So-called fine-art quilts are nothing new. Pop-art guru Robert Rauschenberg invented his famous “combine” series in 1955 by sloshing paint on a quilted bedspread. More recent high-art treatments of Granny’s handmade bed coverings include Judy Chicago’s ground-breaking feminist collaborative projects of the Seventies and the sad, enormous “AIDS Quilt.” Usually…
“It’s hard being easy,” remarks the prostitute in Erik Tieze’s new one-act, Motherlode, the first–and best–of three works by Colorado playwrights in the Changing Scene Theater’s Summerplay: Series 2. She’s wryly describing her own workload, of course. But the line also sums up the predicament faced by the play’s characters:…
Of all the summer musicals available this season, the best so far is Ain’t Misbehavin’, featuring the music of Fats Waller. The production now playing at the Eulipions cultural center erupts with energy, talent and intelligence. These songs are gutsy, wise and full of heart–earthy, sweetly romantic, at times patriotic…
If you liked Whit Stillman’s earlier comedy Metropolitan, in which a group of lamebrained debutantes and their sniffy dates sit around a Park Avenue living room drinking their parents’ whiskey and pondering the meaning of life, you’ll probably like Barcelona. The blue-blooded Stillman remains the only moviemaker in America who…
It’s not exactly news that Mom and Dad and all the things they stand for are completely lame. They were lame in the 1920s, when nice Presbyterian girls from Omaha turned to bathtub gin and the sin of the Charleston. They were lame in the 1950s, when James Dean took…
Wednesday August 3 Fair of the day: There’s nothing like a good old country fair for a dose of plain folks, good eats and rip-snorting entertainment, from buckin’ broncs and tractor pulls to a sweet helping of country music. You’ll find these mundane charms at the Adams County Fair and…
With about a zillion galleries in the West featuring Native American art, you’d think that many would have Native American owners or managers. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Certainly some legitimate galleries guard artists’ interests and the art’s authenticity, but just as many offer mass-produced goods that may or may…
The difficulty in writing a play about another culture and people far, far away is bringing the characters to life. So it comes as no surprise that City-Stage Ensemble’s production of Dan Hiester’s new play, Family Gatherings, a thinly disguised defense of the Palestine Liberation Organization, is a bad trip…
Witchcraft, murder, mayhem, suicide, cynicism and, finally, the tyrant’s head on a pike–Shakespeare really knew how to grab an audience. And despite a somewhat tedious first act, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s production of Macbeth ultimately gives this prurient material the treatment it deserves. The second act is splendid. Even the…
Jim Carrey, the double-jointed, rubber-faced dervish of In Living Color and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, seems like the last guy in the world who needs his act powered up by the special-effects department. But that’s what happens in The Mask. Industrial Light & Magic, the people who put the giddy-up…
Clear and Present Danger is only a movie. In real life, pundits of all political stripes are complaining that the Central Intelligence Agency has grown clumsy and mendacious, that it couldn’t find double-agent Aldrich Ames under its very nose, that it’s lazy and self-serving. But don’t tell that to Tom…
Wednesday July 27 Across the Miles: A mountain vacation doesn’t necessarily mean roughing it–big-city amenities are all at one’s disposal, including big-city music. Witness the Glenwood Springs Summer of Jazz Series, which brings in renowned artists for free Wednesday-night concerts every summer. If you’re in the vicinity tonight, check out…
In Latin America, la promesa is a sacred concept: in order for your prayers to be answered, you must promise to give something in return. This replenishing philosophy motivates much of the area’s folk art as objects of beauty are made to fulfill promises given to family, the community and…
A middle-aged soldier loses his head over a beautiful slut, betrays his wife, his country and himself while spinning slowly into a libertine’s decline. He makes a lot of tactical mistakes as a soldier because he has lost his sense of proportion, all of which eventually leads to his defeat…
While most of the nation’s lawyers are defending O.J. Simpson, a precious dozen or so have slipped away to assist the Clintons in their various tribulations. Apparently all the others drive cabs or run around in the pages of John Grisham’s potboilers saying pithy things. At least there’s finally a…
The figure of the windburned, rawboned, self-sufficient loner has always stood at the heart of the frontier myth. If anything, he’s still getting taller. Witness Colorado Cowboy: The Bruce Ford Story. Arthur Elgort’s spare, straightforward documentary about the five-time world rodeo champion is cause for local pride–Ford operates a ranch…
Wednesday July 20 Tumbling tumbleweeds: Ranger Doug, Too Slim and Woody Paul, better known as Riders in the Sky, will dismount in Denver tonight for a children’s concert sure to please every buckaroo and buckarette in the house–including the grown ones. The trio, famous for its rope tricks, loping humor,…
Denver has no better showcase for sculpture than Artyard, the outdoor gallery on South Pearl Street. The landscaped, paved and fenced garden area is ideal for showing large, durable pieces, and each work gets ample room to make its statement, with only the sky to limit scale. And the intimate…
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead–and the production now at the Theatre on Broadway very nearly succeeds in burying them. Playwright Tom Stoppard takes two of the most ambiguous figures in Shakespeare, Hamlet’s school chums Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and gives them a life of their own, creating a story in which…
When the Puritan Malvolio is funny, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night works. It’s an odd comedy, full of dark emotions and motives, sexual ambiguities, deliberate humiliations and mistaken identity. In some productions, these themes are played seriously and the whole show falls apart. Fortunately, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival production finds exactly the…
Shopping for a superhero this summer? Give poor Arnold Schwarzenegger another chance. That spell of self-doubt that plagued him last year, exemplified by a bomb called The Last Action Hero, now appears to be over, and Arnold is up to his old tricks in True Lies. Most of them, anyway…
American moviemakers with their eye on the hot cultural-diversity issue or the quandaries of the melting pot would do well to see Gurinder Chadha’s Bhaji on the Beach. In a splendid balancing act, this able young director brings keen social observation and pungent, distinctly feminine humor to the everyday traumas…
