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Every Good Cowboy and Nate Baldwin. In the front space at Pirate, there’s an interesting collaborative show made up of neo-pop mixed-media pieces, most with a vaguely Western theme. The works on view include those done either by Matthew Doubek or by Samuel Mobley, as well as many others that…

Despite some intriguing touches, The Housemaid falls short

Fifty years after Kim Ki-young’s postwar hothouse original, Im Sang-soo attempts a sleek, breathless update to the tale of a household riven by a sexy domestic. This time around, instead of a family-man music teacher getting ensnared, a bored, feckless maid (Jeon Do-yeon) is seduced by a rich scion and…

Unknown cages the aggression of a badass Liam Neeson

To age brutishly is Liam Neeson’s apparent career goal — with Taken, Clash of the Titans, The A-Team and now Unknown, the actor continues to follow the Nicolas Cage path from respected thespian to big-budget ass-kicker. In this tepid thriller from Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan), Neeson is Dr. Martin Harris, who,…

Barney’s Version never finds a rhythm

The late Canadian writer Mordecai Richler, best known south of the border for the film version of his 1959 novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, was a bellicose practitioner of Jewish fiction in the manner of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, with a mad helping of Joseph Heller. The joyfully…

Jersey Shore 3 Episode 7: Even more fighting, even less funny

​Guess what? Ronnie and Sammi are fighting. Again. Still. At this point, anyone who stomachs this show has to hate her, because she’s turned Jersey Shore house into a petri dish of bizarre mind games, fighting and girlfriend doublespeak. The Situation has been sharing a room with the world’s most…

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Collective Nouns and E. C. Cunningham. Metropolitan State College has a special place in Denver’s art world. Not only does it have the biggest set of visual-arts departments in the state, but it includes a mini-museum, the Center for Visual Art. These two factors only rarely come together, but they…

Now’s the time to see these Oscar-nominated short films

The theatrical release of the Oscar-nominated live-action and animated short films provides a fun peek into intriguing bite-sized cinema from across the globe. This year’s live-action entries are a diverse mix. The African-set drama Na Wewe is a rather obvious critique of cultural identity, while The Confession is a coming-of-age…

Cedar Rapids is an extension of the workplace ensemble comedy

Fresh from Sundance, Miguel Arteta’s amiable Cedar Rapids is a mild comedy of embarrassment, set in the dark heart of Middle America and starring sitcom secundario Ed Helms (The Office’s obnoxious, angry salesman Andy Bernard) as Tim Lippe, a prematurely middle-aged man-child. Taking an airplane for the first time in…

The Eagle is a thunderous, old-school boys’ adventure

The Eagle, directed by Kevin Macdonald and adapted from Rosemary Sutcliff’s 1954 historical novel, The Eagle of the Ninth, a best-selling tale of second-century Roman legions and youthful derring-do on the far side of Hadrian’s Wall, is a thunderous boys’ adventure of the old-school type: There’s not a female speaking…

The Super Bowl commercials: Denver edition

The commercials of the Super Bowl are one of the biggest draws to the game for some people. Viewers love to see the somewhat witty, incredibly overproduced and expensive miniature films announcing that Volkswagen is the best, Detroit is better than where you are and Fox is the greatest station…

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2011: Year in Preview. Bobbi Walker, owner of Walker Fine Art, has employed a clever way to create an automatic group show by putting together examples of work by all of the artists who will be featured in duets this year. The show looks good, but what’s really neat is…

Undertow is more than just a coming-out tale

Writer-director Javier Fuentes-León’s directorial debut, Undertow, is sublime. Set in a small, picturesque Peruvian fishing village, it’s less a coming-out tale than a magic realism-infused coming-of-consciousness love story. Miguel (Cristian Mercado), a happily married fisherman and soon-to-be father, insists he’s not “that way,” despite being head over heels in love…

The Strange Case of Angelica is surprising in its casual grace

In 1952, Manoel de Oliveira sketched a fable of impossible longing that became, finally, The Strange Case of Angelica. Though the automobile models in de Oliveira’s 2010 film are modern, many plot details remain of the period of its writing: On a torrentially rainy night, the Portas estate sends a…

Tracy Morgan or Tracy Jordan? A quote quiz

Tracy Morgan called Sarah Palin “good masturbation material” last night on national television during a TNT broadcast of an NBA game. Maybe not what the network would have preferred that he say, but a). he was sort of baited and b). this is Tracy Morgan, who is more-or-less completely indistinguishable…

Jersey Shore 3, Episode 5 recap: Ronnie, the broken man

So, we missed last week’s episode of Jersey Shore. Our bad. Yes, we know, MTV replayed it at least thirty times since, but we just forgot, okay? From the commercials and pre-show recaps, it looks like Snooki possibly realized she had a drinking problem, but thankfully bounced back into her…

Hulu might die. Here’s why you shouldn’t care.

News Corp. and Disney (who own Fox and ABC, respectively) are considering pulling their ad-based free streaming shows from Hulu — remember that they are two of the three companies who founded Hulu back in 2008. Hulu has done incredibly well in terms of viewership, but its subscription-based Hulu Plus…

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2011: Year in Preview. Bobbi Walker, owner of Walker Fine Art, has employed a clever way to create an automatic group show by putting together examples of work by all of the artists who will be featured in duets this year. The show looks good, but what’s really neat is…

There’s no pea soup, but The Rite spews its story just the same

The Rite is the latest of at least a dozen widely released American movies in half as many years with demonic possession a major plot point. This doesn’t mean the subject is wrung out; its continuing resonance with audiences hasn’t been effaced by secular pop psychology or modernization within the…