After sinking into self-important tedium with its prior two overstuffed installments, Pirates of the Caribbean seemed destined for burial at sea. And yet the soggy franchise and Johnny Depp’s foppish rapscallion return again for On Stranger Tides — to search for the fountain of youth, no less, a quest that…
An earnest, intermittently droll dramedy about a manic-depressive toy manufacturer and his bewildered family, The Beaver is a parable that’s not easily parsed. While director Jodie Foster fails to maintain a consistent tone — could there be such a thing as inspirational satire? — the movie’s lopsided wobble is undeniably…
Caryl Churchill is not a playwright who repeats herself. She doesn’t have an immediately identifiable writing style or revert to certain kinds of characters or situations. Although her work tends to be politically aware, highly original and inventive in terms of stagecraft, each play is distinctly different. A Number, first…
The story of Billy Elliot is deeply appealing: During the 1980s, as Maggie Thatcher wars with the powerful coal-mining union as part of her campaign to destroy British labor, an eleven-year-old miner’s son stumbles into a ballet class and discovers an unlikely love of dance. Naturally, this appalls his tough…
At Gettin’ Crafty this week, we take a break from crafting to admire the crafts of others. Namely the talented crafters and designers participating at the second annual Crafty Ballyhoo, put on by Denver Handmade Alliance. This event also served as an etiquette reminder of what to do, and not…
When director Jerry Aronson screened his documentary The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg for Ginsberg himself before the film’s release in 1994, the iconic poet is said to have nodded his head and reflectively quipped, “So that’s Allen Ginsberg.” With good reason: Even all these years later, Life and…
It was a lovely, cool evening on Friday night, as the sun went down and people began to gather in the shadow of the Spire at 14th and Champa streets in the Denver Theatre District. The second night of Create Denver Week 2011 held the promise of what would perhaps…
Judging by this weekend’s Facebook frenzy over the Denver Film Society’s “Bargain Bin” film selection of picks for the 2011 season of Film on the Rocks, there is just no fucking with moviegoers. On Saturday night, Karla Rodriquez, Director of Social Media for the organization and its summer program, dropped…
At this point, it’s safe to say that Denver locals Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s The Book of Mormon is like the Titanic of musicals this year, and by Titanic we mean not the opulent ship sunk of hubris, but rather the James Cameron romantic epic from 1997 that swept…
O, glory day for all Trekkies! Today marks the thirteenth 23rd year since the original air date of “The Neutral Zone,” the one and only episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that has had humans everywhere imagining themselves on the Enterprise. It was on this momentous day that the…
The end of the world is coming. It’s hard to say when, unless you’re evangelist Harold Camping, in which case you can feel pretty confident in saying that it’s coming… oh, around Saturday. For a few months now, Camping’s been touting his theory that the end times will arrive May…
Named a “Composer to Watch” by the New York Times, Juilliard graduate Kenji Bunch excels as both a talented violist and a composer. His highly accessible contemporary works have been heard worldwide, and as a performer, he’s worked with everyone from the Flux string quartet to the bluegrass band Citigrass,…
How about this weather we’ve been having? Local skiers and snowboarders fantasizing about 4th of July fireworks at Arapahoe Basin just might see their dreams come true this season: On Friday the ski area announced it will remain open seven days a week through June 5 as planned and then…
Just in case Arbor Day like two weeks ago wasn’t enough to tide you over in the commemorating trees department, this week starts off with Love a Tree Day, which, admittedly, sounds more like a sexual perversion than yet another attempt by godless hippies to shove their environmentalist propaganda down…
First off, we should thank the Internet for keeping pre-information superhighway pop tchotchke culture alive with its vast Youtube time-capsuled vaults of commercials and Christian rap home videos, Wikipedia archives full of false information about the less-than-famous, and Twitter accounts for dead celebrities — all at our fingertips. But never…
Blow jobs, blow jobs, blow jobs, vodka. You’d think, at a Chelsea Handler comedy show sponsored by Belvedere Vodka, that there’d be more vodka plugs, more jokes about alcohol or more punchlines about boozing it up with your girlfriends. But there weren’t. The only plugs that Chelsea — or any…
You think you have a dirty mouth? Surely it doesn’t compare to Chelsea Handler’s, who told the audience all about her early days giving blow jobs as a high-school freshman last night at the Wells Fargo Theatre.Without further ado, Westword is proud to present the top ten penis jokes that…
It was 1867 when British singer George Leybourne wrote of “that daring young man on the flying trapeze,” a paean to the great 19th-century French trapeze artist Jules Léotard, who’s been credited as being the first circus trapeze act ever. Léotard, no doubt, was well taken care of by the…
After watching Drew Barrymore’s Whip It with her daughters two years ago, Robin Bond — the Denver-based filmmaker behind the new documentary Derby Baby — set out to chase down some roller derby dreams of her own. She didn’t get very far. “I’m fairly athletic, and had started skating a…
OMG like how hot are vampires right now? So hot, is how hot they are right now, but as everyone knows, Dracula is pretty much played out and the whole vampires-as-sexy-brooding-potential-lovers thing is already taken — what we need is a new angle on vampires. So let’s see… how about…
Punch out! On Saturday, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) brings its Octagon Nation Tour to the tailgating party before the Denver Outlaws game at Invesco Field, where mixed martial arts fans can test their mettle at the punch strength station and complete physical fitness challenges under the watchful eye of…
It’s been raining all week, which means everyone out there is probably getting a little antsy to get out into the world after holing up at home and ordering pizza. It also happens to be Friday the 13th, which, for anyone with a superstitious streak, means staying in for the…
