Pirate is teeming with good shows right now, and the varied directions of the exhibiting artists are astounding. In the main space, co-op members Richard Colvin and Katherine Temple present collaborative installations in Re-Echo. In many of their pieces, the two artists play with the difference between reality and illusion…
A program note indicates that the Denver Center Theatre Company’s production of The Miser, which was written in 1668, is set in “a French Townhouse in the late 1830s.” The post-French Revolution setting would seem appropriate for Jean Baptiste Molière’s play, which explores the relationship between wealth and social position:…
Most families have a hard enough time taking care of their own problems, let alone those of distant, ailing relatives. But when a primary caregiver discovers that she has leukemia and can’t properly attend to her bedridden father and sick aunt, the proverbial ties that bind the characters in Marvins…
The following is a list of women who have been raped, mutilated, tortured, enslaved, crippled, or murdered–and quite often, all of the above. In some cases, these women have also suffered miscarriages, been rendered infertile, contracted horrific diseases, and gone insane. Some of them have even been killed twice, perhaps…
Dinosaurs used to be cool. In 1969, if you had asked me what was the best movie ever made, my answer would likely have been The Valley of Gwangi, in which a group of cowboys in the Mexican desert find a gully full of leftover dinosaurs animated by Ray Harryhausen…
Road Trip makes American Pie look like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Fast Times like Animal House, and Animal House like Citizen Kane. It ranks (indeed, it is rank) among the most soul-deadening movies ever made; it has no pulse and seeks to steal yours with a cynical vengeance. Oh,…
Woody Allen is back on screen in Small Time Crooks, a bittersweet comedy that in many ways could have been lifted straight from the ’30s. For the most part, it’s Woody Allen Lite — but that’s not a bad thing. While you don’t want to penalize Allen for his serious…
When stars get popular enough (or win enough Oscars), they get to call their own shots. Thus we have The Big Kahuna, the debut release of Kevin Spacey’s production company. Kahuna also marks the film debut of stage director John Swanbeck and screenwriter Roger Rueff — and, boy, can you…
The rules of the game: Go slow. Have a station wagon. Spring cleaning means it’s high season for dumpster diving. “It’s like shopping at a thrift store,” Mary says. “You can’t be looking for something specific.” But while on the road with veteran divers Mary and Tony, who are as…
Ted Conover is a writer who immerses himself in his subject. He has traveled with hoboes, investigated the lives of illegal aliens and hobnobbed with the rich and vacuous in Aspen. Three books came of those adventures. But the scariest assignment he gave himself is the topic of his latest…
For the last five years or so, the fine-art world has seen a major revival of interest in abstraction in its innumerable stylistic permutations. Abstraction in painting and sculpture came into its own in the first few years of the twentieth century. Its audience among artists and collectors was small…
The Philip J. Steele Gallery in the lobby of the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design is currently showing Andy Warhol: Endangered Species, a group of ten silkscreen prints commissioned in 1983 by New York’s Ronald Feldman Gallery. The year is significant because 1983 is just before Warhol broke…
What determines a Shakespearean actor’s greatness? Is it the will to uphold established practice while embracing the avant-garde? Does it depend on how ingeniously a performer wrests humanity from every role, whether central or subordinate? And when the dangers of rote and creative stagnation creep into an actor’s great room,…
The great German director Max Reinhardt may have been able to mount some 24 different versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, including a 1935 film that starred James Cagney as Bottom and Mickey Rooney as Puck. Most mere mortals, however, learn that presenting even one fully staged production of Shakespeare’s…
This was to be a column extolling the daring and inventiveness of a very groovy Sci Fi Network television show called good vs. evil, in which two dead men, a fro-sporting, cool-spouting brutha and his pale-faced partner, try to save the souls of those who have made Faustian deals with…
Digital video is poised to become a major factor in commercial filmmaking, and Time Code, the new feature from Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas), could be used as a commercial for the process, which is its greatest point of interest. The movie is not so much an intriguing story as…
Given that most film studios have multimillion-dollar marketing budgets with which to target eighteen- to 25-year-olds, it’s astonishing how little they seem to know about the everyday life of those they’re supposed to be studying. Drew Barrymore has never been kissed? Please. Rachel Leigh Cook undatable until Freddie Prinze Jr…
Cinco de Mayo celebrates a tiny slice of history — the Mexican army’s defeat of the French occupation at Puebla, deep in the heart of Mexico, in 1862. But the real celebration is more about the spirit of common people linked together in a shared cause. So, it’s a time…
Imagine this: You’re a high-end, work-driven Bay Area management consultant with degrees from Cornell and Princeton. The world is your oyster, though you swallow it in eighty-hour-a-week increments, stopping at home once in a while to — what? — brush your teeth, maybe, or dust the empty refrigerator shelves. Then…
Under the guidance of Cydney Payton, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art has become a center for shows in which women artists figure prominently. Muscle: Power of the View, in the West Gallery, is the latest example. It will be followed by Elbows and Tea Leaves: Front Range Women in…
The word is out: ILK on Santa Fe Drive has become a place to see some of the best little art shows in town, and the two exhibits on display right now, Christina Piña: New Paintings, and Bill Brazzell: Constructs, will do nothing but enhance that positive buzz. The first…
Scholars perennially debate whether it’s an opera or a musical, pundits slather politically correct whitewash over its antiquated portrait of black life and critics alternately champion and decry its eclectic score of ballads, jazzed-up spirituals and show-tune fragments. Audiences, meanwhile, never seem to get enough of the unforgettable melodies and…
