The Hopeless Pickles of Pizazz was the best band at Girls Rock Denver’s annual summer camp this year. But I would be lying if I didn’t immediately acknowledge my own bias: This band of eight- and nine-year-old girls was coached by me and fellow Westword contributor Robin Edwards. Seriously, though,…
The latest incarnation of the Batman franchise is arguably the best yet: dark and gritty with a star-studded cast of characters. When The Dark Knight Rises opens Thursday night, it’s projected to break all box-office records for the biggest opening weekend of all time. And we’ve got a deal for…
Imagine this on a Tuesday night, when the week is still young: something old-school and just for the hell of it, a place where you can get funky and dance like you’re fifteen again, in another time and century. That’s what Motown Tuesday, the weekly dance night at Beauty Bar,…
Christopher Nolan’s ponderous, pontifical action movies are written less as screenplays than as operator’s manuals, guiding an audience through assembling their important themes while scrupulously making sure you don’t miss a thing. This is as true of Inception as it is of Nolan’s superhero saga, now swollen into a trilogy…
One of out every five professional baseball players in the U.S. comes from the Dominican Republic. Take a second with that stat. Here’s another: Every big-league team runs a baseball academy on the island. Unless you follow baseball, you probably had little idea how important signing young Dominican players is…
There’s a really unusual show at Pirate right now that combines neo-traditional paintings of the figure with animated projections based on them. The Future Is Coming is a collaborative effort by painter Terry Campbell and photographer Matt Slaby. The front space contains half a dozen monumental paintings by Campbell. In…
Clyfford Still. For the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, director Dean Sobel has installed a career survey of the great artist that starts with the artist’s realist self-portrait and features his remarkable post-impressionist works from the 1920s. Next are Still’s works from the ’30s, with some odd takes on…
Not to knock films as fantastic as Rachel Getting Married, The Silence of the Lambs and Something Wild, but there’s something wilder — or at least more directly stimulating and pure — about director Jonathan Demme’s live-performance docs. The 68-year-old auteur immortalized a Talking Heads show in Stop Making Sense,…
Scholars have said many thoughtful things about Shakespeare’s women, but Tina Packer, who helmed the highly respected Shakespeare & Company in Massachusetts for three decades, may be the best guide: She not only has the required analytic ability and the passion, but she has also inhabited these women, exploring their…
On Saturday morning, I ventured to Lakewood to experience the Run for Your Lives 5K apocalypse obstacle course. One part Tough Mudder, one part The Walking Dead, Run for Your Lives had 5,000 people crawling under barbed wire, racing through smoked-filled rooms and sliding into pits of muddy water. In…
AIGA Colorado, the local branch of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and Englewood-based BoardPusher Custom Skateboard Graphics have issued a call for artists for the fifth annual Bordo Bello skateboard art show and auction, a fundraiser for mentorship programs including the annual Robert Taylor AIGA Colorado Scholarship and the…
The Colorado Theatre Guild’s seventh annual Henry Awards will be presented tonight at the L2 Arts & Culture Center, 1477 Columbine Street. The festivities start at 6 p.m. with cocktails and a silent auction, followed by the official awards ceremony at 7 p.m.; an after-party will move the fun to…
The Run for Your Lives zombie 5K run came to Colorado on Saturday, July 14, and Lakewood’s Thunder Valley Motorcross park was turned into a scene from the zombie apocalypse. Among the undead and the runners, we found a whole bunch of muddy people. Jim Wills brings back these photos…
The Colorado Burlesque Festival returned to Denver July 12-15 for a third annual twirl of the tassels, showcasing the art of burlesque with performances by some of the top women in the field. Jim Wills brings back these photos from the festival, which included performances by more than 75 women…
The Dark Knight Rises is the epic conclusion to filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, starring Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Morgan Freeman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and more. The movie premieres at 12:01 a.m. Friday, and on Thursday night fans will have several ways to go to bat for Batman…
After hearing Bon Jovi exclaim in “Dead or Alive” that he had “seen a million faces, and rocked them all,” photographer Peggy Dyer was inspired. And ever since, she’s been working on her own project: to photograph one million faces. She’s now nearing the 8,000 mark, and the latest volume…
The city’s announcement that Michael Chavez — who’s made his name with strong, contemporary work as a curator and exhibition designer at the Foothills Art Center and the Arvada Center — has been named the new public art administrator for Denver Arts & Venues seems like sweet salvation after he…
Colorado-boy-made-good T.J. Miller was back in Denver this week, for a five-show run at the Improv after dropping by Red Rocks Tuesday night for the premiere of the video for “Denver,” a rap on his new extended play e.p. In the Nix Bros. video, filmed at landmarks across Denver dives…
In celebration of “Fan Friday”, two street artists are recreating the first Rockies cartoon ever created by former Rocky Mountain News cartoonist Drew Litton on the sidewalk outside Coors Field…
If this week’s climbing temperatures and the smell of burning pine from fires across the state have you pining for ski season, you’re not alone: The Woodward at Copper action sports camp is opening its outdoor summer terrain park (previously open only to summer camp participants) to the public for…
While many idealistic, underground community organizations will taper off after their first or second year of operation — due to poor organization, lack of funding, or internal drama — the Denver Handmade Homemade Market has proven the cynics wrong, staying not only alive and vital after two years of operation,…
Best known as ’70s punk pioneer and frontwoman of The Bags, Alice Bag — born Alicia Armendariz — had a hand in pushing women to the front of the musical movement. Though history memorializes bands like The Germs and Fear as the dominating acts of the East Los Angeles scene…
