For the record, when lowriders start doing the cha-cha on souped-up hydraulics or airbags, they hop — they don’t jump. That’s the word from Lowrider Magazine spokesman Marco Patiño, a well-educated young L.A. talker who says his father, a custom-car buff himself, impressed upon the son early the importance of…
Subtly placed at eye level on the front door of Ron Judish Fine Arts is a letter-sized sheet of paper with an advisory for viewers of Horse: the male as sexual entity. It states that the exhibit, which is now showing, includes the depiction of the male nude and that…
Pirate: a Contemporary Art Oasis is now hosting a group of interesting — though flawed — sculpture shows. In the main space up front is Soul Catchers, which features a large collection of abstract sculptures by Craig Robb. Some are on the wall, some are on the ceiling, some are…
Smartly directed, honestly acted and imaginatively written, HorseChart Theatre Company’s production of O.T. takes on prickly issues with the kind of spunky tenacity that one expects from a group of theatrical renegades. Clay Nichols’s drama, which is being presented at the Denver Civic Theatre as part of HorseChart’s participation in…
Had Leonard Bernstein been regarded as a musical-theater genius a year or two before he wrote On the Town, the 1944 work might not have been cut to ribbons when it was made into a movie starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. Apparently unimpressed with all of the material in…
In the course of two hours, Neil Gaiman speaks 10,000 words (or damned near, when transcribed), and it seems a shame to waste a single one, since there is not an uh or y’know among them. Even the most eloquent writer gets lost in thought every now and then…uh…y’know? But…
The bewildering penchant of recent American movies for glorifying the lovable naif, the perpetual adolescent and the village idiot takes a strange new turn in Miguel Arteta’s dark comedy Chuck & Buck. Arteta’s hero, Buck O’Brien (Mike White), is a 27-year-old manchild who eats lollipops all day long, takes refuge…
Rather than asking if this senseless and expensive new film from wunderkind entertainer Robert Zemeckis is devoid of merit (it is), or “worth seeing” (it isn’t), we should instead take the movie’s title — What Lies Beneath — as a direct question. Indeed, what does lie beneath? Possible answers include:…
In an age of Prozac-popping adults and Ritalin-filled children, it’s no surprise that an artist would get around to mental health as the subject of her work. But who knew it could be done with the graceful sensuality of flamenco dancers and the rhythms of enchanting music? Los Angeles-based choreographer…
Howard Crabtree barely saw When Pigs Fly take off — he died of AIDS five days after it premiered — but some would say he lives on each night that his costumes take the stage. Magnificent drag-wear — and then some — constructed from foam rubber, sequins, glitter and other…
It’s a basic contradiction of the art world: Artists compete with each other to get into the best galleries, while the galleries compete with each other to get the best artists. A standard offshoot of this situation is the endless chain of introductory exhibits, meant either to acquaint the local…
There are two compelling shows at the Emmanuel Gallery on the Auraria campus through tomorrow: Jerry Allen Gilmore on the main floor, and Christopher Nitsche in the loft. The Gilmore show is made up of drawings and paintings that combine abstract painting techniques such as splashes, drips and runs with…
Aesthetics collide, myths explode and philosophies swirl about with dizzying delight in Candide. Just when the title character seems on the verge of articulating truths about the human condition, an unlikely catastrophe or comic accident spirits him to one of many far-off locales, where he contemplates life’s mysteries all over…
A corporate sponsor’s flattering comments and a University of Colorado official’s town-and-gown speechifying delayed the start of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s opening show by nearly 25 minutes. Shortly after the Boulder bureaucrats finished droning, however, audience members who had paid upwards of $40 apiece to see a professional-caliber production of…
Bryan Singer did not read comic books as a young boy, because he couldn’t read them. As a kid, he was slightly dyslexic and, therefore, unable to follow the dialogue as it bubbled across panels and pages; quite simply, Singer says now, comic books confused him, so the Jersey boy…
French director Luc Besson’s underwater adventure The Big Blue has inspired ecstasy in fans around the world since 1988, and for the American contingent, the release this week of a “director’s cut” of the film will surely be cause for celebration. Besson (La Femme Nikita) has added almost an hour…
In Bryan Singer’s last movie, 1998’s Apt Pupil, Ian McKellen portrayed a Nazi war criminal hiding out in the suburbs, passing himself off as an ordinary old man crouching behind drawn blinds. In Singer’s new movie, X-Men, McKellen plays Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, the son of Jews who were murdered in…
For seven years, Marin Alsop has steadily led a major regional orchestra and vigorously maintained a double life as a highly sought-after guest conductor, all the while forging her own style after lingering in the shadows of her apprenticeship to one of the world’s musical geniuses, the late Leonard Bernstein…
When sex-advice columnist Dan Savage sat down to write a book about how he and his partner adopted a baby, he was determined it wouldn’t become “another boring book about parenthood,” all full of gush and sentiment. He succeeded. Savage will never be known as the Erma Bombeck of gaydom,…
More worldly wise than yesteryear’s bar-hoppers, yet every bit as desperate for companionship, the characters in I Love You, You¹re Perfect, Now Change long to secure intimacy without subjecting themselves to courtship’s absurdities. As these legions of swingers, loners and dreamers discover, though, there are reasons (including one or two…
Like any nation governed by an imperious busybody, the grassroots environs of Insectavia regularly buzz about with gossip and intrigue. The tiny duchy’s ant queen — who justifies her absolute authority by claiming to be the kingdom’s wisest inhabitant — has offered one-half of the treasury to any segmented, six-legged…
Before home runs got as cheap as bubble gum, the great Detroit Tiger slugger Hank Greenberg stood out as one of just ten major-league players who had hit fifty or more dingers in a season. In that, the original Hammerin’ Hank’s company was rare: Ruth, Foxx, Wilson, Kiner, Mize, Mantle,…
