Matt O’Neill is the Denver art world’s perennial bad boy: he does things his own way regardless of what anybody thinks, which is why his varied works have such an in-your-face sensibility. Though on the surface, his paintings and drawings seem to be anti-intellectual (as do his explanations of them),…
It’s been a few days since I saw David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars, screening here in competition, and I’m still not completely sure what I think of this sometimes-smart, sometimes-arch ultra-black comedy about shallow Hollywood types. But one thing’s for sure: Julianne Moore is a knockout in it. Moore…
America’s sweetheart, Jennifer Lawrence, truly can do anything. In the course of three months, she’s managed to graciously lose an Oscar (her third nomination in four years), swan above the mansplaining condescension of a male pundit who tsk-tsked her for getting drunk in public, and burst into the summer blockbuster…
#492425863 / gettyimages.com Marion Cotillard, the star of the Dardenne Brothers’ competition film Two Days, One Night, showed up for the photo call on Tuesday in a mini-dress encrusted with a riot of buttons, a whimsical and rather adorable choice for an actress who, on-screen just a few minutes earlier,…
A romance ripped from the pages of Deuteronomy, Frank Coraci’s Blended posits that the best reason for a woman with sons and a man with daughters to get married is that they can take care of each other’s kids. Quel pragmatisme! In the world of this sitcom love story, men…
“We have the biggest prison population in human history here in the United States,” says Piper Kerman, author of the bittersweet prison memoir Orange Is the New Black. “In a relatively short time — in basically one generation — we have invested so deeply in incarceration that our prison population…
Space is the place for the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra’s interactive season finale, New Frontiers, which will explore the final frontier through a series of intergalactically-themed pieces tonight. The first stop is the fictional planet Krypton, where a violent percussion piece from Michael Daugherty’s Man of Steel-themed Metropolis Symphony sonically depicts…
Stephanie Zacharek has been reporting online from the Cannes Film Festival. For much more, including a couple daft cartoons she drew, visit westword.com/movies/. Foxcatcher Even if Steve Carell’s performance in Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher — a terrific one — ends up being the most lauded in the film, what Channing Tatum…
James McAvoy knows not to trust the British tabloids. While flogging his grotty drama Filth, based on the Irvine Welsh novel about a coke-addicted, double-crossing cop, they breathlessly reported that the Scottish actor had dived so deep into method acting that he’d convinced a German hooker to punch him in…
Jordan Wieleba is an old hand at creating captivating variety shows, and for her latest effort, Something Fabulous, she’s making the venue — Blush & Blu, Westword’s pick for Best Lesbian Bar in 2014 — one of the stars. “A big part of this show is the atmosphere,” Wieleba says…
Today’s inaugural Denver Flea is part market, part party and all Colorado. Celebrating the locally owned and locally grown, this hip take on the traditional flea market will set up in City Park with an array of Denver merchants selling vintage and handmade goods alongside food trucks, outdoor games and…
Although Arapahoe Basin typically closes its season with the Festival of the Brewpubs, sometimes — a few seasons ago, for instance, when a snow drought shortened everyone’s run — the skiing is already over. Not so in 2014, says A-Basin spokeswoman Adrienne Saia Isaac. “This year, the skiing is still…
Traditions old and new will put on a fair face this weekend when ArtStir, an all-Colorado art and design market that debuted in 2013 at the Denver Pavilions, returns in a bigger and better version for Memorial Day weekend. Samuel Schimek of Pavilions shop I Heart Denver took over the…
If you live in Boulder, it just wouldn’t be Memorial Day without the annual BolderBOULDER 10K, which has attracted not hundreds, but thousands of runners each May since 1979, making it one of the biggest road races anywhere in the U.S. If you run in Colorado, this is the place…
Historian Linda Przybyszewski’s interest in mid-century women’s fashion was piqued after she happened upon a home-economics text-book from the 1950s — and it further intensified when she discovered a pamphlet called “How to Buy Shoes” that was put out around the same time by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. What…
Kirk Hanna was a cattle rancher, a conservationist and a Colorado legend before his untimely death at age 43. His pursuit of a utopian vision for the ranching way of life and his impact on open-space preservation and resource management are just part of the story told in Hanna Ranch,…
Some things are just too good to be true, like a Dune film starring Mick Jagger, Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles and David Carradine, directed by cult-film legend Alejandro Jodorowsky, with effects and art by Mœbius, H.R. Giger and Dan O’Bannon. Such a thing is clearly too awesome to exist, but…
Somewhere in the midst of becoming a painter, Mark Penner Howell discovered the human figure. And if there’s anything especially new and interesting about the works going on display tonight for his solo show Double Rainbow Plans: Paintings by Mark Penner Howell at Walker Fine Art, that shift in focus…
Opening a new gallery is never an easy proposition, especially when the space in question is huge and comes with a reputation to uphold (past tenants have included the well-regarded Sandy Carson and van Straaten galleries). But artist and art consultant Mike McClung and his partner, Warren Campbell, already have…
Michael Paglia visits the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in this week’s review, taking in the show Matt O’Neill: Thrift Store Sublime which features a handful of stylistic moves that the artist has made during the past twenty years. Continue reading for photos from the exhibit. See also: New work…
In the social network age, it’s easier than ever to take on new hobbies, thanks in part to online communities like Colorado-based Craftsy.com, which offers streamlined instructions on the web. To celebrate its third anniversary, today the website is giving away all the lessons it typically charges for today. See…
Becky Tate was the last speaker to take the stage last February during Ignite Denver 16 — a periodic event that invites people to give five-minute, twenty-slide presentations about anything they want — and she was a good choice: Tate’s talk was about sex, and it was called “30 Days…
