Wednesday January 18 A stand-up kinda guy: Remember Tom Hanks in his role as a comedian in Punchline? The comic touch in his routines came directly from the funny bone of Barry Sobel, who not only coached Hanks in the fine art of making people roll on the floor but…
Hard as it is to admit, Denver’s alternative scene is aging. Well-established cooperative galleries such as Pirate and Spark are celebrating anniversaries well into the double digits, and many of their members now enjoy elder-statesman status. Housed mostly in shabby storefronts in cheap neighborhoods, these hardy urban survivors can seem…
The texture and nature of intimacy is the texture and substance of Shay Youngblood’s potent Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery at Eulipions Theatre. The story about a twelve-year-old girl and the eight “Big Mamas” who raised her reveals the hidden threads women sometimes weave into a community. Many of the…
The record book tells us that Ty Cobb was one of the greatest players in baseball history, and he was. His .367 lifetime batting average will never be approached. His record of 4,191 hits was finally broken by Pete Rose in 1985, but he still holds the mark for runs…
As usual, filmmaker Zhang Yimou is in hot water with the Chinese authorities–the kind of people who think freedom of expression means picking your own appetizer off the lunch menu. Zhang’s latest film, To Live, is a family epic that just happens to trace the agonies and ironies of the…
Believe it or not, Paul Newman will be seventy this year. That serves to remind us how long it’s been since the crass young cowboy called Hud and the Christlike rebel Cool Hand Luke passed into the realm of movie legend. It also tells us that the heroes of Newman’s…
Wednesday January 11 Be a sport: The next best thing to a tramp through the woods is a visit to the Denver Sportsmen’s Show, a five-day event opening today at the Colorado Convention Center. There you’ll find the indoor Wild Trout River, a slate of outdoor seminars, a fly-tying theater…
When I was around six years old, my mother took a class in oil painting at Emily Griffith Opportunity School. I have vivid memories of her bringing home boxes of smelly paint and handfuls of those tiny books filled with child-sized reproductions of the paintings of Renoir and Van Gogh…
Beware the ghost with a bargain: The price for the ethereal gifts he offers may be too high. The hero of Charles Dickens’s The Haunted Man, now in a splendid new production by CityStage Ensemble, discovers just how high a price when he’s offered release from the sorrows of his…
The eagerness and all-out urgency driving John Singleton’s movies often overwhelm his common sense, but no one can fault the young filmmaker for lack of feeling or purpose. In Boyz N the Hood, Singleton threw himself into the streets of Los Angeles with both philosophical barrels blazing, and by the…
Susan Sarandon’s advisors shook their heads. Once you play a mother, they said, you’re stuck with mothers. You can’t go back. You can never outwit Tommy Lee Jones in court again. You can’t romance Kevin Costner in the bush leagues. You can’t rob convenience stores with Geena Davis. “That’s what…
Now that Cap’n Newt is steering the ship of state, how long will it take First Mate Helms to toss Pulp Fiction overboard and throw The Simpsons in the brig? While we wait for a little neo-Puritan backlash, here’s a safe, literate and, in places, self-righteous movie about the endurance…
Wednesday January 4 It’s all relative: Mom never wore neat shirtwaists and pearls in the kitchen the way June Cleaver did, and Dad is nowhere near as cute a roost ruler as Dr. Huxtable used to be. Your brothers and sisters had normal growing pains, not the contrived problems faced…
Any curator looking to find the best women artists from the Front Range over the last twenty years would do well to read the roster of the Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute. Begun in 1976, RMWI’s annual search for female (and, since 1993, male) artists, writers and performers boasts an impressive…
Sometimes a guy is better off when his wildest dreams don’t come true. After all, when real life intrudes on fantasy, it can be most disappointing. So the hero finds out in Last of the Red Hot Lovers, playing at the RiverTree Theatre through Saturday. Oddly enough, Neil Simon’s meditation…
Ludwig van Beethoven’s sundry biographers, wherever they’re sitting, may feel like throwing their hands over their eyes upon being subjected to the crass speculations in Bernard Rose’s Immortal Beloved. But they won’t cover their ears. Musical fidelity has always been more vital to composer biopics than historical accuracy, and Britisher…
How’s this for high concept? Hip, dreamy black dude from the Pittsburgh ‘hood evades loan sharks by passing himself off as square suburban businessman’s long-lost childhood buddy. Despite cultural clashes and comic missteps at the country club, impostor and entire dysfunctional family of white folks wind up friends. Bingo. Ring…
Wednesday December 28 The opposite sax: The Creative Music Works continues its Frontiers: Explorations in Out Music series tonight with an adventurous performance by Random Axe. The saxophone duo (Mark Harris and Glenn Nitta)–a pair of locals who both have been seen previously with Monkey Siren and various Fred Hess…
BEST TEN OF 1994 1. Pulp Fiction. Boy wonder Tarantino scores again with wickedly clever crime triptych. Travolta comeback in full swing. 2. Blue, White and Red. Polish master Kieslowski hits the trifecta, then announces retirement. 3. Cobb. Denver must wait for Tommy Lee JonesÕs brilliant portrait of savage, embittered…
The last time I checked, Albert Einstein was better known as the most brilliant theoretical physicist in human history than as a cute old prankster with white hair whose corduroys were always slipping over his butt. But then, I could be wrong. My SAT scores were lukewarm, I went to…
Out there in the forest primeval of moviedom, the “wild child” has long lurked, rustling around in search of edible tree bark and good box office. First Tarzan swung through the underbrush. Then Francois Truffaut discovered uncivilized, unspoiled Homo sapiens in 1969’s L’Enfant Sauvage. Werner Herzog rounded him up again…
In the Age of Jackie Collins, Anton Chekhov is not the first name that springs to mind when the prof starts talking lit. The Schwarzenegger crowd hasn’t read Chekhov in years, and no one pays 65 bucks a ticket anymore to see his stuff on Broadway. Thank goodness, then, for…
