First, a disclaimer: Having missed last year’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, I deliberately put off seeing it until after viewing its sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. That way I could view Part Two without prejudice as well as be able to judge whether…
Well, now we know why the term “bored to death” was invented. Meet Joe Black, a new film produced and directed by Martin Brest (Scent of a Woman, Midnight Run), takes an interesting idea–Death assumes human form and comes to earth to learn about human existence–and reduces it to a…
Thursday November 5 If you find the dating game to be more like combat, Colorado Free University’s Art of Meeting Someone New course may be just the thing for your heat-seeking arsenal. The class covers the full range of dating topics, from foolproof ice-breakers and meet-and-greet etiquette to how-to’s for…
When it comes to the dance arts, Denver has its share of high-caliber entertainment, from the formal charms of the Colorado Ballet to the modern dance leanings of the Cleo Parker Robinson School. But for Katrina Lairsmith, a former Parker Robinson student, there’s a gap in the local dance culture–maybe…
“I’m the muse of dance, and I’m constantly dancing and fluttering about,” says Pamela Osborne. She’s also an actor in Awakening Galatia, a new play by the Colorado Dramatists that debuts this weekend at the Acoma City Center Theatre in conjunction with hundreds of other events commemorating the tenth anniversary…
In the last decade or so, the Mexican religious holiday El Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) has not only been observed in Denver’s large Hispanic community, but it has also become a marked occasion for celebration in the city’s art world. This is mostly because for years,…
Few American playwrights have demonstrated the ability to effectively transform their vivid childhood memories into something other than a highly personal cautionary tale. Mere mention of the words “socially relevant family play” is usually enough to conjure bizarre images of a metaphorical free-for-all between the Bronx-accented denizens of yesteryear’s kitchen…
British playwright George Bernard Shaw once remarked that fabled escape artist Harry Houdini was, along with the personages of Jesus Christ and Sherlock Holmes, one of the three most famous people in the world. Although today’s culture of instant celebrity has considerably altered Houdini’s standing among the greatest entertainers of…
The hero of Evan Dunsky’s The Alarmist is a dopey innocent named Tommy Hudler (Scream’s David Arquette) whose only sin seems to be falling in with the wrong crowd. A rookie salesman with all the aggression of a baby chick, Tommy sells residential burglar alarms door-to-door in Los Angeles for…
Fascism is in the air…well, at least it’s on movie screens. In a two-week stretch, we’ve seen old Nazis (Life Is Beautiful), neo-Nazis (American History X), old Nazis training neo-Nazis (Apt Pupil), book-burning (Pleasantville), and now, with The Siege, full-blown military rule on American soil. Still in the wings: Enemy…
Fifteen minutes into Velvet Goldmine, director Todd Haynes’s love letter to England’s glam-rock scene of the late Sixties/early Seventies, the film has already promised to be many things: a missing-person mystery, a meticulous period piece, an essay on sexually liberated dandyism, a quasi-musical, a portrait of the Machiavellian as an…
Thursday October 29 Hand in hand with Halloween comes El Dia de los Muertos, the Latin American celebration during which the souls of the dead take time out to party with the living. In that spirit, Aurora’s Crossover Project hosts several El Dia events this weekend, with annual festivities at…
Vampires, specters, werewolves and witches all come out of the ground this time of year, and they all seem to be based in the boneyard, an eternally creepy place. But local author Linda Wommack is out to change that eerie outlook. According to Wommack, whose new book, From the Grave:…
When Westword decided to spook out the best costumes in town, we naturally were lured by the prospects of Guise & Dolls, billed as “Denver’s first and only comedy cabaret show featuring Denver’s most hilarious, outrageous, beautiful and convincing female impersonators.” It all took place within Club Proteus’s Greek-ruin decor,…
Surveying the two exhibits that make up the fall opener at her namesake Rule Modern and Contemporary Gallery, director Robin Rule is clearly pleased. Her bright mood reflects the fact that not only do the two shows each highlight the thoughtful and interesting work of very good contemporary artists, but–and…
Their blazing eyes fixed upon the majesty of the firmament, three creative geniuses stand shoulder-to-shoulder in Paris in 1904, speculating about their collective capacity to influence twentieth-century life. Momentarily bringing to mind Cyrano de Bergerac’s lyrical odes to rugged individualism, a fiery Pablo Picasso murmurs, “The modern world waits to…
As you watch Whiteline Productions’ presentation of An Evening of Three One-Act Plays by Luigi Pirandello, it becomes increasingly clear just why the Pirandello Repertory Theater (and its cash-cow second-stage cabaret, the Laugh-a-Minute Luigi Comedy Club) has yet to take hold in Denver. Of course, lack of popular demand has…
As a requiem for the Sixties, The Big Chill didn’t quite hit the mark the first time around, in 1983. Its greatest-hits soundtrack was soul-stirring, all right; it’s hard to top the Stones, Marvin Gaye or Aretha Franklin in any decade. But the shameless way in which director Lawrence Kasdan…
American History X, a hard-edged look at American neo-Nazis, arrives in theaters with a lot of behind-the-scenes baggage. First-time director Tony Kaye has engaged in a protracted, high-profile battle with distributor-producer New Line Cinema over the film’s final form. While Kaye may have a justified grievance, this is not as…
When Montoya, one of the fearless vampire killers in John Carpenter’s Vampires, tells another character that nobody believes in the title creatures because nobody wants to, there’s no mistaking the ancestry of the line. It comes down, through two generations of horror films, from the moment in the original Dracula…
Even folks who know all about the prairie-dog controversy gnawing at the western plains will probably be enlightened by Varmints. Produced by High Plains Films, the ninety-minute documentary has its world premiere at the Boulder Theater on October 28, and from all appearances, the issue is far more complex than…
Some say the book is in trouble, destined to become obsolete in the computer age. But when the Denver Public Library Friends Foundation asked for literary testimonials from national celebrities and role models for an upcoming exhibit, the results expressed, in myriad ways, solid, enduring support for books. Called Library…
