Throw a couple of polarized misfits on stage and let them rail about society’s refusal to accept them, and most theatergoers will likely say with a shrug, “That’s a shame. Welcome to the world.” If a playwright couches those same issues in the all-embracing language of family discord, though, audience…
Fifty-two years and a couple hundred pounds ago, Marlon Brando electrified Broadway audiences with his snarling, animalistic portrayal of the bellowing lout in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. In fact, Brando’s riveting turn as Stanley Kowalski spawned generations of imitators who wrongly believed that mumbling, scratching and raw emoting…
Since his TV show ended, Martin Lawrence has gotten more ink for his off-camera life than for his movie career. There’s nothing about Blue Streak that is likely to change that. And it’s a shame, because the basic plot — which sounds like something from one of Donald E. Westlake’s…
Joan Chen, director and co-writer of Xiu Xiu the Sent Down Girl, is best known as an actress: American audiences probably identify her most readily as the doomed wife in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor or as Josie Packard, the alternately evil and innocent character in David Lynch’s weird-o-rama Twin…
Half a decade ago, Boulder dance-scene veteran Danelle Helander did modern dance. Though marked by her own style and ideas, her work was still modern dance — nothing more, nothing less. But then her creative life as a choreographer took on an exotic new slant, spurred on by a percolating…
For the impoverished, ramen-noodle-eating guitarist dreaming of a better instrument, there’s a no-money-down way to improve the arsenal: trading up. The combination of a well-made ax and a guitar market that treasures its past means one man’s old workhorse is another’s cash cow. “That’s what guitar collecting is all about,”…
The three thoughtful exhibits that close this weekend at Rule Modern and Contemporary Gallery illustrate both the ingenuity and the taste of the gallery’s director, Robin Rule. What makes Rule clever is that she has converted her single-room space into three distinct galleries, which allows her to present three shows…
The small and recently remodeled ILK @ Pirate gallery is currently hosting Align, an elegant solo show featuring recent paintings by ILK co-op member Bill Brazzell. The paintings are non-objective; they refer to structural abstraction and use expressive geometric shapes. Most are composed of identical components assembled into grid patterns…
Talk-show blather and gossip-column imbecility notwithstanding, professional performers aren’t all celebrified brats who uniformly indulge in angst-filled tantrums, global bed-hopping and public displays of megalomania. Like athletes whose passion for the game extends well beyond the final whistle, most stage actors are more devoted to studying and perfecting the nuances…
Braving theatrical waters that have proved treacherous to the hardiest of companies, the Upstart Crow Theatre has produced nineteen consecutive seasons of uncut classic plays. Even more remarkable, on a recent opening night, the Boulder group drew a full house of spectators who seemed perfectly willing to fork over fifteen…
Whether it’s bad or good commercial luck that the thriller Stir of Echoes follows so closely on the heels of The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan’s wildly successful ghost-story sleeper, it’s bad critical luck. This film has some startling parallels with The Sixth Sense: Both concern psychic communication with the…
When Hector first formed nearly ten years ago, lots of names were tossed in the hat: Cowsville. Gary. Wilhelmina. But when someone suggested Hector, the lightbulb flashed in Tom Motley’s brain. Motley, a lone local cartoonist seeking to evolve into a many-headed graphic monster by establishing a collective comic strip,…
Games magazine once described the CU Trivia Bowl, an annual tribute to insignificance in which players tested their ability to remember factoids most people were proud to have forgotten, as the greatest trivia contest in the country. During its heyday, the Bowl, sponsored by the University of Colorado at Boulder…
Wouldn’t it be great if the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver became one of the great cultural assets of the region in the 21st century? Wouldn’t it be great if the powers that be there could get their act together? Although the museum’s current attraction, Western Vernacular: Colorado Installations, is very…
The current show at the Camera Obscura Gallery, Christopher Burkett: Intimations of Paradise, is a surprise, because all of the photographs are in color. Even more surprising is that unlike most color photos, these are really good. Since a great majority of the serious work in fine-art photography is in…
When last we encountered Peter and Bobby Farrelly, they were pelting moviehouses with industrial-strength jokes about retarded kids, lost semen, found excrement and exploding house pets. Good plan. There’s Something About Mary turned into last summer’s surprise hit and catapulted the brothers to the top of Hollywood’s A List –…
It seems like only yesterday that movies dealing with gay and lesbian life were synonymous with extravagant displays of gloom and doom. From the suicides of The Children’s Hour and Advise and Consent to the serial killers of Cruising and Basic Instinct, same-sex sexuality was no fun — in the…
Can you hear the dreams crackling like a campfire? Can you hear the dreams sweeping through the pine trees and tipis? Can you hear the dreams laughing in the sawdust? Can you hear the dreams shaking just a little bit as the day grows long? Can you hear the dreams…
It sounds like a gala event for a frog, but the Parade of Ponds is designed more for parched humans — not amphibians — who are eager for a little waterfront property close to the homestead. Sponsored by BR&D Landscape as a fundraiser for Hudson Gardens, the parade gives attendees…
When Colorado’s Ocean Journey co-founders Bill Fleming and Judy Petersen-Fleming moved to town in 1992 with an idea for an aquarium in the Platte Valley, they appeared to be a couple of pipe-dreaming flakes. The very idea of a facility devoted to marine life seemed absurd in landlocked Denver –…
ILK, at 554 Santa Fe Drive, is a raggedy, upstart co-op that nonetheless frequently displays some of the most original art around. It is currently presenting a pair of intriguing solo shows. In ILK’s south gallery is New Works by Victoria del Carmen Pérez; in the north gallery is Size…
What is it they say? That even a flea can reach Mount Olympus riding in Pegasus’s mane? Well, in the case of the new Albert Brooks comedy The Muse, Brooks is the flea and Pegasus is his delectable co-star, Sharon Stone. But I get ahead of myself. In The Muse,…
