Way back in 1984, local critics endowed Denver theaters with the Drama Critics Circle Awards. “It was always such a wonderful way for the theater community to get together and celebrate itself,” muses Gloria Shanstrom, general manager of the Colorado Theatre Guild. But in 2001, the curtain closed on the…
Mica is the name given to a flaky group of silicate minerals that cleaves into thin, transparent layers and registers at about a three on the Mohs Scale of mineral hardness. It’s also a featured player in Rebecca DiDomenico’s site-specific installation Mica Chamber, on display at the Boulder Museum of…
There is no movie more overrated in recent history than Napoleon Dynamite; it’s to cinema what the Doors are to rock and roll, a thing blindly and inexplicably championed as though it were a religion above being blasphemed by non-believers. And every time someone tries to explain its appeal –…
Remember what a fun couple Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves were in Speed? Well, forget that. In The Lake House, Warner Bros.’ slow and heavy kickoff to the summer-romance season, Bullock and Reeves play the mopiest lovers to hit the big screen since Tony and Maria channeled Romeo and Juliet…
About ten minutes into Michael Cuesta’s 12 and Holding, the following thought came to mind: Not afraid to put children in harm’s way. Twenty minutes later, not afraid was replaced with compelled. As he did in L.I.E. , which introduced child molestation into a fetid tale of adolescent obliteration, Cuesta…
By now, for masses of believers in mad Korean pulp as it has been epitomized by Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy, the blood-on-alabaster-skin montage behind the credits of Park’s new Lady Vengeance portends a familiar dynamic. Exercises in Asian horror like we haven’t seen before, Park’s films…
Given that John Singleton directed the second movie in the Fast and the Furious franchise, it makes a perverse kind of sense that Justin Lin would follow. Just as Singleton did with Boyz N the Hood, young Lin quickly made a name for himself with a powerful breakthrough film that…
In Coastlines, the final installment of director Victor Nunez’s “Panhandle Trilogy,” a wary ex-con named Sonny Mann (Timothy Olyphant) returns to his fly-bitten Florida home town to collect the debt that’s owed him for taking the fall in a drug deal gone wrong. But the slippery local crime lords (William…
Sitting on the lawn of the Colorado Convention Center adjacent to Speer Boulevard is “Indeterminate Line,” that enormous rusted-steel spiral doodle. The piece, created by Bernar Venet, is one of the most important works of art in the city. The French-born but New York-based artist has an international reputation, but…
Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173), one of the top alternative art spaces in town, is currently given over to a group of shows that highlight the use of photography in various ways. This kind of aesthetic unity at Edge is very rare considering that there are usually three completely…
Apparition. The brand-new Gallery Severn, which is owned by art collector and retired executive Andy Dodd, aims to be what he has called a “launch pad” for emerging artists. This specialty in fresh faces instantly makes the place interesting. Also interesting is Dodd’s decision to feature only one artist at…
The scene is Deola’s dog-grooming salon, where Deola is also setting herself up as a psychic. Three of her friends meet here weekly to play bid whist, and on this occasion they are joined by a fourth, Edna, a newly divorced friend of Deola’s from Texas. Much of the first…
When Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead was first produced in 1966, the idea of telling the story of Hamlet from the perspective of two minor players seemed truly daring. It’s less surprising now, but OpenStage’s production of Tom Stoppard’s play still yields intriguing moments. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, school friends of…
The Caretaker. The setting is a grimy, one-room flat filled with papers, boxes and mismatched bric-a-brac. It’s an appropriate mole hole for sad, befuddled Aston, who thinks he’s good with his hands, tinkers constantly with a screwdriver and dreams about building a shed in the yard — but it also…
Gamers are so used to Mario that the fundamental weirdness of his exploits no longer raises an eyebrow: A dumpy Italian plumber journeys through a fairy-tale land, where turtles throw hammers, mushrooms bestow magic powers, and a kingly turtlebeast holds a princess captive. Where other videogame plots might have been…
Valley of the Dolls Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Fox) Behold The Godfather and Godfather Part II of drag-queen cinema — two movies that provide the gateway to a lifetime of wig addiction. The films couldn’t be more different in temperament — the 1967 original is mile-high Hollywood kitsch,…
All Aboard! Rosie’s Family Cruise (HBO) Aquamarine (Fox) Beavis and Butt-head: The Mike Judge Collection, Volume 2 (Paramount) Before the Fall (Picture This) The Betty Grable Collection: Volume 1 (Fox) Cemetery Man (Anchor Bay) End of the Spear (Fox) Fatwa (Ventura) A Good Woman (Lions Gate) Green Street Hooligans (Warner…
The phrase “performance art” conjures up images of poorly executed college-drama indulgences, and it certainly doesn’t do justice to Jessa and James Huebing-Reitinger’s Project InSECT. Jessa creates gigantic, true-to-scale, fantastically vivid bugs in front of the audience while James uses skits, stories, lectures and insect tattoo painting to enhance the…
Some pretty heavy shit’s been going down in recent months throughout the metro area concerning illegal immigration and Colorado’s Latino population — most notably, 75,000 people ditching class and not showing up for work on May 1 to rally as part of the Great American Boycott, and Cinco de Mayo…
In the spirit of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” the Art Students League of Denver has asked residents to donate their outdated art — framed, latch-hook parakeet portraits made by Grandma Millie in 1989, once-prized M.C. Escher dorm prints and other weather-worn decor — for its YArt Sale,…
The transport will be light — but the drinks will not — when Tom “Dr. Colorado” Noel leads this evening’s Light Rail Pub Crawl. Conversation and liquor start flowing at 5 p.m. at the Buckhorn Exchange (park by the restaurant at 1000 Osage Street), and then crawlers will climb onto…
Like the Grand Ole Opry plopped into a fragrant barn at the county fair, Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion befits its roots in frosty Minnesota soil through its worldview, Buddhist by way of Scandinavia: Life is about suffering. The wind chill is below zero, and so is your spouse;…
