Rocky High

SUN, 10/12 Photographer/adventurer Gordon Wiltsie, who loves mountains, is deeply conflicted by his own part in exposing the wilderness to the masses. The fifty-year-old Montana resident, whose work has appeared in National Geographic and other publications, says the high country has an “almost spiritual pull” on him that he finds…

Breaking Ground

SAT, 10/11 Kids in Longmont don’t ask for much, but a lot of teens in that town are happy to have a place like Club Breakdown to go to on weekends instead of hanging out on the street. Artist Gamma Acosta, now 23, used to feel that way, although the…

The Whole Package

SAT, 10/11 Why would a stock-car designer ever concern himself with a bustle? What in the world would a welder know about hemlines? The answers reveal themselves tonight at Body Packaging III: Identity Crisis, presented by the Pikes Peak Arts Council and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. The avant-garde…

Just Be Sharp!

THURS, 10/9 Lewis Black and Dave Attell seem about as hard to contact these days as folks on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Still, even in the middle of a fifty-plus-city tour, Attell manages to find time to expound on the joys of hitting the road for Comedy Central Live Starring…

Colors of the Season

It occurs to me that the art world is akin to a light switch. Not the on-and-off type (the art world is always on) but one of those dimmer switches. Metaphorically speaking, at times the lights in the galleries have been turned down to a flicker; at other times, they’ve…

Artbeat

Lauri Lynnxe Murphy only recently took over as director of the Andenken Gallery (2110 Market Street, 303-292-3281), but she’s already making a splash with her first effort, the tasty group show Luscious that’s now on display. There’s a back story to Luscious: A good deal of the exhibit — the…

The Naked Truth

I would like to say things were otherwise, really I would. I would like to find all kinds of nuance and dozens of brilliantly esoteric references in the LIDA Project’s production of Jean Genet’s The Balcony. I’d like to have been titillated, frightened or inspired, because it is, after all,…

Major Props

In Elevator, the first of Buntport Theater’s two original one-acts presented under the title Misc. , three people stand in an elevator, pretty much unmoving. We’re treated to several silent minutes, during which we study the actors’ expressions. A fourth person gets into the elevator, then gets off. There’s a…

Webs of Deceit

The blood-spattered French thriller Demonlover offers about as blunt an indictment of international business culture as you’ll see in any movie. With a dedication that borders on mania, writer-director Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Les Destinees) attacks what he sees as the greed, ruthless ambition and Byzantine chicanery lurking behind high-powered…

Heading South

It seems like everybody’s raving up Mexican cinema these days — either as a merit badge of self-conscious hipness or because the stuff is impressive, and sometimes both — but the excitement is definitely merited with Herod’s Law (La Ley de Herodes). This movie kicks the feisty Y Tu Mam´…

Flick Pick

In the Starz FilmCenter’s “Language of Film” series, which starts on Tuesday, October 7, Denver filmmaker Alexandre Philippe will examine three great films from a storyteller’s point of view, deconstructing narrative to reveal what he calls the movies’ “hidden anatomy.” Certainly, he will have superb material to work with. On…

Mystery Man

A good mystery series has to fit like a well-worn glove. It’s that utilitarian undertone of familiarity that sucks the most loyal readers in — that sense of time, place and enduring character that pulls all the plots together again and again. Once you really know Philip Marlowe or Spencer…

This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks

Thursday, October 2 Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was a groundbreaker in every sense of the word during her tenure under President Clinton, not only as the first woman to serve in her office, but as an integral peacemaker in Kosovo and the Middle East. Now her accomplishments…

A Masterful Buzz

Denver is abuzz in anticipation of the arrival of El Greco to Picasso from the Phillips Collection, with its romantic images, impressionist wonders and strong cubist portrayals. Opening this Saturday at the Denver Art Museum, El Greco to Picasso consists of 53 world-famous paintings and sculptures. “I don’t think we’ve…

Oohs and Arrrghs

WED, 10/8 Captain Jack Sparrow may still be sailing the seven seas in search of lost fortune, but plenty of bona fide booty can be found at tonight’s Erotica Aquatica Fashion Show at the Boulder Theater. Designers and boutiques including Buffalo Exchange, Tricia Russell, Common Era, Fascinations and the Ritz…

You Go, Girl

WED, 10/8 Tina Basich, one of the world’s first professional female snowboarders, chronicles her pioneering life in Pretty Good for a Girl: The Autobiography of a Snowboarding Pioneer. Basich, whose unconventional family once lived in a tepee on the front lawn, became a pro boarder at seventeen “because it was…

Thinking Differently

SUN, 10/5 Some would say the books of Peter Sís aren’t children’s books at all. And yet you’ll find them — complicated mazes of lavishly illustrated visual information and sophisticated themes — on the shelves of children’s libraries or among the juvenile picture books at your local bookstore. It’s no…

Beyond U.S.A.

FRI, 10/3 Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver curator Cydney Payton has a love affair with art’s cutting edge: Always seeking ways to straddle it, she’s continuing that streak with BLOOD: Lines & Connections, an ambitious exhibit of global proportions opening tonight with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. at the…

Late Love

THURS, 10/2 In the early scenes of Gus Edwards’s Louie and Ophelia, the title characters are crazy about each other. By the final scene, though, they’ve nearly driven each other nuts — and have come to terms with some of the psychic demons that hinder their ability to love. Louie…

Under the Influence

When the Cordell Taylor Gallery opened its doors in Denver in the fall of 2001, its specialty was contemporary art from Utah, and all of the represented artists were holdovers from the days when the business was located in Salt Lake City. These out-of-state artists were unknown around here and…

Artbeat

Bobbi Walker forces visitors to her gallery, Walker Fine Art (300 West 11th Avenue, 303-355-8955), to suspend their aesthetic sensibilities. At issue is the hideous high-rise — the Prado — in which the gallery is located. Loving buildings as I do, it took me a long time to build up…

Shortchanging America

Barbara Ehrenreich published Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America in 2001 partly as a response to President Clinton’s 1996 reorganization of welfare, which kicked recipients off the rolls if they had not gone to work after two years. Before doing research for the book, Ehrenreich already knew…