Arts & Culture

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Lucha Libre & Laughs will make wrestling funny on purpose this Sunday

By Byron GrahamAugust 1, 2013

Simply put, Lucha libre is fun. Stand up comedy is fun. Put them together, and you have fun overload. The idea came to me after the 2012 Too Much Funstival, during which we put together a few tag team lucha libre matches from the MxW Pro Wrestling promotions before the stand up comedy and music at a show. The crowd was entirely a comedy crowd, but they ate it up. They were loud and rowdy, cheering the good guys and booing the bad guys. Seeing this planted the seed in my brain that eventually sprouted Lucha Libre & Laughs.

RTD art: Douglas Kornfeld at the Civic Center bus station

By Zoe YabroveAugust 1, 2013

At the heart of the RTD system, the Civic Center bus station, is a shiny mural that represents friendship, business deals, introductions and Douglas Kornfeld’s inspiration for the piece: reunions. Kornfeld’s “Welcome!” transforms as you get closer to the work, and he took a few minutes to talk about its…

I’m a sports nut for Magic: The Gathering

By Cory CasciatoAugust 1, 2013

Welcome to a new column called Geek Speak, in which we take on an aspect of geek culture each week. The world championship of Magic: The Gathering is in Amsterdam this week. For the next four days, some of the world’s best players will compete individually for the title of…

The ten best comedy events in Denver in August

By Josiah M. HesseAugust 1, 2013

While previous summers have given comedy fans a handful of semi-decent shows to look forward to, this August is so packed with top-shelf talent that it’s difficult to limit a list of the highlights to just ten shows. In the month ahead we have two female comedy duos, two local…

Dunn the Signtologist’s August show opens tonight at the MacSpa

By Susan FroydAugust 1, 2013

A little bit Warhol and a little bit outlaw, Dunn the Signtologist (aka Dan Ericson) uses street signs as his canvases, painting graffiti-style portraits on their angular and reflective surfaces. How he gets the signs in the first place is better not discussed, and the underground aura of this work…

Now Showing

By Michael PagliaAugust 1, 2013

Catalyst. The beautiful grounds of the Denver Botanic Gardens are the ideal place to mount an outdoor sculpture show, and over the past few years, there has been one such presentation after another. This year, the theme is contemporary sculptors in Colorado. The pieces are picturesquely sited throughout in clearings…

Now Playing

By Juliet WittmanAugust 1, 2013

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged). The Colorado Shakespeare Festival staged a pretty good version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)five years ago, so we’re not sure why the CSF decided to bring it back this season. The show, written in 1987 by Adam Long, Daniel Singer…

In the pitch-perfect Still Mine, love trumps the law

By Chuck WilsonAugust 1, 2013

All that Canadian farmer Craig Morrison (James Cromwell), age 87, wants to do is build a little house, on his own land, without having to ask anyone’s permission. In the pitch-perfect, deeply affecting Still Mine, writer-director Michael McGowan tells the true story of what happened when Craig’s determination to build…

2 Guns is a here-today-gone-tomorrow trifle

By Stephanie ZacharekAugust 1, 2013

All you need for a movie are two guys and two guns. Unless that movie is 2 Guns, in which case you probably need a good deal more. The problem with so many current action movies, this one included, is that once you’ve seen one, you can’t help feeling you’ve…

How Real Sex in Real Movies Is a Real Distraction

By Nick SchagerAugust 1, 2013

Porn re-inserts itself into the art house with this week’s The Canyons, co-starring adult-industry stud James Deen, and next week’s Lovelace, a biopic of the Deep Throat star — two highly publicized releases that reconfirm the hopelessness of going hardcore in mainstream movies. Whether it’s works that inject un-simulated sex…

5 Ways The To Do List Is a Radically Feminist Film

By Inkoo KangAugust 1, 2013

This article contains major spoilers. A white suburban teen, urged on by friends, makes the decision to finally get laid, maybe by the end of summer. That’s the premise of Sixteen Candles, American Pie, Superbad, and now The To Do List. Comedy pin-up Aubrey Plaza gives a characteristically low-wattage performance…

War of the Words

By Jamie SiebraseAugust 1, 2013

It’s like American Idol, only…good. Tonight marks the start of the first annual PlayOffs, an elimination-style weekly playwriting competition in which hand-picked playwrights produce new work based on top-secret prompts designed to “push them to create their best work at a breakneck speed,” says Michael Emmitt, co-founder with Sean Paul…

Red Alert!

By Cory CasciatoAugust 1, 2013

Human blood is an unusual artistic medium. Who better, then, to explore the possibilities of blood work than Andrew Novick, a man whose name is synonymous with weird art — from his time in the infamous Warlock Pinchers band to his work with Peeps? In Blood Lustre, Novick uses the…

Samba Happy

By Amber TaufenAugust 1, 2013

“We’re just trying to infuse more and more of the laid-back, fun-loving energy of Brazil into what we do every year,” says Francisco Marques, one of the organizers of Colorado Brazil Fest, “because we know the good it does for us, and we’re trying to spread it wherever we can.”…

Quiet Time

By Susan FroydAugust 1, 2013

With an overdose of effects-laden, 3-D blockbuster movies filling almost every screen, a quiet little film might just be the antidote we need. A film like Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu’s 1953 classic, Tokyo Story, which subtly hits home through smart dialogue, excellent performances and somber cinematography. The story of an…

Mourning Has Broken

By Robin EdwardsAugust 1, 2013

In less than two years, writer Joan Didion dealt with the deaths of both her husband and her daughter. One of the greatest living American writers, Didion translated her tragedies into The Year of Magical Thinking, a book and subsequent play that muses on the way we deal with grief…

Chimp Change

By Josiah HesseAugust 1, 2013

“The Monkees — they were a major influence on the Beatles,” Jim Carrey asserts in Dumb & Dumber, delivering one of the funniest declarations in rock history, since the Monkees were an attempt to package a squeaky-clean, cookie-cutter version of the Beatles for family TV audiences. Even the Monkees themselves…

Vampires Ride!

By Cory CasciatoAugust 1, 2013

If you only see one vampire Western in your lifetime, make sure it’s Near Dark, the final film in this year’s Cruel Summer lineup at Crash 45. Starring a good chunk of the cast of Aliens and directed by future superstar Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty, Point Break), Near Dark…