As founder of the Shakespeare & Company theater (a tradition in Lenox, Massachusetts for more than thirty years), Tina Packer knows her Shakespeare — frontwards, backwards and any which way you want. She’s also determined over time that the Bard created, by her estimate, only 177 major women characters, as…
David Sedaris played the Paramount on November 7, and the essayist/commentator was a big hit, discussing everything from the house he wanted to buy in England to where white men shit to, well, shitting in your hand, as Kelsey Whipple noted in her “10 best David Sedaris quotes” post. A…
Word came down yesterday from the Bureau of Land Management in favor of large-scale installation artist Christo’s Over the River project slated to cover areas over a 42-mile stretch of the Arkansas River in southern Colorado with fabric canopies. Though further approvals are still needed from the Colorado Department of…
Colorado filmmakers dominated the 2011 Banff Mountain Film Festival awards over the weekend at the annual competition in Alberta, Canada’s Banff National Park, with Carbondale-based director Anson Fogel (Forge Motion Pictures), Basalt-based director Pete McBride (Pete McBride Photography), Greeley-based director Ben Stookesberry (Clear H20 Films), and Boulder-based director Peter Mortimer…
October 4, 1957: a dark day for America, the day the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite ever to orbit Earth. It was the first milestone of the USA vs. USSR space race, and we totally blew it. But we didn’t let it get us down. On the…
Again this year, Starz Denver Film Festival artistic director Brit Withey is offering his must-see picks for each day of the fest — including many flicks that movie lovers might otherwise miss amid the flood of silver-screen goodies. His choice for Tuesday, November 8: “Close Encounters of the Animated Kind…
Author Gregory Maguire will be in town tonight at the Tattered Cover LoDo to celebrate, sign and talk about his newest book, Out of Oz, the final installment in his series of Wizard of Oz-based novels. The series, which debuted with Wicked sixteen years ago and spawned a hit Broadway…
David Sedaris is a tiny man with a huge life. Truly, the man is pretty darn small, and though his voice sounds like that of a timid librarian, it packs a biting combination of charm and painful humor that’s strong enough to ring through even the spaciousness of the Paramount…
This is one in a series of posts in honor of Denver Arts Week that salute some of our favorite people and places on the arts scene. “Linda,” John DeAndrea’s life-like sculpture of a sleeping woman, is one of Denver’s favorite and most mysterious artworks. Since the Denver Art Museum…
This is one in a series of posts in honor of Denver Arts Week that salute some of our favorite people and places on the arts scene. The Nix Bros. have been busy the last few years doling out comedy films of all shapes and sizes, from the patently absurd…
Beverly McIver, whose work was displayed in a solo show last year at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, is the kind of painter who pulls no punches. She paints bold, expressionistic statements based on her experience as an African-American woman, touching unflinchingly on issues of race and class. And…
Like the hairstyles it documents, “White People With Dreads: A field guide” just goes on, and on, and on, without benefit of much sanitizing. And that bothers Alisha, who just found the year-old post and offers this: Maybe half of you people out there should stop being racist and stop…
The long-awaited opening of the Clyfford Still Museum takes place next week, and I was able to get an advance look inside. Before I report on that, however, here’s a quick rundown of its history. Clyfford Still attained master status by being among the pioneers of abstract expressionism, the style…
Chuck Close. In the last few years, the Loveland Museum and Gallery has stepped up its game by presenting the work of famous artists. And the beat goes on with Chuck Close: A Couple of Ways of Doing Something. Close first came to the fore in the 1970s with hyper-realist…
Puncture is proudly “Based on a True Story.” As is so often the case, this means an indifference to “true” human relationships in favor of crusading self-righteousness. In this instance, the cause is life-saving no-stick syringes, which, despite saving lives, are not beloved by Big Pharm. The upstart personal-injury firm…
Does anyone under the age of fifty even remember the man who more or less created the FBI and successfully ran the agency for nearly half a century? Patriot, scoundrel, genius of self-promotion, gang-buster, red-baiter, blackmailer, proponent of the fingerprint, apostle of the wiretap, keeper of the crypt and momma’s…
Comedy doesn’t usually get the respect accorded tragedy, but if you analyze the way that playwright Allison Moore has put together Collapse — the varying rhythms of the dialogue (everything from a touching monologue to a hyper-rapid patch of stichomythia); the surprises that seem inevitable once they’ve occurred; the easiness…
Sometimes it’s easier for life to imitate art than vice versa. Witness French cartoonist Joann Sfar’s first feature, an ambitious attempt to cage the career of legendary French singer-songwriter-scamp Serge Gainsbourg (1928-91), né Lucien Ginsburg, within the confines of a commercial showbiz biopic. Sfar’s Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is itself…
American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose. Written by Richard Montoya, of the San Francisco performance group Culture Clash, American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose tells the story of immigrants in America through a crazed mix of skits, historical references, inspired parody and moments of pathos and insight. But…
Again this year, Starz Denver Film Festival artistic director Brit Withey is offering his must-see picks for each day of the fest — including many flicks that movie lovers might otherwise miss amid the flood of silver-screen goodies. Withey shares today’s choice — Tyrannosaur — on The Latest Word. To…
The Starz Denver Film Festival’s Big Night has become a showcase for future Academy Award nominees — Juno, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours and The Last Station among them. And there’s little doubt this streak will continue. The odds of The Descendants failing to generate award-season love are essentially nil, as…
Colorado-based photographer Pete McBride’s film Chasing Water, the companion to his book The Colorado River: Flowing Through Conflict, won the Adventure Through Activism Award over the weekend at the 2011 Adventure Film Festival in Boulder, one of two $500 cash prizes awarded this year (see trailer at www.PeteMcBride.com). The other…
