Zombies! The Asylum and 13th Floor dare you to nut up or shut up

Zombies have never not been cool as f*ck, but thanks to the insane popularity of The Walking Dead, anything and everything zombie is what all the cool kids are into this Halloween season, and two of Denver’s premier haunted houses are feeding some bwains into the trend with the “Undead”…

Go gaga tonight: Free screening of Lady Gaga: The Monster Mall Tour

Did you miss Lady Gaga’s last tour? Don’t worry. Tonight you can catch HBO’s Lady Gaga: The Monster Ball Tour documentary that was filmed at Madison Square Garden, complete with Gaga’s many-colored wigs and famed fire-shooting bra — but without the inflated ticket price. Eden will project the film and…

Two intelligent solos at Pirate are worth a look

There are currently two good-looking and intelligent solos at Pirate that are definitely worth a look. In the members’ gallery up front, established Denver sculptor Michael Brohman is presenting Place, with work created during a summer-long residency at the Jentel Foundation in Banner, Wyoming. This is the second time Brohman…

Now Showing

Robert Mangold. The dean of Colorado sculpture, who’s been working for more than half a century, is the subject of this strong solo with the epic title Colorado Gold: The Many Facets of Robert Mangold at Z Art Department. The show represents something of a chaser to the major Mangold…

Now Playing

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity. The opening moments are pulse-poundingly exciting — music, live wrestling, flashing lights, tons of adrenaline from an already hyped-up audience. But the actual scripted beginning of the play is quiet, as a Puerto Rican kid called Mace describes his lifelong fascination with pro wrestling…

The Perks of Being a Wallflower revisits pre-Internet adolescence

As someone who was in college when Napster happened, I’d love to see a period piece re-creating teen life during the last moments before technology began to change media consumption, communication, and the whole of social ritual. I wish The Perks of Being a Wallflower, written and directed by Stephen…

There’s no shame in Looper‘s human scale

Early on in Rian Johnson’s time-travel thriller Looper, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) sits at a diner and chats with his self from thirty years in the future (Bruce Willis). When the younger Joe asks the older one about the specifics of temporal displacement, the latter dismisses the question, telling his interlocutor…

In Hotel Transylvania, Dracula fights xenophobia

Casting a tapered, vase-slender silhouette and speaking in a Transylvanian accent with a touch of Borscht Belt, Hotel Transylvania’s de-fanged Count Dracula is introduced in an 1895-set prologue while serenading his infant daughter. No menacing carnivore, this Nosferatu has sworn off fatty human blood, is more scared of humans than…

Now Showing: A Westword guide to the arts in Denver

The aspen aren’t the only things that turn golden in the fall. The cultural scene also glitters, as arts groups large and small, high-brow and low-, celebrated and secret, start their new seasons. To get straight to the art of the most exciting events in the months ahead, we went…

David France examines the history and survival of ACT UP

“Death wasn’t being responded to as a public health problem,” David France says. “It was dealt with with sniggers. It was left to religious leaders to explain or respond to the epidemic. And they responded by calling it the wrath of God.” He adds: “That’s the hostility we all saw…

Animator Genndy Tartakovsky still goes it alone

“I hate realism,” director Genndy Tartakovsky said last week over the phone. “In America, especially, we’re very narrow-minded as far as animation goes. There is only one kind of movie, and that’s that big, family-oriented, four-quadrant, please-everyone kind of film. But if I wanted realism, I’d watch a live-action movie…

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Nobody in their right mind could refute the fact that Red Hot Chili Peppers are one of the hardest-working, hardest-rocking bands in the world. The recent Hall of Fame inductees are currently touring in support of their tenth studio album, I’m With You, which, while released in 2011, has produced…

Prost With the Most

Lowry Beer Garden, which opened in the old Hangar 2 building in Lowry in May, was built to celebrate German beer-drinking culture — a culture that wouldn’t be complete without brats and streudel, oompah music, lederhosen and Oktoberfest. So, beginning today, the open-air Garden will begin a three-day Oktoberfest with…

Toga Party

Forget rock stars. When it comes to banging heads, no one partied like the Romans, something you can try yourself tonight at Bacchus Raucous: A Party in Pompeii, at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. The bash is being held in conjunction with the new DMNS exhibit A Day…

Get Wild

In his band, the Decemberists, songwriter Colin Meloy tells rich fantasy stories through songs that are often inspired by myths and the macabre. He’s brought the same sensibility to his children’s book series, The Wildwood Chronicles. Beginning with Wildwood, which came out last fall, and continuing with the newest installment,…

Easy Being Green

“This year, our Full Moon Harvest Festival falls right on the night of the full Harvest Moon,” says Jennie Nevin, founder of Green Spaces Colorado; that fact wil shine a little extra light on the third annual music fest. This year’s lineup includes Signal Fire, Lunar Fire, A. Tom Collins,…

Running Over the Rainbow

Today’s Color Me Rad 5K at the Botanic Gardens at Chatfield takes a runner’s high to a whole new level with a hyper-hued splash of fun. Throughout this unique race, fitness junkies of all ages and athletic levels will encounter “color bomb squads” at every turn, as rainbow-tinted explosions of…

Do It Right. Do It Yourself

Empowerment to the people is what today’s Blacktop Festival is all about. From self-publishing to self-discovery through art, the first annual DIY street party showcases musicians, dancers, comedians and artists who have found success through self-made means. “We were really interested in turning people on to the DIY idea —…

Worlds Collide

Because it’s an island, Iceland has always been isolated from the bustle of the rest of Europe, a fact that allowed it to form its own cuisine and culture. And over the course of four days, Denver (which also recently landed direct flights to the republic) will highlight a variety…

J.K Rowling’s first “adult” book to be released tomorrow

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released five years ago, ending an adored, epic series that kept devoted fans buried in books for almost ten years. Tomorrow, J.K Rowling’s first “adult” novel, The Casual Vacancy, will finally be available. Will the magic and mystery that Rowling fans have come…