In 1955, when Inherit the Wind was written, religious attacks on evolution seemed safely in America’s past, and authors Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee weren’t so much re-arguing the topic as using it as a metaphor for the stifling of thought in the McCarthy era. It’s astonishing to realize…
The plot of An Ideal Husband isn’t as absurd as that of Oscar Wilde’s best-known play, The Importance of Being Earnest — there’s no mention, for instance, of a baby in a carpet bag — but it’s still a featherweight thing. Husband concerns a politician, Sir Robert Chiltern, whose spotless…
Impulse Theater. Basements and comedy go together like beer and nuts or toddlers and sandboxes. The basement of the Wynkoop Brewery 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, and…
At the opening of The Constant Gardener, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles’s adaptation of the novel by John le Carré, we hear a conversation before we see it. The screen remains black, still running credits, as a man and a woman negotiate a departure. Slowly, the scene dawns, revealing the couple…
Cineastes swooned over Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai’s 2000 film In the Mood for Love, a slow-as-molasses melodrama about two tediously formal people whose spouses are having an affair with one another. Thrown together by circumstances, they find themselves falling in love but, determined not to emulate their cheating…
Remember Nick Cannon? For a while there, he seemed to be the next big young heartthrob, right after starring in the marching-band movie Drumline and the remake of the ’80s comedy Love Don’t Cost a Thing. When Dave Chappelle joked that his son was leaving him for Nick Cannon, people…
Viewers of those VH1 nostalgia countdown shows are familiar with the term “awesomely bad,” denoting a song that one hates to love because it’s unintentionally tacky and awful, yet there’s something about it that won’t let you dismiss it entirely. It’s also a fine way to describe The Cave, but…
Many of those who saw the Disney superhero spoof Sky High were impressed by the debut of Steven Strait. Playing the brooding school bully Warren Peace, who hurls fireballs at our heroes before showing his more sensitive and heroic side, Strait displayed a moody rock-star charisma and an impressive range…
Are you ready for some football? In-state rivals the University of Colorado and Colorado State University will meet up at CU-Boulder’s Folsom Field on Saturday, September 3, to renew their traditional season-opener rivalry. The emotionally charged affair promises to be full of smash-mouth, trash-talkin’ action — and that’s just from…
Thursday, September 1 One of the area’s loveliest fall literary traditions is back: Words to Stir the Soul: Readings From the American West, hosted annually by the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Center for the American West, presents local notables — writers, professors and politicians — reading favorite writings inspired…
Andy Warhol snatched more than a mere fifteen minutes of fame. The man who put the fabulous in his Factory studio and sophistication into soup imagery was as notorious for drama outside the art world as in it. He also made fuzzy the distinction between artist and objet d’art, becoming…
TUES, 9/6 The notion of the total artist — one who juggles many media and genres with ease — defines the career of Bauhaus master Herbert Bayer, who danced between graphic and fine art, architecture and sculpture. He created diverse works, ranging from stylish Aspen ski posters touting his adopted…
THURS, 9/1 The city of Loveland has long tried to distinguish itself from the Continental Divide-straddling ski area of the same name. Now this identity-seeking metropolis is stealing a page from its mountain brethren’s book by looking to attract some tattooed fun-junkies of its own. While both might claim goggles,…
TUES, 9/6 The metro area’s new Documentary Cinema Institute is still a young venture, but founder Carol Beeby’s hopes are high. She envisions the organization as a lifeline to local documentary filmmakers, eventually encompassing a study center complete with a film library, screening room and low-cost editing facility. For now,…
FRI, 9/2 Boston-based saxophonist Ken Field makes grown-up sounds for idiosyncratic outfits such as Birdsongs of the Mesozoic and the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, whose 2003 disc, Year of the Snake, is like a particularly wild visit to Bourbon Street. Yet tots know his work, too, thanks to his contributions to…
Simon Zalkind, the director of the Singer Gallery, does such a good job that I often forget that the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture, where the Singer is housed, isn’t an art museum, but rather a community center. This was brought home big-time last week when I saw a…
There is a disturbing downward correction happening in the local art world. Pod and Capsule will soon just be Capsule, with the Pod part turning into studios. At the first of the year, Studio Aiello, where the commercial-gallery part of the complex is closing, will be turning most of its…
2005 Biennial BLOW OUT. This is the third in a series of biennials presented at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. In the past, participation in these biennials was limited to artists from around here; for the 2005 version, it’s been expanded to include artists working in most of the Western…
When you walk into the East Theater at the Dairy Center for the Arts, you see a man puttering quietly about the stage. The setting is simple: a white chair dead center; a set of coveralls suspended from a hanger to your left; a table holding sound equipment to your…
Oil begins with an unidentified, cowboy-hatted oilman leaning back in a chair and justifying drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The speech is droll — the work is so environmentally sound, the oilman tells us, that the caribou sidle up to the pipelines to keep warm — and the…
Death of a Salesman. This is one of those low-budget shows held together with chewing gum, string and ferocious determination. Which means that it’s uneven, the set and lighting are minimal, and a couple of the performances are downright amateurish. Arthur Miller’s critique of American materialism remains relevant, but his…
Terry Gilliam’s last film featured the former Monty Python troupe member as an eccentric, demanding and difficult director prone to destroying his ambitious projects before a single frame of footage was ever shot. “If it’s easy,” he says in the movie, “I don’t do it.” Alas, this was not a…
