Abreast of the Competition

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…

Director Rama Burshstein on the making of Fill the Void

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…

Vulgar auteurism and Justin Lin

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…

Boulderover

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…

Amber Alert

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…

Geek Chorus

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…

Kick the Bucket

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,…

Bizarre Bazaar Bash

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…

Food, Glorious Food

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…

Return of the Titans

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…

A Matter of Course

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…

A Feast of Fests

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…

Blast Off To Mars

“Have you ever thought about Mars…like, ever?” That’s just one of the many spacey questions routinely asked of the public by Julia DeMarines, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science astrobiologist who hosts the monthly science-outreach program Space in Your Face at Deer Pile, which targets a younger, hipper adult…

Czech It Out

The film of the Czech Republic may not have the cultural cachet of the cinema of such powerhouse nations as France, but there’s still plenty to enjoy. And cinephiles can now check it out at Czech That Film, a program of five recent films showing this week at the Sie…

The Winner and Still the Tramp

When Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times was completed in 1936, silent film was already on its way out. But while the rest of the film industry had moved on to talkies, Chaplin’s last silent film commented on industrialization through his signature physical comedy as the Little Tramp, a factory worker comically…

Paradise: Love

Taken together, Ulrich Seidl’s three Paradise films will be hard to beat this year for sheer arthouse 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 Dairy Center developing a standup comedy scene in Boulder

While big-name comedy acts like Aziz Ansari will draw a large crowd in Boulder, getting a local comedy scene going in Colorado’s hippie hamlet has faced some challenges — whether money, politics or apathy. Now James Gold is hoping to put Boulder’s anti-comedy stigma to rest with his Dairy Comedy…

The eight hottest robots in pop-culture history

Robots are everywhere. From helping us find cat videos on the Internet to assembling other robots (yeah, that can’t end well), they’ve become almost as ubiquitous in real life as they have been in pop culture for years. This Saturday, the multimedia art exhibit Let’s Pretend We’re Robots opens at…