SAT, 9/11 Fifteen-year-old Coloradan Zipei Feng is The Bride of the Go world, slaying twenty competitors at a time in the 4,000-year-old Eastern board game. It’s a complex, mentally challenging match — though certainly not as bloody as the encounters in Kill Bill Vol. 1. In China, promising Go players…
FRI, 9/10 Denver artist Tracy Weil is a fun-loving guy, and his River North neighborhood gallery/studio/house, weilworks, is just the place to have fun. “It’s my Barbie Dream House,” Weil says without irony. Sure — if Barbie’s house was a quirky, neo-modern space with an exhibition tower and a see-through…
SAT, 9/11 It’s a time-proven formula: Pop plus dumb equals ka-ching. So how did Burt Bacharach, one of the most successful pop composers of the twentieth century, end up with a body of sophisticated, intelligent hits? Maybe it’s because his songs — including dozens of classics such as “Walk on…
The adage about too many artists spoiling the installation is exemplified by a collaborative piece — done by several of the co-op’s members and by faculty from Metro — on view in the front space at Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173). Thank goodness John Davenport’s compelling solo, 1+1=1: More…
Dots, Blobs and Angels. Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting an enormous solo that is dedicated to the late David Rigsby, an artist who played a big part in the local art scene in the ’70s and ’80s. The exhibit was organized by director Cydney Payton, who installed it…
For its 2nd Annual Summer One-Act Festival, Miners Alley has put together two one-acts about the dramatic process itself. They’re witty, playful and fun to watch, and they work well with each other. The first, Hidden in This Picture, is by Aaron Sorkin, screenwriter for such movies as The American…
OpenStage Theatre & Company in Fort Collins always walks a thin line between professional and community theater, and this production of The Play’s the Thing falls definitively on the community side. The script is by Ferenc Molnar, a Hungarian author best known for the bittersweet Liliom, which, in the hands…
Cabaret. Cabaret is grim and distressing, and there’s not a hint of redemption anywhere in it. Quite the contrary. But this is a bloody good production, the kind of production that could — and should — attract all kinds of people who might never think of setting foot in a…
In Victorian England, thousands of novels were published every year. Of the few that have endured, perhaps none is more worthy of a film adaptation than Vanity Fair, if for no other reason than this: It’s a chore to read. Clocking in at 850 pages, with frequent excursions into unrelated…
There’s a new movie called Hero. Don’t confuse it with that dusty Dustin Hoffman vehicle, nor with the epic Bollywood musical-espionage extravaganza Hero: Love Story of a Spy (though that’s worth a mind-altering look if you can find it). America and India aren’t directly involved here, but huge imperial issues…
This October, Hollywood will once again reveal its gift for scavengery (not a word, but should be) when it releases The Grudge, a Sarah Michelle Geller/Bill Pullman vehicle designed to scare us right out of our underwear. In the meantime, why not catch the incredibly chilling Japanese film that inspired…
It was Ginger Rogers’s mother who ultimately screwed Dalton Trumbo. Until she got in on the action, things were going swimmingly for the Colorado-born author of the famous anti-war book Johnny Got His Gun. As a successful Hollywood screenwriter, Trumbo lived on a ranch in California and enjoyed the freedom…
Thursday, September 2 Hip-hop artist and activist KRS-One (an acronym for Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone) wants to spread the word: The former teen runaway, who self-educated in public libraries before morphing into a star and lecturer, has a lot to say about hip-hop culture, politics, global issues and…
These are the images we’ve seen over and over again, the indelibles, some in black and white, some in color, and all supremely indicative of the times they record. The 128 photographs included in Capture the Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs don’t just tell stories; they immerse us in the…
“Park Hill Loves Spinelli’s Market. Thank you Jerry and Mary Ellen…from your customers, neighbors and friends,” reads a sign on the wall near the front of Spinelli’s Market, 4621 East 23rd Avenue. Dozens of hand-written notes adorn the poster — messy scribbles thanking the Spinellis for their invaluable community grocery…
FRI, 9/3 Irish expatriates must yearn for many features of their homeland: the fierce winds and breathtaking beauty of the Cliffs of Moher; the eloquent storytelling of their countrymen; the sweeping fields of endless green; that midget who danced for Guinness at the pub. But a group of Irish nationals…
FRI, 9/3 If the title New World My Eye sounds a tad polemical, don’t be daunted: The group exhibit debuting today at the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council may cast a critical Chicano eye on the dominant American culture, but it’s intended to educate rather than to incite conflict. With…
FRI, 9/3 Eddie Brill has one of the most coveted jobs in the comedy world; yet it’s also one of the hardest. Brill is not only is the talent coordinator for comics appearing on the Late Show With David Letterman — a job that requires enormous dedication to stand-up –…
It’s amazing how vast the contemporary art world is, including as it does a full array of expressions — from the most edgy forms, such as video, to the most conservative, such as landscapes, still-life scenes and portraits. Within the realm of representational art that’s being done in the area,…
There’s a show at Andenken Gallery (2110 Market Street, 303-332-5582) with the cutesy title of Peachy Keen. Though the phrase has a retro ’50s feel, the show itself has more of a ’60s thing going on. You can’t really blame this confusion on Morgan Barnes, the kid who put the…
Common Ground. The Sandra Phillips Gallery specializes in abstraction, as is shown off in the current show, Common Ground, which combines neo-abstract-expressionist paintings by Jennifer Scott McLaughlin with neo-constructivist sculptures by William Mueller. Gallery owner and director Sandra Phillips discovered both artists at the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art’s…
I was sorry when I heard that Denver actor Brett Aune was leaving his home town to try his fortune in Los Angeles. Aune, who departed last week, has featured prominently in some of the most memorable theater experiences I’ve had in this town. I remember him as a swan…
