano art. This latest effort is CHAIN REACTION: Chicano/a and Latino/a Art in Colorado, which is being presented in the Vida Ellison Gallery on…
