There’s no doubt that Ping Pong Summer is someone’s childhood. It plays like a cherished memory, rosy and warm, rebuilt in minutiae with such affection and detail it’s hard not to be moved by its sincerity. Writer-director Michael Tully weaves his coming-of-age story with all the trappings of the ’80s,…
Though Denver’s art world can trace its roots back to the late nineteenth century — the Denver Art Museum, for example, was founded in 1893 — it has only reached critical mass since the dawn of the 21st. The most obvious evidence of this was the construction of the DAM’s…
Peggy Jo Tallas was an outwardly conventional, quiet-spoken Texas woman who, after a mildly adventurous youth, lived with her mother for many years. Starting at the age of forty, she also robbed banks — perhaps because she was bored, perhaps because she was seeking a fuller and more interesting life,…
One of the biggest selling points of 21 Jump Street, the 2012 TV-remake comedy, turned out to be its seemingly unscripted lunacy, the way it put Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill in police-shorts outfits and let them riff on their characters’ mutual ineptitude. Sometimes you need a little flapdoodle, and…
When Phil Lord and Chris Miller pitched their idea for a 21 Jump Street movie, a film everyone thought was, at best, a moronic moneymaker, they had one bold proposal: “What if the twist is that we try to make it really good?” says Lord. “That’s basically a summary of…
Multi-hyphenate actor Clark Gregg understands that hard work and perseverance don’t necessarily pay off in Hollywood. Since moving to Los Angeles in 1992, the star of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has directed two feature films and scripted three, none of which are the work he’s best known for. Gregg knows…
Cancer, so costly in real life, can be thrown around pretty cheaply in fiction, which is why most cautious readers and moviegoers are wary of it as a plot element. Call it the Love Story syndrome. But the presence of mortal illness has always been a staple of romantic melodrama,…
The hardest part about making Alamo Drafthouse Cinema’s Wayne’s World Quote-Along work isn’t finding good lines – it’s deciding which great lines are going to make the cut. “When I think about how the quote-alongs are put together, try to whittle it down to the best lines,” explains Keith Garcia,…
A celebration of a visually stunning art form born in the late 1970s and brought into the contemporary age with the newest technology, Laserium: The Cosmic Laser Concert returns to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s Gates Planetarium for a limited summer run today. The multimedia exhibition blends the…
Red Fang started out at the height of stoner rock’s popularity, and the band’s music displays some of the hallmarks of that movement: sludgy, colossal riffs and distorted vocals scaled to epic dimensions. But the members of Red Fang also spent some of their ’90s youth in Portland, witnessing all…
Shakespeare’s famously bloody play Macbeth will get a shot of estrogen starting tonight in the Betsy Stage’s original new adaptation. Beth takes the classic tragedy and places it in 1920s Paris, imagining the title character as a female painter toiling in the male-dominated art scene. “It’s about the struggle to…
“Harvey Milk inspired people, and still does, today,” says Denver Gay Men’s Chorus artistic director James Knapp. And he should know: Knapp will conduct ninety singers and a twenty-piece chamber orchestra tonight in I Am Harvey Milk, an emotionally driven oratorio celebrating the life of California’s first openly gay politician…
For Clyfford Still Museum director Dean Sobel, curating Modern Masters: 20th Century Icons From the Albright-Knox Art Gallery for the Denver Art Museum was a bit like raiding the candy store: Since the DAM doesn’t have much in its collection from the classic modern period on which the exhibit focuses,…
Everyone loves the summer celebration that is Film on the Rocks, and here’s why: It’s got comedy, local bands, cult-favorite movies and a party atmosphere, all under the stars at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the most beautiful outdoor venue in the world. This year’s new host, Sam Tallent, will keep spirits…
Gender inequality plagues the theater world, and “women are fully misrepresented as far as getting our work up on stages goes,” says Susan Lyles, founder and director of the And Toto Too Theater Company, an organization that showcases new works by women playwrights. Tonight, for the troupe’s fourth annual Play…
A new collaboration will take three Denver artists far from Tank, the south Denver studio they share with several others, for a two-part exhibit that opens tonight at Longmont’s Firehouse Art Center and the Boulder mixed venue Madelife. When Joel Swanson, just coming off the high point of a solo…
Mirrored tiles, wood branded with politically charged symbols, LPs, books, chairs, rugs and mounds of slowly melting shea butter are just a few of the materials that New York-based artist Rashid Johnson layers into his complex sculptural works. Some hang on walls; others, like the installation called “The Shea Butter…
For our second annual Comics issue and contest, we asked cartoonists (and would-be cartoonists) to send us comics depicting life in Colorado. The winning entries tackled a variety of subjects, from overcrowding to the nightlife of Colorado’s casino mountain towns. Here, we present the cream of the crop. Having trouble…
For this year’s edition of Fantasia 2014, Colin Ward says he was moved to action by the urban environment he experiences every day. “For years I’ve been diehard passionate about the world kind of waking up — I believe that there are so many bad decisions being made with the…
Though Molly Brown’s fame lies with the sinking of the Titanic, the Molly Brown House Museum’s summer exhibit, “A Call to Arms,” aims to show her place in history beyond the boat by focusing on her involvement in World War I. Some of the artifacts include several original Red Cross…
Jeff Raphael was once the drummer of early San Francisco punk band The Nuns. Along with The Avengers, that band opened the infamous last show that the Sex Pistols in its first run played at Winterland in February 1978. Since then, Raphael has gone on to play with several of…
Why is the dance company whose “Welcome to the Madhouse” plays in Longmont this weekend called Point Your Damn Toes? Founder-director Julia Kay laughs. “We first started dancing together two or three years ago, and when we decided to become a company, I was bouncing back and forth among names,”…
