Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage is a manic, farcical take on the myth of the West, mixed with a large dollop of gothic horror. Best of all, it’s a genuinely clever, funny and outrageous script. Bits and pieces of things you’ve seen before float to the surface — scenes…
Cookin’ at the Cookery. Singer Alberta Hunter had an extraordinary life. She left her Memphis home at the age of twelve for Chicago, where she got her start at a rough club called Dago Frank’s. Eventually, she moved to New York City, becoming part of the Harlem Renaissance of the…
At the start of The Fog of War, the brilliant new documentary from director Errol Morris, we see a composed, sharply groomed and middle-aged Robert McNamara, preparing to brief the press on the Vietnam War. He asks two questions: first, whether the chart he’s set up is visible, and second,…
This Jew has spent several hours in the past week reading all four Gospels, as well as various supplementary (and often inflammatory) texts, upon which Mel Gibson based The Passion of the Christ. I’ve read the interpretations of scholars, the apologias of popes and the damnations of zealots. I’ve read…
It’s hard to imagine a more perfect midnight movie than Harold and Maude (1971), Hal Ashby’s subversive black comedy about the taboo romance of a twenty-year-old boy obsessed with death (Bud Cort) and a flamboyant 79-year-old senior citizen (Ruth Gordon) whose worldview is eccentric, to say the least. They meet…
When a pitiful little bug-munching creature was found lurking in the deep, dark caves of West Virginia, the townies of nearby Hope Falls had no idea that the creepy half boy/half bat’s tale would become an urban legend. The satirical saga, which was splattered across the front pages of the…
Thursday, February 26 An outgrowth of the Colorado Ballet’s private annual Patron Performance, tonight’s special Dance Celebration gives the public a one-time opportunity to view rarely seen works. Members of the company will show off a little and stretch their range for a night, beginning at 7:30 p.m. at the…
Literary readings are usually about as rousing as a two-hour wait at the DMV. Maybe it’s the stick-up-the-butt, tea-party ambience; maybe it’s the fact that most writers can’t credibly translate their prose into the spoken word. Whatever the reason, the whole idea of sitting on a folding chair, sipping fruit…
To mark the fortieth anniversary of the Beatles’ invasion of America and Denver, cruise down to the historic Brown Palace Hotel (where the lads stayed after playing at Red Rocks on August 26, 1964) for a special Beatlemania Overnight Package. “There was a line of people three deep all the…
SAT, 2/28 Kick up your heels at this weekend’s Colorado Shred Symposium freestyle footbag tournament — the sport better known to most of us as hacky sack. “Hacky Sack is a brand name,” explains Mile-Hi Shred Club member Sunny Dawn Freeman Genz, who is hosting the event. “But people who…
TUES, 3/2 I can read in red. I can read in blue. I can read in pickle color, too. — Dr. Seuss, from I Can Read with My Eyes Shut! This one’s a real no-brainer. When you consider how many children have learned to read with help from the Cat…
WED, 3/3 T. Coraghessan Boyle is everywhere these days. His latest novel, Drop City, a finalist for last year’s National Book Award, has just appeared in paperback. He has a short story in the current issue of Harper’s and another in an upcoming New Yorker. A new novel, The Inner…
SAT, 2/28 When Louis Armstrong was asked to define jazz, he said, “Man, if you gotta ask, you’ll never know.” Like all good four-letter words, “jazz” rolls fluidly off the tongue with poise, passion and sizzle — and when Les Ballet Jazz de Montréal takes over the University of Denver’s…
It would be an understatement to say that there’s a lot of excitement surrounding the marvelous idea of constructing a new building to house Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. And even if the MCA hasn’t yet mounted a campaign to raise the $3 million to $4 million needed, the process…
Shots of mountains, cowboys and horses, and other subjects evocative of the American West make up most of Photographs by Barbara Van Cleve, the solo at the Camera Obscura Gallery (1309 Bannock Street, 303-623-4059). Born in Montana and living today in New Mexico, Van Cleve is a true Westerner, but…
Balance. On the West Ninth Avenue side of Fresh Art, the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development has paid for a tiny sculpture garden as part of the long, ongoing Santa Fe Drive beautification project. The garden, composed of a group of rectangular forms made of cast concrete that serve as…
Singer Alberta Hunter had an extraordinary life. At age twelve, she left her Memphis home for Chicago, where she got her start at a rough club called Dago Frank’s. She moved to New York City in the 1920s and became part of the Harlem Renaissance alongside such luminaries as Duke…
We go to a play by Harold Pinter with certain expectations. We expect ambiguity, eloquent silences, language used like a scalpel or to parody literary convention and ordinary use. There won’t be a plot, and the action will be puzzling, but it will involve mis- and non-communication between characters and…
Beast on the Moon. The year is 1921. Aram Tomasian, a survivor of the 1915 massacre of Armenians by the Turks, is trying to make a life for himself in Milwaukee. He has bought himself a picture bride, a fifteen-year-old orphan called Seta. Aram is young, but rigid and traditional…
Albert Maysles, with brother David, made two different films about two different rock-and-roll bands five years apart, but to this day he can’t think of one without immediately thinking of the other. The first he was shooting 40 years ago this very day, more or less: The Beatles were on…
It’s clear by now that Meg Ryan, the bubbly sweetheart of half a dozen romantic comedies, means to bring new substance and seriousness to the second act of her career. Witness the lonely New York English teacher she played in last year’s brainy slasher flick, In the Cut. In no…
Seldom over the course of a relatively storied career has Gene Hackman garnered sustained laughter in films billed as comedies. He’s wonderous at playing virtuous or wicked, paternal or pissed off, but never quite comfortable in the role of comedian. He may be an actor of uncommon range, able to…
