Nuncrackers: The Nunsense Christmas Musical is a collection of sketches, songs and sight gags that work best when they’re briskly paced and centered on a single character. During its many multiple-character scenes and lame segues, however, Dan Goggin’s musical revue about the Little Sisters of Hoboken fizzles into a predictable,…
Nothing in Maynard has changed since the Civil War,” says a young woman of her Texas community’s stultifying ways. Consigned to a life of folding clothes, screaming at her three kids and indulging in midday liquor-laced gossip sessions, Hattie’s sweeping assessment doesn’t seem that far-fetched to anyone who’s spent her…
For 17 years, Dorothy Swanson has waged the loneliest battle: keeping good shows on television, a medium that exists as if only to taunt her. You can hear in her voice the strain such a struggle has taken on her. Her voice breaks and softens when she speaks about the…
There’s definitely something weird going on in the British pop scene. Years after tasteful Yanks allowed classic works such as Saturday Night Fever and Grease to dissolve into our vast iconic array, villainous Limey programmers were still hyping them over there. Thus, the dual plagues of disco and ’50s rock…
This is some damn fine coffee you got here in Twin Peaks. And some damn good cherry pie. But I have to tell you something, sheriff: Last night, I had a dream in which a dancing midget talked backward, thus leading me to believe that our killer is a man…
Daniel Salazar’s unique photo-constructions hit you full-on with that secret weapon so common to work in all disciplines of Chicano arts: humor. An acclaimed film documentarian, animator and photographer, Salazar thinks laughter is a great way to open up dialogue, and that’s the point of his ongoing series Machos Sensitivos,…
Here in Colorado, we’re very familiar with the cowboy-poetry phenomenon, but the notion of an Australian bush poet is still a bit exotic. Although only the latter features wallabies and dingoes and mulga trees as part of its lore, the two genres are closely related. And bush poetry, which boasts…
Colorado’s own Chuck Parson is surely one of the most prolific artists anywhere, as his activities of the last year illustrate. When he wasn’t putting in long hours as head of the sculpture department at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, he was feverishly working away in his…
Elizabeth Schlosser Fine Art in Cherry Creek is presenting The Estate of Ethel Magafan, an exhibit of fourteen pieces from the late artist. Magafan was born and educated in Colorado, but she spent most of her career in the art colony at Woodstock, New York. In the 1930s, Magafan and…
Encouraged in no small measure by the fact that Denver’s cultural groups annually outdraw all local professional sports teams combined, several ambitious theater companies have recently elbowed their way onto the city’s crowded stage. Rather than join forces with established organizations that operate their own spaces (and boast loyal followings),…
At the time, it was meant to be read as a great compliment: Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez create comic books for people who don’t read comic books! A publisher or pitchman couldn’t have come up with a more glorious phrase, one magical sentence that would reel in the literate and…
Skeptics will not take easily to the optimism in Thomas Carter’s teen love story Save the Last Dance, and outright cynics may find the whole thing absurd. The notion that a sheltered white girl from shopping-mall country and a knowing black boy from the inner city can dance their way…
Thirteen Days is a suspenseful look at the American government in the grip of a crucial, minute-to-minute, real-life crisis that threatens to destroy the country. No, it is not — as the brief time span of the title makes clear — about the recent election struggles, or the 1998 impeachment,…
Shuffleupagus and Five-Card Nancy are just two of the collaborative art games to be played when the Hector Cartoonists Collective and the Denver Comic Art Festival host a pair of Saturday night free-for-all Cartoon Jam Sessions, designed to lure R. Crumb wannabes out of their closets for some mass hysteria…
Not every resident zipping along the fast track of the rapidly changing Golden Triangle district lives in a luxury loft: Just witness the inhabitants of one modest relic that’s stood along 11th Avenue at Cherokee Street for eighty or ninety years. Heretofore nameless, Row House — so named in a…
In the waning months of 2000, history — or in Denver’s case, historic preservation — marched down the street. The Denver City Council, with the full support of Mayor Wellington Webb, unanimously authorized the creation of a non-contiguous downtown historic district. It includes more than forty buildings that have played…
A sculpture by Robert Mangold, titled “PTTSAAES Denver” but unofficially redubbed “Particle Moving Through Denver” (above), was recently erected on the fairly new leg of the Sixth Avenue Parkway that runs through the still-under-construction neighborhood being built on the former Lowry Air Force base. The sculpture, done in 1999, is…
“You’re right! I quit!” Until this moment — this shrill outburst that comes out of nowhere and startles both interviewer and subject — Marisa Tomei had been speaking in hushed tones, like someone making funeral arrangements. Every so often, she would punctuate her sentences with giggles — some nervous, some…
The War on Drugs has become this generation’s Vietnam, the unwinnable conflict that will, in the end, destroy the innocent and reward the guilty. That, in a coke vial, is the premise of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, a film that gives flesh and face to bloodless government statistics and statements seldom…
Just imagine: While your friends who skied at Breckenridge today are stuck in the gridlock of Eisenhower Tunnel traffic and your friends who skied at Vail are spinning their wheels behind a closed Vail Pass, you are making your way back to Denver from Winter Park in style — on…
You have three more days to become a part of history. Because after December 31, Denver’s electronic time capsule project will be history. Over the past thirteen months, Denverites have posted their memories of the city and made predictions for its future on the Celebrate 2000 E-Time Capsule portion of…
Thank God for old Jews with shaky hands and the inability to tell this word (G-O-R-E) from this one (B-U-C-H-A-N-A-N). Without them — and Survivor Richard Hatch, that self-proclaimed “fat naked fag” who, as it turns out, is just a really concerned parent and not at all, uh, abusive –…
