When I was a child growing up in London, someone gave me a large red book called Sunday, published in the 1880s. On the flyleaf was written “To little Nellie, from Papa.” The book had been created for Victorian children trapped in their dark, stifling houses for a full day…
Cabaret. Cabaret is grim and distressing, and there’s not a hint of redemption anywhere in it. Quite the contrary. But this is a bloody good production, the kind of production that could — and should — attract all kinds of people who might never think of setting foot in a…
Some of the best performances of the year can be found in Mean Creek, a small independent film that marks the auspicious feature debut of 31-year-old writer-director Jacob Aaron Estes. The film, an ensemble drama with a relatively unknown cast, looks at six kids and what happens when an innocent…
If Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence were a live-action sequel, there would be a lot of gossip about star histrionics, creative conflicts and so forth. Since the original Ghost in the Shell, first released nearly ten years ago, made an anime icon out of its star, the frequently nude…
Fortune smiles on groovy egregiousness. In the case of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the filmmakers’ investment in their weird visions is wildly unorthodox, but the payoff is oddly satisfying. The movie features myriad killer robots, raucous underwater dogfights, and Laurence Olivier’s best work since he died fifteen…
Mr. 3000 has low aspirations, which suits it well. It’s about a 47-year-old baseball player trying to get three meager hits and the team for which he plays trying to climb out of fifth place and into third by the season’s rapidly approaching end. Not much to root for, is…
It’s a good bet that some of the locals are horrified, or terrified, but here you have it: the Pikes Peak Lavender Film Festival, whose stated mission is “bringing quality international lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender films to Colorado Springs.” That this weekend’s event is the fifth annual Lavender says…
Home/Life: 121 kids from 11 cities photograph their world is the harvest of a global photography project. In 2002, homeless children in cities around the world — including Nairobi, Moscow, Jakarta, New Delhi, Johannesburg, Paris and New York — were dispatched to their cities’ streets armed with digital cameras and…
Thursday, September 16 No doubt about it: These ladies make lovely music together. The members of the Colorado Springs-based da Vinci Quartet have the chops to play wherever they like, but they choose to serve as artists-in-residence both in the Springs and here in Denver at the Lamont School of…
Dancers have been trying to take flight since dance was created; they spring up, they sail through the air, they dive, they vault, they flip, they swing from trapezes. But alas, dancers have never actually flown, right? That’s what you think. Brooklyn-based choreographer Elizabeth Streb, a fifty-something spike-haired maverick with…
MON, 9/20 “Whether it’s good or bad, it’s always entertaining,” notes Lion’s Lair bartender Dermot Carroll about the bar’s Monday open-mike comedy nights. Dermot has been serving drinks at the Lair, at 2022 East Colfax Avenue, since the first open-mike event, and he’ll serve them again tonight for the Lion’s…
MON, 9/20 The lure of geocaching is not merely that of finding a stack of moldy CDs. Rather, the challenge is to discover hidden stuff using a Global Positioning System, better known as “GPS.” “It’s a high-techie scavenger hunt,” says Evergreen’s Mike Dyer, who recently penned the how-to book Essential…
SAT, 9/18 That Ike LaRue has such a vivid imagination. In Ike’s private world, a mild time out is a hundred-year jail sentence; the neighbor’s pet cats are really notorious, cop-evading canary burglars, and…did we mention that Ike’s a pooch? Dog or not, he’s a roguish character far too delicious…
FRI, 9/17 Strolling the Pearl Street Mall in the early 1980s, it wasn’t uncommon to come across groups of jugglers performing mind-boggling feats. Those were the golden years of busking, before outside influences intruded, when it was juggling for juggling’s sake, pure and true. But diamonds in the rough can…
Stoppage, now in the main space at Pirate: a contemporary art oasis (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058) is the latest in a long-running series of installation exhibits by Pirate member Richard Colvin and his partner, Katherine Temple. The piece is unexpectedly spare, considering the pair’s typical everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach. Suspended from the…
digital.movement.04. Tracy Weil, owner of the weilworks gallery has a passion for computer-aided art. That’s why he organized digital.movement.04: Installations in video, sound & digital animation, the first in a planned series of annuals that will feature art that employs digital technologies in its creation. Weil began by putting out…
At the beginning of Three Ways Home, currently being produced by the Shadow Theatre Company, Sharon, a white career woman, has volunteered at a social-services agency. She’s assigned to visit Dawn, an African-American welfare recipient suspected of abusing her four children. Sharon’s opening monologues are wittily incisive as she introduces…
Dalton Trumbo was a member of the Hollywood Ten, a group of writers whose careers were ruined during the McCarthy era because they stood up to the House Un-American Activities Committee. After his bluntly hilarious non-cooperative session with the committee — re-enacted in Trumbo: Red, White & Blacklisted — Trumbo…
Cabaret. Cabaret is grim and distressing, and there’s not a hint of redemption anywhere in it. Quite the contrary. But this is a bloody good production, the kind of production that could attract all kinds of people who might never think of setting foot in a conventional dinner theater. Anyone,…
In this hour of enmity and bitterness, we Americans appear to be totally fed up with each other. Post-9/11 and mid-Iraq, the national political debate has been reduced to a nasty civil war that ruins friendships, stops casual dinner chats cold and, if I don’t miss my guess, gladdens the…
The most crucial piece of equipment in Hollywood is obviously not the movie camera. It’s not the casting couch. Not even the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud or the personal trainer. It’s the Xerox machine — which was preceded by carbon paper. That’s why, over the years, we have had three Mrs…
The future is almost here. At least it is according to screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce (Pandaemonium) and director Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People), two cinematic visionaries whose combined vision in Code 46 sparks tremendous intrigue — and unrest. At once a weirdly familiar sci-fi trip, a bleak romance, a…
