Dividing the Estate. Dividing the Estate is a quietly incisive play about a large and contentious family. Stella Gordon, the 85-year-old matriarch, rules over a grand old house in the fictional town of Harrison, Texas. She is strong-willed and authoritative but essentially kind — and she’s determined that the family…
Taken together, Ulrich Seidl’s three Paradise films will be hard to beat this year for sheer art-house scald. Seidl has a relentless vision, but one worth reckoning with, especially now that he has turned world-class ambitious and crafted his epic: this trilogy of doomed emotional struggle. The first film, Love,…
The unlikeliest of all the Hangover trilogy’s comic implausibilities might be its four pampered, rich-boy leads unironically calling themselves the “Wolf Pack” without anybody ever making fun of them. In the slobs-versus-snobs comedies of the 1970s and ’80s, the snooty rich kids were always the antagonists, bullying the nerds and…
New York is a cruel and beautiful place, just as 27 is a cruel and beautiful age. In Frances Ha, Greta Gerwig plays a woman who’s feeling the weight of both. Frances is an aspiring dancer who has reached the age when “aspiring” really means not cutting it. Life with…
At the end of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the audience members at Germinal Stage did something I’ve never seen at that theater: They stood up and applauded. It’s not that Germinal hasn’t staged excellent works in the past — works worthy of a standing ovation. It’s just that audiences…
In Arnaud Desplechin’s English-language Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian), Benicio Del Toro—freed at last from the tyranny of playing bit-part heavies in American thrillers and action movies—is James Picard, a Blackfoot Indian who has lost his way in post-World War II America. He’s a veteran, but he’s treated…
I. First, Something About the Badges (Then We’ll Get to the Coens) Someday I’m going to write a song and call it “Ballad of the Blue Badge.” I haven’t figured out a rhyme scheme yet, let alone a melody, so please allow this outline to suffice: At Cannes, the color…
Daniel Mindel, A.S.C., is part of an ever-shrinking population: cinematographers who have yet to shoot a feature digitally. He acknowledges that he “will be forced” to do it eventually by “the corporate entities that drive our industry,” but he believes “there is no need to use an inferior technology at…
Ladies and gentlemen—anyone, really, who cares about his or her mug—step right up. According to a bit of advice proffered in one of the festival editions of The Hollywood Reporter a few days back, the beauty product to buy while in Cannes is Avibon, an “only-in-France aging cream.” If sun…
It takes more than good looks to be a contestant in tonight’s Ms. Hooters Colorado Pageant, which will feature dozens of Hooters girls from across the state. They’ll be judged on overall beauty, runway presence and an ability to work the crowd, all for the chance to stay abreast of…
The Israeli arranged-marriage drama Fill the Void begins as a spy caper. Eighteen-year-old Shira (Hadas Yaron) and her mother (Irit Sheleg) play P.I. at the supermarket, observing a handsome asthmatic with gold-rim glasses and a gawky frame to see if he’s marriage material. Satisfied with the way he reads the…
Justin Lin may strike some as out of place in the pantheon of contemporary auteurs. The Taiwanese-born American filmmaker, best known for having directed Fast Five and its sequel, Fast & Furious 6, makes unabashedly populist blockbusters for mainstream audiences—hardly the purview of a “serious” artist. His films, wafer-thin in…
You know those two little lines you get in your forehead when you frown? The ones that, if you frown too much, stick there for good? The French have a name for that: “the lion wrinkle.” And by the tenth day of Cannes, there are a lot of lion wrinkles…
While the rest of the country is celebrating a revival of standup comedy, Boulder has had a difficult time establishing a laugh track of its own. “It’s amazing to me that for such a famous town, there’s no local standup comedy,” says James Gold, a Boulder promoter who was surprised…
Tonight is all about arts and crafts — art projects and craft beers, to be precise. At Hops & Hooks, the first in a series of Colorado Women’s Beer Club events pairing lager and lady-tailored leisure, Bitter o’Clock crafting entrepreneur Kelli Petersen will teach the art of crochet as participating…
Adolescence has rarely looked more awkward, unpleasant or emotionally painful than it does in Welcome to the Dollhouse, Todd Solondz’s 1995 black comedy about the horrors of being the least cool kid in junior high. The film’s unapologetic and unromanticized take on the casual abuse that kids heap on each…
Artist Colin Livingston’s conceptual diptychs — which are steeped in our sterile commercial culture to the point that it’s hard to say if he’s embracing or lamenting the fall of civilization — might not always be easy to understand. But most people who see them know they’re supposed to laugh,…
Need a new fascinator for Burning Man? How about some handmade clothes for Apogaea or accessories for that big electronica party coming up next weekend? If you want to stock up on alternative items, there’s only one place to be this weekend: the Fusion Factory’s Bazaar-B-Q. “The bazaar highlights art…
EatDenver, a group of independent restaurateurs who collaborate on a variety of food-related charitable initiatives, is the force behind the Big Eat, an annual pig-out celebrating the local dining scene. Now in its third year, the Big Eat has made a big move — to Sustainability Park, at 2500 Arapahoe…
There are already mammoths and mastodons on display at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, but as paleontology curator Joe Sertich points out, “Those are just bones. They don’t really tell the whole story about elephants.” That’s what Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age is for. “This…
Despite the beefed-up security in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, the BolderBoulder will move forward today, as it has every Memorial Day since 1979. The first waves of Boulder’s storied 10K run start at 7 a.m. at 30th and Walnut streets, setting in motion a spectacle that includes…
Two major holiday-weekend arts fests open today in downtown Denver, and while there could be some competition for crowds (and their wallets), organizers of both events insist that they’ll complement each other — and give viewers a bigger, bolder taste of (mostly) contemporary Colorado art. The Downtown Denver Arts Festival…
