Wes Craven — purveyor of fine horror movies, including A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and the Scream trilogy — has apparently decided to go “legit.” And with Music of the Heart, he has done so with a vengeance. The film’s only death is the result of…
In the beginning, there were little people. If you understand that, you can begin to understand Charles Simonds and his work: unfired miniature clay structures that seem to have been left behind by some vanished civilization. Invented by Simonds, the intricately formed pieces first began popping up over twenty years…
The dream of sustaining a repertory company dedicated to producing the classics has intrigued a host of theatrical luminaries — and drained the resources of many more. In 1960, for instance, respected actor and director Ellis Rabb’s company first took up residence at various universities, later merged with New York’s…
The thing about walking into Five Green Boxes is this: You won’t want to leave. You’ll want to move in and walk across the white floor and settle yourself between its clean, cool chartreuse (!) walls, under the high ceilings and unimpeded loft-like expanses. Read the newspaper on a fuzzy…
All this week, the Community College of Denver on the Auraria campus has been hosting a national conference on photography titled “Photography and the Creative Process.” Free and open to the public, the conference was organized by renowned local photographer Ron Wohlauer, who has taught photography at CCD since 1975…
The Edge Gallery is featuring three interesting solo shows right now, and that doesn’t happen very often. In the front space, Carlos Frésquez continues his exploration of personal and ethnic identity in Tiempotrippin en El Meso-Moderno World. Frésquez’s longtime interest is in the three cultures in which local Hispanics live:…
As the three characters in Art discuss the worth of a painting one of them has purchased for an extravagant sum, they argue, rail and bluster until they finally establish the play’s basic premise: When it comes to questions of art or relationships, there’s no accounting for taste. But while…
The prospect of an evening of ghost stories is intriguing, especially this time of year, but there’s no point in dragging it out for two-and-three-quarter hours when only five to ten minutes’ worth of the material is even of passing interest. Director Scott Gibson and company’s enthusiasm notwithstanding, Once Upon…
And now…a G-rated movie from David Lynch! No, Lynch hasn’t lost his mind. He hasn’t gone soft in the head. And he hasn’t sold out to the smiley-faced bean counters at Disney. While the notion of America’s King of Weird — the man who brought us Blue Velvet and Twin…
Steven Soderbergh may have had some rocky times after his 1989 breakthrough with sex, lies, & videotape, but these days he’s on a roll. Last year he produced Pleasantville and directed Out of Sight, two of the year’s most praised films. This year, he has The Limey, a complex, introspective…
Alison Hawthorne Deming is a woman who knows her place. Born and raised in Connecticut, Deming came west to live in Tucson only about ten years ago, the practical result of being offered a position at the University of Arizona. But the unique problems of a region where great natural…
My grandmother was a quiet, unpretentious kind of woman who rarely complained and seemed satisfied keeping her opinions to herself. So when I asked Grandma one day why she didn’t play bingo every Friday night with her lady friends, she startled me. “That’s for the old ladies,” she said with…
The hippest of the hipsters on the art scene have been doing lots of pooh-poohing and naysaying about the blockbuster Impressionism: Paintings Collected by European Museums, which is now playing at the Denver Art Museum. Essentially, these cool-eratti believe that impressionism is too pedestrian for them — and that the…
The O’Sullivan Arts Center, located on the campus of Regis University, is an oft-overlooked exhibition venue that always has something worth seeing. Right now in the large and handsome gallery is a duet in which painter Amy Metier has been paired with sculptor Richard Stephenson. The exhibit, called See Saw,…
His radical American cousins have reduced the grandeur of character to the smithereens of personality. His angry English countrymen have rejected arch debate in favor of circuitous harangue. And his disaffected Irish forebears have alternately romanticized, upbraided and forsaken their motherland. But rather than siphon such tried-and-true iconoclasm, twenty-something playwright…
In an age when a former professional wrestler (and current elected official) declares organized religion a crutch for the weak-minded (who need strength in numbers), a talking-head presidential candidate spews inflammatory remarks about religious groups and a so-called reverend pickets the funeral of a murdered gay man, it seems a…
David Fincher needs a hug, the poor bastard. Or possibly a diaper change. Ever since 1992, when he ruined the Alien series with the excrescence of his pointless, senseless third installment, he’s been making the same bratty, obnoxious movie over and over again: gloom, doom, indestructible protagonist, bureaucratic evil, quasi-religious…
According to The Story of Us, men and women have different responses to life, love and sex, and this can sometimes result in conflicts and tension in a marriage. And you thought American Beauty was daring. The “us” of the title are Ben (Bruce Willis) and Katie (Michelle Pfeiffer). He’s…
When I was growing up, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was the closest thing I had to a paternal mentor, the only authoritative voice I consistently trusted. Novel after freakish, scattershot, infinitely humane novel, the man provided tools to identify and cope with the daily horrors of America — this vast sea…
The Great American Beer Festival is the ultimate test of mettle. The three-day event presents about 1,700 different beers, making it the drinking equivalent of the Tour de France or the Boston Marathon. Thankfully for attendees, tasting each of these beers is not required. But for Paul Gatza and his…
The twenty-second Denver International Film Festival opens this week with a showing of Sydney Pollack’s Random Hearts at the Buell Theatre. Director Pollack (Tootsie, Out of Africa, The Firm) will introduce the romantic drama, which stars Harrison Ford and English Patient leading lady Kristin Scott Thomas. This year’s festivities also…
The Robischon Gallery has launched its fall and winter schedule with Manuel Neri, an important exhibit that focuses on the latest creations by the world-famous California artist. Neri has become a household name around here; this is the third time in recent years that Robischon has presented a solo turn…
