The cold-bloodedness of some entertainment journalists is a thing to be admired; they’ve balls for brains, which gets you far in this profession. The Hollywood press corps’ cynicism is the source of its strength, and God bless the famous fool who plays along, answering every crooked question with the straightest…
Faced with yet another sports movie in which a group of lovably troubled kids triumphs over adversity, it’s easier to scoff and grumble than to feel even partially uplifted. So let’s do it — let’s scoff and grumble. At least for a moment. In Brian Robbins’s Hardball, a degenerate gambler…
After the next apocalypse, hundreds of thousands of years from the moment we clever humans smugly call “now,” the great philosopher-scientists will gather to assemble the remaining traces of our present time and species. In particular, these evolved beings will find fascination in the structure of our crania, which will…
If you’ve ever wanted to see an Unidentified Flying Object, the opportunity may be hovering just over your head. Texas-based MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), a group dedicated to the research of flying objects, will sponsor an end-of-summer celebration, the RODS Hunt, during which the public will have the chance to…
William Wegman’s life went to the dogs long ago. He’s been turning weimaraners into objects of art since the early ’70s, when he first began to photograph Man Ray, the progenitor of his weimaraner kingdom. But this labor of puppy love isn’t over yet; in fact, the man/dog relationship that’s…
In the beginning, there’s a sawdust ring, surrounded by what seems to be a low concrete wall. A group of people in peasant dress enter, walking beside a horse-drawn cart. To measured music, they release a bundle from the cart. It rises slowly toward the ceiling; you see that it’s…
Carousel is so familiar to most of us that we tend to forget the musical’s true genius. First produced on Broadway in 1945, it represents the melding of two very different sensibilities — that of Ferenc Molnár, the Hungarian novelist and playwright who wrote Liliom, which Carousel is based on,…
Julie Davis’s All Over the Guy is yet another entry in the ever-growing genre of gay romantic comedy. Ten years ago, one would have led off by saying, “It’s a romantic comedy, but with a twist: They’re both men!” or “It’s When Harry Met Solly…!” It’s a step in the…
The Italian film Bread and Tulips is a first cousin once removed of the American comedy Home Alone. A tremendous hit in Italy (it won nine Donatello awards last year, the Italian equivalent of the Oscars), it concerns a woman who, on a bus holiday with her family, accidentally gets…
A year after Cameron Crowe climbed back aboard the tour bus for one last spin through rock’s golden days of giddy hedonism and phony heroism comes a film set a decade later, in the mid-1980s, when the parties got harder, the music louder and the musicians prettier. The world of…
At Chatfield Nature Preserve, the corn is high. Really high, as in nine feet tall, a rise tall enough to cover the pate of the old Corn King Giant. Grown from a special hybrid cornseed planted expressly because of its superior loft, it covers 5.3 acres of land, the sun-kissed…
Sixty-two miles south of Tangier, Morocco, lies Jajouka, a tiny village in the foothills of the jagged Rif mountains — an arid, spiritual haven where the Master Musicians of Jajouka have kept sixteenth-century traditions vibrantly alive. Given the blessing of Allah by the Moslem saint Sidi Ahmed Sheik ages ago,…
With a few cool evenings in the last couple of weeks, there’s no denying that fall’s on the way. And what better season to check out a couple of shows devoted to that coziest of all art forms — the quilt. The Colorado History Museum is presenting Quiltspeak: Stories in…
With blockbusters sweeping in and out of the main-floor galleries at the Denver Art Museum (100 West 14th Avenue Parkway, 720-865-5000), it’s easy to forget that there are many fine smaller shows upstairs (see review, previous page). A compelling example can be found on the fifth floor, which is devoted…
Judd Apatow tries not to think of what became of Sam and Lindsay Weir, Neal Schweiber, Bill Haverchuck, Daniel Desario, Nick Andopolis and the other freaks and geeks Apatow knew back at McKinley High School. Those kids were his family, the children born when Apatow and writer Paul Feig created…
Only committed horticulturists and compulsive readers of the New York Times obituaries (this writer falls into the latter category) likely noticed the recent passing of Rosemary Verey, an aristocratic Englishwoman whose sophisticated but egalitarian approach to gardening took some of the stuffiness out of what previously had been a rather…
So why is it that every time they make a movie about a nerd, the character in question is always white? What’s Hollywood trying to tell us? Caucasians have a corner on the market in failing eyesight, office jobs and undernourished physiques? Or is it legitimately a white thing –…
Be prepared: A night at the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus owes far more theoretically to Tod Browning’s Freaks than it does to Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey. Started seven years ago in New York by graphic artist turned fire-eater Stephanie Monseu (aka Philomena) and her lover/mentor, Keith Nelson (Mr. Pennygaff),…
No genre of music generates giggles quite like polka. But while many see polka as the soundtrack for lederhosen-wearing seniors, Marty Rome sees it as a life-changing force. “I don’t know what kind of person I’d be if it weren’t for polka,” she says. A Denver polka addict for seventeen…
Last fall, a national search was conducted to find a replacement for Cydney Payton, the respected former director of the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art who has taken over at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. In January, BMoCA’s board of trustees announced its selection, Ken Bloom. It’s taken a few…
It’s hard to know what to call the Mizel Arts Center (350 South Dahlia Street, 303-399-2660). Its real name is the Mizel Family Cultural Arts Center, but the shorter Mizel Arts Center has been a convention for years. Confusing the issue is that the institution has been merged with the…
Far too often, those who work in the music industry are so concerned with making a living they often forget they’re capable, at their best, of making history as well. They sacrifice art and artists in the name of commerce, then sleep soundly wrapped in bedspreads made of silk and…
