THURS, 4/28 We all want to believe that there are still pristine places around, but reality says otherwise: Park designation in America is often just a protective stopgap meant to halt further damage beyond what’s already been done. With that in mind, veteran park ranger Jordan Fisher Smith ushers in…
FRI, 4/29 Need to brush up on your Klingon? Have a hankerin’ to gorge on Gagh? Then don your best Starfleet dress uniform, strap on your Jedi Knight light saber, and beam yourself up to the Marriott Denver Tech Center, 4900 South Syracuse Street, for this weekend’s Starfest 2005. KathE…
THURS, 4/28 The off-Broadway satire Newsical is coming, and it’s going to be a bona fide celebrity shish kebab. The rowdy roast skewers household headliners such as Anna Nicole and Jacko while also sinking its fangs into any fresh tabloid fodder that slinks across the front page. “We poke fun…
Although Denver has long been the largest city in Colorado, historically it was not the art-making center of the state. No, that distinction was held by Colorado Springs — even before the launch of the Broadmoor Academy in 1918, which transformed the town into a full-fledged art colony. That knowledge…
The young artist with the epic name of Jared David Paul Anderson is a one-man art movement. Not only is he a serious painter, as he demonstrates in Red, White and Black, now at the Assembly (766 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-5501), but he’s also the founder of an artists’ collective,…
Balance. Rarely has Walker Fine Art come up with an exhibit as successful as Balance, which pairs recent abstract paintings by Denver artist Don Quade with abstract sculptures by Colorado Springs-based Bill Burgess. Quade was formerly at Fresh Art Gallery, but Walker picked him up when Fresh Art closed last…
Pigeons on the grass, alas. — Gertrude Stein It is neither just nor accurate to connect the word alas with pigeons. Pigeons are definitely not alas. They have nothing to do with alas and they have nothing to do with hooray (not even when you tie red, white, and blue…
Normally, I would trek through broken glass — well, okay, walk several city blocks in new high heels — to see Nicholas Sugar perform. It’s not just his humor and intense stage presence; it’s the fact that in the past he’s added interesting colors to roles that could easily be…
Cats. This company does as good a job with Cats as one can imagine. The dancing, choreographed by Stephen Bertles, who also directed, is seamless. The cast is lithe and graceful. They slither like snakes. They leap high and land without a sound. They’re wonderfully into character, batting at each…
No more soccer!” declares small-time thug Sing (writer/director/star Stephen Chow) as he vigorously stomps on a child’s ball. In the context of Kung Fu Hustle, it’s a pathetic attempt by Sing to make himself look tough. The larger signal, however, is to followers of Chow’s work: It’s a direct reference…
If nothing else, give Dana Brown credit for enthusiasm. A documentary filmmaker in name only, he is really the camera- and microphone-equipped president of several booster clubs — among them what might be called the International Society of Beach Bums and, thanks to his latest exercise in hero worship, the…
Perhaps no filmmaker working today better exemplifies the great humanist tradition of Italian neo-realism than the gifted Kurdish-Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi, whose movies — A Time for Drunken Horses, Marooned in Iraq (aka Songs of My Motherland), and now Turtles Can Fly — deal with the plight of the Kurdish…
The Game of Their Lives is the second movie in the past three years with that title, and also the second about a major soccer upset during the World Cup. The first was a documentary about the North Korean team of 1966; while it was fascinating, it has yet to…
Among the many mysteries surrounding The Interpreter is the one that finds Sydney Pollack heralded as a major American director, a maker of Serious and Important Movies. His filmography, marked by mawkish mediocrities (Out of Africa, as vibrant as a coffee-table book; The Way We Were, its romance as plausible…
Amanda Peet. Ashton Kutcher. Romantic comedy. Who’d have thought it could work? And yet A Lot Like Love is an entertainment success, a triple threat of fresh writing, inspired directing and, yes, good acting. Fortified with a healthy dose of intelligence, it manages to leap clear across an entire field…
The Denver Art Museum’s beautifully chosen series The Art of Silent Film continues this week with a screening of Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), G.W. Pabst’s socially prophetic melodrama about a German pharmacist’s daughter (American Louise Brooks) whose big-city innocence leads her to a reformatory, then a brothel. Strategically…
What a difference a century makes. New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez was accused of bad sportsmanship and worse for trying to slap the ball out of Boston Red Sox hurler Bronson Arroyo’s glove in last year’s American League Championship Series. But in The Old Ball Game, a breezily incisive…
Thursday, April 21 If you build it, they will come: Tonight you have your choice of two local hard-hat tours, both of which will explore cutting-edge architectural projects in trendy parts of town. The Denver Architectural Foundation and Studio Completiva will host a Hard Hat Loft Tour of the Monarch…
“I’ve always found that writing about places is kind of the primal poetry,” says Jake Adam York. “I’m a big wanderer. For me, pathways are the most captivating things.” York knows a thing or two about pathways. The route of his own life has taken him across the map, from…
SAT, 4/23 The post-war brainchild of contractor-turned-designer Edward Hawkins, Englewood’s Arapahoe Acres neighborhood has seemingly existed in its own little world for more than half a century, the 124 unique homes hidden enough to remain unknown to most Denverites, yet considered by many to be jewels of mid-century architecture. You…
FRI, 4/22 Between all the free play and the bling-blinging of the machines, the 2005 Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown should be enough to make even the deaf, dumb and blind kid tilt. With more than one hundred games — from Elvis and Earthshaker to Lord of the Rings and Jungle…
THURS, 4/21 Dale Chihuly looks like a man of the earth, with his dashing eye patch, wild hair and blue-collar demeanor, so it’s not always easy to connect him with the torrid, delicate hand-blown fantasy worlds he creates from sand and fire. Chihuly could be called the swashbuckler of glass,…
