Get ready, drag enthusiasts: Tickets go on sale today for the Denver stop of RuPaul’s Drag Race Battle of the Seasons, at the Ogden Theater on May 1. This year’s 2016 Extravaganza Tour is headed to our town for the first time — last year’s events here starring Drag Race…
Colorado’s favorite madam is turning forty this weekend, with an all-day birthday bash on Saturday, January 30. After four decades of skiers and snowboarders racing down her bumpy terrain, Winter Park’s Mary Jane will be celebrating in style — ‘70s glam style, to be exact. And the fun won’t stop…
Our Broncos are resting up this weekend, preparing for the Super Bowl in San Francisco, but the rest of this city is not. There are all kinds of jams to hear, dances to dance and macaroni and cheese to eat over the next couple of days. For even more events, smash…
Neal Cassady, inspiration for the Beat Generation, was one of the most powerful literary and pop-culture figures to emerge in the twentieth century. He spent most of his early life in Denver, yet few people in this city seem to know about his legacy, says music-industry veteran Mark Bliesener, himself…
When entrepreneur Russell Hopkins isn’t tearing up local skate parks on his BMX bike or converting old Volkswagens to run on oil, you can find him at his new bike shop in Lakewood, the Container Collective, crafting bamboo bicycle frames from scratch. A Wisconsin native whose last job was teaching…
In Diva Watch, we’ll profile the passionate, diverse and fascinating performers who light up Denver’s drag community, expanding on our Diva Dozen list from 2015 and our new Fresh Faces list for 2016 by asking different queens — from established to ingénue — questions that take a peek beneath the…
Mulder and Scully are back, at least for the length of a mini-series, and legions of costumed X-Files fans re-emerged from the shadows to cheer on their long-lost heroes at a big-screen premiere party at the Oriental Theater. The Enigma was there, too — tattoos, horns and all — just to…
Last year was pretty good to science fiction film fans. We got, among other things, a new Star Wars movie, a bunch of new comic book movies and even a handful of original, non-franchise films. To cap it all off, two science fiction films were nominated for Best Picture Oscars…
“Every film is a documentary of its actors,” Jean-Luc Godard once said. Starring Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling, Andrew Haigh’s shattering marital drama 45 Years expands that maxim: As we gaze at and listen to these performers, whose characters reflect on nearly a half-century together — almost as long as…
Broadly speaking, the Venn diagram of contemporary art as it applies to painting, sculpture and installation has three circles: representational, abstract and conceptual. This week, I’m looking at multiple shows at two venues that feature work that exists where the representational circle overlaps the abstract one. Next week, I’ll discuss…
The movie they’re selling isn’t the movie this is. Sony Pictures Classics is peddling Nicholas Hytner’s film of Alan Bennett’s play and memoir The Lady in the Van like it’s the usual twinkly Best Exotic time-with-our-elders holiday entertainment. There’s Maggie Smith, dressed up as what my grandmother used to call…
Photographer Todd Duane Miller decided to leave Las Vegas after thirteen years of working to establish a grass-roots movement in that city’s fickle arts scene. In October, Miller relocated to Denver and opened 701 Gallery just off Santa Fe Drive at 701 West Sixth Avenue, where he plans to feature unconventional art…
Whether you prefer Broadway musicals or tour-de-force biographical political dramas — or something more intimate — there’s plenty of variety to go around this week on Denver stages. Try these on for size, or check Westword’s online theater listings for more theater choices. Dirty Dancing – The Classic Story On…
Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, which premiered in 1985, is a sad, angry play that vividly evokes the atmosphere of those early AIDS years, when headlines spoke of a strange new cancer affecting gay men and the cause and progression of the illness were unknown. All that was known was…
Popcorn is a truly rare gem in a vast, picked-over field of rocks: a fun, smart slasher film that was released during a time when we all thought we’d never scream at a slasher again. Well, break out the earplugs: Popcorn is showing Wednesday, January 27, at the Alamo Drafthouse. For…
Here’s an odd thing to say of a lavishly expensive 3D IMAX maritime disaster flick that hits theaters just a month after the last one: They don’t make them like this anymore. There’s a reason for that, of course — the parents and grandparents who like ’em stolid and corny…
After ticking off seven things that ruffle the super-preened feathers of some Stapleton residents, we decided to take on another one of Denver’s vaunted neighborhoods: Highland. I lived in Highland (aka “the Highlands”) for about a decade, from the late ’90s through 2008, and in that time it changed a lot. Lower…
But what about the meaninglessness of everything? William Monahan’s Mojave is one of those ’90s-style chatty-killer movies, mixed with one of those ’90s-style guns-in-the-desert existential cheapies, the kind of picture where good-looking dudes shooting each other is passed off as elemental and beautiful rather than just what it actually is…
After local makers showed off their wares, tasty treats and exploding ice cream, the members of DeVotchKa took the stage at the Denver Art Museum to make Art of the Maker, a CultureHaus benefit, a night to remember. Photographer Ken Hamblin III captured all the arty fun on January 23…
Edge Theater Company took a big risk in mounting Euripides’s Medea as the first show in what it’s calling “the year of the woman.” After all, how many Denverites want to spend an evening pondering a straight-up Greek tragedy? But utilizing the clear, literate, modern-without-being-obtrusive translation of poet Alistair Elliot,…
Scrolling through Facebook a few weeks ago, I happened upon a post that got me excited, a listing on Craigslist for a gutted mobile boutique in a 1997 Ford e350 bus. Clicking through the pictures of the well-cared-for bus, with a hardwood floor and integrated lights, I found a familiar…
There’s essentially one joke in the Kung-Fu Panda movies. A ridiculous, adorable creature executes some extravagant action-flick flourish — vaulting over roofs, dropping a bad guy, striking a poster-perfect superhero pose. Then the battle music fades and that adorable creature breaks badass character to remind us it’s totally relatable, even…
