Not long ago, Otis Taylor was a Boulder antiques broker, and uninformed observers of the local music community considered him to be something of an antique. How wrong they were. In the mid-’90s, Taylor reinvented himself as a modern bluesman, and since then, he’s earned the kind of critical acclaim…
Jack Redell is an American classic in the making. Some day, folks will speak of Redell’s time here with a reverence generally reserved for Tom Waits and Jack Kerouac. Hell, word has it the Thin Man has named a drink named after Redell in honor of the amount of time…
It took three years for Victoria Woodworth to produce and unearth Faultline, her first solo recording. It took much longer than that to collect the wealth of experience and emotion at its heart. A small person with a big voice and a poetic bend, Woodworth concentrates on the Important Issues:…
A decade ago, the Gothic Theatre was a pit: dank, dirty, with crappy sound and ripped-up seats left over from its Prohibition-era, weekend-matinee heyday — the perfect setting for punk shows back before the style became sterilized. In 1999, the Gothic underwent a makeover more radical than the one performed…
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After years of sliding faders and twisting knobs for local luminaries such as Blister 66, Rocket Ajax, Chaos Theory and countless other acts, James Martinez has finally found a home behind the boards at the Blue Mule. From one-man acoustic acts to balls-out gutter punks and everything in between, Martinez…
Because so many downtown warehouses once used for rehearsal spaces have been recast as lofts and galleries, Denver is experiencing an epidemic of homeless musicians. Rents are up all over, but that’s only part of the problem; after all, who wants to rent to a bunch of kids with Stratocasters?…
The first time the Mars Volta came to town, in November 2001, it was easily outshone by the other acts on the night’s bill. Vocalist Cedric Bixler and guitarist Omar Rodriguez seemed reserved, even timid, despite being widely renowned for their explosive stage presence as members of the critically acclaimed…
Garage rocker-turned-director Davis G. Coombe spent six years chronicling the explicit and unpredictable behavior of the Czars, Orbit Service and Rainbow Sugar, then boiled it down into a 99-minute exposé of Denver’s underground music scene, warts and all. Intimate, candid and stylish, The Tornado Dream not only graced the 2003…
Home to the Denver International Film Festival for ten days each October, the eight-house Starz FilmCenter features top-drawer art films and lively revivals through the remainder of the year, along with Saturday-morning programs for children, film-and-discussion nights, themed series and frequent showcases for Colorado filmmakers. In February, Starz hosted the…
A perennial winner in the movie-food category, the venerable Mayan Theatre serves up the kind of quirky, whole-earth stuff that goes just fine with such indie cinema as 21 Grams or the latest slice-and-dice action from Hong Kong. The Alternative Baking Company’s vegan cookies — Peanut Butter Persuasion is our…
Seen one multiplex, pretty much seen ’em all. But the Colorado Center Stadium 9, operated by United Artists Theatres, has a couple of minimal advantages: plenty of indoor and outdoor parking, close proximity to pre- or post-movie refreshment (i.e., Dave & Buster’s) and, if you’re in the mood for a…
Since 1941 (the year Citizen Kane was released), the University of Colorado’s International Film Series has been a major cultural resource. The inventive CU programmers continue apace in their efforts to bring in exotic and important work. Recently, IFS’s “Cult Cinema” series featured screenings of Alferd Packer: The Musical, The…
Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter, Sofia (the Oscar-winning writer/director of Lost in Translation), gets most of the attention these days, but the man who created the Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now and The Conversation was as thoughtful, congenial and engaging as any Denver International Film Festival honoree in recent memory when he…
Sometimes a movie is just not worth $8.50. Sometimes it’s not even worth the $3.50 to pay-per-view it. But sometimes, the guilty pleasure of, say, a Legally Blonde 2, is worth fifty cents. Every Tuesday the Tiffany Plaza 6 drops its already cheap $1.50 rate to a mere half-dollar –…
That the metro area’s Spanish-speaking Hispanic population continues to grow didn’t escape local entrepreneur, state school-board member, politico and all-around rich guy Jared Polis. Seeing an untapped market, the man with the means opened Cinema Latino in the Aurora Plaza mall’s former dollar theater. The eight-screen movie house features new…
The early sequences of Gavin O’Connor’s deft, exciting re-creation of a great moment in American sports history — the U.S. Olympic Hockey Team’s 1980 victory over the seemingly invincible Soviets — are set at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and in the rickety old Broadmoor Arena, where…
Last fall, the Cinderella Twin, one of the city’s last two drive-in theaters, was supposed to bite the dust to make way for new development. But the plans were put on hold, so there’s at least one more season in the sun. The double-screen drive-in is already open on weekend…
There’s no getting around it: Babies kill the movie experience. Rather than become the pariah in the last row, most parents of newborns opt to simply give up on going out to the movies. But now they don’t have to: Moms and dads can take their babies and wee ones…
No question about it: Flicks are for kids on Saturdays at Starz. The usual Saturday-matinee fare is absolutely abysmal, but at Starz the shows are hand-picked for children in varying age groups. Naturally, the movies fall on the indie side of the spectrum, but there are also kid-lit-to-screen titles, as…
Most adults instinctively know that when the kids come along, they’ll spend the next eighteen years reclaiming their cultural lives, inch by wretched inch. Happily, the Denver Center Theatre Company found a way to slow parents’ march of Sisyphus: While adults take in a matinee, Familes@Play entertains their kids with…
You have to hand it to creative guide Douglas Love and the Walden Family Playhouse. The exclusive Colorado Mills children’s theater, which debuted just over a year ago, really does what it set out to do: provide the same kind of experience for children that the Denver Center Theatre Company…
