Forget Mad Hot Ballroom. The real dance documentary hit of the summer is more likely to be Rize. After all, which do you think the kids are going to find more appealing: Formal steps that require suits, partners and schoolteachers; or shaking the booty and slamming into fellow dancers while…
It’s okay to be slightly afraid of Hungarian movies. Even critics don’t necessarily relish the thought of them or look upon Budapest as a hotbed of filmmaking. As a matter of fact, it’s hard to recall the last time there was a good movie from the land that gave us…
Martin Lawrence has never exactly been among the world’s more gifted comedians, yet his movies seem to keep raking in the cash, so there must be legions of loyal Lawrenceheads out there somewhere. But even they, who have made financial successes of Black Knight and Big Momma’s House and National…
A kind of criminal fairy tale, Benot Jacquot’s Tout de Suite recalls both the Godard New Wave classic Breathless and its American counterpart, Bonnie and Clyde. A restless rich girl named Lili (dramatically beautiful Isild Le Besco) takes up with a small-time Moroccan thief (Ouassini Embarek) after a botched bank…
When Nick Sugar swaggers onto the stage of the Avenue Theater as Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show on Friday, July 1, you can count on a raucous good time. “We’re putting the sex, drugs and rock and roll back into the show,” Sugar says, “putting everything out there. The…
Thursday, June 30 As the planet closest to us, Venus has been a magnet for space exploration. And though Venus mirrors the size and mass of the Earth, it has evolved in a radically different way. It has a scorching hot surface, for example, and an atmosphere of noxious gases…
As I browse through a catalogue for the Japanese Design Today exhibit, I notice a familiar face. My laptop is a near-duplicate of one that will be among the items unveiled when the show opens Thursday, June 30, at the Center for Visual Art. Of course, mine is a little…
FRI, 7/1 Years ago, I learned the meaning of art while walking the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in a sweaty Village Inn cartoon-bear suit, only to be ambushed by my older brother’s friends — who’d heard about my humiliating employment. Thankfully, today I can shake off that trauma as the…
SUN, 7/3 Anyone tired of seeing people steering toward the conservative right in Colorado Springs can watch them turn liberally left at Pikes Peak International Raceway today, when contestants speed counterclockwise around the one-mile oval during the U.S.A.C. Rocky Mountain Classic. After the gates open at 9 a.m., fans will…
THURS, 6/30 There’s more to art than meets the eye. The new exhibit Beyond Visual, created by the kid-oriented Downtown Aurora Visual Arts, expands the sensory scope of artistic expression — and makes a big stink in the process. “They smell like mint, orange, strawberry, blackberry and cinnamon,” says DAVA…
SAT, 7/2 If you’ve been itching for some dramatic romance but can’t quite bring yourself to watch Days of Our Lives or As the World Turns, Samuel Barber’s Vanessa could be just what you need. The work, which won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1958, gets its regional premiere…
Since taking over as president of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center a couple of years ago, Michael De Marsche has made many changes — some for the better, some for the worse. But one call no one can argue with is his decision to bring in Chihuly, a massive…
A couple of months ago, Cherry Creek North’s Pismo Gallery (2770 East Second Avenue, 303-333-2879) moved from its familiar spot on Fillmore Street, where it had been for a decade, to a gigantic and handsomely finished showroom next to Hapa Sushi. Relocation, always a risky prospect for a small business,…
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…
There’s a lot that’s good about Humble Boy, currently showing at the John Hand Theater. The play is literate, with eccentric characters, some absorbing scenes, occasional unexpected moments — but somehow the structure eluded me. And all the esoteric talk about space and time and the habits of bees seemed…
Independence is a story about three very different young women and their terrifyingly possessive, half-mad mother. Kess, the oldest daughter, left the family and remained out of touch with her mother for four years. She’s a successful academic, living in Minneapolis with her lesbian lover. At the beginning of the…
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…
Bewitched may go down as the first movie about a fictional failed actor that creates a real-life failed actor. This hackneyed, hapless and utterly useless redo of an overrated 1960s sitcom is excruciating to sit through for a dozen reasons. But nothing is more intolerable than the sight of Will…
You’re a talented young resident at a New York hospital, first-generation Chinese, and you happen to be gay. In fact, you’re dating a new and exciting woman, a dancer with the city ballet, and she wants you to share the relationship with the world — and your family. But can…
Anyone who would insist that movie reviewing is not a real job (ŒSup, Mom) hasn’t been forced to sit through screenings of Bewitched and Herbie: Fully Loaded in the span of five days — and by forced, I mean either you see both movies, write 800 words about each, or…
Horror-movie cultists are in for a dark thrill this week when the 1945 British classic Dead of Night is shown in Boulder. Linked by the tale of an architect’s recurring nightmare, it’s a series of five supernatural episodes. Notable are the two directed by Alberto Cavalcanti — the first about…
In his first book, The United States of Wal-Mart, journalist John Dicker lays out plenty of reasons to revile the goliath retailer and its ubiquitous smiley faces. Yet he understands that such criticism may sound like liberal elitism to folks whose shopping options are limited by a modest income. “How…
