Growing up in an East Texas trailer park gave Michael Mayes an edge on the other singers trying out for the role of Joseph De Rocher, the convicted murderer and rapist in Terrence McNally and Jake Heggie’s opera Dead Man Walking. It’s a part Mayes knows well; he grew up…
This is one of the busiest weekends of the summer by far. If you didn’t make it on a camping trip, check out these staycation ideas. They’re all practically free. Go to the beach, learn about new lifestyles or check out a ballgame. You’re free to do any or all…
There are a lot of great, geeky Christmas movies. Halloween? Shit, that holiday was practically made for geeks, and the list of geek films tied to holiday is fantastic. But Independence Day? There’s exactly one movie tied to that holiday that any self-respecting geek should give a shit about it,…
Mark Ruffalo’s great gift, besides those scruffy good looks and that prickish, hung-over charisma, is capturing the essence of the guy who’s spinning toward a crash but trying to angle himself back. His greatest performance, in Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me, is a slow-motion skid-out, a portrait of…
Earth to Echo is a slender kiddie flick about a quartet of preteens and their palm-sized alien pal that’s at once bland, well-intentioned, and utterly terrifying regarding the mental development of modern children. As in the most honest kids films, our five-foot heroes admit to being isolated, unhappy, and cowed…
It’s kind of happy-sad, like watching a kid you knew as a toddler graduate from high school: Chris Evans, seemingly destined to be a boy forever, is now officially a grownup. In Bong Joon-ho’s futuristic snowbummer Snowpiercer, the Korean director’s first English-language film, Evans plays the leader of a group…
The Merry Wives of Windsor isn’t one of Shakespeare’s best plays. I read somewhere that it was written in response to the desire of Queen Elizabeth I to see the fat knight in love, and the plot is slight. This Sir John Falstaff isn’t the one we know from the…
Northern New Mexico is renowned for its vibrant art scene, and lots of attention has been paid to it, especially with regard to the region’s art history. In the early twentieth century, artists began to go to Taos and Santa Fe, initially attracted by the unique scenery and the colorful…
It’s a relief, after the wretched Identity Thief, to see movies whose makers love Melissa McCarthy as much as audiences do. Identity Thief’s comic centerpiece was predicated on the idea that McCarthy having sex is a hilarious grossout, like she’s the pie Jason Biggs once had to diddle. Half an…
Horror, like porno, can be judged only by its effect on your pulse: If you jerked in your seat, it served its function. Biology requires us to react to jump scares, just as it urges a lonely man to thrill to a great set of tits. But triggering a coronary…
Let’s get the obvious over with: The early days of the Beatles, as reflected in Richard Lester’s ebullient shout of freedom A Hard Day’s Night, were all about the optimism of the early 1960s, a thrilling and energizing time when young people, and even some older ones, truly believed that…
I Hate Hamlet. I Hate Hamlet is a bit like the curate’s egg: hilariously funny in parts, and in others so idiotic that you’re embarrassed for the actors. Why is the radiant Jamie Ann Romero wasting her talents wafting about as Deirdre, a stagestruck 29-year-old virgin who’ll have sex with…
Articulated Perspectives. Summer is group-show time, and Bill Havu and Nick Ryan have put together a great exhibit that looks at artists who combine representational imagery with abstract sensibilities. The exhibit, installed on both the main level and the mezzanine, includes the work of three painters and one sculptor. As…
Here are some of the triumphant moments of recent history that make it into the climactic montage in America, the latest “America’s perfect!”/”America’s doomed!” pant load from felonious troll Dinesh D’Souza: Jackie Robinson rounding home. Elvis Presley swinging his hips. Ronald Reagan and the Berlin Wall. Boxed copies of Windows…
If a toddler tried to re-create the mystifying behavior of adults, it would look a lot like Paul Haggis’s Third Person, a drama where grownups scream and cry and kiss for reasons that are confounding even to those who understand speech. The film follows a handful of couples, or, really,…
How has there not already been a Nicolas Cage movie called Rage? That title could fit many of the Drive Angry star’s late-career time-wasters. Here it works best as an imperative rather than an announcement of theme: You may feel some anger if you pay to watch this. Or you…
Artist Nathan Abels paints light and its infinitesimal atmospheric changes, something that can’t be easy, though his facility with a brush somehow makes it appear so. And that’s just one subtle theme running through West With the Night, a show of new works that celebrates, among other things, sunrises and…
The Fourth of July is all about the bombs bursting in air and the stars and stripes forever, but it’s also about family and community and eating watermelon. Get your patriotism on a night early at the annual Independence Eve celebration in Civic Center Park, a party with fireworks that’s…
Whenever Plus Gallery artist Xi Zhang, who now lives in Milwaukee, returns to his once-adopted home of Denver, it’s reason for a celebration, and his current visit will include that and more, with both a wedding and a new solo show at Plus on the talented Chinese emigre’s agenda. The…
Tired of nostalgia, Uncle Sam and “The Star-Spangled Banner”? Check out Dark Junk Under Mile High Lights, the Itchy-O Marching Band Independence Day extravaganza in teh shadow of Sport Authority Fireld at Mile High. The 32-piece mob of drummers, exotic dancers, electro-trash musicians and even a Chinese lion entertains audiences…
Today the Fourth of July is synonymous with top-of-the-line pyrotechnic displays and big BBQ cookouts with the latest gas-grill technology. But how did we celebrate America before we could Instagram the moment? Find out at the Old Fashioned July 4th Celebration at Four Mile Historic Park, which will be hosting…
With 200 craft breweries in Colorado, it’s no surprise that out-of-state outfits want to cash in on this state’s thriving beer culture. Tonight in City Park, the Boston Beer Company will host the Samuel Adams Brew & View, where audiences can play lawn games, graze food-truck offerings and sample beers,…
