Denver’s new Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building, by the Denver firms of David Owen Tryba Architects and RNL Design, is the latest monument to rise at the Civic Center — which, by the way, is Denver’s premier urban space. Because of its prominent location, designing a building here has…
The Victoria H. Myhren Gallery, in the Shwayder Art Building on the University of Denver’s campus (2121 East Asbury Avenue, 303-871-2846), is hosting an exquisite exhibit titled Ronald Davis: Recent Abstractions 2001-2002. The show, which runs through November 8, was organized by Gwen Chanzit, a professor of art history at…
The Full Monty began as one of those small, unassuming British movies about unemployed men in a gritty, industrial town — in this case, Sheffield, Yorkshire. These workers see their neighbors, wives and girlfriends rushing to a Chippendales-style male strip performance, and they decide to raise some money by staging…
There are evenings when my job seems like the best in town, and the Shadow Theatre Company’s Lady Day at Emerson¹s Bar and Grill provided one of them. The lights come up on a muted gray-green background, a piano, a nosegay of gardenias on a round table. Piano notes sound,…
Consider life’s unbreakable rules: Send Mom flowers on her birthday. Keep your fastball down. Never order lasagna in Des Moines. Don’t go sailing with people you can’t stand. Violation of this last rule has yielded some pretty fair books and movies over the years — Moby Dick and The Caine…
Now, here’s an innovative narrative: Two shticky goofs of different races get stuck with a ridiculous mission and must overcome their mutual antagonism to save the day. Been there? Done that? You bet! Yet somehow, amazingly, the new I Spy dishes out fresh and funny antics while simultaneously spewing forth…
Clear your throats, take a deep breath, and belt out the words with the Raging Grannies: (To the tune of “Frère Jacques”) Georgie Bush, Georgie Bush, Can you hear? Can you hear? No more nukes or bombings, No more nukes or bombings, Can you hear? No, it’s not the latest…
Classically trained actor Joshua Kane must have sold his soul for his voice: It’s a booming, heart-stopping theatrical instrument, even over the phone from New York. And it’s not like Kane and Beelzebub are complete strangers. One of Kane’s one-man stage shows, Date With the Devil, recalls “the many voices…
I said it just a few weeks ago: It’s hard to believe how many first-rate art shows this season are devoted to that old warhorse, abstract painting. There’s no question that the current positive reappraisal of abstraction — both of the historic and contemporary type — is a train that’s…
It’s strange to find a first-rate painting show on the second floor of a run-down warehouse near the National Western Stock Show Complex — but that’s exactly what’s there right now. The impressive exhibit is called hEMLOCK rOW: Paintings by Stephen batura, and it’s on display in a building known…
Time, that is intolerant Of the brave and innocent, And indifferent in a week, To a beautiful physique, Worships language and forgives Everyone by whom it lives. — W.H. Auden “My husband wanted to leave,” an attractive blond woman told me during the intermission for The Skin of Our Teeth,…
If you’re a fan of the baseball-cap-wearin’, Nader-votin’, muckrakin’, best-sellin’, corporation-confrontin’ son of a gun known as Michael Moore, all you need to know about his latest film, Bowling for Columbine is that it’s more of the same. You know: the mix of easy humor, political potshots, attempts (some successful,…
For American moviegoers with a blood lust for organized crime, the Boss of all Bosses has long been named Corleone. Is it Vito? Or Michael? That’s a matter of personal preference. In any event, so beloved and enduring are the Godfather films — the first and second, anyway — that…
Punch-Drunk Love is a Paul Thomas Anderson film — Paul Thomas Anderson of Magnolia and Boogie Nights fame. It is also an Adam Sandler film — Adam Sandler of Little Nicky and The Wedding Singer fame. In terms of story, it has far more in common with Sandler’s previous work…
In the aftermath of the deadly rampage at Columbine High School, Colorado became a media poster child for the effects of gun violence. And as shockwaves rippled from the April 20, 1999, tragedy, some blamed art — including movies — for igniting the killing spree. In turn, filmmakers examined violence…
Environmental sculptor Shan Wells grew up in southwestern Colorado, immersed in nature and the immediate landscape — which has become his artistic medium — all his life. It shows in the work: In Wells’s visual world, stones, leaves or flower parts might be arranged in patterns on the ground, sandstone…
The Robischon Gallery is surely the flagship of Denver’s contemporary-art venues. Oh, sure, there are a handful that are every bit as good — but none are any better or have as long of a distinguished track record. The gallery’s physical plant, with its high ceilings and big walls, is…
I’m going to throw caution to the wind and say that Continuum: Magnetic Sustensions, by Joseph Shaeffer, is one of the best shows by an emerging artist that we’re likely to see during the 2002-2003 season — which, by the way, has only just started. The Shaeffer show is being…
There is simply no way of explaining musical genius on the order of Mozart’s, and I think that’s the puzzle at the heart of Peter Shaffer’s glittering and celebrated play, Amadeus, which received all kinds of awards and attention when it first opened in London, in 1980, and again four…
As far as I can tell, David Lindsay-Abaire, author of A Devil Inside, has a good education, an effervescent imagination, a lot of smarts, a highly developed comic sense — and nothing much to say as yet. The play is full of ugly, violent imagery, but none of its deaths…
As pharmacologist Elmo McElroy in Formula 51, Samuel L. Jackson initially sports a seriously silly fake Afro along with hippie-dippy threads that make him look like some sort of flower-power cult leader. When next we see him, it’s thirty years later, and he’s got cornrows and is inexplicably wearing a…
Death is too often taken literally, and this unfortunate perspective is sustained by much cinema, despite the medium’s dubious kiss of immortality. There’s easy drama in tragedy and grisly ends, but moviemakers don’t often successfully deliver symbolic death, the subtly grim yet vital bridge between lively verses. Happily, director George…
