When it comes to cost-cutting, downsizing and philosophical and practical compromise, how low is it possible to go before there’s nothing left to cut — and nowhere to go but up? Detropia, the evocative new documentary from filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp), is a portrait of a…
Artists tend to be praised and valued far more after their deaths than during their lifetimes, and clearly this paradox was not lost on Mark Twain, who wrote a play about Jean-Francois Millet — a real, famous and very brilliant painter of his time — called Is He Dead? In…
At the center of Memphis, an energetic, Tony-winning musical dealing with race and music in the 1950s, is a white man, Huey Calhoun, who’s fascinated by black music. Stumbling into an underground rock-and-roll club, he’s greeted at first with suspicion, but wins grudging acceptance after declaring in song that this…
British filmmaker Andrea Arnold’s remarkable new adaptation of Wuthering Heights comes packing some redoubtable weapons, including the most atmospheric ultra-realism the story has ever seen, an awesome sense of the Yorkshire landscape, and no small payload of brooding poeticism. But undoubtedly, its coup de grâce has everything to do with…
“This film was born out of the rage of not being able to make other projects,” Leos Carax says of Holy Motors, an anomaly in the French director’s oeuvre, as its production was relatively stress-free. Speaking at a hotel bar in New York, Carax says, “It was imagined very quickly,…
This week’s Paranormal Activity 4 continues the story of an extended American family whose members own a lot of surveillance cameras, camcorders, smartphones, baby monitors, webcams, Talkboys and other consumer electronic devices with which they record the haunting of their nice suburban tract homes by a terrifying demonic entity. The…
In Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths, a prune-faced, simian-mouthed sexagenarian sits by the road in an old suit and brown-patterned tie, and cradles a white bunny in his arms. This is precisely what we’ve come to expect of a Tom Waits entrance. Waits has long been one of Hollywood’s favorite sight…
“Positive characterizations are complex characterizations,” says writer-director Ava DuVernay, tucking into a serving of roasted potatoes. “That’s all we need to know. They shouldn’t be saccharine. They shouldn’t feel like medicine. You know, often films that are deemed positive, nobody wants to see them.” It’s a recent Sunday afternoon, and…
The Internet may have become the go-to place for many shoppers, but it hasn’t yet killed off the good old-fashioned swap meet, especially when it comes to bicycles. As proof, the 24th annual Subaru Denver VeloSwap has grown into the world’s largest consumer bicycle swap, and promoters say this year’s…
Denver is a zombie town, and you don’t have to look any further than today’s Zombie Crawl for proof. Once again, thousands of the living dead will march up and down the 16th Street Mall for fun, to collect food for Food Bank of the Rockies and to try to…
Thirteen’s the lucky number for this year’s Victorian Erotica Ball, and since costumes are a must, the attending gentlemen will be dapper and the ladies prim but not-so-proper in their corsets and other accoutrements. Tonight’s ball, hosted by Kevin Larson Events, will feature erotic delights that will do justice to…
We’ve seen Stanley Kubrick’s iconic images hundreds of times; Room 237 from The Shining and the spinning bone that turns into a satellite from 2001: A Space Odyssey are just a few. But what if those images held secret messages? That’s what director Jay Weidner is proposing in Kubrick’s Odyssey,…
After last year’s dearth of good snow, skiers and snowboarders are raring to go this season — but before you speed up the hill and down those slopes, slow down and breathe deeply with another installment of Snow Salutes, a yoga practice built for skiers and snowboarders. “I’ve heard a…
Well before it was a Disney cartoon, the story of a beautiful princess cursed by an evil witch to sleep for a hundred years, then awakened by the kiss of a handsome prince, was told through dance: The Sleeping Beautywas first performed as a ballet in 1890. “It’s a very…
Portland multimedia artist Alexis Gideon’s show Alexis Gideon: Video Musics Series opened in late September at Emmanuel Gallery. But gallery director and curator Shannon Corrigan says the collection of still images, drawings and what she calls a “trailer,” for lack of a better word, are like eye candy to fuel…
The members of New Directions in Digital Arts, a collective born in a class taught by multimedia artist Mark McCoin at the University of Colorado in Boulder, are right at home with the quest to forge the future of the multimedia installation. And, as McCoin has noted of the group…
Thomas Dolby cultivated a mad scientist schtick that still persists decades after his quirky 1983 hit “She Blinded Me With Science.” Back then, he was something of an electronics/synth pop/multimedia pioneer whose influence eventually surpassed his own hits. Dolby had another reasonably large hit with “Hyperactive” in 1984, followed by…
Davy Rothbart is famous for his love of detritus. Ten years ago, he launched FOUND Magazine, an exuberant, lo-fi celebration of things left behind: love letters, Post-It notes, journal entries, birthday cards, shopping lists and other strangely revealing minutiae of human existence. FOUND’s pages are hilarious and heartbreaking; often, they’re…
The grand old classical McNichols Building in Civic Center Park has seen many incarnations and reincarnations since it was built as a public library by Andrew Carnegie more than 100 years ago. We last peered into its open spaces during the Denver Biennial of the Americas two summers ago, after…
Though writer and illustrator Edward Gorey is best known for his macabre, nonsensical illustrated books, he is also the author of a rather bizarre play called The Helpless Doorknob. “The play is barely a play at all,” explains Royce Wood, who is directing the piece as an improv show this…
As we cast our ballots to vote for our next president, Square Product Theatre — in conjunction with 43 other theater groups around the nation — will help us remember the other 44 chiefs of state who’ve won in elections past. The regional premier of 44 Plays for 44 Presidents…
Robert Louis Stevenson’s classically creepy story of Victorian repression and split-personality disorder is coming to the stage tonight in an innovative show from Firehouse Theater. Using Jeffrey Hatcher’s stage adaptation, this production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyderetells the chilling story of a well-respected, even-keeled doctor whose experiments bring out…
