To fully appreciate the merits of Vacancy, you need to have the proper technology. Digitally projected lurid images and THX-amplified creaks and moans are all well and good, but what director Nimród Antal’s creepy cockroach of a thriller really cries out for are the shabby delights that can only be…
Holland’s gift to world cinema, Paul Verhoeven can be a very bad boy and a very good filmmaker. Any of his movies could have been titled Basic Instinct — not least his epic World War II thriller Black Book, in which a Jewish chanteuse who has watched her family massacred…
Most fictional characters in mental institutions struggle to get out, but when Dana Fielding, the artist-protagonist of The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, arrives in one after a suicide attempt, she settles right in. Battered by the response to her latest exhibit, a couple of negative reviews and a general sense…
This is one ugly family gathered in Big Daddy’s Mississippi Delta home to celebrate the patriarch’s 65th birthday, and almost everyone in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof but Big Daddy himself knows that he’s dying. There’s Big Mama, operating in an acute state of denial; son Gooper, accompanied by…
A House With No Walls. There’s a special category of pundit: the black conservative, those darlings of the Republican Party who profit hugely by attacking other African-Americans. The protagonist of Thomas Gibbons’s play is a more thoughtful and credible version of this kind of talker, a brilliant historian named Cadance…
More than any other institution in the city, the University of Denver should be credited with establishing and nurturing contemporary art in the early to mid-twentieth century. But despite the school’s important role, the accomplishments of artists associated with it have not been properly documented. Dan Jacobs, director of the…
Michael Chavez, the curator at Foothills Art Center (809 15th Street, Golden, 303-279-3922), has organized Pattern Recognition, which looks at art that considers repetition. This is the second show that Chavez has put together at Foothills that surveys a contemporary stylistic category being done in Denver. The first examined contemporary…
Breaking the Mold. In 2003, Connecticut collector Virginia Vogel Mattern donated some 300 pieces of contemporary American Indian art to the Denver Art Museum. For one of the special shows inaugurating the new Frederic C. Hamilton Building, Native Arts curator Nancy Blomberg has selected over a hundred works for the…
Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show (Sony) The greatest boxed set ever — not so much for the made-up irritainment as for the real thing, which this collection serves up by the ton. There are 23 brilliant episodes of the HBO show here, but they pale in…
We’ve all seen Super Mario eat copious amounts of mushrooms, but have you ever considered the care that goes into preparing such delicacies? In Cooking Mama: Cook Off for the Wii, Wolfgang Puck wannabes are thrust into the kitchen — alongside “Mama,” the game’s titular chef — where they’ll chop,…
Brute Force: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) Cutie Honey: The Movie (Bandai) Double Happiness (Image) Forgiving Dr. Mengele (First Run) Freedom Writers (Paramount) George Lopez: The Complete 1st and 2nd Seasons (Warner Bros.) Happy Days: The Second Season (Paramount) The History Boys (Fox) The Image (Warner Bros.) La Haine: The Criterion…
Later today (Thursday) there will be a complete slideshow of last night’s Tamarac Square Fashion Project. Can’t wait until then to tell the judges who you think should have won Challenge #3? Post your comments below. (You’ll have to wait for the slideshow to see who actually won!) Any comments…
Today’s contestant in the Cydney Payton Design Challenge is Gino Velardi, who is best known around town for his stunning gowns. Seriously, he has this feathered babydoll number that Cat might just kill for…but that’s another story, as he’s got something else in mind for the director and curator of…
Today’s entry into the Cydney Payton Design Challenge comes from Crystal Sharp, whom everyone knows as the proprietor of She She on South Broadway and Bayaud. Check out her design, and then go here to see the slideshow of what she — and the other eleven designers competing in the…
And now Cat presents the second entry in the Cydney Payton Challenge, a design created by local fashion fave Mona Lucero. Next week Payton will choose her favorite sketch, and the winner will be announced on the Tamarac Square Fashion Project runway on April 25. Stay tuned to Cat every…
Cydney Payton is the city’s reigning art matriarch. And how lucky we are, because Payton’s no stodgy old maven. No, the executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver loves Manolo Blahniks and red lipstick, wishes she could meet Miuccia Prada, is listening to TV on the Radio, and even…
Nicole Popovich One of Cat’s faves from the second challenge of the Tamarac Square Fashion Project. To view the slide show, click here. Cat will be honest: She expected some trash to come down the runway during the second challenge of the Tamarac Square Fashion Project. Not that she’s disrespecting…
Olympic snowboard medalist Chris Klug had always lived life on the edge. He could conquer any mountain — but when he learned he needed a liver transplant, he faced a real uphill battle to get back into fighting form for the Snowboard World Cup Tour (“The Bounce-Back Kid,” March 8…
When it comes to the fledgling Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, Jonathan Waterman, author and self-proclaimed adventurist, thinks it’s a case of “out of sight, out of mind” for the majority of Americans. During the past 22 years, Waterman has observed significant changes in the 19.2-million-acre sanctuary — devastating…
It’s Spa Week — and just in time! Bikini-and-shorts season is just around the corner, and my pale, blah skin doesn’t want anything to do with that until a good massage, facial and scrub have been had. Normally that would set me back at least $300, but with national Spa…
Denver is like a big sister to Fort Collins: When Fort Collins is having bicycle problems, Denver gives her a ride to the mall; and when Fort Collins no longer has venues big enough for shows put on by its own art collectives, Denver steps in and gladly opens her…
The Summit Foundation claims that the hockey match-ups between rival institutions — police personnel versus fire personnel, Copper versus Vail — slated for the Summit Foundation Hockey Classic fundraiser are friendly. But anyone who has ever seen a hockey game knows that neither “friendly” nor “amiable” (or, for that matter,…
