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…
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…
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, 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 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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
Writer-director Tanya Hamilton’s striking debut is the rare recent American independent film that goes beyond the private dramas of its protagonists, imagining them as players in broader historical moments. Set in the Germantown section of Philadelphia in the summer of 1976, Night Catches Us examines the failed hopes of ’60s…
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…
Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist breathes life into a celluloid fossil, lovingly animating an unproduced script by the great filmmaker Jacques Tati. Chomet sets The Illusionist on the cusp of the ’60s, around the time Tati wrote the script as a followup to his hit Mon Oncle. The title character, a…
IFC’s new show Portlandia is basically a hipster SNL. It stars Fred Armisen (of, uh, SNL) and Carrie Brownstein (aka the Jesus Christ of Portland hip). The first episode premieres Friday, but you can watch it now on Hulu. In it, jokes are made about organic chicken and radical feminist…
Joan Moment and Monroe Hodder. Though Joan Moment has spent the past four decades in California, she began her art career right here in Colorado in the late ’60s when she was a graduate student at the University of Colorado in Boulder. That makes it easy to associate her work…
Taking in Enemies of the People is a little like watching a Cambodian Shoah, if we had access to the director’s methods and motivations instead of just the astonishing results. Chronicling his ongoing project to track down and document those responsible for the Khmer Rouge’s late-’70s reign of terror, co-director…
Ivan Reitman, master of the high-concept, big-budget Hollywood comedy (Ghostbusters, Dave), would seem an unlikely candidate to direct No Strings Attached, an extremely low-concept, low-key romantic comedy of contemporary sexual mores centered on the dating foibles of attractive nerds. Fully devoid of the fantasy contrivance that often sets a Reitman…
Tracking the parallel trajectories of three employees laid off from cushy corporate jobs at the same Boston-based manufacturing conglomerate, The Company Men is transparent in its ambition to capture The Way We Live Now from a sensitive and equitable — rather than a withering and satiric — point of view…
There are many things that make English television better than American television. Mostly, it is a lack of censorship; American TV loves violence but hates sex, drugs and profanity. English TV loves them all equally, and luckily for us, by the good graces of YouTube and Netflix, we can indulge…
My, how attitudes change — or, rather, how well MTV edits. Episode three opens with Sammi feeling remorseful after somehow, just now, realizing Ronnie is a liar. A big one. She’s ready to apologize to the girls, and Ronnie is ready for her to peace out of the relationship, since…
