The ten intersections with the most accidents in Denver right now include plenty of well-traveled roadways in the metro area. If you live and work in the Mile High City, there’s a good chance that you’ve driven through one or more of these danger zones this week.
The day after former Colorado resident Devin Kelley murdered 26 people at a Sutherland Springs, Texas church on November 5, filmmaker Michael Moore tweeted that this tragedy has pushed the April 20, 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, the subject of his 2002 Oscar-winning documentary Bowling for Columbine, from the list of America’s ten worst mass shootings.
Diane Kruger, who was named Best Actress at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival for her work throughout In the Fade, “plays a German woman who’s married to a Turkish man,” Denver Film Festival artistic director Brit Withey goes on. “One day, she’s dropping their son at their office, and as she’s leaving later that day, a bomb goes off and it kills her husband and their little boy.”
The fortieth annual Denver Film Festival got off to a fine start with Lady Bird, an opening night flick well worth discovering. Since then, the event’s attendance has been impressive despite a lack of star power on par with Emma Stone’s appearance for La La Land last year and the mixed quality of the six movies I caught during the fest’s first weekend. Note that a Q&A with costar Kyra Sedgwick on November 3 barely mentioned Submission, the DFF’s centerpiece presentation at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House for which she was ostensibly on-hand, and no one seemed to care.
You’ll have a hard time understanding the local sports pundits who predicted that your Denver Broncos would defeat the fast-rising Philadelphia Eagles during their face-off on Sunday, November 5, because they’ll be choking on crow feathers all day long. The final score of the contest was 51-23, but the actual game wasn’t that close. Moreover, the Twitter debate about who should start at quarterback for Denver as this already lost season moves forward focused less on whether Brock Osweiler, the man under center yesterday, is better than Trevor Siemian, the hurler he replaced, and more on which of them sucks harder.
On Sunday, November 5, just over a month after Stephen Paddock killed more than fifty people at a Las Vegas country music concert, and less than a week since Scott Ostrem gunned down three at a Thornton Walmart, a man named Devin Patrick Kelley murdered at least 26 parishioners at a church in tiny Sutherland Springs, Texas. We’ve subsequently learned that Kelley is a former member of the Air Force and a onetime resident of Colorado Springs who appears to have been fueled by strong feelings about religion, as were at least two killers who shook the community in the past.
“Thelma is a film from Norway that’s actually the country’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film,” says Denver Film Festival artistic director Brit Withey. “It’s an interesting film of the type that you don’t necessarily find in film festivals all that often. It’s sort of a supernatural, paranormal thriller, but a really intriguing one.”
Vic Mensa, who opens for Jay-Z on Sunday, November 5 at the Pepsi Center, represents the highest form of hip-hop. His latest recording, The Autobiography, is not only among 2017’s best albums in any genre, but it’s essential listening for anyone who wants to understand the social, cultural and political moment in which we find ourselves. In the interview below, he explains why with both passion and compassion, not to mention a fierce intelligence that spares no sacred cows.
On a recent edition of KWGN’s morning program Daybreak, co-host Natalie Tysdal was joined by Jason Granger, founder and CEO of Infinity Marketing Group, for a segment in which he showed off three phone apps that allow users to track the whereabouts of family or friends. But neither viewers nor staffers at the station knew at the time that Granger was arrested, convicted and served time in jail last year for stalking a former family member.
Twenty-five years ago this week, Colorado voters approved Amendment 2, whose backers portrayed it as outlawing “special rights” for gays, lesbians and bisexuals. The measure’s passage on November 3, 1992 provoked outrage nationwide, with Colorado’s branding as the “hate state” resulting in boycott calls from singer Barbra Streisand and other members of the national entertainment community. But while Amendment 2 was deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark 1996 ruling, a University of Denver professor sees its legacy in the current Masterpiece Cakeshop controversy and other cases she considers to be problematic on every level.
Yesterday, November 2, as we reported, 47-year-old Scott Ostrem was arrested for allegedly killing three people at a Thornton Walmart the previous evening. In the hours since then, we’ve learned much more about Ostrem’s victims, Victor Vasquez, Pam Marques and Carlos Moreno, and the man who apparently took their lives at random. Far from being a terrorist, Ostrem appears to be another angry, frustrated white man taking out his failings on innocent people.
Again this year, Denver Film Festival artistic director Brit Withey is offering his must-see picks for each day of the fest — including many flicks that movie lovers might otherwise miss amid the flood of silver-screen goodies. Today he spotlights a selections for November 3, 4 and 5: Have a Nice Day, Vigilante and Strad Style.
The 40th annual Denver Film Festival’s kick-off last night, November 1, at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House was a decidedly low-key affair, especially in comparison to the 2016 launch, when future Oscar winner Emma Stone strolled the red carpet prior to a preview of the left-field blockbuster musical La La Land. But while star power was decidedly absent, the evening scored anyhow thanks largely to viewers’ discovery of Lady Bird, an opening-night selection that offered the sort of pleasant surprise the DFF shoots for every time the theater lights go down.
The Thornton Police Department has announced that Scott Ostrem, the only named suspect in a triple murder at a Walmart store yesterday, November 1, has been taken into custody.
Yesterday, November 1, as expected, your Denver Broncos pulled downward-spiraling quarterback Trevor Siemian from the starting lineup in favor of Brock Osweiler, who was F-bombed on social media after leaving the team in 2016 and heavily ridiculed upon his return earlier this year following big-time failures in Houston and Cleveland.
The folks at Delta County High School, on Colorado’s Western Slope, are learning what can happen when you mess with Cidney Fisk. The teen is suing the public school and a slew of other related individuals and entities in United States District Court, alleging that her identity as an atheist and criticism of activities such as allowing a Christian group to hand out Bibles on campus resulted in a wide range of discriminatory acts, including the arbitrary lowering of her marks in a student government class.
“The Party is a dark comedy with a great cast,” says Denver Film Festival artistic director Brit Withey. “Kristin Scott Thomas, Patricia Clarkson, Cillian Murphy. “But it’s also a small film — and by that, I mean it all takes place in this one little town home, almost entirely in the living room. There’s a bit in the kitchen and in the back yard, but it’s very spare location-wise.”
The City of Denver has agreed to pay $4.65 million and make major changes in its jail policies to settle claims involving Michael Marshall, who died in a Denver detention center circa 2015 during a mental-health crisis.
Monday, November 6, marks exactly five years since Colorado voters approved Amendment 64, which legalized limited recreational marijuana sales in the state. To mark the occasion, Brian Vicente, an attorney who co-authored the measure, will join other key figures in the campaign at a reception, dinner and fireside chat about the march to victory and the way the industry has developed during the half-decade since then. In advance of the celebration, whose details are featured below, Vicente offers reflections on the past and a look ahead to the future of legal marijuana in Colorado and beyond.
According to a recently filed lawsuit, Michael Bailey spent 52 days in jail because the Colorado sheriff’s office where he was wanted for a minor offense didn’t bother to pick him from the facility that held him. And a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is backing the complaint, says his story is far from unique.
Our recent post about the most expensive neighborhoods for rent in Denver this fall included ten areas in which the average cost for a one-bedroom apartment ranged from just under $1,500 to $2,000 per month. In contrast, the ten least expensive Denver neighborhoods in terms of rent prices right now all boast an average rent price of less than $1,000.
Again this year, Denver Film Festival artistic director Brit Withey is offering his must-see picks for each day of the fest — including many flicks that movie lovers might otherwise miss amid the flood of silver-screen goodies. Today he spotlights the offering for opening night, November 1 — Lady Bird — and previews the festival’s 40th edition as a whole.
