SAT, 7/23 Jazz percussionist and spiritual traveler Jimmy Hopps — aka Jimmi EsSpirit, the Spirit Man — has a mile-long musician’s resume and the chops to back it up: A boyhood friend of Motown’s Marvin Gaye and young piano prodigy who switched to drums later on, he boasts such career…
In 2001, Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art launched what became the first in a series of biennial exhibits. It was such a good idea, it’s a wonder the Denver Art Museum didn’t think of it first. Having a regular exhibition devoted to local art is compelling because it’s about living…
Though most of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (30 West Dale Street, Colorado Springs, 1-719-634-5581) is taken over by the mammoth Dale Chihuly retrospective, there is another attraction installed in the side gallery just west of the lobby. ATHLETE/WARRIOR is made up of elegant, beautifully printed black-and-white photos of…
Chihuly. Michael De Marsche, president of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, has orchestrated the extravaganza Chihuly, a sprawling survey of the career of glass master Dale Chihuly. Working near Seattle, Chihuly is among the best-known glass artists of all time, right up there with Louis Comfort Tiffany and Paolo…
My friend Julia, 24 years old, tall and striking and a one-time ballet dancer, was wearing rhinestone-encrusted stiletto heels for the occasion. When she rose to her feet, put her hands to her hips and did “The Time Warp,” I knew the Avenue Theater’s Rocky Horror Show was a success…
The Elephant Man. The Elephant Man is based on the life of Joseph Merrick, who was born in Victorian London and suffered from a hideously deforming disease that resulted in overgrowths of bone and hanging excrescences of putrid flesh. Abandoned by his father and stepmother, Merrick became the primary attraction…
Roald Dahl’s inner child was evidently a contrary lad — precocious, dark-minded, contemptuous of adult supervision and fueled by a sense of justice that often proceeded via cruel whim. In Dahl’s twisty children’s stories, villains throw kids out of windows, beautiful women turn out to be hideous witches in disguise…
Since George Romero’s long-awaited Land of the Dead turned out to be a letdown, we’ll have to find our zombie-movie solace elsewhere. Thankfully, Romero’s been making movies for so long that not only has he inspired others to follow in his footsteps, but those others have begotten others still. Sam…
If Vince Vaughn puts any effort into what he’s doing, it doesn’t show, which is perhaps one of the benefits of always appearing to be hung over. The man probably has to check the bags under his eyes at the airport, and he’s about as in shape as a toddler’s…
British indie filmmaker Sally Potter, a former dancer, lyricist, and performance artist, clearly has a taste for adventure. In 1992 that led her to Orlando, a screen adaptation of the experimental Virginia Woolf novel about an Elizabethan nobleman who hangs around for 400 years, eventually morphing into a hip 20th-century…
If for no other reason, Happy Endings deserves its soft spot in our collective hearts for rescuing Tom Arnold from the why-are-they-now? scrap heap. The former Mr. Roseanne Barr plays Frank, a widower who falls for and sleeps with his son’s conniving would-be girlfriend Jude, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. And…
Me and You and Everyone We Know, the new film from writer/director/performance artist Miranda July, walked off with prizes at both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals. An audience and critical favorite, it follows an ensemble cast of characters, each of whom is longing to connect with another human being…
Before its release in 1933, the bluenoses over at the Hays Office had their way with the Barbara Stanwyck vehicle Baby Face, clipping more than five minutes of what was then thought to be steamy carnality from the original print. Happily (for most of us, anyway), the censored scenes remained…
If you know a better way to spend the weekend than creating a four-day mini-utopia in the Colorado mountains near Paonia, we’d like to hear about it. Starting Thursday, July 14, dreamers will converge in the remote spot as part of Dreamtime to share music, dancing, interactive sculptures, fire performances,…
Thursday, July 14 Rather than feeling sorry for himself this summer, exiled Tour de France veteran Tyler Hamilton of Boulder is forging right ahead while appealing his two-year ban from the bicycling event, a sentence handed him for alleged blood doping. Instead, Hamilton’s racing all over the world, working with…
Since the beginning of modern time, Denver has played catch-up with other cities. At some point, “cow town” became an unacceptable tag. This was before “fish city” was even a seedling of a thought in the minds of the visionaries, and long before Landry’s Restaurant Inc. reopened the shuttered Colorado’s…
FRI, 7/15 Tonight at the stroke of midnight, the wait will be over. Two years of agony and despair will end as millions of wannabe wizards and witches speed-read to find out the answer to the burning question: Who is the Half-Blood Prince? Local booksellers are keeping the anticipation level…
SAT, 7/16 I briefly enjoyed a stint as the editor of über society magazine Hamptons, covering all the glamour and glitterati of that moneyed paradise. I always felt gleefully wicked and subversive about the fact that I, a small-town girl from Fruita, had become an arbiter of taste for this…
SAT, 7/16 Responding to the death of John Lennon, punk sage Tesco Vee of the Meatmen sang his unabashed ode to the Beatles, “One Down, Three to Go.” By way of worship, the world has also seen such Fab Four interpretations as William Shatner’s “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,”…
Ah, the thea-tah! Comedies, dramas, musicals, dance, clowns, cabaret. New York, London, Paris, Milan… Colorado Springs? Yes, Colorado Springs. The city known for theological theatrics gets a shot of culture with the debut of the Colorado Festival of World Theatre. The CFWT was birthed in 2003, when transplanted thespian Suzy…
You can’t miss one of downtown’s newest public sculptures: It’s blue, it’s gigantic and it’s a bear. “I See What You Mean,” created by well-known Denver artist Lawrence Argent, is part of the multi-million-dollar art program associated with the expansion of the Colorado Convention Center. The enormous sculpture was installed…
Whether he likes it or not, Lawrence Argent is going to be associated with the color blue because that’s the color of his gigantic bear, which was only recently installed downtown at the Colorado Convention Center (see review,). Another Denver artist who’s known for his taste for blue is Bryan…
