The More the Merrier

The heroine of Andrucha Waddington’s Me You Them (Eu, Tu, Eles) is a force of nature who holds men in her thrall and deftly reshapes them to suit her life. Without knowing it, they fall prey to her charms, her spirit, her very scent. But she’s no Cleopatra dripping with…

Bad Aim

Enemy at the Gates is a cross between the PlayStation game Medal of Honor, a World War II Nazi-shoot-’em-up viewed through a sniper’s scope, and a Harlequin romance novel. No doubt director and co-writer Jean-Jacques Annaud thought he was making a Serious Film, but what he ended up with is…

Book ’em, Denver

As any mother of a library-going three-year-old will tell you, returning 21 thin picture books on time every three weeks is easier said than done. There’s always at least one shoved under the bed, to be found days — or months — later, unread and buried in dust bunnies. But…

Boomer’s Paradise

Ah, those were the days. Rockin’ with Alan Hodges and His Nite Owls. Cruising your T-Bird to the Frosted Scotchman. Catching fouls at Bears Stadium and swilling Duffy’s soda pop. The names weren’t nationally known, but the ethos certainly was: ’50s Denver, like most other urban centers across the States,…

Amazing Grace

Lewis Sharp, director of the Denver Art Museum, was in his typical ebullient mood when he addressed an assembled group of the media recently. The occasion was the unveiling of the model for the new wing being designed by Daniel Libeskind, the Berlin-based American architect who’s one of the hottest…

Artbeat

For some reason, the little room off the entry at Pirate (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058) always seems to be hosting an exhibit worth seeing. The space, dubbed ILK @ Pirate to distinguish it as a separate, alternative space, is currently showing higgled ripples, featuring the mostly three-dimensional work of young…

Where Dinosaurs Rule

The Arvada Center’s production of The Dinosaur Play is filled with a wide array of sights and sounds, but the most impressive spectacle occurs shortly after the lights dim, when a stodgy professor wanders on stage and delivers a lecture about paleontology. The audience, made up almost entirely of elementary…

Good Cop, Bad Cop

One can only imagine the pitch meeting at which comedian-turned-film-actor Denis Leary told ABC programming execs he wanted to write and star in a show about a pill-popping, Scotch-swilling, chain-smoking, adulterous New York City cop who utters obscenities as casually as he exhales. It’ll be a 30-minute show, Leary probably…

The American Way

Director John Herzfeld’s last feature, the droll and underrated 2 Days in the Valley, from 1996, was a more than adequate counterbalance to the catastrophe of his first feature, Two of a Kind, a 1983 John Travolta vehicle which, together with Moment by Moment, put its star on the fast…

Popular Mechanics

From Arnold’s Terminator movies to the so-bad-it’s-good Small Wonder sitcom, the brains behind modern pop culture have rammed one robotic image after another down the public’s throat. These android icons usually fall into one of two camps: They’re either adorable fodder for the toy industry or cold, remorseless killing machines…

Stuck on Art

Sometime after 1 p.m. on Sunday, Barry “Wildman” Snyder expects to paste a few final decals — including a red-with-blue-striped Dole label and a classic Chiquita blue oval — on “My Sticka Zappa,” a thirty-by-forty-inch interpretation of the late rocker Frank sitting on a toilet. To create this masterpiece, the…

Oil Wells

There’s no question that oil paints were used to create the paintings in Jeffrey Keith: Recent Work. Invisible plumes of airborne linseed oil immediately engulf anyone who enters the Rule Gallery, where the show is on display. It’s not a light aroma that simply wafts through the room — it’s…

Artbeat

Installed below street level along the greenbelt east of Broadway in Englewood is a hidden attraction: the Dry Creek Sculpture Garden. It may be entered at various points, but the easiest route is to take one of the pedestrian ramps on Hampden Avenue that lead down to a walkway running…

Digging Up the Past

What becomes of an entire class of people when its members are summarily rounded up like common criminals, even though they’ve never committed any crimes? Are they to maintain their dignity when told that such imprisonment is for their own protection? Should they hold fast to democracy’s ideals when they’ve…

Heard on the Street

Filled with more raunch than a Friars Club roast, the first part of Bag Ladies Ball is initially hard to swallow. The interactive dinner-theater show, being staged in a second-floor meeting room at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in central Denver, is playwright and director Melvyn Benetti’s response to…

Treat Him Write

Sam Hamm is, relatively speaking, a successful Hollywood screenwriter, meaning he earns his keep penning screenplays without having to subsidize his income by tending bar or waiting tables. He has a handful of films to his credit, some little known (1983’s Never Cry Wolf, his debut), some enormously profitable (1989’s…

Gunning for Love

Leave it to Hollywood to sell us the insipid romance of a thoroughly irritating white couple as the solution to an archaic Latin American mystery. As pure bang-up adventure, The Mexican is certainly more user-friendly than childish junk like The Way of the Gun, but the attempt to weave adult-relationship…

In the Mood for Mood

With In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-Wai solidifies his stature as the subtlest and most idiosyncratic of Hong Kong’s directors. In an industry best known for its accessible, crowd-pleasing comedies and action films, Wong has turned out a series of increasingly risky dramas that make little or no concession…

Carry On

If high society threw a gala for homeless people each year, and the recipients of their charity were actually invited to the party, it might end up resembling Bag Ladies Ball, an interactive theater experience that’s the brain- and heartchild of local playwright/director Melvyn Benetti. There’s dinner, dancing and a…

Life in Focus

The once-upon-a-time life that photojournalist-turned-author/mom Deborah Copaken Kogan — five-foot-two and barely two steps out of Harvard — formerly led seems unthinkably harsh: Her first major photography gig found her in the back of a truck in war-torn Afghanistan, wrapped head to foot in a blue burka, the only woman…

Time Machines

Until last year, Artyard, the grand dame of the local sculpture world, was the place to see rotating exhibits of monumental outdoor pieces by a number of noteworthy sculptors. They were displayed in a large lot on South Pearl Street, just a few doors down from the gallery proper. But…

Artbeat

The Colorado Photographic Arts Center (1513 Boulder St., 303-455-8999) is featuring the recent work of Karen Kirkpatrick, Michael Butts and Glenn Cuerden, last year’s recipients of CPAC awards. Part of the prize for that honor was this exhibit, which has been rather bluntly titled Members Awards 2000. The show begins…