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…
This was the most fun I’ve had at the Arvada Center — in fact, the most fun I’ve had at the theater for a while. This venue generally attracts a pretty staid crowd, many of them middle-aged and older, and it was clear that some people were offended by The…
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…
Movies based on comic books have become dime-a-dozen events — appropriate given that the cover price of these titles was 10 cents when they debuted decades ago. It wasn’t so long ago Warner Bros. teased the release of Richard Donner’s Superman by insisting, “You’ll believe a man can fly”; now,…
About two-thirds of the way through A League of Ordinary Gentlemen, Chris Browne’s weirdly engaging documentary about professional bowling, the bad boy of the game, Pete Weber, looks straight into the camera and assures us: “I’m not an asshole.” Whether to believe Weber is an open question, given what we’ve…
Eros is not a single film but three, each roughly a half hour, joined in a common goal. The first segment was made by Wong Kar Wai (In the Mood for Love) and the second by Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Erin Brockovich). The final piece, by any measure the climax, was…
If you’re short on reasons to be grateful these days, look no further than March of the Penguins, the astonishing, if imperfect, nature documentary from first-time director Luc Jacquet. Hard times may have befallen you, but at least you are not a penguin, an animal destined to repeat a devastating…
The popular Boulder Outdoor Cinema series got under way last month and continues through August 27. And a pair of immensely popular recent movies will be on view this week as BOC patrons loll before the screen on assorted couches, bean bags and yoga mats. On Friday, July 8, it’s…
Jay Eggleston didn’t know he was getting career guidance in 1985 when he saw pictures in magazines showing daring young guys performing tricks on BMX bikes. He just knew he wanted to do what they were doing, so he asked his dad to build him a then-novel quarter pipe in…
Thursday, July 7 There’s nothing like a bit of audience participation to get a pack of film buffs — folks accustomed to vegetating in a dark room before a flickering screen — talking. This year, the Manhattan Short Film Festival, which will run at about fifty venues across the nation…
Bruce Campbell is shaving while talking by phone from a hotel room in Dayton, Ohio. This multi-tasking is necessitated by preparations for his “Summer of Love” tour to promote his latest low-budget film, The Man with the Screaming Brain, and his new book, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way. The…
FRI, 7/8 Two years ago, Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver boss Cydney Payton carried the Colorado art world on her shoulders when she single-handedly curated MCA’s biennial exhibition. This year, the curator is renowned London-based writer/artist/gallery owner Kenny Schachter, who drew talent from a range of Western states, not just Colorado…
FRI, 7/8 Hey, Texas isn’t the only state to have steers and queers. Right here in little ol’ Colorado, we can claim our share, too — and there’s a whole rodeo devoted to them. The Colorado Gay Rodeo Association is rounding up its 23rd annual Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo tonight…
WED, 7/13 “I was at a comedy club in the Midwest once where three black comics got put on back-to-back just as a fluke,” remembers Denver-based comedian Louis Johnson. “Myself, Tommy Davidson and Percy Crews, and we killed it; it was the funniest thing. The next day the front office…
MON, 7/11 “My wife a Yeti so she kind of afraid of fire,” Bigfoot grunts as the opener to one of his jokes. “She such a bad cook, we pray after meals.” Pause. “Only thing passed around our table is gas,” he concludes. The Borscht Belt stylings may seem a…
Colorado has a strong tradition of producing ceramics. During the early decades of the twentieth century, this was due in large part to the abundance of natural clay. But there’s no simple explanation for why the post-World War II era was such a golden age here, and why so many…
Typically, the show in the main room at Pirate: a Contemporary Art Oasis (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058) has nothing to do with the one in the associates’ space. That’s not the case this time, though. Pirate member Marie E.v.B. Gibbons is a friend of Pirate associate Jimmy Sellars, so the…
Alden Mason, Kimberlee Sullivan and Lorey Hobbs. The changing of the seasons from spring to summer is what inspired William Biety, director of the Sandy Carson Gallery, to put together three solos, each comprising nature-based abstractions. Alden Mason marks the debut of the Washington artist, who is represented in this…
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. He smelled of decay. His head was so large that he couldn’t sleep lying…
Humble Boy. Although Humble Boy is literate, with eccentric characters, some absorbing scenes and occasional unexpected moments, somehow the structure doesn’t hang together. And all the esoteric talk about space and time and the habits of bees seems more an attempt by playwright Charlotte Jones to impress the viewer than…
Quite simply and quite literally, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds is Close Encounters of the Third Kind turned inside-out: They’re still out there, only this time the aliens are out for our blood, which they spray all over the countryside like so much red paint…
So little time, so much trouble. In the 24-hour period that’s dissected in Heights, the first feature from Harvard/Cambridge/USC film-school-educated Chris Terrio, an aspiring Manhattan photographer named Isabel (Elizabeth Banks) gets cold feet about her upcoming marriage to a dull but pleasant lawyer named Jonathan (James Marsden); a needy Broadway…
