It never quite feels like the holidays until Christmas lights start twinkling around Denver and the Denver City & County Building glows like a color-blind kid’s birthday cake. Many of the biggest light displays in town have already kicked off, including downtown Denver’s Grand Illumination, but there are still more to come. Keep reading for where you can get lit through Christmas.
Books make great gifts for the holidays. It helps, of course, to find books that address your particular recipient’s passions and obsessions — and while you’re at it, why not throw in a few titles by local authors?
What’s scarier than I-25 in a snowstorm? Krampus, a Haunted Christmas, which took over the home of the 13th Floor Haunted House, at 4120 Brighton Boulevard, for two nights of a very scary Christmas this past weekend. Photographer Brandon Marshall braved the elements to bring back these pictures of a…
We’re in the final stretch of the Christmas season, which means it’s time to escape the seasonal stress by enjoying a free event or two. Nerd out on the Force, get down with some trippy beats or have a few laughs while eating cereal. Check the Westword calendar for even…
Lauri Lynnxe Murphy, honored for her work pushing and promoting Denver’s arts scene as a member of Westword’s first class of MasterMinds in 2005, took a break from writing about The Mayday Experiment, her tiny-house project, to pen a defense of DIY in the wake of the Ghost Ship fire and the…
Modernist artist Alexander Calder’s abstract sculptures will be showcased at the Denver Botanic Gardens York Street location starting in spring 2017.
Kids today just don’t get it. Back in the TV dark ages, stations would actually sign off between midnight and 5AM, cartoons were on Saturday morning, and the occasional holiday special were what marked the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Just the sound of the announcement that there was a special program about to start was Pavlovian. These days, of course, kids can watch all of these specials on-demand, which makes them less of an event. Back then, they were, without a doubt, special.Of course, time has not always been kind to the delights of our youth, and the classic Christmas specials are no exception. Each one, even where they retain their charms, has a moral—whether intended or accidental—that if you consider it from a modern perspective sort of ruins it, or at least reveals the differences between the era of its creation and the place we are in American culture today. Just please: don’t let these foibles detract from the overall goodness of these TV holiday artifacts. This list is meant with nothing but love.
I have a few thoughts on these Golden Globe nominations, including: In what world am I living where eight men are nominated for their film scores, and somehow not included is the young luminary Mica Levi, whose music for Natalie Portman vehicle Jackie was one of the most jaw dropping…
I was fortunate enough this year to be at both Sundance and Cannes, so it was something like agony for me to watch the litany of critics and commentators who spent the summer and early fall complaining about the year in film — all while movies such as Manchester by…
Seriously: It’s time to wrap up that holiday shopping and put a bow on it. But you can still get it done conscientiously, mindfully and locally, thanks to these last-chance markets showcasing Colorado makers, artisans and artists. We’ve wrapped up twelve holiday markets in metro Denver this weekend where you can snag great gifts for everyone on your list.
With ten days left before Christmas, there’s still plenty of time to get to our shopping lists. In the meantime, why not have some fun? This weekend we’ve got space beers, earth weed and laughs to enjoy. Check the Westword calendar for even more entertainment opportunities. Star Wars Beer Release…
For Thanksgiving we tallied up the ten best Turkey-Day Sitcom episodes, and there were a surprising number of good candidates—but the November holiday of gluttony has nothing on Christmas, the holiday for which it seems sitcoms were made. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, or so sang Andy Williams (probably in a special televised right after some of the sitcom eps on this list), and TV embraced that to the utmost.So while you’re wrapping presents, baking cookies, stringing popcorn and cranberries, or whatever Christmassy thing it is you do to prepare for the big day, check out these ten holiday episodes—because sappy sentimental sitcoms are one of the reasons for the season.
In this, the harrowing year of 2016, I could jump into the Oscars talk. I could pick groundbreaking films that reminded me time and again that movies are alive and more vital than ever, like the heartbreaking Moonlight, the soul-stirring Queen of Katwe, the force-of-goodness 13th, the subtle and sweet…
Whenever I tell someone I’ve been binging on Hallmark Christmas movies all day, there’s a certain amount of apology involved. “I know, they’re the worst,” I’ll concede, before the other person has had a chance to say anything. “The one I watched this morning was a real winner.” Usually whomever…
Tokyo’s Akihabara district is a gamers’ paradise — and now Brandon and Tiffany Osha have brought Akihabara to Westminster, turning that suburb into a mini-gamer’s paradise. The grand opening of the Akihara Arcade and Bar last weekend attracted a crowd of gamers eager to take a turn at twenty different Japanese…
In a profile early this year, the novelist Dana Spiotta told the New York Times, “That’s seductive, being paid attention to.” Several of the films below — those that seduced me — feature pivotal scenes, whether in diners, at picnic tables or at kitchen tables, of one character raptly listening…
Clark Richert has been at his craft for over fifty years. Long acknowledged as a master of Colorado’s contemporary-art scene, in recent years he’s reached a wider audience through shows like West of Center at MCA Denver and Hippie Modernism, jointly organized by the Walker Art Center and the University…
Controversial opinion: Lists are a great way to both organize and digest horrifically large amounts of information. And they’ve never been more relevant than this, the Lord’s year, 2016, in television. There’s just too damn much, and nobody could possibly watch it all — except maybe Scott Bakula on a…
Here’s a promise few movies can make. If you sink two hours into Collateral Beauty now, it’s guaranteed that for the rest of your life, when conversation stalls, you can save the night by asking, “Did you ever see that movie where Will Smith plays an ad executive so shut…
Watching Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s mesmerizing sci-fi arthouse stunner, Evolution, I thought of the paintings of surrealist Rene Magritte — a few in particular: The Collective Invention (1934) and The Human Condition diptych (1933, 1935). The former features a creature — the bottom limbs of a woman and the body of a…
Pablo Larraín is having a good year. The Chilean director, Oscar-nominated a few years ago for his 2012 political drama No, has just released Jackie, featuring a striking Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s assassination. He is also about to release Neruda, a complex,…
In the pantheon of American First Ladies, Jacqueline Kennedy was no Eleanor Roosevelt. She didn’t push for policy, didn’t relinquish her pillbox hat to walk among the needy, didn’t travel to foreign countries as an ambassador and certainly didn’t advise her husband on matters of war. Jackie Kennedy’s role was…
