Would you run into a burning building to rescue someone you don’t know? Would you climb high into a tree to save a cat that’s going to scratch the hell out of you and isn’t even yours? Probably not. But firefighters do all of that and much more, routinely. According…
Ted Striker: Surely you can’t be serious! Dr. Rumack: I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley. Airplane! has got to be one of the best movies ever made. Its blend of wacky, over-the-top silliness out-funnies Adam Sandler and Jack Black — even after 26 years on the video-store shelves…
Scott Brown is no stranger to mountain festivals. He helped start the Telluride Bluegrass and Film Festivals, so believe him when he says the Telluride Tech Festival is different from any other high-country celebration in existence. “It’s about being smart,” Brown says. “Telluride is isolated, in a sense,” he adds…
Some people just aren’t okay with the word “ass.” Last year, the captain of a team competing in the Wild West Relay: Get Your Ass Over the Pass asked coordinator Paul Vanderheiden if he would change it to “mass.” Whatever getting your “mass” over the pass may entail, Vanderheiden says…
I have never won a game of bingo. My problem is this: I can’t play more than one bingo card at once, so I’m never the first to place my dabbers on five consecutive squares. Well, all those bingo pros out there had better watch their backs, because I’ve discovered…
Disc golf is the perfect poor student’s sport — the friendly competition of “ball golf” without the high-priced equipment. The first course was installed at the University of California at Berkeley in 1970, and most of the courses are still near colleges (like the picturesque School of Mines course tucked…
Snort a few lines of Fame, screen Save the Last Dance a couple of times, and channel what you’ve learned from the bad-ass pose of a second-rate Eminem and you get Step Up, a dance romance with the originality of a paint-by-numbers set. First-time director Anne “Mama” Fletcher, the choreographer…
If Crash grew a pair of cojones, it might look something like Larry Clark’s cheerfully defiant Wassup Rockers, in which a pack of Latino skaters from South Los Angeles spend an afternoon marooned in the suburban jungle of Beverly Hills, cutting a swath through dense thickets of white privilege and…
World Trade Center is about just that — the attacks on, and the collapse of, the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. But 45 minutes in, a viewer might easily forget the movie is set during that nightmarish day. There is little talk of terrorism, and scant suggestion that a…
When the clueless U.S. men’s soccer team got dumped in the first round of the World Cup, American sports fans generally shrugged and went about their business. Aside from its popularity among millions of suburban schoolchildren, what most other earthlings call “the beautiful game” still arouses about the same passion…
I can’t imagine what world-famous architect Daniel Libeskind was thinking when he took on the job of brainstorming about the Civic Center right before his new Frederic C. Hamilton Building at the Denver Art Museum is set to open. After all, the Civic Center is beloved by many, and messing…
I’m a logico-deductive sort of person, I think A comes before B, and I firmly believe that 1 + 1 = 2. And I don’t need any insider information to figure out what’s going on in the public sector of Denver, because so much of it is, well, public. I’m…
The Armory Group. In a summer art calendar that’s uncharacteristically filled with significant exhibitions, The Armory Group: 40 Years has got to be one of the most important of them all. The story begins back in 1966 in Boulder — specifically, in the fine-arts department at the University of Colorado…
As I stood in line for the ladies’ room during the intermission of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s The Tempest, the woman in line behind me asked me what I thought of the production. I murmured something noncommital. She herself liked all the actors, she told me, except for Prospero. She…
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,…
In 2004, Jason Hall, the head of Warner Bros.’ new videogame division, did something remarkable: He promised to end bad movie tie-ins. By then, gamers had become well acquainted with the suckiness of movie-based games. Ever since Atari’s E.T. — a game so bad, tons of unsold copies were buried…
Brick (Universal) Rian Johnson’s feature debut as writer-director will wind up as one of the year’s best films. A film noir set in a modern-day high school, it’s Sam Spade roaming Ridgemont High. Kids get doped up and knocked up and even rubbed out while speaking pulp-novel slang, but the…
Adam and Steve (TLA) Back Woods (Terror Vision) Beautiful People: The Complete Series (Sony) Clone (Image) Damon Wayans’ Last Stand (Fox) Frat Boy Collection (Fox) Gilles’ Wife (Koch Lorber) Ghost in a Teeny Bikini (Image) Grounded for Life: Season 3 (Anchor Bay) The Hidden Blade (Tartan) Inside Man (Universal) Jayne…
As a boy growing up in Denver in the 1950s, Purnell Steen would head down to Five Points to hear jazz from such international icons as Ella Fitzgerald and Cootie Williams at the Lounge in the Rossonian Hotel. It was bluesy gospel jazz, the kind of “swing” style that anybody…
“There are so many things that need to be done in Africa,” says Natalie McIntyre, a volunteer for the non-profit organization Food for the Hungry. “I know that they need food, but I think it’s really important to empower people. “Fourteen million people in Uganda don’t have access to health…
“This is a selfish thing to do,” concedes Chris Cardone, the organizer behind this weekend’s Lodo Bass Bash. “I’m only doing it because I wanted to see all my favorite artists in one place.” Most of Cardone’s heroes play extended-range basses that hit notes standard instruments can’t replicate. At the…
“Having a lawn isn’t the best way to garden in Colorado,” says David Winger, conservation specialist and Xeriscape expert with Denver Water. He’s not kidding: For the six years I lived in the Midwest, I didn’t have to water my lawn once, and the grass still grew like crazy. But…
