When you walk into the East Theater at the Dairy Center for the Arts, you see a man puttering quietly about the stage. The setting is simple: a white chair dead center; a set of coveralls suspended from a hanger to your left; a table holding sound equipment to your…
Oil begins with an unidentified, cowboy-hatted oilman leaning back in a chair and justifying drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The speech is droll — the work is so environmentally sound, the oilman tells us, that the caribou sidle up to the pipelines to keep warm — and the…
Death of a Salesman. This is one of those low-budget shows held together with chewing gum, string and ferocious determination. Which means that it’s uneven, the set and lighting are minimal, and a couple of the performances are downright amateurish. Arthur Miller’s critique of American materialism remains relevant, but his…
Terry Gilliam’s last film featured the former Monty Python troupe member as an eccentric, demanding and difficult director prone to destroying his ambitious projects before a single frame of footage was ever shot. “If it’s easy,” he says in the movie, “I don’t do it.” Alas, this was not a…
The problem with making black-lacquered high school satire is this: Heathers came out in 1989, and it pretty much did the trick. There’s always room for an excellent addition to the genre, and in 1999, it appeared in the form of Alexander Payne’s Election, a film blessed both with a…
The trouble with pornography is that while it sells itself on the authenticity of the sex act, everything else about it is usually artificial, and very blatantly so. The hair color of the leads, most of the female body parts, and especially the situation: When was the last time you…
Wage slaves, unite! Mike Judge’s Office Space, released in 1999, combines the terrors of Franz Kafka with the hopeless workaday fatigue of Dilbert in a pointed satire about cubicle life. The beleaguered hero, Peter (Ron Livingston), is tormented by a parade of identical supervisors; his co-worker Milton (Stephen Root) wards…
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the creature led a climactic dogsled chase through Antarctica. For the fun-loving bugaboos taking part in Denver’s Monster Bike Rally, however, the preferred mode of transport is a pedal-powered two-wheeler, ridden in far more pleasant weather. “We’ve tried to do a Halloween ride a few times,”…
Thursday, August 25 Self-published poet Lara Catone and musician Tim Pourbaix of Killfix, who produces his own recordings, discovered that their respective struggles to make themselves heard aren’t really all that different. And so the Scattered Arts Collective, a loose circle of artists from many disciplines, was born. Envisioned as…
As the Colorado State Fair settles into Pueblo from August 26 to September 5, savvy Denverites might ask: “Who goes to the fair, anyway, besides farmers and grandparents?” Well, put down your Cosmos and snap on some overalls, because the answer is… you. Organizers say that the 133rd edition, while…
SAT, 8/27 Everyone’s a dreamer at the non-profit Microbusiness Development Corporation in Five Points. People come with hopes of opening their own business, whether the service is bike repair or steel-drum lessons. They cook Laotian dishes and concoct and bottle kick-butt barbecue sauces. They are artists, candle makers, writers, seamstresses,…
FRI, 8/26 Some sports can be geographically restrictive. That’s why the good farmers of Iowa trek to our state to find out what snow plus a slope can do. And though Coloradans are blessed with the right landscape to fuel that particular passion, we’re sadly lacking when it comes to…
FRI, 8/26 “It’s really hard to categorize,” says Andenken curator Ryan Riss, who is struggling to come up with a moniker to classify the five nationally recognized artists he’s assembled for MyMyHeyHey, an exhibit that opens tonight and runs until September 23. “I don’t want to say ‘street culture,'” he…
FRI, 8/26 The idea for AIResTANGO materialized over a cup of morning coffee three or so years ago, says Boulder aerial dancer Cathy Gauch. While she and her friend, tango whiz Deb Sclar, sipped and discussed their creative lives, the notion of mixing their respective genres suddenly seemed obvious to…
Robischon Gallery has a pair of solos in its front rooms that look so good, they could be the first shows of the fall season — except that it’s a month early. Installed in the entry space and the one behind it is JAMES COLBERT: The Long View; hung in…
The Space Gallery (765 Santa Fe Drive, 720-904-1088) is presenting a group show, Embody, that features three emerging Denver artists, all of whom do representational paintings based on the figure. The show begins with portraits and self-portraits from two series by Jason Blamey. In the front are four monumental pieces…
2005 Biennial BLOW OUT. This is the third in a series of biennials presented at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. In the past, participation in these biennials was limited to artists from around here; for the 2005 version, it’s been expanded to include artists working in most of the Western…
Denver Repertory’s Death of a Salesman is one of those low-budget shows that’s held together with chewing gum, string and ferocious determination. Which means it’s uneven. The set and lighting are minimal, because neither the company nor the John Hand Theatre has the resources to create the mix of dream,…
Impulse Theater. Basements and comedy go together like beer and nuts or toddlers and sandboxes. The basement of the Wynkoop Brewery where Impulse Theater performs is crowded, loud and energetic. Impulse does no prepared skits, nothing but pure improv — which means that what you see changes every night, and…
Like hundreds of creative Southerners before them, Phil Morrison and Angus MacLachlan have Thomas Wolfe in their bones. The media notes for Morrison’s first feature, Junebug, don’t mention Wolfe, and the 37-year-old NYU Film School graduate makes a point of distinguishing between literary inspiration and what he, like Paul Schrader,…
Sure you want to be inside Sophie Jacobs’s head? The poor woman’s cabeza is so stuffed with guilt and fear, so tormented by grief and what might be delusions, that to spend even five minutes in there poses an obvious risk to your own sanity. At least, that’s the way…
Surfers, skateboarders and desert racers have all had their moment at the movies recently. Now the motocross crowd gets its turn. Supercross, which provides a glimpse at what its makers call “the second-fastest-growing motorsport in the U.S., behind only NASCAR,” is anything but a dramatic masterpiece. But it features enough…
