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…
Wednesday July 13 Shelling it out: Native American literature no longer languishes on the cultural back burner–author Paula Gunn Allen now provides a comprehensive overview in Voice of the Turtle, a book containing published works by indigenous peoples dating from 1900 to 1970. Allen will re-create those voices tonight during…
In the art world, representations of the human body commonly symbolize perfection and beauty, an ideal. But occasionally the form depicted is flawed, maimed–even erased. Such figures inhabit the abstract-flavored paintings, drawings and sculptures of Agnese Udinotti and Jeff Bertoncino, on display at Mackey Gallery. The two artists’ harmonious styles…
She lures him into her chamber and keeps him there like a big, hungry spider. First she seduces him, and then he can’t leave because he throws his back out. It’s Christmas Eve and there’s a blizzard raging outside–no cabs, no limos. All the while she works on him, because…
Even good actors are entitled to load a dud once in a while–especially in July. Blown Away is the summer’s second action picture pitting a mad bomber against a cop, but the fireworks this time around are limited to the explosive charges that wacko Irish terrorist Tommy Lee Jones plants…
The sweet-tempered half-wit Tom Hanks portrays in Forrest Gump has dozens of antecedents in literature and films, so it’s a little tough to keep him in focus. For a start, imagine the eternal optimist Candide combined with Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin and Dustin Hoffman’s savant from Rain Man. Add a dash…
Wednesday July 6 Belew horizon: Who knew? Adrian Belew may have gotten his start playing covers at the Holiday Inn, but nothing in the transcendent career that followed would indicate it. This thinking guitarist’s guitarist has been Lieutenant Punk to Frank Zappa and the pop foil of Robert Fripp in…
The Fourth has come and gone, but the spirit of independence is amply demonstrated in three sparkling new art exhibitions by and about women. At Edge Gallery, solo shows by artists Cara Jaye and Gail Wagner each explore the idea of “a woman’s place” with revolutionary zest. Across town, photographer…
The lighthearted feminist musical review A…My Name Is Still Alice, a collection of songs and sketches now in its regional premiere at the Theatre on Broadway, is more about playful self-mockery than genuine social issues. It may not be a comic wonderland–there are some scratchy performances among the six-woman ensemble…
The Shadow is a shadow of the Thirties radio fantasy that inspired it, but not for the usual reasons. As early TV shows demonstrated, you can impose visual images on radio melodrama and get away with it. Especially when most of the original audience will never see the thing. What…
In its vain and glamorous heyday, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studiously avoided sending “messages” to the 90 million Americans who went to the movies each week. Instead, the biggest and richest of the Hollywood studios produced sophisticated escapism, polished to a gleam by the slickest directors and craftspeople and inhabited, as the company…
Wednesday June 29 Piano lessons: Practice makes perfect–directors often hone their filmmaking chops on short subjects before working their way up to full-length features as stunning as the Jane Campion flick The Piano or as quirky as Orlando, Sally Potter’s Virginia Woolf adaptation. You can check out shorts by both…
Wednesday June 22 Siren songs: Guitarist Ottmar Liebert knows what the view looks like from the top of the new-age charts. His music–shooting off from a passionate home base of flamenco toward unknown worlds that encompass jazz and other global sounds–defines the genre. And Liebert’s unmistakable instrumental prowess helps carry…
The old maxim that a picture is worth a thousand words takes on new significance when art incorporates text. The use of letters, words and meaningful phrases as visual elements in artwork is a fairly recent invention–the two media still are perceived by many as essential opposites. If not for…
Something’s happenin’ here, and what it is ain’t exactly clear. But it’s exciting, funny and bugged-out. The Home Medical Shopping Network, an hour-long performance theater piece now playing at The Bug, takes on the business of medicine and the inanity of cable TV (and the culture that has produced them…
It’s great fun to see famous Broadway and Hollywood actors on a Denver stage–it seems to bring out the “golly gee” in all of us. Wendy Wasserstein’s slick, sophisticated and tepid comedy The Sisters Rosensweig, passing through Denver via the Auditorium Theatre’s “renovated” stage, boasts a fine professional cast–all established…
Now that Westerns are back, you can get a fresh, vivid look at the Wyatt Earp/Doc Holliday legend by renting Tombstone at the video store. Released in theaters six months ago, George P. Cosmatos’s swift, concise hayburner features the able Kurt Russell as vengeful lawman Earp and edgy Val Kilmer…
Nobody handed Jack Nicholson anything. He earned his place early on as one of Hollywood’s big dogs, and twenty-five years later, he’s not afraid to bare his fangs. For instance: A lesser force might not have gone anywhere near Wolf, recalling those campy werewolf flicks in which tormented Henry Hull…
Wednesday June 15 To be or not to be: Can you decide to not be gay? The question is turned over completely in One Nation Under God, this week’s installment of the PBS documentary series Point of View. Combining a look at activities within Exodus International, an organization touting “homosexual…
Although there are several Denver galleries that specialize in African-American art, oftentimes the work displayed is as safe and stereotypical as that of the most conservative Cherry Creek showroom. Few opportunities exist in the area for African-American artists on the cutting edge, those who don’t conform to the demands of…
On the surface Nunsense II: The Second Coming may sound irreverent, anti-Catholic and irreligious. But like its predecessor Nunsense, it’s none of those things. The jokes are funniest to those most familiar with Catholicism–one former Catholic schoolboy informed me that the Latin motto on the floor of Mount Saint Helen’s…
Natalie Belcon is beautiful, funny and equipped with a luscious, rich voice. You can hear a long way down into the sound she makes, and in Robert Garner Center Attractions’ The World Goes ‘Round, she makes the world go around all by herself–almost. Belcon’s not really all by herself–there are…
