When Exorcist director William Friedkin remade Henri-Georges Clouzot’s great existential thriller The Wages of Fear in 1977, he dedicated Sorcerer to Clouzot, as a respectful student might. By contrast, the perpetrators of a new version of Diabolique, which is the late M. Clouzot’s most famous film, don’t even bother acknowledging…
Thursday March 21 A walk on the wild side: There’s not much one can say about Velvet Underground founder Lou Reed that hasn’t already been said: The influential, timeless and poetic elder statesman of urban rock has seen it all, done it all, commented on it all and come through…
It’s tempting to compare Denver’s vibrant alternative art scene to a circus. But that wouldn’t be fair to circuses, which have only three rings, as well as an underlying organization and theme. The alternative scene, on the other hand, is governed by anarchy. Literally anything goes at the co-op galleries…
Brash and bawdy, George Bernard Shaw’s one-act Great Catherine is now playing with his more talky Overruled in a terrific CityStage Ensemble evening, Shaws Together, calculated to bust a gut. As extravagant as both of these little plays are, director Greg Ward keeps his delightful cast tottering on the brink…
It’s easier to preach than it is to teach–but too many contemporary playwrights are still on the pulpit. With all the white-collar crime undermining public confidence in Wall Street these days, one might suppose an angry little play exposing the selfish, callous nastiness of it all would be most welcome…
Giuseppe Tornatore’s reputation on this side of the Atlantic rests on the 1989 Academy Award winner Cinema Paradiso, his engaging but sticky-sweet valentine to movie memory. That nostalgic box-office success sought to recapture a bygone filmmaking style, and it endorsed the prevailing American view of Italians as mushy sentimentalists who…
Anyone who saw Marleen Gorris’s militant fantasy A Question of Silence in the mid-1980s immediately understood the Dutch filmmaker’s no-holds-barred feminism. In a clever twist on Death Wish and four decades of male-dominated revenge Westerns, Gorris had three ordinary women–a housewife, a waitress and a secretary–heap their pent-up resentment and…
Thursday March 14 Eve of destruction: “While sketching a series of ideas for monoprints and reflecting on the dilemma of Eden,” artist Connie Lehman says, “it occurred to me that no one has ever blamed the apple.” Score one point for the women. Lehman decided to explore that discrepancy by…
There is no region in the United States more firmly implanted in the popular imagination of the world than the American West. The images are romantic ones and have a long history. A rough-and-tumble Western mining town, for example, is the setting for a Giacomo Puccini opera–chosen, no doubt, because…
The great thing about a comedy such as Much Ado About Nothing is its treatment of potential tragedy. There’s a lot of thought behind all those laughs. Shakespeare examined what malicious false witness could do in Othello–how it might turn a good and loving husband into a murderous fool. In…
The 1932 film version of Grand Hotel is best remembered for Greta Garbo’s languid “I vant to be alone.” A better signature line was never invented for an actress–particularly since Garbo was a famous recluse. No one could ever read that line again without invoking her presence as the elusive…
In these days of mindless Hollywood conformity and obscene movie budgets set aside for the destruction of cars and helicopters, the career of the magisterial Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray should be a lesson to us. In 1952, when the former economist and advertising man was working on Pather Panchali, the…
To hear Ethan and Joel Coen talk these days, they’re a couple of plain-spoken, rock-ribbed Midwesterners whose simple hearts remain in their home state of Minnesota. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course: The dominant qualities of the brothers’ work–from Raising Arizona to Barton Fink to The Hudsucker…
Thursday March 7 One to wash: It’s cute and kicky–it’s Suds, a goofy, melodramatic musical romp through the innocent Sixties. A despondent 16-year-old girl decides to end her life in a laundromat dryer but is saved by three angels: a bubbly Gidget clone, a Capri-pants bad girl and–who else?–a glowing…
Greg Esser wears so many hats in the local art world that he’s reminiscent of Peter Sellers in one of those madcap Sixties comedies in which the British comic plays half a dozen roles. For starters, Esser’s the public art administrator for the Mayor’s Office of Art, Culture and Film…
It’s Arthur Miller time in Denver; works by the American playwright have been staged by no less than three local theaters in the past month. And Industrial Arts’ moving, if somewhat choppy, production of Miller’s timeless All My Sons provides an interesting contrast to his more popular but less dynamic…
Agatha Christie’s wonderful murder mystery Ten Little Indians showed up in the movies as And Then There Were None to creep out several generations of fans. The 1970s musical spoof of Christie’s original, Something’s Afoot, adds another dimension of macabre merriment to the legacy. Christie’s original plot may be more…
When it comes to portraying the TV news biz, Hollywood is naturally drawn more to the glitz than the grit. Why make a big deal out of a fatal prison riot when you can have Robert Redford massage Michelle Pfeiffer’s foot? Who gives a damn about Latin American politics when…
Kenneth Branagh’s A Midwinter’s Tale is another sweet comic valentine to those batty but lovable show folk. So if you’re less than enthralled by the vanities and insecurities of actors, you may as well stop reading this and start shopping for another movie. Now that half the house has departed,…
Thursday February 29 Old-time religion: While the membership of Blind Boys of Alabama has evolved, the gospel-singing group’s name has remained intact for nearly sixty years, as has its pious intent. Best of all, when the boys fire up their voices to praise the Lord–Lord, what God-given, soul-stirring voices they…
It may be tempting for viewers to lump all abstract paintings that feature drips, runs, scratches and splashes into the abstract-expressionist camp. But look before you leap to any conclusions. Making the point that not all expressionist abstracts are abstract-expressionist are the nearly twenty gorgeous oils in the exhibit Sam…
Inside a moral vacuum is a bad place to be: Not only is it fraught with violence and suffering, it’s boring, too. But somehow that boredom is conveyed without boring the audience in The Lida Project’s consuming production of Edward Bond’s notorious urban horror story Saved. It all takes place…
