Flick Pick

It was wise to wait two years to release September 11, a collection of eleven shorts, each eleven minutes, nine seconds and one frame in length. Even now, it’s hard to imagine the viewer whose gut will remain unwrenched. Emphasizing the global impact of the event before the retaliatory bombs…

Texas High Note

On the phone, Tish Hinojosa is not long on words. But the Texas singer-songwriter, who weaves her tunes from a patchwork of folk, rock, country, swing and Tex-Mex influences and delivers them in a crystal-clear voice, seems to do most of her talking through her low-key and beautiful music. Over…

This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks

Thursday, November 27 Prior to giving — and giving and giving and giving — thanks at today’s dinner table, do yourself a big favor: Burn some pre-meal fat and work up an appetite at Huff-n-Puff Before You Stuff, Aurora Recreation’s annual invitation to battle holiday poundage before it starts. Bring…

Heaven Must Have Sent Them

Long before kids had actor Will Ferrell stuffed into yellow elf tights and pointed booties to laugh at, my brother, sister and I amused ourselves for hours on end dancing around the Christmas tree lip-synching to a cassette of kooky Christmas classics. My personal favorite was always “Grandma Got Run…

Book Look

SUN, 11/30 In the Jewish tradition, books are central to life: The urge to study the world is ingrained among families, generation to generation, and a well-stocked bookshelf provides the impetus to learn in many Jewish homes. But while the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture’s annual Leah Cohen Festival…

Ice Ice Baby

FRI, 11/28 Break away from the shopping madness and glide into the holiday spirit at the Comfort Dental Ice Rink, opening today from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. at Fillmore Plaza, Second Avenue and Fillmore Street in Cherry Creek North. The University of Denver skating team will be on hand…

Wise Words

Boulder author Ying Chang Compestine, a native of Wuhan, China, has been at home in Colorado since coming to the University of Colorado in 1986. Now she’s about to move to California, and it’s a shame: Compestine’s departure is a loss for members of the area’s burgeoning Chinese-American community. But…

AIDS Outreach

MON, 12/1 Since it premiered on December 1, 1989, as an artists’ response to World AIDS Day, A Day Without Art has gone through a lot of shape-shifting. Instead of closing galleries or draping artworks in black shrouds, artists now tend to speak out on AIDS in visual terms, by…

Change Is Good

FRI, 11/28 As the Christmas season fast approaches, one cannot help but cringe at the inevitable onslaught of typical holiday productions. Buried neck-deep in Yuletide cheer, it’s nearly impossible to muster enthusiasm for yet another production of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Are audiences supposed to coo again and feel…

Group Dynamics

There’s a handsome show called Winter Exhibit: Murphy, Garcia, Jackson, Lee playing at the glitzy Fresh Art Gallery, and it’s a signature outing in a number of ways. As usual, everything was hand-selected by director and gallery owner Jeanie King. Also as usual, all of the artists on display explore…

Artbeat

Variations on the theme of contemporary portraiture are brought together in Heads, now at Studio Aiello (3563 Walnut Street, 303-297-8166). The show highlights six artists, four of whom have their work shown in depth. Gallery co-directors Tyler Aiello and Monica Petty Aiello organized the exhibit in cooperation with private dealer…

Divine Inspiration

God’s Trombones is the title of a book by James Weldon Johnson, published in 1927 and consisting of seven poem-sermons. Johnson, best known for the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” was hugely influenced by African-American folk tradition and by the preachers he heard in church on Sundays, and his…

Dickensian Exploitation

Oliver! is among the best musicals ever written. But in 1960, when Lionel Bart — then a young, working-class composer — prepared for its debut, many critics were dubious. Although Charles Dickens’s novel, Oliver Twist, on which the musical is based, is full of fascinating, eccentric and entirely original characters,…

Kitty Litter

If you’re hankering for a movie about an awkward yet lovable “outsider” type who wanders into a pastel mock-up of Middle America and cajoles the straights to get saucy, you’re in luck. It’s called Edward Scissorhands, and it’s been available on video for years. Renting it will absolve you of…

Deadly Kid

It took them four years, but Dark Castle — Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver’s horror division which puts out a movie every year around Halloween — have finally made something that’s genuinely scary. It may be no coincidence that, this time around, Silver has scored a higher-profile cast than usual,…

Flick Pick

Director Jean-Luc Godard, once the enfant terrible of France’s New Wave, was never much known for his charm. The groundbreaking Breathless, made in 1959, was full of enchantments and innovations, but the later films of Godard’s most productive period, such as 1967’s La Chinoise and 1968’s Weekend, were seen by…

Yo! Let There Be Lights

The city will give new meaning to the term “bling-bling” when it flips the switches on 500,000 jewel-like lights during the Downtown Denver Holiday Lighting ceremony this weekend. But don’t worry: There’s nothing gangsta about it. The local custom, presented by the RTD, the Downtown Denver Partnership and Larimer Square,…

This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks

Thursday, November 20 Butt out: If you’re tired of your butt freezing while you’re having a smoke outdoors in the dead of January, maybe it’s time you jumped on the wagon. You can join other puffers — and plenty of sympathetic company — at the Auraria campus for today’s Great…

Welcome to SantaLand

Better not cry. Tonight I saw a woman shake and slap her sobbing daughter, yelling, “Goddamn it, Rachel, get on that man’s lap and smile, or I’ll give you something to cry about.” Meet “Crumpet,” a thirty-something jaded mall imp clad in striped tights and a worn green polyester smock…

Game Girls

SAT, 11/22 A group of women frustrated with the local lesbian dating scene are reviving the flower-speckled 1960s game show The Dating Game, with a twist. The MissKiss Game Show, premiering tonight in Boulder and hosted by comedienne Edith Weiss, will feature four single gay women — one MissKiss and…

Fowl Balls

SAT, 11/22 Nothing quite says “thankful” like pitching a little poultry at a couple of placid pilgrims. Copper Mountain’s Turkey Bowling hits the slopes today and on Thanksgiving Day to scratch up a little chicken feed for charity by encouraging mountain moguls to fling frozen turkeys down an icy lane…

Happy Holidays

Belle and the Beast, an updated version of the eighteenth-century fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, has waltzed into Boulder’s Nomad Theatre. “We always try to do something classic that appeals to families during the holidays,” says Nomad resident producer Theresa Klebert. “We want you to have a lighter,…