Of course you’re going to the Westword Music Showcase in the Golden Triangle on Saturday, but that still leaves plenty of time to enjoy everything else this city has to offer, including comedy shows, brewery birthdays and a couple of beach parties. Keep reading for our ten favorite events that won’t set…
Thousands of dedicated cosplayers and comics geeks stormed Denver Comic Con 2016 over the weekend of June 17-19, 2016, for a glorious glimpse of such celebrities as Marvel maven Stan Lee, the latest in comic culture and, thanks to all the costumes, each other. Photographers Aaron Thackeray and Danielle Lirette…
Paul Hamilton owns one of the country’s largest private collections of African art, which fills his three-story Five Points home: up the stairs, down in the basement, out in the garage. Over 800 artifacts are stashed into every crevice imaginable. Now artist and photographer Thomas Evans has brought Hamilton’s collection to…
It’s no secret that I love horror movies, but I have a confession: They don’t really scare me. At least, not usually. My beloved zombie movies fill me with a sense of apocalyptic angst, but almost never fright. As much as I love the gore in so many of these films,…
I’ve long been amazed that artists in Denver’s alternative scene will go to such lengths to pull off shows that run for only a few weeks. But few have gone to as much trouble as Charles Livingston has with Altared States at Pirate, which is anchored by an over-the-top installation…
The most surprising thing about the new buddy action-comedy Central Intelligence is the sight of Kevin Hart playing straight man to another actor’s antics. In previous comedies, Hart has been the pint-sized, fast-talking dynamo at the center of the action. Even in movies where he’s the guy in over his…
Let me tell you all the good things about Nicolas Winding Refn’s high-art, lowbrow horror film The Neon Demon before I tell you what I will not tolerate. After Drive, Refn seems obsessed with his idea of Los Angeles, one where there’s always a full moon, no traffic and everyone…
Has Paul Rudd become Hollywood’s idea of the face of economic insecurity? There his handsome mug was, in Ant-Man, beneath a Baskin-Robbins ball cap, his character making do behind an ice-cream counter while Marvel made bank in promotional tie-ins. And now, in The Fundamentals of Caring, Rob Burnett’s alternately winning/cloying…
Woodrow Wilson described D.W. Griffith’s notorious Civil War epic Birth of a Nation as “writing history with lightning.” Gary Ross’ Free State of Jones, which covers roughly the same period as Griffith’s film, is more like writing history with index cards. Diligent and informative but also fragmented and inert, it…
When commercials for Mel Brooks’ Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) ran on Channel One at my high school, I was ready. Vampire movies had dominated the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and at last a slapstick comedy was set to lampoon all that arty melodrama. High school me couldn’t…
Now more than ever, Denver PrideFest, one of the largest pride events in the nation, stood tall last weekend as a symbol of love and solidarity within the GLBTQ community, here and everywhere. Photographer Miles Crisinger caught all the colors of the fest’s July 19 parade and rally. Now…
Podcasts are in tune with the democratized spirit of the internet; anyone with a microphone and a computer can offer listeners unlimited hours of recordings, usually for free. Limited only by their imaginations, podcasters have a freedom of expression unrestricted by commerce, censorship or geography. Several great podcasts have blossomed…
John Moore is no stranger to the theater. For more than a decade, the longtime journalist and critic for the Denver Post covered Colorado’s theater scene with an integrity and intensity that earned him a spot as one of the country’s twelve most influential critics in American Theatre Magazine in 2011 — the year…
My family has always been politically divided. My parents used to joke about “cancelling out each other’s votes,” as my mom entered the voting booth a Democrat and my dad, a staunch Republican. I remember how much I loved being at my mom’s side in the voting booth, peeking out…
Catherine, a widow living in a wealthy suburb of Austin, Texas, during the presidency of George W. Bush, hires Arturo from a group of unemployed men gathered at a street corner to clean up her overgrown garden. She is lonely, neurotic, angry, shunned by neighbors who gossip about the reasons…
Thousands of comics fans lined up last weekend for Denver Comic Con at the Colorado Convention Center, many of them there to show off their elaborate cosplay creations, which often require months of preparation. Behold the heroes and villains and weird characters of Denver Comic Con 2016, as documented by…
“We just decided to go for it,” says Ryan Schutz, a towering, genial, bearded guy — Hagrid in a service-station shirt. With him is Mike Decker, similarly attired, one arm in a sling but the other rocking a Mongo-size cup of coffee. Schutz is the executive director of Bikes Together, a…
A mythical and misunderstood place, Lakeside Amusement Park stands as one of Colorado’s most enduring and fascinating cultural treasures. Opened and in operation since 1908, the family-owned park was not only a prominent player in Mayor Robert Speer’s vision for Denver as part of the City Beautiful movement, but also…
Let’s face it: Colorado was made for hiking. From the highest peaks in North America to the lush forests of lodgepole pine and aspen, wildflower-blanketed meadows that go on for miles to river- and glacier-carved canyons, the Rocky Mountain landscape is ideal for exploring. That also means that there’s a…
This is the first day of summer, and weeks of fun stretch ahead. But you’ll need to be organized if you want to catch all the great events in Denver and beyond. For starters, this is Go Skate Week, so you’ll want to study the Colorado Skateboarding Facebook page for…
This sadistic pulp-revisionist Western starts so well that you might feel something like loss as it ends: The Duel could have been something. The opening is all evocative mud and blood as a pair of knife-fighters, their left arms tied together, stab in a downpour. Cut to two decades later,…
John Carpenter, the legendary horror filmmaker, has been the focus of a Scream Screen tribute at the Sie FilmCenter that just concluded with last night’s Prince of Darkness showing. But there was supposed to be a special bonus to that series: Carpenter, who’s currently on his first national tour as a musician, was…
