People were shocked a few weeks ago when New York City firefighters and police officers scuffled during protests at Ground Zero; the firefighters wanted to continue digging out the remains of their brothers with full manpower. And while this spectacle was disheartening, there are some cases in which a little…
Only a couple of months ago, it looked as though Donald Miller had a publishing home run on his hands–a thoughtful, exhilarating, inclusive book about World War II scheduled to hit stores just as Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ Band of Brothers was finishing its critically lauded run on HBO…
Last summer, the Denver Art Museum surprised everyone by announcing that it had received the Harmsen Collection of Western and American Indian Art as a gift. The locally famous collection, put together by Bill and Dorothy Harmsen, is made up of thousands of pieces ranging from important paintings and sculptures…
The Andenken Gallery (2110 Market Street, 303-332-5582) is presenting Works by Dianne Barnes, Michelle Barnes, Tracey Barnes, a group show representing two generations of the same family. The senior Barnes is Dianne; Michelle and Tracey are her daughters. Dianne’s work, a series of miniature garments and shrines in Plexiglas boxes,…
Making great old songs fresh again is one of the best contributions of contemporary musical theater. The Boulder Dinner Theatre’s production of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes reminds us why, more than sixty years after their composition, songs such as “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “It’s De-lovely,” “You’re the…
I approached Two Women Avoiding Involuntary Hospitalization: A Hormonal Cabaret with some trepidation. A few years back, it seemed all of the magazines and newspapers were full of commentary about menopause. Women bemoaned their hot flashes; experts prescribed various remedies, from meditation and soy to the universal use of estrogen…
The new Martin Lawrence comedy, Black Knight, is yet another twist, albeit an uncredited one, on Mark Twain’s protean A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, one of the original fish-out-of-water comedy-fantasies. Was there an outcry for yet another redo? After all, Twain’s 1889 novel, about a New England mechanic…
A writer of sociopolitical depth far beyond his thirty years, PEN/Hemingway Award-winner Akhil Sharma says he looks to “bad” writers — “the ones where you can see most easily what they’re attempting to do” — for inspiration and instruction. One example: Ernest Hemingway himself, namesake of Sharma’s prestigious literary award…
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is the most-anticipated holiday flick of the year. Friday’s opening will unleash an outpouring of Harrysteria and related merchandise. So that you’re not left wasting away in Muggleville, get prepared with this modest Potter quiz. 1. Harry got his scar from: a. An encounter…
Cydney Payton, director of Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art, feels that the museum’s facility in Sakura Square is too cramped — and who could disagree? As she points out, the space also has a lot of environmental problems: Sunlight streams annoyingly into the galleries, producing glare and uneven lighting; there…
Although Go Fish! (see page 67) fills the first floor at the Museum of Contemporary Art, there’s another show in the gallery upstairs. What do you see when you look over there? (2000 Cooley, East Palo Alto, California) is a photo-based installation by Galia Shapira, an Israeli artist living in…
Song, dance, dialogue, story, spectacle: These are the several pleasures of the American musical and, decade by decade, one or another of them moves into prominence. In the ’30s and ’40s, most musicals consisted of a string of comic or melodious songs, with whisper-thin plots holding them together. Then came…
It takes a nimble mind to mix light and dark, to wed humor with treachery. In Novocaine, newcomer David Atkins is not always up to the task. Neither is Steve Martin, who wants to be taken seriously while reserving the right to produce the occasional sick yuk. If you still…
If you believe in magic, you’ll love Harry Potter and the Sorcerer¹s Stone. And if you don’t, you will, and you will. True, the hype has been a bit much. And, yes, a mad, desperate world choked with reproduction and reprobation could hardly be expected to resist such a high-concept…
Robert wasn’t a man of many words. In fact, he tended to repeat himself over and over and over. Still, what he said long ago in his scratchy, singsong voice stills resonates: “I am Robert Robot, mechanical man/Drive me and steer me/Wherever you can.” The sixteen-inch-high red-and-silver toy, modeled on…
Colorado’s virtual Women of the West Museum can be accessed only by computer, but its commitment to the interactive spread of knowledge and culture doesn’t stop online. WOW has become involved in artist/youth mentoring programs and has released Expanded Visions: Four Women Artists Print the West, a portfolio featuring diverse…
It is no exaggeration to say that Denver’s entire art landscape changed for the better last week when Ron Judish Fine Arts cut the ribbon on its new and unbelievably grand gallery in Highland. The gallery had been located on Wazee Street in LoDo before shutting down in the middle…
The Spark Gallery (1535 Platte Street, 303-455-4435) typically hosts two shows at once, which is the ordinary practice for most co-ops. Unfortunately, more often than not, the shows are incompatible. I suppose this is the inevitable result of the vagaries of scheduling and the very heterogeneous membership at Spark. This…
Longtime married couples should attend the Denver Center Theatre Company’s Dinner With Friends, and so should young people in love. It’s a great date play. Not in the sense that it arouses desire or presents an idealized view of love, but because the playwright muses so knowingly on the topic…
The heroine of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s bold and bracing new comedy, Amélie, is Amélie Poulain, a doe-eyed crusader with the face of a porcelain doll and a sleek helmet of jet-black hair. From her high perch in Montmartre, where she works as a cafe waitress, Amélie secretly resolves to emancipate all…
It is difficult to imagine a more timely film than Focus; its message about intolerance resonates in a post-September 11 world in ways the filmmakers never anticipated. Adapted from Arthur Miller’s little-known 1945 novel of the same title, Focus looks at what happens to a society when basically decent people…
Like his many fantastic creations over the years, Lonnie Hanzon is a bit of magic himself: His credits sparkle like the bejeweled Christmas trees he’s shipped off, piece by piece, to Neiman Marcus in Dallas, or the meticulously detailed mechanical environments and displays he’s installed everywhere from the 16th Street…
