When Obama appears as Satan, where’s Stephen Colbert?

Stephen Colbert, as a real human being, is useless to us. Yes, that’s a very selfish thing to say, but we all know it’s true. When he’s stepped out of character in the past for interviews on Fresh Air or Meet the Press, it’s mildly interesting, but it’s interesting in…

Tomorrow’s Iron Pour promises hot art

Since 2005, the CU Denver Iron Pour has been an “annual rite of spring,” with professional and student artists crafting tile sculptures carved with molten iron. Not only does the Iron Pour result in pieces that viewers can take home with the, but it also gives them an amazing look…

100 Colorado Creatives: Feminism & Co. co-curator Elissa Auther

#82: Elissa Auther As co-curator of the MCA Denver’s annual Feminism & Co. (there’s another installment tonight), Elissa Auther has been responsible for bringing untold stories and untrue stereotypes to the forefront.Through the creation of panels on polyamory, feminist science and women’s roles in the workforce, Auther has helped start…

Chris Tucker: Five reasons why we love him

If it weren’t for his recent, surprisingly tender performance in the Oscarific Silver Linings Playbook, Chris Tucker would be in danger of only being known for his massive IRS debt. But now he’s back, not only in his first film in years but on the road performing standup, which was…

RedLine’s group photography show is earning double takes

Month of Photography, a citywide series of events going on right now, has really left its mark on Denver over the past few years — a goal that hasn’t been easy for some other recent multi-venue offerings. Remember Dialogue Denver, which coincided with the 2008 Democratic National Convention? No? Neither…

Now Showing

Art of the State. This juried effort at the Arvada Center has been attracting crowds, to say the least. The two-person jury comprised Collin Parson, Arvada’s exhibition manager and curator, and Dean Sobel, who, as director of the Clyfford Still Museum, is an art-world celebrity. Because of the curators’ stature,…

No examines the fate of Chile through the lens of a single election

In 1988, the fate of Chile and its dictator came down to a ballot as simple as a middle-schooler’s Do-you-like-me? note. A referendum, demanded by international pressure, offered citizens a simple choice: a “yes” for allowing President Augusto Pinochet to return to office for another eight years, or a “no”…

The truth (maybe) behind The Shining

Like the blood that gushes forth from the elevators of the Overlook Hotel, brilliant/ridiculous theories of what Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is really about have for years surged madly and memorably — especially online, where the Internet’s dead-ends, blind links and back-where-you-started arguments just might be another part of the…

In On the Road, Kerouac’s classic becomes a fraud

Two sacred texts of the ’50s proto-counterculture have escaped the rapacious machine of cinema adaptation for a half-century. One is J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, which probably only would have worked starring Salinger himself, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, that ecstatic recount of crossings and recrossings of North…

The Pitmen Painters isn’t as passionate as its characters

Based on historical events, The Pitmen Painters tells the story of a group of miners in a small town near Northumberland who sign up for an art-appreciation class taught by art historian Robert Lyon. When the men show no interest in his slides, Lyon realizes that having them create their…

Girls Gone Godard

“All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun” goes Jean-Luc Godard’s quip. Add to that a few more girls and their bikinis, and you have the rough formula for Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, which looks like the most expensive Girls Gone Wild video ever made…

Believe it: Netflix does TV right

Luther (Netflix Link) Golden Globe winner and impossible-handsomeness standard-bearer Idris Elba is Detective Chief Inspector John Luther, a brilliant investigator with a complete inability to detach from the darkness of his work. In the pilot, he investigates chilling psychopath Alice Morgan, played by Ruth Wilson — he knows, but cannot…

Was Heaven’s Gate a masterpiece all along?

“This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” So goes the adage from John Ford’s 1962 classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and so it has gone for Heaven’s Gate, the class-war Western written and directed by one of Ford’s truest disciples among contemporary…