The six vivid women thrown together by fate in John Sayles’s Casa de los Babys are frequently divided by their bickering, but they are united in a deep common yearning — and of that Sayles has made an observant and provocative drama about the ambiguities of adult life and the…
Before you crack your wallet for Veronica Guerin, you’d be well off to rent a video of the 2000 release When the Sky Falls (working titles: When Heaven Falls and, natch, Veronica Guerin), of which this new Veronica Guerin is basically a tarted-up remake. Same story, same scenarios, same basic…
This year’s North American tour of The Animation Show, opening Wednesday, October 22, and running through Friday, October 24, as part of the University of Colorado’s International Film Series, features a collection of award-winning animated shorts from eight countries. They were chosen by the co-producers, Academy Award nominee Don Hertzfeldt…
Anyone who has ever read works written by Maya Angelou, or heard her speak, knows that wisdom radiates from her words. But while this renaissance woman delivers many lessons, inspiration is at the heart of her message. “There are certain truths that I think everybody needs to realize, one being…
Thursday, October 16 Colorado is book country, so it follows that it’s also home to a bumper crop of published authors. You can meet more than 35 of them at this year’s Colorado Book Awards Gala, hosted tonight at the Seawell Ballroom, 14th and Curtis streets, by the Colorado Center…
‘Tis the season when jack-o-lanterns glow, skeletons rattle and houses morph into terror dens that crank out fear for fun. Here are the venues that the werewolves of Westword found to be the most fang-tastic: Das Meyer Fine Pastry Chalet, 13251 West 64th Avenue in Arvada, has traded its rolling…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Guy walks into a bar and orders the cheapest domestic draft available. Bartender pours the man a beer before setting it down on the counter along with a small plastic coin with a bar logo on it. “The chip,” the barkeep explains, “is…
WED, 10/22 Galen and Barbara Rowell perished on August 12, 2002, when their small plane crashed outside of Bishop, California, but their efforts on behalf of Tibet continue. Galen Rowell, considered one of the world’s foremost adventure photographers, had recently returned from a remote area of Tibet. His pictures from…
FRI, 10/17 Tyrannosaurus Rex and dozens of his big-boned friends will roar into town today as part of the Dinosaur World Tour. Featuring the largest flying-reptile exhibit ever assembled — including the giant Quetzalcoatlus, with its 27-foot wingspan — Dinosaur World offers more than a hundred displays, including 2,000 square…
SAT, 10/18 Like most local gallery-goers, you’re probably going to find yourself fighting the crowds at the Denver Art Museum to see El Greco to Picasso from the Phillips Collection at some point during the coming weeks. All well and good: We don’t always have such a wonderful opportunity to…
SAT, 10/18 When Augustana Arts executive director Donald Tallman heard that renowned vocal quartet Anonymous 4 would be making its final cross-country tour, he jumped at the chance to book the group for a farewell Denver concert, which will be held tonight at Augustana Lutheran Church, 5000 East Alameda Avenue…
Let me say this right off the bat: The fall-winter blockbuster at the Denver Art Museum, El Greco to Picasso from the Phillips Collection, is one of the best shows ever presented in our region. Not since the DAM’s Matisse show a few years ago has the city been graced…
A couple of times a year, Cherry Creek’s Gallery M (2830 East Third Avenue, 303-331-8400) puts on a photography show that focuses on a single photographer using traditional methods. The big fall exhibit, Bob Kolbrener: Celebrations of Nature, is the latest example of this worthy program. The show features sumptuous,…
After ducking a little local controversy, the two-man Puppetry of the Penis is yanking in the Colorado crowds. Lincoln Davies and new-kid-on-the-jock Jef Benjamin are exposing their talents in the name of art. Once you get used to the terror of seeing two naked men and a seventeen-by-fourteen-foot Godzilla-sized phallus…
Simon Morley, the Aussie creator of the internationally notorious comedy Puppetry of the Penis, summed up his unlikely theatrical juggernaught with a smile and a shrug in one interview. “It’s art. It’s a piece of skin. It’s there to be laughed at. Get over it,” he said. Considering that Morley’s…
When we first see Fanda, the craggy, octogenerian hero of the sublime Czech tragicomedy Autumn Spring, he alights from a sleek black limousine under a rich canopy of trees and begins looking at a luxurious country mansion with obvious distaste. “Quite shabby,” he sniffs to the obsequious sales agent at…
The opening credits insist Kill Bill: Volume 1 is “Quentin Tarantino’s 4th film,” when it’s actually his 3.5th; it’s too incomplete to be measured as a whole; it’s really half a movie waiting for a proper ending, which is due to arrive in the next volume in February 2004. Until…
In case the stunning French documentary Winged Migration somehow flew right by you during its long and fruitful run at the Mayan, you can still catch it on the giant IMAX screen at United Artists’ Colorado Center, I-25 and Colorado Boulevard. Shooting over three years on all seven continents, director…
Join Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their harrowing journey past the majestic peaks of the Bitterroot Mountains to the roaring rapids of the Columbia River in Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West, a new film opening this week at the Phipps IMAX Theater in the Denver Museum of Nature…
Thursday, October 9 Author, musician and Jill-of-all-trades Jennie Shortridge has a bit of Denver and the foothills in her past, a fact that comes into play in her new novel, Riding With the Queen, the story of a weary rock singer who forsakes the road to return to the metro…
This year’s Starz Denver International Film Festival, which opens Thursday, October 9, with the new Anthony Hopkins-Nicole Kidman drama, The Human Stain, and runs through Sunday, October 19, will feature more than 130 films and dozens of in-person appearances by notable actors and directors. The most buzzworthy event, booked at…
SUN, 10/12 Kite-maker Jane Parker-Ambrose was really too busy to take on another project, but in 1985, after sailing one of her custom flyers in Red Square with the Soviet Women’s Peace Community, Parker-Ambrose was moved to use her kites for an even higher purpose. “The kite has its own…
