Why do we love A Christmas Carol so much that we see it again and again, year after year? It’s an annual pageant of redemption that gives us a villain we get to boo, and a reformed soul we get to cheer. Scrooge stands in for our guilty and regretful…
Singing elves. Dancing snowmen. The awkward beauties of stop-motion animation. Yuletides threatened by mad professors, insane dictators, giant buzzards and Arab stereotypes. Welcome to the world of Rankin/Bass, a company that took the shiny, pop-culture Christmas ball and ran with it, creating a demented body of video work that will…
It’s the time of year for eggnog, present wrapping and terrible, awful, no-good bullshit Christmas movies. Seriously, is there any holiday more beleaguered by cheesy garbage than Christmas? While yes, there are gems that balance the sentiment with a good story, a little edge and maybe some laughs, most fall…
‘Tis that holiday when Annual Gift Man rears his horrible head and only John Waters and his powerful gay gun can save us. If you find yourself in a same-sex relationship this year — after cleaning up the embers of that disastrous hetero relationship you tried just to make your…
More traumatizing events happen during the Yuletide season than during any other period. This time of year, you can’t throw a brick without hitting a holiday well-wisher — and believe me, we’ve tried. The crushing rush of Christmas is so culturally pervasive that you can’t escape the traditional holiday entertainments that…
The dismal march through Christmas kitsch continues. While we value love, kindness, faith and redemption, when you fetishize any values and work them over for their commercial value, they ossify. They sour. They become shorthand for real feelings. Then they take their place entirely. That’s when they become despicable. That’s…
Tacky, tasteless, grotesque: Some fashion is so bad it’s good, and ugly Christmas sweaters are the epitome of this theory. In honor of National Ugly Sweater Day, which just happens to be today, December 18, we’re offering our list of the five best places to snag your Yuletide fashion —…
The city’s been lit by the beautiful glow of LED and incandescent holiday lights for a few weeks now, but with this recent snow dump, the illuminated displays now feel like they have a true home in our winter wonderland. Even the icicle lights dripping from the trees outside Racines and…
Colorado’s charms are undeniable — from amber waves of grain to purple mountain majesties, we’ve got it all: the great outdoors, a great climate, great eats and arts, and a newfangled hip quotient that leaves the old cow-town designation behind in the dust. And naturally, we have our own special…
Westword’s offices are closed today, but that doesn’t mean the city is shutting down. There are plenty of ways to relax this weekend in the calm between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Unwind with yoga, fire-breathing butterflies and have a couple chuckles. Drop us a comment if you know of…
Dogs and their humans gathered Tuesday night at Alpine Dog Brewing for beer and cheer and ugly sweater contests for all. The Yappy Hour event was a benefit for the Denver Dumb Friends League. All photos by Ken Hamblin III. Now see the full Denver Dumb Friends League Holiday Yappy Hour…
Denver-based pet-prosthetics specialists OrthoPets got a leg up this month, when the Small Business Revolution sponsored by Deluxe Corp. surprised the operation with a $25,000 check. A few of OrthoPets’ bionic puppy patients showed up at the dog-friendly Watering Bowl on December 2 for a surprise party that honored Martin Kauffman,…
Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin’s sweet nectarine of a jazz standard “Easy Living” figures, in a glancing yet potent way, in Todd Haynes’s Carol, adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt. Even though the lyrics speak of contentment — “Living for you is easy living/It’s easy to…
Here’s a challenge. Gather some friends, pour some drinks and announce to everyone the premise of Daddy’s Home, the new family comedy about dads competing to be pater superior. It won’t take long: Will Ferrell is a doting shlemiel of a stepdad to suburban moppets whose biological father, played by…
Part of a generation of modernists who emerged in northern New Mexico in the 1970s, Zachariah Rieke has been influenced by both abstract expressionism and Japanese calligraphy. A selection of his abstracts can be seen in Surface Tension, a group show at William Havu Gallery that combines paintings and sculpture…
National Ugly Sweater Day came a day late at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, where hundreds of the 303’s worst-dressed denizens donned garish winter-wear for the Denver Ugly Sweater Run last Saturday. Here’s what that looked like, if you can bear to take a peek. Photos by Ken Hamblin III, and…
On the bad days, Jim Stevens would curse and throw tools across his art studio, frustrated by his inability to create like he did before he lost his sight. He’d just come off a rough seven years: losing his vision, his wife, his job and his artistic ability in quick…
Joseph Koncilja is a longtime preservationist who’s working to save historic structures in Pueblo. His interest in the vintage built environment extends to neon signs, which he has been collecting for years. Because of a preservation ordinance in the southern Colorado town, neon signs aren’t allowed on buildings facing the…
In just over a week, 2015 will come to a close. That means it’s time for that most joyous of traditions — the year-end list! Everywhere you turn, lists of the best, the worst, the most and the least are springing up, informing you about all the cool shit that…
Here it is folks, a cinematic advent calendar of sorts for this holiday season. Our local repertory houses — the Sie FilmCenter and the Alamo Drafthouse, along with a handful of other movie houses — are about to go all H.A.M. for you and your Christmas spirit. So, we’ve gathered…
How good was 2015 for movies? My first draft of a top ten was a staggering top thirty. I had to make some agonizing cuts and punt by giving documentaries their own sidebar — this year, they’ve earned it. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it: Watch every one…
Every year we endlessly debate the “meaning of Christmas.” Fox News stages its traditional “War on Christmas” show, commentators lament the crass commercialization, and decorations inch up in store stocks until they compete with pumpkins for space. And on Christmas Eve, families everywhere gather around a traditional nativity, with baby…
