Arts & Culture

Sure, you still need to find a Christmas present or holiday gift for your dad that isn’t somehow related to golf, but maybe if you hit up some awesome DJ nights, the Candy Cane Festival or any other event this weekend you’ll have a creative spurt and figure out the…

College kids are too lazy to recycle. That’s the premise behind the recycling jukebox, a project dreamed up by six University of Colorado at Boulder engineering students. Because there isn’t always a recycling bin right around the corner when they finish their ROCKSTAR Energy Drinks — or whatever it is…

The top grossing movie of 2009 was, of course, Avatar, and this year the title goes to Toy Story 3. We’re calling that social progress, although there’s something a little too futuristic about computer-animated movies taking the crown back-to-back — we’re pretty sure it means there will be a robot…

We’re all hearing a lot of talk this holiday season about shopping local and what it means to a community. But Talulah Jones shop owner Robin Lohre is doing more than that: Beginning December 1, Lohre will host a reception showcasing a different local artisan every night through Christmas Eve…

Ah, the social justice film. We know this trick: They lure you in with their compelling story line and gorgeous cinematography, only to depress you with their social problem for which you are at least indirectly complicit. Today, we learn about the horrors of the fishing industry in The End…

The Colorado premiere of the Broadway hit A Christmas Carol, The Musical — with music by Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast) and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens (Ragtime) — stays true to Charles Dickens’s original story but does not take the Scrooge-as-super-villain approach. “So many productions of A Christmas Carol…

Of all the great female jazz singers of the mid-twentieth century, Nina Simone was perhaps the most distinctive, enigmatic, occasionally bewildering. And so it makes sense that An Evening With Nina, Shadow Theatre Company’s new musical about her life, would be similarly hard to describe. It’s a sort-of-musical about a…

If you didn’t get all the holiday adrenaline out of your system fighting for your life on Black Friday, lace some jingle bells into your sneakers and make a run for it today at the nineteenth annual Jingle Bell Run in Washington Park. “We’re encouraging people to come dressed up…

ArgusFest will hold its 7th annual Fair Trade Holiday Bazaar today at the Mercury Cafe, bringing Fair Trade Organization-certified vendors together to showcase their wares. “We create stable partnerships with the artisans and think of the cultural significance of the product created,” says Christina Redwine, program director for People of…

You may not have heard of Pancake Boy or Captain Starfish yet, but if the kids from the Art Students League of Denver have any say in the matter, you will soon. That’s because superheroes of all shapes and sizes will be on display in the fifth annual Dendiggityopolis Superhero…

Sugar and spice and everything Christmas is the Santa song of today’s Candy Cane Festival, a merry, merry tradition that’s ho-ho-hosted every year by Hammond’s Candies, the iconic sweets factory that spins, twists, pulls and peddles old-fashioned candy canes, lollipops, ribbon candy and chocolates. The fest, now in its tenth…

Offering rotating special guests each night, the edgy variety show BALLS! A Holiday Spectacular is an opportunity to catch a cross-section of Denver’s creative class while giving back to the community at a relatively modest cost. Proceeds from each performance benefit a different charity. “It’s a chance for people to…

Revolution and art have always gone hand in hand, from the Bolshevik-era propaganda of the Soviets to the freak-out frescoes of the psychedelic ’60s. That’s why, for Zach Alexander, the best way to bring a bunch of disparate social-change groups together is under one big artistic umbrella. “The thing we…

“Flamenco is not folk art,” argues Natalia Perez Vel Villar. “It’s an art. I always try to make the point of how difficult it is.” She’d know. Having begun her training as a flamenco dancer in her teens (she started in ballet, but switched), Perez Vel Villar has spent most…