The Colorado Photographic Arts Center has its offices and exhibition space in the Highland neighborhood in a rehabbed garage it shares with the Carol Keller Gallery. At first, Keller occupied the main rooms — converted mechanics’ bays — and the CPAC was in the smaller rooms that had been offices…
Some might suggest that John McEnroe’s American Standard at the partly face-lifted ILK on Santa Fe Drive is simply a late entry to the ceramics bee still going on in the wake of the National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts meetings held in town last month. He uses…
Like a silky musical riff that beckons with the promise of discovery, Side Man pays homage to a bygone artistry that championed purity of devotion over shameless self-promotion. Centered around four jazz musicians, Warren Leight’s memory play abounds with soulful passages in which a young man tugs at the dark…
As the Acoma Center’s house lights dim, a techno-musical display fades to shadowy silence. Then a young man appears at the edge of the stage and, draped by a backdrop of thousands of stars, stares straight ahead while a disembodied voice intones, “What’s your history?” A few scenes later, the…
Rehab, sweet rehab. Last resort of the alcoholic, the drug addict and the would-be suicide. Free room and board, lots of tender loving care and a whole herd of fellow recovering screwups who’ll always be there for you, and are willing to apologize and admit their imperfections at the drop…
Where the Money Is is Hollywood’s latest attempt at a geezer vehicle — in this case, for Paul Newman. Despite his unassailable movie-star credentials and his still-handsome mug, Newman is faced with the inevitable dilemma of the aging leading man: Either make a film that appeals only to other oldsters…
It’s quite possible that American Psycho is a brilliant movie. It’s also quite possible that it’s a dreary, obvious chop-’em-up dressed in Alan Flusser suits and Ralph Lauren boxers, drenched in Pour Hommes aftershave, all to disguise it as bracing satire on the greed-is-good ’80s. The option audiences choose to…
It’s difficult to reconcile American perceptions of Iran, a rigidly authoritarian Islamic fundamentalist society, with the captivating and compassionate films that emanate from the country. Most of these pictures, including 1995 Cannes Film Festival Camera d’Or winner The White Balloon and 1998 best foreign-language film Oscar nominee Children of Heaven,…
One of the toughest women you’ll ever encounter, Paulina Cruz Suárez isn’t a cop or a firefighter or even a lady wrestler. For most of her life she’s been a maid, preparing meals and caring for the children of rich families in Mexico City. But her story, told in a…
The day the Goose knocked down the Penguin, my sister cried. The Penguin was her favorite player, but poor Ron Cey, standing in the batter’s box in the fifth game of the 1981 World Series, never had a chance against the 96-mph fastball that socked him in the head. As…
Even in the mildest of winters, there comes a time — late in February, perhaps — when you think you’ll puke if you have to look at one more leafless tree. In fact, the total absence of snow only enhances the unyielding, mud-brown plainness of winter in the Denver area…
Exhibition director Jason Thomas keeps up the pace at the Market Street Gallery@Guiry’s by putting up one great show after another. Right now he’s highlighting two talented artists who create sculptural installations that incorporate ceramics. On the left is Strands Pathways Gravity, featuring wall-hung and floor-bound sculptures by Denver’s Martha…
For at least the past hundred years, Irish-born playwrights have made it a habit to explode national myths by spinning stranger-than-fiction yarns of their own. Drawing his inspiration from the years he spent on the Aran islands thirty miles off Galway’s west coast, John Millington Synge tried to evoke the…
At least for the moment, the great (and greatly persecuted) Chinese film director Zhang Yimou has a new muse. Startlingly, she is a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl who has never before appeared on-screen, but in Zhang’s new film, Not One Less, Wei Minzhi manages to carry most of the freight once borne…
By their very nature, fundamentalist religions demand conformity. Original thought and personal aspirations are subordinated to duty and ritual as prescribed by scripture — be it the Bible, the Koran or the Torah. Members who do not strictly adhere to the precepts of the faith are ostracized, shunned, even expelled…
What’s your pick for the most ridiculous movie ever made? The Conqueror, starring John Wayne as Mongol emperor Ghengis Khan? How about The Manitou, in which the grizzled head of an Indian medicine man sprouts from Susan Strasberg’s neck? The musical remake of Lost Horizon surely deserves a couple of…
Titus, Julie Taymor’s gorgeous film version of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, may be the most lavish release of last year…and also the most perverse, on nearly every front. It’s easy to see why there has never been a feature version of this tragedy. Of the most commonly mounted Shakespearean plays, at…
In a long, silent scene at the end of Big Night, a man expresses his deep and conflicted love for his brother by cooking an omelette and placing it in front of him. In American Pie, a horny teenager masturbates into an apple pie his mother has left on the…
Like any creative type, Steve Wilson dreams of the day when he can “create a place where a group of artists can come together to do their work.” Judging from the kind of energy that’s radiating from the Robert E. Loup Jewish Community Center these days, the teacher and director…
Well, after two years of local preparation, the National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts 2000 meeting came and went last week in only a few days. But if NCECA’s gone, it’s not forgotten. Temporary though it may be, it’s left behind a legacy in the form of more…
World of New Colors, which closes Saturday at the Bayeux Gallery in the Golden Triangle, is a solo show devoted to the work of Philadelphia-based textile artist Marcia Hewitt Johnson. Johnson creates geometric abstractions with pieces of cloth joined together using quilt-making techniques, as in the two-panel “New York New…
The group of Denver natives and Southern Methodist University graduates that formed HorseChart Theatre Company a few seasons back made it their mission to produce plays that “do not make a spectacle of the obvious.” While past productions have tested edgy boundaries and occasionally transported theatergoers to seldom-seen territory, the…
