The program notes for Nat King Cole & Me include an interview with author and performer Gregory Porter. He describes his mother, who, he says, was dedicated to helping others. One Thanksgiving, she made a sumptuous meal of ham, turkey and sweet-potato pie, and took it to the mission for…
My reaction to a Harold Pinter play often follows a predictable pattern. For the first few minutes, the dialogue strikes me as ordinary, the contradictions and obscurities willful and self-conscious. I find myself questioning whether the playwright is really as brilliant as decades of reviews say he is. Yet by…
Alarms & Excursions. Alarms & Excursions is minor Michael Frayn, a series of comic finger pieces, but it can’t help bearing the master’s stamp. A group of eight playlets examines the role of technology in our lives and its impact on human communication. In the first, a friendly dinner is…
The first time through, you might dismiss Coffee and Cigarettes as a filmmaker’s recess — playtime before the serious business of making a real feature. Jim Jarmusch never intended this new movie — a collection of eleven shorts made over the last two decades — to be a movie at…
Sitting through Raising Helen is an exercise in frustration, because somewhere inside this big heap of Hollywood nothing is a something (someone, actually) worth saving and savoring. Her name is Joan Cusack, always a supporting player but never a star, no matter her grace and warmth and charm even in…
Those people who live in small towns, they’re not like you and me. So naive, so innocent. And adorably quirky. Why, they’ve got so many lovable quirks you just wanna run up and hug ’em. Or, if you’re a filmmaker, perhaps you can make a movie about these simple folk…
This year’s renewal of Boulder’s popular Chautauqua Silent Film Series starts off with a showing of The Patsy (1928), King Vidor’s enduring comedy starring Marie Dressler and Marion Davies as a constantly feuding mother and daughter. Not to be confused with the Jerry Lewis talkie of the same name, this…
Ever hear of something called the Sundance Film Festival, a little gathering that Bob Redford started up in the hills of Utah a few decades ago? It caught on, and now everyone who can afford a fringed buckskin jacket and a private jet heads to Sundance in hopes of hightailing…
Thursday, May 27 While thousands flee the city this weekend, the International Wine Guild continues its ongoing series of classes designed to inform casual wine lovers. What will be uncorked this session? A wide variety of flavorful topics, including “Wines of the Pacific Northwest” (tonight) and “USA Food and Wines…
Aah, Memorial Day. A day of somber reflection, of backyard picnics and barbecues. A day for quietly contemplating the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, and a day for beer. Lots of beer. Lots and lots of beer. So while Mom is in the kitchen making red, white…
MON, 5/31 The Shona people of Zimbabwe call the bateleur eagle (a rare native raptor that in Shona religious lore serves as a messenger of the gods) “Chapungu.” It’s no mistake that the name also applies to the contemporary stone art of the nation, a relatively recent cultural endeavor that’s…
MON, 5/31 If you’re feeling the need for speed this Memorial Day, get to Bandimere Speedway for the annual Pepsi All-American High School Drags. The showdown is open to high school students between the ages of sixteen and nineteen with a valid driver’s license and a release form signed by…
When invited by the City of Broomfield to put on an art exhibit in the building shared by its library and public auditorium, members of the Women’s Caucus for Art made certain the theme fit the environment. As an enhancement for the Mamie Doud Eisenhower Public Library’s summer reading program,…
SAT, 5/29 The universal struggle that women face in trying to balance a career, family and friendship is highlighted in Saints and Hysterics, a new work by local playwright Tracy Shaffer Witherspoon and performed by the Paragon Theatre Company. The play opens tonight with a world-premiere presentation at Denver’s Phoenix…
There’s so much to do in Colorado during the summer, it’s almost paralyzing. There are the always-popular but always-sold-out concerts at the Denver Botanic Gardens, the KBCO World Class Rockfest, the Shakespeare Festival, the Taste of Colorado, the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival, the Grand Prix, the ever-expanding number of farmers’…
While summer days are great for lounging, it’s the hot summer nights that will truly make memories. And nothing heats things up faster than a tacky theme party. Here are four summer evenings that are sure to live on in infamy — and make you the social director for summers…
I’m here at the Off Track Betting room at the sprawling Red and Jerry’s complex on Oxford and Santa Fe for one reason: to learn how to gamble. Or more accurately, to learn how to play the horses. Gambling in its simplest state is no more challenging than sleep. Want…
As the sultry musk of summer gets ready to coat our bodies like a clammy dishrag, here are a couple of homemade mix tapes to keep you cool in the midst of all that global warming, sticky sex and melted ice cream. The first tape is made up of some…
Crystal Sharp, owner, SheShe boutique KissMe mascara “It acts like a waterproof mascara, but it comes off with warm water. It’s fabulous. You can swim in it; you can tan in it and not worry about it running all over your face.” Gabriel Conroy, designer Large-scale bone, coral or turquoise…
As comedian Steven Wright once said, “24 hours in a day…24 beers in a case…coincidence?” I think not. There are thirteen weeks of summer left — and thirteen perfect drinks to get you through them. Coincidence? I think not. Here’s to a liquid tour of Denver! Mojito Cuzco Kick off…
Forget ice cream. Discriminating dessert connoisseurs know that gelato is the real hero of summer. “When I got here seven years ago, it was almost impossible to find gelato,” says Simone Parisi, owner of Parisi, a north Denver Italian restaurant and deli that recently added a gelato counter. “It’s definitely…
Every summer when I was younger, my friends and I basically moved out of our parents’ houses and into the surrounding wilderness, resorting to a primitive caste system whereby whoever had the coolest stuff dictated what we did. We spent days re-creating World War II with cap guns, fortifications in…
