Vance Kirkland’s studio. A warning about Denver ArtsWeek: Beware the free stuff. Friday night’s opening event — free admission to Denver’s museums, and special programs featuring music, food, and story-telling for the kids — was a fantastic idea. But the promise of free stuff tends to bring out the cheap…
Former Marine Lance Hering as he looked at the time of his recent arrest. Lance Hering, the recently arrested Marine whose bizarre disappearance was the subject of the 2007 Adam Cayton-Holland feature article “An Uphill Battle” and yesterday’s blog “The End of the Line for AWOL Marine Lance Hering,” used…
François Bégaudeau in The Class. The Class (Entre Les Murs), which can be be seen at 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 18 at the Starz FilmCenter as part of the 31st annual Starz Denver Film Festival, comes with a tony pedigree. The film won the Palme d’Or at this year’s…
Lord save us. News that Colorado Springs’ Focus on the Familiy is eliminating 202 jobs — the biggest single cut in the ministry’s history — naturally raised the question of whether Focus reps would lay the blame at Barack Obama’s door. After all, prior to the November 4 vote, Focus…
Key lyric from the Prince song “Controversy”: “Am I straight or gay?” In the latest issue of the New Yorker, writer Claire Hoffman checks up on the Artist-Currently-Known-As-Prince in his new Los Angeles mansion and finds that the flamboyantly androgynous musician (who was one pelted with garbage when he appeared…
Associated Content founder and president Luke Beatty. “Ham It Up,” a May 2007 Message column, asserted that Associated Content, a Denver-based operation, “is arguably the most visited media website in the city” — a claim that couldn’t have made the folks at the Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post, 9News, etc.,…
Single File poses side by side. How confusing! No pushing and shoving, blog lovers. There’s plenty for everyone. Today in Backbeat Online: • Single File previews its new recording. • Tickle Me Pink releases the explicit version of its “Typical Whore” video. • KBCO’s Studio C celebrates its twentieth anniversary…
A missing-person playing card. Soon, playing cards in Colorado jails could be replaced by ones emblazoned with the photos of missing persons and unsolved homicide victims, says a Colorado Department of Corrections representative, who adds the new playing-card program “hasn’t actually started, but is a work in progress.” If so,…
Two looks at Lance Hering. The strange story of Marine Lance Corporal Lance Hering — whose story was chronicled in the April 2007 feature article “An Uphill Battle” — just got a little stranger. Hering first came to the public’s attention when his best friend, Steve Powers, emerged from Eldorado…
Ed Asner as Lou Grant. Ed Asner is back at the Denver International Film Festival — at least on film. The irascible star of Lou Grant came to Denver 21 years ago, when the completely forgettable O’Hara’s Wife opened the festival in 1987. But former festival director Ron Henderson won’t…
The late Jack A. Weil. Art is where you find it. And on Friday, November 14, the kick-off of Denver ArtsWeek, when eleven museums across town opened their doors to huge, enthusiastic crowds, I found it in what could be the city’s smallest museum: the mezzanine of Rockmount Ranch Wear…
Mark Cuban Updated, 12:10 p.m. November 17: Billionaire Mark Cuban is most closely associated with Dallas, thanks to his ownership of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. But he’s got a Denver connection, too. As pointed out in “HDNet Gains,” Cuban’s HDNet — a service that reached out to Dan Rather…
My ticket. Shortly after watching Slumdog Millionaire, the first-rate flick detailed in the blog “Slumdog Millionaire makes for a Big Night at the Denver Film Festival,” I walked with my wife from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts to the lot where I’d parked my fine 1994 Geo Prizm…
Magic Cyclops, in all his majesty. The focus of November 15’s Big Night presentation at 31st annual Starz Denver Film Festival was Slumdog Millionaire, a flick reviewed in the blog “Slumdog Millionaire Makes for a Big Night at the Denver Film Festival.” But there was plenty going on outside the…
Dev Pateal and Freida Pinto in Slumdog Millionaire. Last year’s so-called Big Night at the Denver Film Festival featured Juno, a small-scale comedy about a pregnant teen that inspired the blog “Juno Lives Up to the Hype at the Starz Denver Film Festival” before becoming a left-field box-office success and…
Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler: bloody but unbowed — for the moment. Pre-season Oscar forecasters make Mickey Rourke a frontrunner for a Best Actor nod in conjunction with The Wrestler, which made its local debut at the King Center on November 14 as part of the 31st Starz Denver Film…
Don’t forget to take your medicine. When the eleventh anniversary of John Denver’s death passed by on October 12, I noted it privately, but let it be at that. After all, how many times can you dredge up cheesy feelings for an artist whose songs alternately inspired and gagged so…
An image from Waltz With Bashir. A couple of weeks ago, I had a choice: either catch up on several hundred non-spam e-mails then clogging my inbox or attend a Denver Film Festival press screening of Waltz With Bashir, an autobiographical animated film by Israeli director Ari Folman about a…
The devil made him do it. For more blogs, look out below. Today in Backbeat Online: • The Imp of Satan writes the best Craigslist musician-wanted ad ever. • Get a free MP3 download from your Mama. • Meese’s now not-so-secret show in Boulder next week. • The Fray premiers…
Start your engines. Here’s the sad vehicular truth: When you take your car in for repairs, you just pretty much assume you’re going to get screwed by the mechanic. He’s either going to tell you something is broken when it’s not, make up the name of some part that needs…
A mock-up of a billboard coming soon to a neighborhood near you. So you thought last night’s vote of the Golden City Council not to allow religious symbols on city property this year was the only local event likely to attract notice from culture warriors nationwide? Ha. As of this…
Skating nirvana in Nederland. Well, the hippies finally did it. After five years of scratching the dirt for funds, the tiny, pinecone-smoking hamlet of Nederland is opening the Nathan Lazarus Skatepark this Saturday at the edge of the Barker Reservoir. It was constructed over three months by the expert skater…
