‘Tis the season for endless reruns of It’s a Wonderful Life. But how wonderful did early critics consider this movie? J. Edgar Hoover thought it was Communist propaganda, reports Josiah Hesse. But 65 years later, “the film’s take on social welfare, real estate loans and class warfare remain poignantly relevant…
Earlier this week, we created a contest for you, our glorious readers, to win tickets to Comedy Works by submitting your favorite jokes. The post, which earned more than sixty submissions, resulted in some flat, some bewildering and some pretty hilarious jokes, and we recently announced our final winners. (Some…
As the holiday season kicks into high gear, Colorado celebrates with some high-wattage displays of light. Tonight, downtown Denver’s oldest architecture will be lit up with thousands of LED bulbs while the Denver Zoo and Botanic Gardens will go bright after dark later in the month. We’ve compiled a list…
Snowboarding season is getting into full swing up in the mountains, with resorts opening by the day (Steamboat and Eldora opened their 50th anniversary seasons this week, and Beaver Creek and Crested Butte are also now spinning chairs in time for Thanksgiving), but you wouldn’t know it down here in…
More than Home Alone or Miracle on 34th Street, It’s A Wonderful Life is probably the most beloved and iconic Christmas film for American audiences. Once a box-office bust, the film has received a second life as a prime-time television staple for holiday gatherings, and has now been adapted into…
Now that the turkey is all packed away in your fridge and the masses are elbowing each other out of the way for Black Friday deals, it’s time to go out and have fun without spending a lot of cash. There’s plenty to do this weekend without maxing out your…
Denver’s not the only buy-local shopper’s Valhalla to have big plans for tomorrow’s national AMEX-sponsored Small Business Saturday. Downtown Boulder is spreading the love to loyal gift-hunters, and more than forty businesses on the Pearl Street Mall and environs will participate by offering discounts, open houses, free good cheer and…
Yesterday one reader stopped to give thanks for a facility we named Best New Building in the Suburbs in the Best of Denver 2012: the Parker Arts, Culture and Events center, otherwise known as PACE. The facility, which opened in the fall of 2011, includes a theater, an auditorium, a…
In 2003, Sandra Phillips opened her namesake gallery in a funky former hair salon on Santa Fe Drive. One unfortunate aspect of the space was a spiral staircase that created a dangerous obstacle: I came dangerously close to banging my head against it many times. But despite such physical shortcomings,…
Becoming van Gogh. Timothy Standring, the Denver Art Museum’s curator of painting and sculpture, is the brains behind the very compelling, very interesting and, most of all, very successful Becoming van Gogh, on display now. When we think of van Gogh, we are actually only thinking of the work of…
Dixie’s Tupperware Party. Dixie is a booze- and sex-addicted, trash-talking, child-neglecting ex-con from Alabama who holds Tupperware parties in her trailer, and she’s invited you to this one. Dixie’s Tupperware Party at the Galleria really is a Tupperware party — you get a name tag and raffle number when you…
If you recently had a close encounter with the howling demon known as Hurricane Sandy, you might have a renewed belief in global warming. If not, consider yourself lucky, then see Chasing Ice, director Jeff Orlowski’s beautiful yet sobering documentary about the world’s rapidly melting ice caps. His guide is…
A stacked-deck theological inquiry filtered through a Titanic-by-way-of-Slumdog Millionaire narrative, Life of Pi manages occasional spiritual wonder through its 3-D visuals, but otherwise sinks like a stone. It’s no shock that Ang Lee brings to his high-seas adventure graceful and refined aesthetics devoid of any unique signature or pressing emotion,…
When Ruby (Emayatzy Corinealdi) tells the new man in her life that she likes “indie” movies, it’s both a declaration of identity and a dare. The man, Brian (David Oyelowo), a bus driver who has politely but persistently pursued Ruby after driving her home from her overnight nursing shift at…
Silver Linings Playbook, which stars Bradley Cooper as a manic-depressive man-child attempting to get his life back together after a breakdown, won the coveted Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and subsequently shot to the top of most Oscar prognosticators’ Best Picture short list. The film’s…
There are big changes afoot at Miners Alley, the small, bright and hospitable theater established by Rick Bernstein almost a decade ago in Golden after running a Morrison company he’d founded in 1989. But after close to 25 years in the business, at the start of the new year, Bernstein…
In Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the unprincipled seducer tries his wiles on the virtuous and beautiful Dona Ana, whose father challenges him to a duel and is killed — only to reappear in the final moments of the opera as a towering moving statue and drag the unrepentant Don Juan down…
The Thanksgiving holiday is all about two things: food and giving thanks, usually in that order. But for close to four decades, Mile High United Way’s Turkey Trot has been counteracting this annual orgy of overeating with an energizing race that gets families off the couch and outdoors. The run,…
As today’s Black Friday shopping showdown plays out in malls across the state, gift buyers can feel excited, overwhelmed and even fearful. But for the past half-decade, Buy Local Week has worked to ease that tension and shift the focus from big-box blowouts to a celebration of local retailers —…
“If you’re ready to emerge from your Thanksgiving food coma and burn some of those holiday calories off, Copper Mountain has plenty of activities to be thankful for,” says resort spokeswoman Austyn Williams. “Our Olympic-sized, 22-foot superpipe will be opening for Thanksgiving weekend, and on Saturday, we also have our…
Want to walk off those Thanksgiving leftovers and also avoid the mobs at the mall? The Victorian Holiday Home Tour, now in its third year, is a Saturday-afternoon jaunt along East Colfax Avenue, with tours of seven historic homes all gussied up for the holidays. “What we’d really like is…
Susan Meyer might be one of Denver’s most unique artists, yet she hasn’t had a full exhibition since 2004, when her installation Malfunction Junction — a room-sized roller-coaster track ablaze with synchronized lighting that crashed from the heights into another, flatter dimension — blew more than a few minds at…
