Alicia Scherson’s enthralling Il Futuro asks the question no one wants to hear: How would you see the world after a personal tragedy? When her parents are killed in a car accident, teenage Bianca (Manuela Martelli) is forced to face this existential quandary, not only with regard to her own…
If they made a movie, Holden wouldn’t like it,” Martin Sheen opines deep into the new documentary Salinger. He’s speaking of the possibility of a film adaptation of The Catcher in the Rye, a disastrous idea that J.D. Salinger prevented in both life and death. Sheen, of course, could be…
Zoos tend to fare badly during wartime, with the plight of captive animals mirroring that of besieged populations. Diane Ackerman’s beautiful book The Zoo Keeper’s Wife tells the story of the Zabinskis, who ran a zoo in Warsaw that was devastated by German bombers: “The moaning of lions and yowling…
Multimedia artist Adam Stone has collaborated on four of Buntport’s most interesting shows, making music for three and contributing a soundscape and his own haunting presence to Wake, the company’s take on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. So a fair amount of excitement greeted the recent announcement that he had created a…
We’ll always have Iron Man, they must be telling each other in Hollywood. As summer wanes, the hulking corpses of would-be blockbusters litter the home-video distribution channels like fallen kaiju from Guillermo Del Toro’s giant-‘bots-vs.-giant-beasts movie Pacific Rim, the most enjoyable of 2013’s many urban-renewing summer blockbusters. In Del Toro’s…
Understandably, Peter Mayhew is not as well known as Harrison Ford or Mark Hamill. But W. Ryan Ziegler wants to change that. The first-time filmmaker is now raising money on Kickstarter for Standing in the Stars: The Peter Mayhew Story, a documentary about the 7′ 3″ actor who played Chewbacca…
“What always happens with Off-Center — which is both fun and terrifying — is that we have this initial inspiration, and then we bring a bunch of people together to make it happen,” says Charlie Miller, co-curator of Off-Center@The Jones. “But it is often not until it gets closer to…
When it comes to hard, dark, pulsing techno, Droid Behavior is one of the best labels out there, and the Great American Techno Festival will fill your need for some gritty underground sounds this weekend. The main festival takes place Friday, September 13, through Sunday, September 15, at Skyline Park,…
Set aside those Independence Day fantasies. When the aliens invade, our technological achievements will look primitive and pitiful next to their superior technology. Resistance will be futile: When they come for you, you’re going to have to run or die. Train for our eventual race against extinction in the Area…
If you’ve ever run a marathon, the inaugural Denver Beerathon, a liver-saturating craft-beer palooza that blows into town today, should be a cakewalk. After all, Sam Gelin, the brains behind the traveling brew crawl, insists, “It’s only like a marathon with respect to the fact that there are the same…
In past years, Snowboard on the Rocks kicked off the carving season with snow-sports film premieres and music at Red Rocks. This year’s Snowboard on the Block will re-package the concept and bring it down to the party-ready EXDO Event Center in RiNo. And though the surroundings won’t be as…
Culture and technology are splintering in every direction these days, but nothing brings us all back together like our collective memory of VHS tapes. “We want our videos to be the perfect crap storm of comedy, beauty and non-preachy social commentary,” says Commodore Gilgamesh of Everything Is Terrible!, the found-footage…
Alamo Drafthouse Littleton’s September programming is all about back-to-school themes — and Mean Girls is the perfect choice for a quote-along, notes Alamo spokesman Keith Garcia. “When you think about movies that bring back all the feelings, good and bad, about being in school, Mean Girls is right at the…
Loyal disciples will come together this weekend for the seventeenth incarnation of Nan Desu Kan, one of the country’s largest anime conventions. For three days and nights, NDKers will take over the Marriott DTC in full anime regalia, enjoying keenly organized programming that brings the industry’s biggest stars, experts and…
Drag and Broadway have been in a long-term relationship since maybe the beginning of musical theater, if not time, and the beautiful music they make together builds to a glittery, madcap crescendo in Priscilla Queen of the Desert: The Musical, an adaptation of the 1994 Academy Award-winning film. Priscilla first…
Pablo Kjolseth of CU-Boulder’s International Film Series held out on going digital for as long as he could, but circumstances — and the passage of the Digital Cinema Initiative — made that increasingly difficult in a world where new celluloid film is a thing of the past. After a fast…
Having just powered through two local festivals within a week of each other, it’s easy for fans to forget that comedy shows exist outside the city limits of Denver. Hopefully you’ve saved a few laughs for the Oddball Comedy & Curiosity Festival, which arrives in town tonight and stars Dave…
As an incubator for the arts and a show space for up-and-coming creatives for more than thirty years, the Chicano Humanities & Arts Council Gallery is all about inclusion, and tonight’s opening of the Los Vatos Renaissance show is the embodiment of just that: It’s a presentation of work from…
Museo de las Américas director Maruca Salazar wisely chose the work of five young Latin American artists to represent the museum during this summer’s Biennial of the Americas 2013. All of them, she says, are part of a new generation deeply concerned with environmental issues in a world overrun by…
Most of Spun, the Denver Art Museum’s summer mélange of textile-related exhibits, is already open, but many will consider Nick Cave: Sojourn its centerpiece. Focusing on Cave’s signature mixed-media assemblages and Soundsuits (fabulous wearable costumes stitched together with found objects and unusual fibers and designed to make sounds when worn),…
Textile arts comprise some of the most grassroots forms of expression. Born of necessity and woven through with elements of creative design since the dawn of mankind, in modern times they’ve morphed into a whole genre of multimedia work that slides right off the functional grid and directly into the…
The latest venture of Tran Wills, Base Coat Modern Nail Salon X Gallery will celebrate its grand opening this Saturday, September 14, when the combination nail salon/art gallery joins the lineup on Tennyson Street in the Berkeley neighborhood. Wills, whose name has become synonymous with style and small-business savvy in…
