John Sayles on his new novel, wars, history and research

John Sayles is best known as a cult-director and script doctor, but apparently all that time spent writing and directing his own movies isn’t enough for him, as he’s also an accomplished novelist. Sayles will be hanging out at the Tattered Cover on Colfax this weekend to answer all your…

Comment of the day: Apples, oranges and Candy

There really is no comparison between Martin Lawrence and Candy Darling, né James Slattery, an actress and fixture of the Warhol Factory/late ’60s downtown New York scene who happened to be technically male. One was beautiful as a woman, talented and funny; the other is hideous as a woman, and…

Free movie time: Nou Bouke

There is perhaps no other place in the world so constantly put-upon has Haiti. It was already the most poverty-stricken country in the western hemisphere even before it was beset by one of the worst natural disasters ever recorded in human history with the 2010 earthquake, and a year and…

Elder Statesmen

For more than thirty years, the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council has been a cornerstone of the local Latino community and culture. “Metarealist” painter Stevon Lucero has been there from the beginning. Along with a few other artists — Al Sanchez, Jerry Jaramillo — who still show at CHAC, once…

Ballet Up To the Barre

Ballet-loving boys still face some stigma, but there’s precedent for the story of Billy Elliot, a kid raised in a rough-and-tumble English coal-mining town who longs to dance. Edward Villella, once America’s most powerful and masculine ballet star, a sex symbol before Baryshnikov reached our shores and now director of…

Jolly Bad Omens

Friday the 13th is not a day with positive connotations: Besides the folkloric significance, it’s also the handle for twelve of the most gratuitously sequelized slasher flicks ever made (which is all that much more infuriating, because why not thirteen of them?). At any rate, there is hope yet for…

Straight Shooters

In the pantheon of tough guys, Clint Eastwood stands alone. No other actor comes close when it comes to consistently portraying characters — from Dirty Harry to Walt Kowalski to the Man With No Name — who combine surly violence, dry humor, near invincibility and a twisted sense of right…

Older and Bolder

“The BolderBoulder has become a big Memorial Day tradition for a lot of people, and race morning is always very energetic around here,” says BolderBoulder spokesman Matt Jenkins. “I was pretty young when the first race came through town, and I watched my dad run it, so it’s been pretty…

The Real Spoken Word

“Denver has this explosive cycling scene, and it seems like everyone around here has a good bike story,” says Andrew Orvedahl, the local comedian behind The Narrators, a storytelling event held at 8 p.m. the first Wednesday of every month at Paris Wine Bar, 1553 Platte Street. “If anybody has…

A Cut Above

Composer David Wohl first came across Margaree King Mitchell’s Uncle Jed’s Barbershop in a museum in Baltimore, and immediately recognized that the award-winning children’s book had the potential to become a musical. Years later, it has: Wohl, along with playwright Ken Grimes and director Susan Einhorn, fleshed out the saga…

And Snow it Goes

“Winter just ended yesterday, pretty much,” says Keystone spokesman Ryan Whaley. The resort had so much snow this year that it even had to push the opening of its golf course back a week. The weather’s been so wacky that Whaley’s just decided to run with it. “Our Summer Remix…

Cash and Carry On

Flea markets and farmers’ markets and craft sales have merged and morphed into outdoor markets where you can buy beautiful handmade treasures, clothing, antiques, jewelry and food ― and they’re all the rage in Denver these days. Although it’s rare to find this sort of mash-up market downtown, that dearth…

Shearer Spills

When Harry Shearer heard President Barack Obama refer to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a “natural disaster,” he decided to take action. The actor and writer, best known for his roles in The Simpsons and This Is Spinal Tap, had been following the investigations into the government’s handling of…

Support for Mission Supports

Bangsnap Records will join in tonight’s Gorinto, a weekly avant-garde music and food throwdown at the Mercury Cafe, to raise money for Mission Supports, a nonprofit that Arnie Swenson founded in February to help adults with developmental and cognitive disabilities who are currently on the waitlist for the Medicaid waiver…

A Moment with John Sayles

Most people know John Sayles as the filmmaker and screenwriter behind such crazy-genre cult classics as Brother from Another Planet, The Howling and Piranha, but he’s also the author of several award-winning books. Sayles’s most recent novel, A Moment in the Sun, is a 968-page toe-crusher of a tome that…

The Numbers Game

Back in 2009, comedian and actor Paul F. Tompkins was having trouble filling a venue in Atlanta, so he used his Twitter account to rally support. The ploy worked, and somewhere in the middle of it all, a fan made another request: “Why don’t you come to Toronto?” Tompkins replied,…

Candyland, and other childhood pastimes Hollywood has ruined

Here’s how the screenwriters of the upcoming Hollywood adaptation of Candyland — the candy-themed board game for children who do not know how to read — describe it: “We envision it as Lord of the Rings, but set in a world of candy.” That is an actual quote. It seems…

Five weird Harry Shearer roles

While Harry Shearer is most popular as the bassist from This is Spinal Tap and nearly half of the voices of on The Simpsons, he’s also been extremely prolific in other areas during his half-a-century in showbiz. In advance of the screening of his documentary The Big Uneasy Thursday night…

In the name of Emily Griffith, give me “Opportunity” or give me death!

Word has just come down that Emily Griffith Opportunity School has undergone a name change. The century-old institution, created by educator Emily Griffith to offer quality (and, at the time, free) vocational instruction to Denver’s huddled masses, will heretofore be known as Emily Griffith Technical College, a dumbed-down nomenclature that…

OMG, Guys: Lauren Conrad has a book club

It is true. Thanks to Lauren Conrad’s tweet about her new fave dessert recipe “Blueberry Boy Bait,” we were intrigued enough to take a jaunt over to Laurenconrad.com, where we discovered that she’s starting a book club. And what’s even better about this whole books n’ LC thing? She’s taking…

Gratuitous randomness: At first I was like… but then

Change, some guy once said, is the only constant. It’s only natural that we should reform our opinions on things periodically, that we should reassess and reevaluate how we react — sometimes, at first you’re like one way, but then you’re all a different way, and pretty frequently, you just…