According to protagonist Dorothy’s hearse-driving, derby-skating granny, “Normal is overrated!” Author Megan Dougherty delivers that powerful message – along with lessons in self-confidence and individuality – to young women via her tween series Dorothy’s Derby Chronicles. And to mark the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls rolling strong for ten years, teammate Dougherty…
Fall is here, which means football season is here, which means fantasy football is back! How’s your team? (Just kidding: No one who’s not in your league cares.) Sadly, it also means the tired, lazy comparisons between fantasy football and Dungeons & Dragons are back. Whether it’s a meme like…
Art is all around us, and tonight you can immerse yourself in it at the free launch party for the 303 ArtWay crowdfunding campaign at PlatteForum. The campaign will then get moving on Saturday, September 26, during the third annual Northeast Walk Fest at Holly Square, 33rd Avenue and Holly Street, featuring…
Since 1963, the Austrian birthrate has halved. You can’t blame Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s new thriller, Goodnight Mommy, for the trend, but it sure isn’t helping. The quiet creepshow follows eleven-year-old twins Lukas and Elias (Lukas and Elias Schwarz, great), who suspect their mom (Susanne Wuest) wishes they hadn’t…
Traffic in Denver sucks. If you drive along Speer Boulevard after 3 p.m. on any given day, you have to battle not only congestion, but new development construction that is apparently permitted to stop traffic whenever it pleases. Then there’s the nightmare known as Colorado Boulevard, a street where no…
Dance takes center stage — and even the silver screen — this week in Denver, with a performing-arts calendar that includes a stopover by Twyla Tharp’s golden-anniversary tour, a celebration of dance on film, and a fall premiere from Denver’s own Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. Twyla Tharp Dance: 50th Anniversary…
Revered American crime novelist James Ellroy is coming to Denver this weekend to kick off an exciting new film series at the Alamo Drafthouse. On Saturday, September 26, Ellroy will host a screening of Curtis Hanson’s 1997 film L.A. Confidential, which was based on Ellroy’s novel of the same name. That…
Matt Scobey has been part of the Denver scene for ten years, but he has never had a higher profile than he does right now. That’s partly because his “Talavera Bolsa,” a crumbling partial floor made of concrete tiles, was the only unalloyed success in last summer’s otherwise disappointing Vis-à-Vis…
“Giallo” translates to “yellow” in Italian, plain and simple — but when the word is used to denote a particular style of literature and film, it is terrifyingly more. The giallo genre comprises a stylish thriller that generally involves a masked killer stalking women and men alike, usually with revenge…
What a beautiful, aerosol-filled weekend! Colorado Crush was massive this year, taking over the RiNo arts district and adding fresh murals by acclaimed local and international artists. Jonathan Lamb of Like Minded Productions had helped locate the walls and sanction space for the artist lineup, which included Colorado Crush founder Robin…
John Patrick Shanley first visited his father’s birthplace in Ireland in 1993, and Outside Mullingar, which opened last year in New York, is a clear response to what he found there. We know this Ireland he depicts — rural, muddy and barren; we know of its isolated farms and the…
There are times – a lot of them – when I just don’t know how I’m going to go on. Things feel daunting. What I need to do to try to survive in New Denver and my new reality – adjuncting, juggling multiple jobs, scrambling with the ordinary day-to-day –…
Given the rich Latino heritage that runs through Colorado, it’s surprising that a properly programmed and produced film festival celebrating all of our diverse hermanos y hermanas took so long to appear. It wasn’t until last year that the Denver Film Society produced the first CineLatino Film Festival — and…
The Jolly Roger flew over E.B. Rains Park on Saturday for the inaugural Northglenn Pirate Fest, a local nod to Talk Like a Pirate Day that included live music and circus performances, a cardboard-boat regatta, and — what else? — a Talk Like a Pirate contest. Photographer Ken Hamblin was…
In the mid-twentieth century, movie audiences understood the value of a good melodrama: A picture like Now, Voyager or Black Narcissus or almost anything by Douglas Sirk could be an urn into which you could pour your own unarticulated feelings of loss and loneliness. The heightened, unrealistic intensity of those…
Some veteran filmmakers try to capture the younger generation and fail to get it right, coming up with characters and faux with-it dialogue that invite lots of eye-rolling. That’s not the problem with writer-director Nancy Meyers’s The Intern, in which retiree Robert De Niro finds meaning in life — and…
Colorado is photogenic, and proves it in more than a hundred films. It first posed for the camera in 1897, when James H. White and Frederick Blechynden shot short “actualities” such as Procession of Mounted Indians and Cowboys, and the kinetic Denver Fire Brigade, in which horse-drawn engines, careening and…
Poetry is big in Denver literary circles this week, as 100 Thousand Poets for Change takes over the city with a series of weekend events and the local slam community sends off its 2015 contender for the Individual World Poetry Slam. And then there’s also a side-trip to literary Iceland…
With Chaz Bono, Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner introducing themselves not just to America but the world, the stories of transgender people are beginning to find vocal and visual platforms. From This Day Forward, a documentary screening Tuesday at the Sie FilmCenter, adds a fascinating new chapter. It’s the story of…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we’ll be looking at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. The wheels are turning for photographer Evan Semón. Cycle Culture Colorado: We BikeDenver,…
This week is full of free thrills and chills, with starring turns from a rising comic and a veteran hip-hop DJ, as well as a visit from Iceland’s emissaries. Check out more events on the Westword calendar and drop us a comment if you know of a bargain that belongs…
John Lahr wants us to see what’s behind the curtain. The eminent theater critic, who retired recently after covering the beat for the the New Yorker magazine for 21 years, produces the most probing, original and well-written work on performance, performers and the theater today. His most recent collection of profiles…
