Written, produced, directed, and edited by Rena Riffel, who also reprises her role as Penny from the original Showgirls, Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven has been available on VOD for at least a year, but is now being released on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing, thus conferring onto it the…
For nearly a century, Western art was dismissed in favor of international modernism. But then a funny thing happened: In the late twentieth century, the market for Western-themed paintings and sculptures soared, forcing institutions like the Denver Art Museum to scramble to catch up as prices skyrocketed. (This is why…
Al Wynne. As many know, the Black Forest home and studio shared for more than sixty years by the late Al Wynne and his widow, Lou Wynne, was utterly destroyed by fire this summer. The conflagration took some 400 works by Al in the form of watercolors and drawings, constituting…
After the Revolution. Playwright Amy Herzog enters a very specific world in After the Revolution: the passionate, close-knit, hyper-idealistic world of Jewish Communism in New York City during the early decades of the twentieth century. For these activists, Soviet Russia was a model. But when Khrushchev denounced Stalin during the…
James Gandolfini’s charisma wasn’t something turned on at will, but rather a vibe that radiated from deep within: It’s in the timbre of his voice, his rolling carriage, the way he’s always just one flirtatious millisecond behind the beat. Part of what Gandolfini does in Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said is…
To paraphrase the Bee Gees, Joseph Gordon-Levitt should be dancing. He’s already done it in (500) Days of Summer, where he led an exuberant ensemble routine that out-Dr Peppered any Dr Pepper commercial. Then there was his smashing Saturday Night Live re-creation of Donald O’Connor’s “Make ‘Em Laugh” — like…
It was 1976, a year when all the groovy girls were traipsing around in tiny suede skirts and all the cool guys had Badfinger hair. One of those guys was English racing driver James Hunt, the charismatic rapscallion who won that year’s Formula One World Championship. (The embroidered badge on…
You wouldn’t expect this production of The Full Monty at a dinner theater — not so much because of the script, but because of the daring with which it’s staged. Places like Boulder’s Dinner Theater are kept alive in large part by church groups and Rotary-type clubs, and they need…
Defending the Caveman is a low-key, low-budget one-man show, part standup comedy, part nightclub act. Written by Rob Becker, the piece has been appearing in intimate venues around the country for several years, promoted as a fun way to pass an evening with a drink in your hand and your…
Mild spoilers up to The Bridge’s ninth episode below. Artisanal murders are all the rage these days. On Showtime’s Dexter, NBC’s Hannibal and Fox’s The Following, small-batch, labor-intensive, sold-with-a-story slaughters have become TV’s equivalent of the Cronut. Handsome, intelligent and mannered as court eunuchs, serial killers have become the new…
The Black Power movement is a piece of American history that still strikes fear, anger and misinformation into the hearts of some people. But for anyone looking to get past the rhetoric, ArgusFest will host a screening and group discussion tonight of The Black Power Mix-tape 1967-1975, a documentary assembled…
When your city is invaded by a host of demons, you’re going to need the skills of a top-notch exorcist to set things straight. Maybe even a couple. Lucky, then, that twin brothers Rin and Yukio of Blue Exorcist: The Movie are especially skilled exorcists, even if Rin is the…
The seed for Ethan Knightchilde’s documentary Ghosts of the West was planted during his childhood. “I grew up on the East Coast,” he notes, “and when I was about nine years old, I read a book — some adolescent tale about a ghost town and a lost mine. It was…
Civic Center Eats has morphed over the years from its funky beginnings as an urban lunch-hour farmers’ market to a bi-weekly food-truck party — and, as Civic Center Conservancy director Lindy Eichenbaum Lent notes, “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. “There’s only so much room in the park, but…
A third of the food we eat comes from pollinated plants, from the apples in our pie to the asparagus on our grill, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And since honeybees are responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, they’re helping to put that food on our tables…
“You can set a whole continent on fire with language,” says Michael Annis of Denver’s Howling Dog Press. “Poetry at its most passionate is a language tool for getting people in touch with their inner selves. And until you do that, it’s going to be hard to change the world…
Niza Knoll Gallery’s annual canine-inspired art show Gone to the Dogs has received a lot of interesting submissions in the past four years, from paintings to sculptures to a real-life freeze-dried dog in a Victorian-era glass case. This year’s show will feature an all-new array of forty or so eclectic…
Though staring at the sun under normal conditions is not advisable, you can look at that mass of incandescent gas today at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science without worrying about blindness. “I’m looking forward to our visitors having the opportunity to observe the sun through the solar telescopes,”…
I love ceramicist Jean Smith’s work, so when she asked if I would be willing to judge the Mixed Media Show sponsored by the Women’s Caucus for Art, Colorado Chapter, I was honored — and intrigued. But I also should have been very, very wary, because soon the entries —…
If you think there’s something different about this year’s Boulder International Fringe Festival, check your calendar. Activities are starting about a month later than usual, and, as Fringe director Dave Ortolano notes, there’s a reason for that. Years of feedback from audiences, artists and sponsors from past fests, have indicated…
The familiar and evocative mature paintings of Mark Rothko channel pathos in their glowing blocks of color, but they did not leap onto the canvas automatically. The journey that took Rothko from more traditional roots to shimmering shapes is explored in a new exhibit opening today at the Denver Art…
Actor, filmmaker and theater director donnie l. betts has been reviving the Destination Freedom scripts of Richard Durham, whose long run of live radio theater programs profiled cultural and historical African-American figures beginning in the late ´40s, for more than a dozen years as a pet project, Black Radio Days…
