It’s hard to fathom what the Holocaust means now, used for political leverage and simplified into totemic symbols that short-circuit thought. The Holocaust was the defining fact of my childhood and adolescence, but it wasn’t called the Holocaust then. It was the war. The war encompassed a lot of things:…
After twenty minutes or so of watching Relatively Speaking, I stopped taking notes and began laughing. Out loud and several times. This may not seem particularly significant, but consider the fact that as a critic, I go to the theater far more often than normal mortals do — which means…
Two women, dressed in standard waitstaff uniforms, emerge from the bar and into the well-appointed lobby of the hotel built 90 years ago by beer magnate Adolphus Busch, who tried to bring the Jazz Age to what would become a Muzak town. About 50 feet away, an interviewer and his…
Neil LaBute is back to his old self again, and the cinematic world is a better place for it. Honestly, what was he thinking when he made Possession? Did the charges of misogyny, still lingering from In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors get to him so…
An Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film and winner of five Golden Lola Awards (the German Oscars), Nowhere in Africa recounts the true story of a Jewish family who fled Nazi Germany in 1938 and found refuge in Kenya. Although exquisitely shot and acted, the film is hampered…
Long ago, Eddie Murphy grew tired of Eddie Murphy parts: the fast-talking high-jiver, the preening put-on. Even before he began parodying himself in Bowfinger and Showtime and I Spy — the latter two perhaps accidentally — he accepted high-paying roles in low-rent movies that neutered and humiliated the character he…
Step back in time this weekend with the Jewels of Highlands historic house tour, featuring eleven northwest Denver homes ranging from classic Craftsman bungalows to twin stone “castles.” The emerald-green lawns and ruby-red brick walkways will prove that you’re not in Kansas anymore. “I’ve always loved the architecture, the Victorian…
Thursday, May 8 While Denver might not have New York’s sweeping bridges connecting downtown to its outer boroughs, the city can now claim to be home to the world premiere of Brooklyn: The Musical. Heading for the bright lights of Broadway in September, the new show, written by Mark Schoenfeld…
What could you possibly have in common with that baggy-pantsed, slouching, backward-visor-wearing, straight-up gangsta kid at the bus stop? Nothing? Think again. 14 Faces, written and performed by Denver native Ted Bettridge, examines the human link between the likes of suburbanites and derelicts, the haves and have-nots. “You are about…
THURS, 5/8 Perhaps Bootsy said it best: Get down just for the funk of it.Or for the chance to score free airline tickets. Dancers will be doing just that at Jammin’ 92.5’s Shake Your Groove Thang dance contest finals, starting around 9 tonight at the Kasbah, 15373 East Sixth Avenue,…
THURS, 5/8 With Colorado’s frigid snowmelt rushing through mountain streams — and making things icy and dicey — why not give kayaking a try under more serene conditions at today’s Paddling Expo at the Boulder Reservoir?At the event, sponsored by Wildwasser Sports and the Boulder Outdoor Center, water rats can…
A rite of passage for just about every Denver student during the last year of elementary school was the year-end trip to the old Elitch Gardens or Lakeside amusement park. You’d be sitting around with your friends, signing yearbooks, and the following conversation between boys courageously boasting (though quivering inside)…
TUES, 5/13 If you’re dating, you’re obviously mentally deranged or soon will be, but still, we date as much as possible. Why? Guys date because we are on a never-ending quest to see naked breasts. For women, I’m not sure. They find the “perfect man” and immediately begin changing all…
THURS, 5/8 Move over, P.T. Barnum: There’s a new show in town. And instead of giant elephants and bearded ladies, tonight’s unique Sensory Circus features live music, poetry readings, performance art and more.”Your senses will be blown away,” promises Alicia Greenberg, co-founder of the Circus. A graphic designer by trade,…
It was just last month, for the first time since it was founded in 1996, that the Vance Kirkland Museum formally opened its doors to the public. True, the hours are quite limited (Wednesday through Friday, from 1 to 5 p.m.), but it’s still a big improvement over the previous…
At approximately this time every year since the 1970s, the Foothills Art Center (809 15th Street, Golden, 303-279-3922) has presented the area’s most important ceramics group show. No surprise, then, that the current version, Colorado Clay Exhibition, 2003, is really great. The annual show is juried, and this year’s celebrity…
It was a lover and his lass, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, That o’er the green cornfield did pass In the spring time, the only pretty ring time, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding: Sweet lovers love the spring. — From As…
He claims to be blacklisted and close to busto. Thirty years in the film biz, with a cult bigger than David Koresh’s and a disemboweled body of work that would make any studio boss blood-red with envy, and still he kvetches in a voice so eerily similar to that of…
What a strange enterprise, making a movie about reading a book. It’s the kind of paradox that philosophy students chew over at three in the morning — and a prospect any Hollywood producer would flee as fast as his Ferragamos could carry him. But for Mark Moskowitz, a lifelong bibliophile…
At some fast-approaching point in pop-culture evolution, we’re due to hit Total Outsider Saturation, wherein everybody is an outsider and therefore there is no longer an outside. In the fleeting meantime, we have scintillating reminders of the struggle, like X-2: X-Men United, the latest bid from comic-book land to increase…
If you have never heard of Lizzie McGuire, you are not a female child between the ages of six and fourteen, nor are you a parent with a female child between those ages. For the uninitiated, then, Lizzie is the eponymous heroine of the three-year-old, wildly popular Disney Channel TV…
Hooray for the altruists and art lovers at Madstone Theaters. Recognizing that distribution can be a nightmare for young and/or unknown indie filmmakers, the art-house chain is showing six promising new films, through May and June, that have played the festival circuit but haven’t yet attracted distributors. In Denver, Madstone’s…
