Like Hancock, the Will Smith flick from last year, 2007’s Big Man Japan tweaks the superhero myth by focusing on a shaggy, thoroughly unconventional guardian of society — one who has more critics than fans. But whereas the former falls to earth thanks to a plot loaded with psychodrama and…
Midway through A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers’s solipsistic, terminally-apologetic-for-being-solipsistic portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-slacker-messiah, the author, upon interviewing to become a cast member of MTV’s The Real World, makes the following observation about his generation of self-obsessed, media-savvy technobrats: “These are people for whom the idea of anonymity is existentially irrational,…
The stately Japanese movie Departures comes to theaters trailing some justified ill will for having trounced the critical favorite, Israel’s Waltz With Bashir, for Best Foreign Film at last year’s Academy Awards. It’s not hard to fathom what Academy voters saw in Departures, an earnest appeal for renewed respect toward…
Want to know how a city works? Start by watching 1974’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, a primer in which subway hijackers test how long it’ll take a million bucks to pass through Gotham’s plumbing. Turns out an hour is just enough time to roust the hated mayor…
Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, in which a man is accused of an unnamed crime and, having faced all kinds of baffling and inexplicable encounters as well as a wall of bureaucratic obstruction, is eventually executed, was published in 1925. In its evocation of the menace lurking in the shadows…
Claire Walter and Laura Daily are lifers when it comes to reporting, a dangerous prospect these days. So was laid-off Atlanta journalist Jennifer Maciejewski, who struck marketing gold when she started a blog called Atlanta on the Cheap and soon realized that the concept had had overgrown its sweet Georgia…
It’s never too early to start thinking about Halloween — or your next fetish ball, for that matter — and the Disguises Community Flea Market and Clearance Sale Extravaganza is a killer opportunity to do just that. Costume-making materials, props, makeup, shoes, novelties and several racks of one-of-a-kind former rental…
This is it. Absolutely, completely it. Local brainstormer and design guru Jaime Kopke is heading off to grad school, and after this month, her hands-on Denver Community Museum (for which ordinary people and artists alike were challenged to submit artifacts on a theme for a public show) will be a…
What better place to enjoy two of the greatest fruits of our earth — grapes and hops — than in a garden? And while you won’t find either crop growing at the Denver Botanic Gardens, you can celebrate them anyway at tonight’s Garden Grapes & Hops — a party featuring…
Every year, I get excited for the Arvada Center’s summer art exhibits, which are typically complementary yet distinct shows with enough diversity to satisfy wide-ranging tastes. And this year is no exception: The seasonal selections include Jill Greenberg: Monkeys and Bears, Haze Diedrich: Devotion and “Scramble” Campbell: Music With a…
Like Hancock, the Will Smith flick from last year, 2007’s Big Man Japan tweaks the superhero myth by focusing on a shaggy, thoroughly unconventional guardian of society — one who has more critics than fans. But whereas the former falls to earth thanks to a plot loaded with psychodrama and…
Talk about the kindness of strangers. You’ve got to hand it to the folks in the Riverfront Park neighborhood who went to Judy Anderson at PlatteForum — the Central Platte Valley non-profit gallery that pairs at-risk youth and working artists — with an offer she couldn’t refuse, not no way…
Metropolitan State College of Denver’s Center for Visual Art has a mission to emphasize diversity and present modern works by artists not commonly seen in this city — and for assistant director/curator Cecily Cullen, the idea of a cross-cultural exhibit by a group of contemporary artists who are also Native…
Get inside the head of one of the most celebrated filmmakers in history when the Curious Mind of Werner Herzog kicks off tonight with the famed director’s documentary debut, Land of Silence and Darkness. This 1971 film turns the cameras on the blind-deaf, a world as alien to our own…
In Dharmic culture, there’s a concept called seva: Like Judaism’s tzedakah or Catholic charity, it’s the spirit of giving back to the community. For Nancy Levenson of NamasteWorks Yoga, the free ongoing Yoga in the Park Summer Series in Highlands Ranch is her annual act of seva. “It’s all about…
Have you ever gotten up-close and personal with a World War II-era B-25 bomber? “It’s an amazing piece of American history,” says bomber pilot Jim Terry. “The airplane is a time capsule; it’s exactly the way it was in 1942.” Terry’s airplane will be a guest of honor at tonight’s…
Some say summer is about getting into the gym and fitting into last year’s bathing suit. I say it’s about eating a ton of hot dogs. I’m talking fifty or so — and not over the course of an entire summer, but in about ten minutes. Sound appetizing? If so,…
What exactly is the Swishing Party that the Denver Library’s Fresh City Life and Dazzle are putting together this evening? “It’s a fashion swap meet,” explains the library’s Chris Loffelmacher. “Dazzle hosted our Knit for Our Troops kick-off party, and it just exploded with slightly snockered knitters. There’s been kind…
Author Craig Johnson wasn’t born in Wyoming. Rather, while moving a herd of horses through the state on a cowpoking mission, he fell in love with Ucross, population 25, a town in the middle of nowhere, and knew it was where he wanted to settle. And he did eventually move…
The Sangre de Cristo Arts Center has the neatest way of pulling things together for an exhibition: Blessed with a surfeit of exhibit spaces both intimate and grand, the venue simply cries out for the type of interrelated curating for which former director Jina Pierce and current director Karin Larkin…
What happens when diverse artistic mediums collide? Find out at the Mash-Up Party at BMoCA, a cultural extravaganza fueled by libations from a cash bar. “I was thinking it would be cool to do a party where we mix different styles together,” says Sarah Kinn, coordinator of adult programs at…
Bring your rabbit-foot keychain, four-leaf clover and any other lucky charm you own to the Rotary Club of Denver Mile High Foundation’s Million Dollar Hole-in-One Shootout today at Kennedy Golf Course. You’ll need them for a series of contests in which entrants try to get their ball closest to the…
