A truly punk act, a shout of freedom, frustration, and exaltation, hits about halfway through Lukas Moodysson’s girl-punk reverie We Are the Best! The three thirteen-year-old protagonists, high on the idea of the three-chord band they’ve just started, find some damp garbage bags on the street that, they discover, are…
There’s much to be astonished by in the story of how the Supreme Court was goaded in slapping down Proposition 8, California’s gay marriage ban. One of the most surprising: that in courtroom after courtroom, be it state, district or superior, Charles Cooper and the proponents of the ban never…
Comedies about the battle of the sexes tend to have one clear loser: the audience. Driven by an oppositional view of romance that proved outmoded and seldom funny, Think Like a Man introduced us to six men living in Los Angeles and their corresponding flames. Some of these entanglements were…
Denver’s PechaKucha community, which puts on high-energy, lightning-fast slide shows with local creatives, likes to take to the streets when the weather gets nice. “Most of our summer PechaKuchas are outdoors, when the weather is great and we can get a big audience,” says spokeswoman Martha Weidmann. “Having them outside…
Although considered by many to be a hip-hop producer, Steven Ellison has displayed musical and artistic ambitions that are clearly not confined to a narrow range of classification. Drawing inspiration from the late hip-hop genius J Dilla, Ellison, under the moniker Flying Lotus, has likewise brought considerable imagination and a…
Give Of Montreal’s back catalogue even a casual listen and you’ll find a little bit of everything — glam rock, disco, psychedelia and pure pop — sometimes all crammed into the same song. The band’s main man, Kevin Barnes, is a complex and contradictory figure, creating everything from obscure characters,…
Out in the open is the place to be on pleasant summer nights, and that’s where you’ll be seated for tonight’s performance at the Arvada Center amphitheater by Denver’s Wonderbound dance company. In a program called Memories, choreographer Garrett Ammon and the troupe will explore themes of Jewish life and…
Denver has an impressive collection of public art — and tonight, some of those pieces will be in the spotlight during the Twilight Bike Tour, a two-wheeled spin around the city put on by Denver Arts & Venues. “We have a handful of pieces in the city that have a…
Blow off all other obligations and hit the streets for the eleventh annual Go Skateboarding Day. Skateboarding is for everyone, age, gender and skill level notwithstanding, and today’s unofficial holiday will celebrate the sport. Expect huge crowds at the Denver and Arvada skate parks, where local skate companies will be…
Your new favorite band is from Denver — you just have to find it! No small task in a city with thousands of artists and hundreds of venues, we know — but you can start this weekend at the Westword Music Showcase. More than 140 of our favorite local artists…
Last winter, Sara Martinelli, owner of Three Leaf Farm, decided to host an art show in her barn. “It was a huge success; we had tons of people,” she remembers. “So I thought I’d do it for the summer solstice, too.” The big draw of Art on the Farm is…
Thirty million surveillance cameras operate in the United States, shooting four billion hours of footage each week, say Nothing to See Here curators Christina Battle and Adán De La Garza. “Let’s just stop and think about that for a second — the average person (with a life expectancy of 75…
When Denver hosted its first PrideFest 39 years ago, being gay was illegal in most states and the idea of gay marriage was inconceivable, says Rex Fuller of the Colorado Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Center. “Our theme for this year is Same World Same Love. We’re talking about the…
Learning is always more fun when you have a beer in hand. That’s the basic idea behind Nerd Nite Denver, a lecture (and drinking) series that encourages people to share the knowledge they’re passionate about. With topics ranging from the evolution of Wesley Crusher’s sweaters on Star Trek: The Next…
Director Jeremy Seifert struck gold with his first film, DIVE!, a prize-winning low-budget doc about the wisdom of putting waste to use in a second life. To make his second movie, GMO OMG, Seifert took his family with him on a journey to explore the proliferation of GMOs in the…
Punk style is not just for guys. We spotted Denver native Malaya Harris back home during a break from her classes in Chicago. She creates her own unique look by crafting accessories and personalizing her clothing; keep reading to discover what inspires her look and her style icons. See also:Vivan…
To anyone who grew up watching too much basic cable in the ’80s and ’90s, the sight of Paul Reiser cracking wise is comfortingly familiar. Whether on contemporary classics like Aliens and Diner or the long-running and widely syndicated sitcom Mad About You, chances are good that Reiser’s face is on a television somewhere at this exact moment. Not one to rest on his considerable laurels, however, Reiser is currently in the midst of a mid-career renaissance, appearing in several upcoming movies and honing his standup act in clubs across the country. In town this weekend to headline Comedy Works’ South club, Westword caught up with Reiser to discuss his role in the Sundance film festival smash Whiplash, the lasting influence of Aliens, as well as his experience returning to the stage after a 20 year hiatus from comedy.
Ratha Sok had never taken on a project quite like this one. But now approximately 1,500 square feet of space — a pillar outside CEC Middle College that used to be just gray brick — is covered in an eclectic mural painted by Sok, fellow artist friends Denzel Samaniego, Jin…
More than a decade ago, Starz art director Suzanne Heintz decided there was a way to have a family and her freedom, too: She acquired a set of mannequins, including make-believe husband Chauncey and daughter Mary Margaret, and began photographing herself in vignettes with them for a project she calls…
We leave the movie theater on this week’s Voice Film Club podcast in favor of a longform interview with Village Voice film critic Stephanie Zacharek, who’s been at the New York paper for about a year. Before that she wrote for Salon, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and the Boston Phoenix,…
#73: Quintin Gonzalez Texas-born with an MFA from Yale, Quintin Gonzalez makes visually fluid work, regardless of the medium, as he moves between painting, drawing, printmaking, video and new media. Within that repertoire, Gonzalez creates intuitively, drawing from pop-cultural imagery — and something a little deeper. Recently, his work has…
A Doctor Who chats with the Queen of Dragons while Finn from Adventure Time peruses the art on the table behind them. This is Denver Comic Con 2014. This ever growing convention just keeps getting better. So what made this year so great? Here are the five best things about…
