French novelist Alexandre Dumas wrote The Lady of the Camellias as a tribute to a young lover he admired and lost when she died at the age of 22, burned out by high living and the scourge of the age, consumption. Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi kept the memory of the…
The new Richard Linklater film, subUrbia, adapted by Eric Bogosian from his 1994 play, opens with a long, unbroken tracking shot through a ticky-tacky Texas suburb, backed on the soundtrack by Gene Pitney wailing “Town Without Pity.” This logy, Jim Jarmusch-y opening hints at even greater anomie to come–and boy,…
I spent the 68th anniversary of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre watching The Godfather with the new soundtrack prepared for its 25th anniversary. The scene was a mixing room in the Saul Zaentz Film Center in Berkeley, California, and the master of ceremonies was much-honored editor and sound expert Walter…
The young black Chicagoans in Theodore Witcher’s love jones are busy finding themselves–in writing or photography, on the winding paths of friendship, in the mysteries of life and career that loom ahead. Most of all, they’re trying to figure out the real deal on romantic love, but the ambiguities of…
You know you’re in neo-noir country when the first images on the screen turn out to be empty freeway ramps bathed in cold moonlight and oil-cracking towers looming in the fog. It’s as though Michelangelo Antonioni and Nicholas Ray had both been let loose again in Los Angeles to spread…
Thursday March 13 Campy trip: The title tells it all–20,000 Leagues Beneath the Valley of the Dolls, opening tonight at the Theatre on Broadway, doesn’t take much of anything too seriously. The first original stage concoction of a group calling itself the Kitten With a Whip Club, Dolls is billed…
When ceramic artist Maynard Tischler arrived in Denver from back East in 1966 to interview for a job in the art department at the University of Denver, he came away with a mixed reaction. Though he liked the sunshine out west, he wasn’t so thrilled to learn that the university’s…
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and most self-help books about the battle of the sexes are written by space cadets. Since many of these tomes are also about what losers men are when it comes to their treatment of women, comedian Rob Becker took it upon himself…
Playwright Joan Ackermann makes sense out of the commonplace. In last summer’s biggest local hit, Stanton’s Garage, she wove the eccentricities of unremarkable men and women into a thoroughly involving slice of life. Zara Spook and Other Lures, also a journey of personal discovery, is a delightful fanfare for the…
The backwaters of our great republic are probably no more infested than the cities with photographers whose pictures are pure accident, novelists in need of remedial English or actors chugging along on grand illusions of adequacy. Indeed, every busboy and skateboarder in Los Angeles is waiting for a callback from…
The Indian-born director Mira Nair has never hesitated to cross borders–cultural, geographical or temporal. Some of her previous films have examined aging dancers in a Bombay strip club, an expatriate newspaper vendor in New York who’s been separated from his pregnant wife in India, the Romeo-and-Juliet romance of a black…
In Return of the Jedi, the last chapter of the Star Wars trilogy, an intergalactic window display of creepy and cuddly critters upstages the human characters. All the conflicts are resolved between the virtuous rebels–Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Han Solo (Harrison Ford), and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher)–and the wicked Imperials,…
Thursday March 6 The beat goes on: When John Coltrane changed the face of jazz music with his imaginative modal improvisations, he owed more than a little to the smoothly shifting bedrock off which he played. Coltrane’s classic quartet recordings of the early ’60s were more often than not held…
That an art collection even exists at the University of Colorado in Boulder became known to the general public only thirteen years ago. And the circumstances for the revelation couldn’t have been more embarrassing: a newspaper report that CU’s multi-million-dollar art collection had been allowed to “rot” through neglect and…
In order to make the world safe for theater, children have to be initiated in its mysteries now. Everybody in the business knows this, and strides have been made on the local scene to create theater suitable for children and families–like the splendid Peter Pan presented by the Denver Center…
Moviegoers who believe that David “Who killed Laura Palmer?” Lynch is the greatest genius to hit the big screen since Dali and Bunuel slit that poor donkey’s eyeball in Un Chien Andalou are going to get a serious kick out of Lost Highway–and probably spend a couple of hours afterward…
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight aspires to be gritty and tough and tender all at once, but its tones keep getting in one another’s way. In his feature-film debut, Anderson has conjured up the tale of a courtly old gambler, Sydney (Philip Baker Hall), who inexplicably takes under his wing…
During the first few minutes of Howard Stern’s romp through his inexplicable life, he spells out his mission: Private Parts will both convert the nonbelievers and entertain the cult. Stern wants to give you plenty of hot lesbian action (and freed from FCC restrictions, he takes real pleasure in saying…
Thursday February 27 West side, east side: A rich vein of local lore gets the nod today with a Jewish History of Denver Tour offered by the Colorado Historical Society. The traveling lecture, led by Denver resident Marjorie Hornbein, begins with an introductory talk at the Colorado History Museum, 1300…
Dale Chisman has long been known as an artist’s artist. For proof, look to the fact that several well-known local artists are among the collectors who’ve snapped up Chisman originals from his new show at 1/1 Gallery. Chisman is principally known for his paintings, but for more than three decades,…
Sure, it’s based on a loopy premise, but Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon still attracts audiences in droves. It’s most likely to appeal to family audiences: Kids under twelve go for the magic, while their grandparents appreciate the show’s optimistic image of an earthly paradise. Country Dinner Playhouse would seem to…
Legendary skirt-chaser Don Juan gets his in the end–at least in most of the versions of the famous story. And after seducing all those women, he would seem to deserve to burn in hell. But what if hell is a very pleasant sort of place–a kind of continuing cocktail party…
