Walk the Line (Fox) No matter what a junkie does with his spare time — say, redefine country music, or forge one of history’s most enduring personas — movies about junkies are a drag to watch. So it’s too bad this Johnny Cash biopic is a by-the-numbers fall-and-redemption tale. A…
Annie Duke’s Conquering Online Poker (Big Vision) The Avengers: The Complete Emma Peel Megaset (A&E) Battle’s Poison Cloud (Cinema Libre) Bleak House (BBC Warner) Camara Oscura (Warner Bros.) Charmed: The Complete Fourth Season (Paramount) Death Tunnel (Sony) The Hobart Shakespeareans (Docurama) The Ice Harvest (MCA) The Lords of Discipline (Paramount)…
Last fall, Microsoft hyped its pricey Xbox 360 by promising to reinvent gaming as we know it. The blockbuster “next generation” titles were supposed to harness the machine’s awesome power to deliver high-definition graphics and impossibly realistic action. But a funny thing happened on the way to the future. The…
Standup comedy hasn’t evolved much since the glory days of ventriloquist and puppet. Every so often, there’s a Gallagher smashing watermelons or a musical funnyman like Jack Black, but for the most part, comedy is a dude on a stage with a microphone, plodding through a joke-punchline-new-joke routine. Boring! Well,…
It’s not easy being a local playwright. David McClinton and Karl Kopp (the well-known minister of Denver’s First Divine Science Church, who died in October), both veterans of the 2004 Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region, reached this dire conclusion when they noticed that last year’s showcase replay featured only…
This weekend’s Sex and So Much More Show at the Colorado Convention Center just isn’t getting the kind of attention that a sexpo featuring porno bigwigs Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson deserves. For one, Focus on the Family hasn’t gotten involved, but things would sure be a lot more interesting…
“I feel as if the Denver dance-music culture is one of the strongest in the entire nation,” says Ryan Dykstra, the man behind Ryan Dykstra Nightlife and the event promoter of 2K6, today’s mind-blowing conglomeration of the hottest names in electronic music. “It’s a very loyal following.” For this special…
Unless smiled upon by the pooh-bahs of PBS or the lords of cable, the makers of most short films are doomed to obscurity — at least in this country. Even the lucky ones can expect little more than a hard-earned glimpse at the odd film festival, followed by orphanhood. Thank…
If you have any awareness at all of the existence of Running Scared — no, not the Gregory Hines/Billy Crystal cop buddy comedy, but the new film written and directed by Wayne Kramer — chances are you have but one question: How in God’s name does anyone expect us to…
For a while there, Mel Brooks made a fine career out of satirizing Hollywood itself, taking dead aim at Alfred Hitchcock suspense thrillers, classic Westerns and, most hilariously, the Frankenstein franchise. Spaceballs, released in 1987, arrived just in time for the tenth anniversary of the first Star Wars blockbuster. If…
Cydney Payton, director of Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art, is very adept at keeping all the balls in the air. I really don’t know how she does it without going stark raving mad, but I admire her for it. With only a skeleton staff at the museum, she practically runs…
Sandy Sardella’s swank Pismo Fine Art Glass (2770 East Second Avenue, 303-333-2879) in Cherry Creek North is unique among Denver galleries because of its specialty. With an exhibition space as nice as any around, Sardella is able to give glass artists the same opportunity for proper exhibitions as is ordinarily…
Abstract Symbols. No sooner had Tracy Felix taken down his show at the William Havu Gallery than Sushe Felix, his wife, put up her own, a major exhibit with some three dozen paintings. The show has an epic-length title — Abstract Symbols From Nature and the Unconscious, new paintings by…
The setting is the living room of Tobias and Agnes, a wealthy East Coast couple, and the play is a twisted descendent of the classic drawing-room comedy, complete with elegant furniture and a much-frequented drinks table. There’s even a properly rebellious daughter. But no servants enter the picture, and no…
There’s not much depth to The Smell of the Kill, but it’s wonderfully malicious and a lot funnier than any of the sketch comedy I’ve seen lately. Nicky, Molly and Debra are thrown together once a month by their husbands’ friendship; on this particular occasion, they cluster in the shining…
Frozen. It’s hard to deal with murder — particularly the rape, murder and dismemberment of a child — without being exploitative. It’s hard to explore the issue of forgiveness without sentimentality. But Bryony Lavery’s Frozen succeeds on both counts. The title of the three-character play — involving the child murderer,…
All the President’s Men (Warner Bros.) It’s no mystery why Warner Bros. chose to rerelease All the President’s Men now; at last we know how much — which is to say how little — Mark “Deep Throat” Felt really looked like Hal Holbrook. A new doc on former FBI second-in-command…
Sony’s approach with its handheld, the PlayStation Portable, is to carbon-copy its most popular titles for on-the-go gaming. “Enjoy Grand Theft Auto on PlayStation 2?” Sony seems to ask. “Well, here’s a version for the PSP. Oh, you’re a SOCOM fan? Super, we’ve got that on PSP too.” With the…
Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber (MCA) The Dick Cavett Show: Comic Legends (Shout Factory) Domino (New Line) Dorian Blues (TLA) First Descent (Universal) Left of the Dial (HBO) The Memory of a Killer (Sony) Midnight Cowboy: Two-Disc Collector’s Edition (MGM) Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Collector’s Edition (Sony)…
Nobody actually enjoys working out. Sure, sweating yourself stupid might make you feel better about that Pete’s burrito with extra sour cream you killed after a disciplined night of Bacardi-and-diets. But the unflattering clothes, blotchy skin and heart-shattering cardio work? No chance. Reverend White Eagle, a Denver motivational speaker and…
Kick off the Mardi Gras season with a Masquerade Ball tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the elegant and historic Parkside Mansion, 1859 York Street. A more refined alternative to other booze-and-bead fests scheduled around town, the ball requires revelers to wear cocktail attire and masks. In keeping with the New…
Freedomland manages a seemingly impossible feat: It’s both turgid and overwrought, eliciting the shriek that fades into a yawn without anyone ever noticing. It’s a wholly dreary piece of work, yet another dismal entry on the resumé of director Joe Roth, an only-in-Hollywood hack who’s allowed to make movies –…
