Beast on the Moon. The year is 1921. Aram Tomasian, a survivor of the 1915 massacre of Armenians by the Turks, is trying to make a life for himself in Milwaukee. He has bought himself a picture bride, a fifteen-year-old orphan called Seta. Aram is young, but rigid and traditional…
Albert Maysles, with brother David, made two different films about two different rock-and-roll bands five years apart, but to this day he can’t think of one without immediately thinking of the other. The first he was shooting 40 years ago this very day, more or less: The Beatles were on…
It’s clear by now that Meg Ryan, the bubbly sweetheart of half a dozen romantic comedies, means to bring new substance and seriousness to the second act of her career. Witness the lonely New York English teacher she played in last year’s brainy slasher flick, In the Cut. In no…
Seldom over the course of a relatively storied career has Gene Hackman garnered sustained laughter in films billed as comedies. He’s wonderous at playing virtuous or wicked, paternal or pissed off, but never quite comfortable in the role of comedian. He may be an actor of uncommon range, able to…
This weekend’s second annual Golden Film Festival will feature a broad array of Academy Award-nominated short and feature-length documentaries, live-action shorts and animated shorts, as well as a selection of Colorado-made films. Sponsored by the Golden Resource for Education Arts and Theater (GREAT), the festival will be held in the…
“With improvising, rehearsal is all you’ve done in your life up to date,” insists Fred Frith. For the 55-year-old avant-garde legend, that’s probably enough to fill a museum. Guitarist and co-founder of prog-rock collective Henry Cow (a project that lasted from 1968 to 1978), Frith has toured with over a…
Thursday, February 19 Keep on the sunny side: Colorado bluegrass band Southern Exposure will warm your winter tonight when the five-piece combo quick-picks an array of traditional tunes. The show is part of Broomfield’s Winter Concert Series, which focuses on nationally known folk artists hailing from our region. The group…
In the early 1900s, burlesque — a mix of parody and bawdiness — was huge. Yet over time, what was known as the “burly-Q” grew tired and was displaced by raunchy strip clubs and porn mags. But the concept didn’t die, and these days, neo-burlesque is busting out all over…
Simple, modern aesthetics shine at Composition, a tiny haven of creative paper products on the ground floor of LoDo’s Annex at the Steelbridge Lofts. “I’m basically obsessed with paper,” says Jennifer Roberts, a civil engineer who opened Composition almost a year ago. “And I thought there was a need for…
SUN, 2/22 Despite being the new kid on the block, professional lacrosse has really scored in this town. It doesn’t hurt that the second-year franchise, the Colorado Mammoth, keeps winning and sits at the top of the National Lacrosse League’s Western Division standings. One reason the sport has grabbed an…
SAT, 2/21 What’s that flying through the air? Holy coffeecake, it’s a bunch of Danes! And they’re great: The National Danish Performance Team, an international gymnastic touring group in town this week as returning guests of the City of Aurora, is electric. That’s the enthusiastic word from Alan Herron of…
THURS, 2/19 After a ten-year absence from the Colorado History Museum, the 10th Mountain Division: Soldiers on Skis exhibit marches back into the spotlight today, retooled and ready for another tour of duty. “This is an important part of Colorado’s history, so we felt it was important to update it,”…
SUN, 2/22 As if the success of her Stories on Stage series — a delightful on-stage pairing of top-notch actors with fabulous snippets from the literary world — weren’t enough, SOS founder and executive director Norma Brown saw an untapped audience out there and decided to go after it. A…
Using politics to create art requires a skill for balancing aesthetics with philosophy, since political artwork must be visually successful while also conveying a message. The problem is that most artists can’t pull it off — something that’s very apparent in the art world, where bad message art is so…
Balance. On the West Ninth Avenue side of Fresh Art, the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development has paid for a tiny sculpture garden as part of the long, ongoing Santa Fe Drive beautification project. The garden, composed of a group of rectangular forms made of cast concrete that serve as…
It’s no secret that the alternative scene in Denver has been pretty flat for the past couple of years. But it looks as though Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173), an artists’ cooperative, is forging a path out of these woods. Since the beginning of the season last fall, Edge…
Claire Boothe Luce’s The Women was recently revived at the Roundabout Theatre in New York, a production I happened to catch one evening on television. It featured Cynthia Nixon, best known as Miranda in Sex and the City, as the wronged wife Mary Haines and Kristen Johnston as her catty…
John Brown’s Body isn’t exactly a play; it doesn’t have one absorbing plot line. Instead, it’s an adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benét’s famous 1928 epic poem about the Civil War, and, like all epics, it’s a kind of episodic tapestry. There’s chanting and singing. Actors are sometimes specific characters, and…
Beast on the Moon. The year is 1921. Aram Tomasian, a survivor of the 1915 massacre of Armenians by the Turks, is trying to make a life for himself in Milwaukee. He has bought himself a picture bride, a fifteen-year-old orphan called Seta. Aram is young, but rigid and traditional…
It was only a few days ago that Shane Carruth, software engineer-turned-filmmaker, was ready to walk away from the money on the table and keep his movie–78 minutes’ worth of cheapo celluloid that had, in a Utah instant, become as valuable as strands of gold. He had stopped answering his…
The world can always use another documentary that makes a passionate plea against the death penalty. When a film takes us inside a particular case to show us how the system has failed to serve justice — how politics, errant logic, reactionary fear, classism and racism govern the use of…
It is so very nice when a movie completely outstrips the expectations conjured by its trailer, as is the case with The Dreamers. At first blush, this tale of three passionate youths caught up in Paris’s late-’60s countercultural revolution looked downright trite. Never mind that esteemed veteran director Bernardo Bertolucci…
