Vince Ku quietly excuses himself from his martial arts class, bows to the shrine of the three compatriot warriors to show his respect, then sprints upstairs to fetch the lion. Returning, he pulls a huge papier-mâché head from a canvas bag, hoists it above his shoulders and brings the animal…
SAT, 9/20 They will not go quietly, these little critters. Instead, Boulder’s prairie dogs — creatures with names such as Viktor the Victim and Prairie Home Protection — will hold their polyether-resin heads high at a final celebration tonight at 7 p.m. at the Odd Fellows Hall, 1543 Pearl Street…
THURS, 9/18 Bone-crushing tackles come as no surprise in a football game played without protective gear, and such action is at the black-and-blue heart of Aspen’s Ruggerfest 2003. The 36-year-old demolition derby, held every September in the Rockies, features the toughest rugby teams from across the country. The gathering’s a…
SAT, 9/20 It seems incredible that books are still subject to witch-hunts, but in the 21st century they most certainly are, particularly when it comes to literature written or recommended for children and young adults. According to the American Library Association, the ten most challenged books or series last year…
FRI, 9/19 You don’t have to be American to know about the Pony Express, but it’s a saga that Americans, particularly Westerners, all grew up with: Nary an oater has flashed upon the silver screen in the past hundred years without making some reference to the mid-nineteenth-century version of express…
SAT, 9/20 In pagan lore, the autumnal equinox, or Mabon, celebrates the harvest season in what amounts to an early precursor of the American Thanksgiving. In other words, when the shadows grow long and the sun dips low, it’s time to make merry and share abundance with others. Leave it…
It’s hardly news that Denver is a sports town — think of all the money the city has thrown at its professional sports teams in recent years — but this is something of an art town, too. Those of us in the visual arts march to a different drummer than…
The Camera Obscura Gallery (1309 Bannock Street, 303-623-4059) opened in the 1970s, making it the granddaddy of Colorado’s photo galleries. Its creator, octogenarian Hal Gould, a photographer and curator, is the granddaddy of local photo enthusiasts. Fifty years ago, even before he launched the gallery, Gould began to collect photos…
It’s hard for me to review Suddenly Hope, currently playing at the New Denver Civic Theatre. On the evening I attended, the auditorium was filled with people who looked and sounded like my New York aunts and uncles or my cousins from Israel. Also, the musical celebrates a concept of…
Four years later, the Columbine massacre (and school shootings elsewhere) leaves more questions unanswered than resolved, despite the relentless efforts of psychiatrists, social commentators of every political stripe and baffled law-enforcement officers to explain them. In his remarkable first feature film, Home Room, writer-director Paul F. Ryan declines to analyze…
Many observant Jews in Israel and America are outraged by writer-director Eitan Gorlin’s brash first feature, The Holy Land, and it’s easy to see why. It’s not every day you encounter a film about an uncertain rabbinical student who falls in love with a Russian prostitute — in the holy…
Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki is not just one of the world’s great fantasists; he’s one of the most painterly filmmakers alive, and a vivid thinker who revels in taking chances with moods and spells and narrative experiments. Princess Mononoke was the first Miyazaki film to enjoy great acclaim in America,…
“For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Albert Einstein said that, but Peter Barton lived it. And exactly a year ago, the legendary entrepreneur, sports enthusiast, rock-and-roll fan, husband and father of three escaped the boundaries of time altogether, dying…
Thursday, September 11 Local photographer Nanette Martin made five trips to Ground Zero between September 2001 and May 2002 to chronicle the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks. The result is a new photo memoir, The Thousand-Mile Stare: Images From Ground Zero, and a subsequent photography exhibit. Thirty-three black-and-white…
Karen Finley is in the middle of what she describes as a “star-studded week.” No longer fighting Jesse Helms and the National Endowment for the Arts “decency clause” in front of the Supreme Court, Finley’s overbooked calendar calls for performances with Lou Reed, a video shoot with Sonic Youth’s Kim…
SUN, 9/14 Soon You’ll hear a tune That’s gonna lift you out of your seat It could be sweeter But then the meter Was written especially for your feet — Irving Berlin, “Everybody Step” If the term “tea dance” evokes visions of grannies a-go-go shuffling their walkers to elevator music,…
SUN, 9/14 Chuck Trujillo raised a lot of eyebrows in the competitive running community four years ago when he announced plans for a regular Denver marathon. Plenty of these epics already clogged the fall calendar in places like New York, Chicago and even Minneapolis. But all of those places had…
FRI, 9/12 One expects art galleries to cater mainly to grownups, but consider little Quetzalli, 928 West Eighth Avenue, a gallery that’s committed to exploring cultural roots through art. Its current show, Rastros (Traces), featuring works by Eric “Elfego” Baca and Robert Lopez Dussart, appeals to adults by offering different…
TUES, 9/16 Maxine Hong Kingston was born into war in 1940; her refugee mother, a doctor who had run a hospital in a cave in China before joining her husband in Stockton, California, talked about it all the time, in firsthand detail. Even then, Kingston felt an overwhelming responsibility to…
WED, 9/17 The horrors of 9/11 left many Americans grasping for meaning. New York journalist Anne Nelson was one of them, and when she was asked to assist a fire captain in writing eulogies for eight of his finest who died, she composed a commemoration for each. In the process,…
Miners Alley is a brand-new theater company with a decade-long pedigree. After years in Morrison, artistic director Rick Bernstein recently moved the group to Golden, housing it in an intimate, brand-new theater above the Foss Drug Store. There, he mounted an interesting production of The Elephant Man last month. The…
Hollywood has always been an easy target, especially when it turns the gun on itself. The makers of New Suit, a new wiseass movie-industry satire, include a French director, Francois Velle, who never has made a U.S. film until now, and a young screenwriter, Craig Sherman, whose most notable previous…
