The thoroughly unlikable heroine of Life or Something Like It is a vain, starlet-like bleached blonde employed by a Seattle TV station. To call her a reporter is to defame reporters. Her hairspray outweighs her brain, and everything in her life — from her obsessive workouts at the health club…
Watch out, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg: A new generation of directors wants your jobs. These aspiring filmmakers will showcase their efforts at The First Look Student Film Festival this weekend at the Starz FilmCenter. Thirty-eight short films from around the globe will be screened during three presentations. “We have…
Docents are the unsung heroes of every museum; primarily volunteers, they go back to school before each new exhibit opens, then lead their quiet little tours and go home. But the five docents at the Museum of Outdoor Arts, fascinated by the museum’s recently refurbished, topsy-turvy Red Grooms sculpture “Brooklyn…
The era of the Dutch masters — many of whom have made their way into modern culture on the lids of cigar boxes — is one of those rare subjects in the art world that have generated interest not just from stodgy old art historians, but from everyone. And there’s…
Joseph Riché is a young Denver sculptor who’s been exhibiting his kinetic creations around town for the last several years. His innovative and imaginative work has, in turn, influenced a number of other young sculptors. So it makes a lot of sense to put together a group show that’s devoted…
It’s hard to imagine Harold Pinter’s Betrayal being given a better production than the one currently at the Denver Center — an elegant set, excellent actors — but somehow, though I enjoyed the experience of watching it, in the final analysis, the play left me cold. Perhaps this was because…
The Rise and Fall of Little Voice began its life in London’s West End, as a play written by Jim Cartwright to showcase the amazing vocal talents of actress Jane Horrocks. Horrocks — best known to American audiences as the daffy Bubble in Absolutely Fabulous — has a knack for…
Women who exchange descriptions of their sexual encounters are certainly no more appealing than men who boast in locker rooms, but they seem to get more free passes. If, in the name of social candor, Jerry Springer can induce sisters to confess what they’ve done with barnyard animals and every…
I don’t know what most devout Christians expect from the Second Coming, but in a relentlessly inspirational new movie called Joshua, the Son of God does it all for the citizens of a small town in Alabama. He tosses a 500-pound log onto his shoulder as if it were a…
The perpetrators of the new Sandra Bullock vehicle, Murder by Numbers, could be hauled in on any number of charges, including plagiarism and child abuse. But their most obvious crime is first-degree dullness. A thriller without thrills, a mystery devoid of urgent questions, this merely bloody piece of business spends…
Who better than a Lion to direct the Arvada Center’s production of Sundiata, the Lion King of Mali? Michael Lion laughs with delight at the link between his name and the play’s title, and quips that he’s no cub when it comes to the performing arts. After all, Lion won…
When three white men in Jasper, Texas, chained James Byrd, a black man, to a pickup truck and dragged him to a grisly death four years ago, most Americans recoiled in horror. New York documentarians Whitney Dow and Marco Williams decided to explore how this could happen in this small…
Painter Santiago Pérez, who lived in Colorado Springs for several years as a member of the U.S. Air Force, is the subject of the multi-dimensional Return of the Wizard, an enormous solo show on display at the Carson-Masuoka Gallery. The impressive exhibit includes more than fifty paintings done over the…
There’s quite a bit worth seeing right now at Pirate (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058). In the main gallery and in the Treasure Chest, longtime co-op member Steve Alarid is the subject of an impressive two-part solo (see previous page). In the Associate’s Space is Gwen Laine: New Works, a show…
August Wilson’s Jitney is a capacious, large-minded, wordy, generous, emotional grab bag of a play that continues working on you for some time after you’ve seen it. In fact, more than one viewing would be required to plumb all of the work’s riches. The action takes place in a storefront…
The three plays that constitute the Morrison Theatre Company’s evening of one-acts, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, are based on a short-story collection of the same name by Evergreen resident Joanne Greenberg. Greenberg is the author of several works of fiction; her most famous novel, I Never Promised You a Rose…
The two slacker anti-heroes of Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También (And Your Mother Too) come furnished with all the usual glitches of late adolescence: raging hormones, impatient wanderlust, contempt for their elders and a jones for dope and beer. In fact, Julio (Gael García Bernal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna)…
The work of Henry Jaglom is an acquired taste that, for many of us, remains unacquired. While his new film, Festival in Cannes, is not a huge departure from the usual, it may be his most accessible effort for non-fans since 1991’s Eating. Not surprisingly, the movie is set at…
The clock is ticking. For those of you who haven’t organized your tax returns yet, the tax man lurketh. And while it might be tempting to hit the party circuit in hopes of finding a genius accountant, perhaps there’s a better way. At the Malley Senior Recreation Center in Englewood,…
On the surface, the official uncloseting of Rosie O’Donnell received a great deal of attention from the media, including a two-hour edition of the Diane Sawyer-hosted Primetime and a stream of blowhard editorials in the nation’s newspapers, weeks before the scheduled April 16 release of her orientation-confirming book, Find Me…
No bones about it: Over the past few years, the Denver Blues and Bones Festival has grown into a great weekend. There are much bigger festivals — the Taste of Colorado, the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, the People’s Fair — and much smaller neighborhood fairs, but Blues and Bones is…
Call her madam! Lou Bunch ran the most successful whorehouse in Central City back in the days when the mining town was known as the “Richest Square Mile on Earth.” These days, it could be the saddest square mile on earth, since Central City’s plan to mine the wallets of…
