Ambition Facing West. Anthony Clarvoe’s Ambition Facing West is ostensibly about immigration, since it deals with three generations of an immigrant family — their lives, identities and ambitions in the mythical trek west for safety, opportunity and freedom, however defined. But Clarvoe goes deeper than this. His play isn’t a…
Far North & Outer Space. Far North & Outer Space, now at Goodwin Fine Art, features new work by Beau Carey and Lanny DeVuono, both of whom create contemporary paintings based obliquely on views of the landscape. Many of the Careys are snow scenes and were inspired by a National…
This essay contains a spoiler or two for John Wick. There’s too much violence in movies today — too much of the wrong kind, though if you asked me what the “right” kind is, I would only be able to tell you that I know it when I see it…
Dog lovers and fans of the beyond-understated charisma of Keanu Reeves have a tough choice when it comes to John Wick. Those who count themselves among the former should know that the Cutest Beagle EVER gets offed — off-screen, but still — in the first twenty minutes. That’s not my…
Alexandre Aja’s Horns is the rare YA-ish romance that doesn’t make like a guidance counselor and force the characters to shake hands and forgive. It’s a biblically tinged, eye-for-an-eye vengeance thriller about an emo boyfriend named Ig (Daniel Radcliffe) whose childhood sweetheart, Merrin (Juno Temple), has been murdered underneath the…
When we first meet the title character in Olive Kitteridge, she considers the revolver in her hands and looks up at the cloudless sky above the woods one last time. The 25-year journey (and the accumulation of mistakes and bad luck therein) that leads the elderly Olive to that moment…
You’re never too old to have style: That’s the message in Lithuanian-born filmmaker Lina Plioplyte’s documentary Advanced Style, screening tonight at the Sie FilmCenter as part of the Denver Film Society’s Women+Film series. Plioplyte, who financed the film through crowdfunding, will appear via Skype at the event to discuss the…
Kate Bornstein is a lot of things: activist, artist, writer, actor, playwright and gender theorist. But she’s also human, and tonight’s screening of Kate Bornstein Is a Queer & Pleasant Danger gets that point across. Not so much a documentary as a contemporary day-in-the-life tale with biographical elements woven throughout,…
If the only thing that really scares you about Halloween is figuring out where to spend your precious partying time, put your anxieties to rest. With Nightmare on LoDo Street, you don’t have to choose. “A pub crawl gives you the ultimate experience on this night — a variety of…
Fabulous costumes and makeup are a part of everyday life for drag queens. But when Halloween rolls around, it’s time to kick it up a notch. This year, Tracks Night Club is mashing up Halloween with its monthly Drag Nation show to bring you an all-out freak show. The club…
The Mercury Cafe does Halloween right every year — and for 2014, it’s throwing a little bit of samba flavor in with the usual favorites. “On Halloween, we invite our beloved dead to come feast with us and dance,” explains owner Marilyn Megenity. “Throughout the entire building, that’s what we’ll…
It’s been seven years since Boulder’s Frequent Flyers aerial dance troupe put on its sophisticated, Halloween-friendly show Theatre of the Vampires, partly because it’s so costly to stage. “The production qualities are high, and it’s expensive for a reason — it’s the real deal,” notes Frequent Flyers founder Nancy Smith…
Few Halloween club-night promoters meld partying with the arts more seamlessly than the Fantastic Hosts, a private local group for young professionals that opens some of its events to the public. Tonight’s Fantastic Ugly Bug Ball is the group’s spooktastic love letter to the fun-loving, diverse and artsy crowds of…
It’s not uncommon to see throngs of people, faces painted and food in hand, parading into cemeteries on November 1 and 2. Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), a two-day holiday that originated in Mexico, honors the dead through festivals and celebrations. It is believed that the dead…
Fans of the annual Denver Gorilla Run might notice that the event has migrated this year from its longtime home in lower downtown to City Park. “Runners will see a lot more natural vegetation,” notes Frank Keesling, president of the Mountain Gorilla Conservation Fund, the beneficiary of the event. “It’s…
Nearly every adult in America read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in middle school and has some memory of the novel’s nonstop, gut-wrenching intensity. Just imagine roping in all of the book’s politics and violence on the compact stage-in-the-round at the Denver Center Theatre Company’s Space Theatre. That’s the…
Theresa Caputo is not your run-of-the-mill TV psychic or a one-dimensional caricature. Rather, she’s full of charm — something that the clairvoyant shows off perfectly in TLC’s brilliant Long Island Medium, a show that is just as much about Caputo’s everyday life as a wife and mother as it is…
Sci-fi author William Gibson has a reputation as a prognosticator of the future. His debut novel Neuromancer portrayed the Internet’s takeover of everyday life a decade and a half before it happened, establishing the gritty cyberpunk genre and influencing creators from Billy Idol to the Wachowskis. When it comes to…
Decades ago, a golden era of TV horror hosts flourished. Every UHF channel with access to a hammy local actor and a box full of old, cheap monster movies would put the two together to fill those late-night hours. Those days are long gone, but the men of the Werewolf…
The University of Colorado’s International Film Series is mining the series Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema on Wednesday nights this fall, and this evening’s screening of Krzysztof Zanussi’s 1972 flick The Illumination fits right into Polish film’s experimental mold. Outwardly the story of a physics student waylaid in…
While a tense Denver Center Theatre Company stage adaptation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies goes on around the corner at the Space Theatre, Off-Center@The Jones will be making a delightful mockery of it, beginning with tonight’s 8 p.m. premiere of >Lord of the Butterflies, a musical parody featuring…
There aren’t many love stories as beautiful and strange as Harold and Maude, and when the stage adaptation of the classic film opens tonight, you’ll find its unique wonder intact. Not that there aren’t some obstacles to staging the tale of a love affair between a septuagenarian with a zest…
