The few U.S. commentators who bothered to note the recent election in England marveled at the level of attack sustained in the run-up weeks by Prime Minister Tony Blair — and not just in print. While George Bush’s handlers make sure that anyone who disagrees with the president in the…
I found Shaking the Dew From the Lilies, now at the Playwright Theatre, enjoyable in the same way I found nights with girlfriends enjoyable in my twenties. Clad in pajamas or our underwear, we’d dissect each other’s relationships amid peals of satirical laughter at the general obtuseness of men, assure…
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 –…
Somewhere, this could all be happening right now,” spoke the narrator in the trailer for the first Star Wars movie (thereafter known as Episode IV: A New Hope), and to those who were small children then, it rang true. For an entire generation, the Star Wars trilogy could never comprise…
Here’s the scenario: You’re Jet Li, the international action star who has finally become a semi-household name in America, thanks to imported DVDs and various cinematic team-ups with rappers and singers. But in Hong Kong, where you’ve done several movies that don’t depend solely on ass-kicking, you are revered as…
Tod Browning’s Freaks, a bizarre glimpse into the world of the sideshow, has been the ultimate cult movie for more than seventy years. Talk about impeccable outlaw credentials: At a San Diego preview, a woman ran screaming from the theater; upon the film’s release, in 1932, many American exhibitors refused…
In June 2003, Richard Florida, author of the hot-hot-hot Rise of the Creative Class, was speaking to a group of despairing alternative-newspaper types when one asked if Florida had any hope for the political future. Yes, he replied. In Denver, where John Hickenlooper had just been elected mayor. Two years…
Thursday, May 19 A unique component of the Denver Public Schools, CEC Middle College offers students an opportunity to earn college credits or career-industry certification while still in high school. How well does it work? Pretty well, at least on the filmmaking front. Students in the school’s Digital Film Production…
When Twentieth Century Fox opened the Mayan Theatre at 110 Broadway in 1930, promoters christened the occasion with an elaborate celebration. They screened a print of Ernst Lubitsch’s Monte Carlo, a film touted to be “As exciting as a caress! As intimate as clinging silk!” Adult patrons were charged 35…
Martinis and lemonade. It puts me in the mindset of cool, comfortable, sophisticated Lilly Pulitzer shifts or a summer breeze lifting the lace curtains, stories above the street, in someone’s ritzy loft. That’s the atmosphere mother-daughter team Patricia and Cassie Brown created when they opened their new Highland home-decor boutique,…
SAT, 5/21 While some sports tend to go overboard in the area of self-promotion, tennis, as a whole, has typically shown restraint. But backers are stepping out of the shadows with the fourth annual USA Tennis Rock & Rally, which bounces today from 9 to 11:30 a.m. on the south…
SUN, 5/22 Last summer’s hi-dive-sponsored video scavenger hunt may have had a more lasting effect than organizers initially intended. The event brought together local filmmaking aficionados in a one-day quest to document a laundry list of strange things around town — including, but not limited to, filming themselves stealing something…
SAT, 5/21 Madeline and Sylvia, two New York senior citizens enjoying the challenges of continuing education, are on a field trip with their junior college’s Women’s Studies class. They walk into Las Hermanas, a feminist-lesbian health-food restaurant. “Oh, Mad, look at this floral watercolor. It’s so vibrant,” says Sylvia. “I…
It was two years ago that I first became aware of an unexpected curve in the art road. Despite all expectations, digital media was on the wane, and painting was waxing. The thought gave me a good laugh, because it was such an outrageous idea. Fast-forward to the present, and…
The spare, monochrome paintings in Angela Larson’s Seeking Harmony, at Spark Gallery (900 Santa Fe Drive, 720-889-2200), may look like neo-minimalist compositions, but they’re not. In fact, these pieces have nothing to do with minimalism or any other art theory, but rather are based on the I Ching. Larson says…
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…
Kimberly Akimbo, currently being staged at Nomad Theatre, begins with an elderly woman seated on a bench, huddled in her jacket against a surprising April snowstorm. (The first mention of the unseasonable weather got a big laugh on the snowy 30th of April in Boulder.) A younger man comes by…
Opening nights are a strange phenomenon, paper houses filled with critics and theater people. The latter are warmly supportive of their friends in the play, and many of them express their support by responding so passionately — empathetic gasps, howls of slightly drunken laughter — that the rest of us…
Over the past few years, some of the most reliably interesting theater performances in this area have taken place on the small, square stage above the galleries at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, under the aegis of artistic director Brandi Mathis. Mathis, who worked at the museum for five…
The Crimson Thread. The first scene of this play is well-acted and somewhat promising, though it does have a bit of that golden-sunlight, Hallmark-card feeling about it. The year is 1869. Two sisters, Eilis and Bridget, are talking on the porch of a stone cottage in a small, poor Irish…
Jane Fonda comes from a good Hollywood family and used to be a pretty fair actress herself. Klute, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Coming Home were three of the better films of their time. So after getting a look at herself in her first movie in fifteen years, La…
If you’re expecting Mindhunters to be a psychological thriller and you buy a ticket for the movie, you will almost indubitably feel cheated. But break down the film’s title to its most literal sense — hunting for a mind, presumably because those involved were out of theirs — and you’ll…
