Nobody understands the gestalt approach to making music better than guitarist (and former Denverite) Bill Frisell, one the great original improvisers of our time and a recording artist who changes partners more frequently than a square-dancer. But it’s not that he’s fickle: Frisell is just a dreamer, a musical sponge…
Thursday, October 30 Sque-e-e-ak For old-time radio aficionados, that eerie sound effect, followed by greetings from a creepy-voiced host, needs no introduction: It was the trademark opener for every episode of The Inner Sanctum, the popular ’40s mystery program that enjoyed a run of over ten years, from radio’s heyday…
There’s nothing quite like the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). El Día is a time when families build living-room altars and decorate family members’ graves as a sign of love and respect. Beginning every November 1 and continuing through the following day, it’s a celebration…
Want to get in touch with your inner Little Red Riding Hood or let loose the Gandalf trapped inside your routine self?Don’t wait around for a fairy godmother to help. Instead, check out some of the dozens of costume stores in the Denver area. And while this isn’t a complete…
SAT, 11/1 The rumblings started early last season, when the Denver Nuggets became the first — and only — National Basketball Association team to add a Portuguese-translation page to its official team Web site.The catalyst for this linguistic link was rock-steady Brazilian rookie Nenê Hilario (now simply known as Nenê)…
SAT, 11/1 We try to get our kids to read, but it’s an uphill climb in the 21st century: The older they get, the more tuned in they are to sense-teasing technological amusements — Game Boys and Xboxes, non-stop television and computer games — and the less inclined they are…
SAT, 11/1 Seminal New Orleans musician Jelly Roll Morton, acknowledging his own Creole roots, used to say his syncopated early jazz music evolved with a “Spanish tinge,” and it’s an element of jazz that’s always grown with the genre itself. In fact, there’s a name for what’s become of that…
SAT, 11/1 If there’s a giant squid hurling gutter balls next to a harlot in pasties, hot pants and yucky brown rented shoes, then Beats & Bowling must be twinkling its toes again. The competition, which rolls its fifth installment tonight, assembles costumed and themed teams of music-industry enthusiasts who…
The season began only a scant six weeks ago, but already many of the first shows have closed — or soon will. It’s been a crowded calendar, with more than a hundred exhibits being presented simultaneously, a couple dozen of which are definitely worth seeing — pretty good odds when…
The Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173) is just coming off a recent bout with censorship. As reported in Westword (Off Limits, October 9), the Denver Civic Theatre requested that Edge remove a photo from its show hanging in the theater’s lobby. The photo depicts two men kissing, with the…
In Blue/Orange, Christopher (Keith L. Hatten), a young black man, is awaiting his release from a London psychiatric hospital, where he’s been held for 28 days of observation. However, his psychiatrist, Bruce (Steven Cole Hughes), isn’t sure he’s ready to be discharged. He fears that Christopher is displaying all the…
We remember Oscar Wilde today primarily for his epigrammatic wit — the nineteenth-century bons mots that have lost none of their sharpness or humor over the intervening decades. This was a man whose last words were supposedly “Either that wallpaper goes or I do.” Wilde’s theories of aesthetics, his faith…
On October 12, BBC America aired the second-season premiere of The Office, the beloved mockumentary that follows paper-selling rats ’round the maze of cubicles leading to the office of head cheese David Brent, a pathetic little man who says in public things no rational human being would even think in…
That a new feel-good sports movie called Radio contrives to move us is just fine; that’s what feel-good sports movies are supposed to do. That its makers chose to move us in the style of a linebacker sacking a quarterback is not so good. After enduring this flagrant emotional blitz,…
Sometimes something so wonderful appears on the big screen that I want to leap up like a shameless non-professional and hug it. Such is the case early on in the film Sylvia, a superb drama based on the brief life of writer Sylvia Plath. While boating in Cambridge, England, with…
Richard Brooks’s brilliant adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1967) remains one of the most chilling true-crime films ever made. The tale of two drifters whose disturbed personalities collide to produce their brutal mass murder of an ordinary farming family in Kansas and, in time, their double execution by…
Call it a honey of a drinking festival: The International Mead Festival — Honey Wines of the World features the globe’s best brands of mead. A heady elixir that fueled the fun of early man, the Vikings and Chaucer, the potion still works its magic on a growing segment of…
Thursday, October 23 Are you one of those touchy-feely gift givers? Then get your hands on some of the area’s finest fiber works this weekend at the Rocky Mountain Weavers’ Guild Annual Sale, which will feature a gorgeous array of table linens, blankets, beadwork, sweaters, scarves and more, on sale…
To start a circus, you have to have a bit of the dreamer in you, not to mention an eye for the angle not taken. Cedric Walker has both, it seems: The utterly upbeat CEO and founder of the Atlanta-based UniverSoul Circus paid his dues during a life steeped in…
FRI, 10/24 Pour on the liquid latex and give that corset an extra tug, because the 4th Annual Victorian and Fetish Ball will cast its sexy spell tonight. The masquerade tease will harness the talents of four professional dominatrixes, unleash an exhibition of the sensual art of Japanese bondage and…
FRI, 10/24 Last year, a female quartet sailed through Scream Scram dressed as the Titanic. The women were costumed in such a way that when they stood together, they looked like the doomed ocean liner. Still, they were able to navigate independently around the 5K run’s Washington Park course, which…
SAT, 10/25 Keep your eyes peeled for paranormal behavior at today’s Meet the Fire House Ghosts at the Denver Firefighters Museum. “There is some definite poltergeist activity going on around here,” says the museum’s executive director, Carey Southwell. Built in 1909 as Denver Fire House Number One, the station, at…
