Admit it: Like just about everyone else, you aspired to outer-space travel when you were nine years old. Some of us never shake that out-of-this-world daydream to become an astronaut; we still secretly harbor that yearning to zap through meteor showers and past Saturn, seeking to go, yes, where no…
The objects on display are only the most visible aspects of exhibitions. There are other key components that, though less prominent, are equally essential. The most important of these is the idea underlying the display. Without an idea — even a bad or misguided one — there is no show…
Every year at this time, LoDo’s David Cook Fine Art (1637 Wazee Street, 303-623-8181) presents a group show that’s filled with museum-quality pieces by a who’s who of Western artists working during the last part of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. This is an important…
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…
What is there to say abou The Wizard of Oz at this point in time? The film — if not the original book — is etched in every American mind: Judy Garland’s solid little Dorothy with her child’s innocence and full, womanly voice; Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion; Margaret Hamilton epitomizing…
Parallel Lives, at the Avenue Theater, begins promisingly, with two heavenly beings designing the human race. They discuss skin color — red, tan, yellow — and worry that those humans with ordinary white skin may feel left out or inferior. They decide that procreation will occur through sex and that…
Death of a Salesman. Written in 1949, Death of a Salesman electrified the theatrical world for several reasons. It tossed aside the conventions of the well-made, three-act play years before they were finally laid to rest in the rebellious mid-’50s. It criticized the post-war myth of the American dream –…
If you’re trying to navigate the gulf between the absolutist view inside Fortress Bush and the relativist politics of Western Europe, you need go no further than Brothers, a provocative new drama from Denmark. Superficially, it’s an intimate and rather self-contained film, but director Susanne Bier (Open Hearts, The One…
Layer Cake, the new British crime drama from first-time director Matthew Vaughn, is a block of granite struggling to liberate the statue inside it. Vaughn (producer of Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) includes plenty of dark threat and compelling visual style, but his ambitious trip into the…
It’s fair to say that Madagascar, directed by one man who made Antz and another who used to work on The Ren & Stimpy Show, is virtually plot-free — nothing more, really, than a scene or two from The Great Escape cut and pasted into an episode of Survivor. Its…
Adam Sandler cast as a former pro quarterback — that laughable setup is about the only funny thing about this pointless, witless remake of The Longest Yard, which wasn’t intended to be taken as a comedy in 1974 and won’t be mistaken for one in its latest incarnation. (It was…
The mockumentary is a tricky thing, and one not to be attempted by amateurs, many of whom treat the form like a joke without need of a punchline. Damn the filmmaker who thinks it clever and ironic enough to “interview” “real people” “talking” about other “real people” who, of course,…
Nathan Gebhart, Mike Marriner and Brian McAllister weren’t the first newly minted college graduates to leave the shelter of academe and be overwhelmed by the possibilities. But they just might be the first to turn their bewilderment into a kind of alternative business plan: A few years ago, on the…
Thursday, May 26 Learn and burn: Tone up your brain and your body this evening when the Historic Denver and Colorado Preservation groups collaborate to host a guided Historic Bike Tour that explores notable locations by bicycle along a path originating at one such site (Four Mile Historic Park, 715…
Several years ago, while penning The Right Madness, his latest exploration of (very) bad behavior, Montana’s James Crumley suffered an unidentified ailment that caused his lungs and the lining of his heart to fill with fluid. After an ER nurse told the author, who’s crustier than a truckload of French…
FRI, 5/27 Connoisseurs and dilettantes alike will be treated as gallery critics this weekend at the seventh annual Colorado Arts Festival at the Denver Pavilions. Today through Memorial Day, more than 180 of Colorado’s finest painters, sculptors, photographers and visionaries will dazzle your eyes and stimulate your creative talent with…
FRI, 5/27 According to local lore, the Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride was born 27 years ago as an alternative to the more froufrou Telluride Film Festival. After watching the “other” festival cater to Hollywood clientele and art-house cinema, a group of outdoorsmen decided to organize a fest of their own…
FRI, 5/27 The synthesizer is a powerful tool that has suffered much abuse since its entrance into the pop world. Cheese-doodling, lipstick-wearing hairspray bands of the ’80s are to blame for the synth’s lowly place among “real” instruments like guitars and snare drums. But Sci-Fi Uterus, a Denver electronic trio,…
FRI, 5/27 It was the summer of ’81. My best friend, Ron, had just graduated from high school; I’d tossed my cap the year before. We were cruising down the highway in his black 1971 Volkswagen Beetle, windows down, singing at the top of our lungs (me, totally off-key; him,…
Depictions of the figure are getting hot in the art world again; I haven’t seen this much interest in the topic since the 1980s. Falling in line with this international trend, the Robischon Gallery is presenting Stefan Kleinschuster, a mega-sized show that provocatively fills several of the spaces up front…
There’s an interesting sculpture show now at Pirate: a contemporary art oasis (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058) called Sanctuaries. The abstract wall and floor works by Craig Robb are made of steel, wood and plastic. Some include recognizable things, such as tiny chairs and houses, but the best ones are completely…
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…
