As we near the end of the 1900s, it’s interesting to notice that the world of the visual arts is wide open, with a staggering profusion of artistic visions. Quite literally, anything goes. There are so many competing styles, ranging from straight traditionalism to the wildest fringes of conceptual art,…
There is, near the end of the spy-spoof sequel Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, a dick joke. It begins like many run-of-the-mill dick jokes, of which the rest of the film is almost entirely composed, but it blossoms into one stellar, protracted, deftly executed, masterful dick joke. It…
Pretentiousness masquerading as profundity; self-indulgence masquerading as art. The Loss of Sexual Innocence, the dreadful new film from writer/director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, One Night Stand), joins the ranks of the worst films ever made. On the surface, this statement may seem harsh and heartless–but it will strike anyone…
In John Sayles’s Limbo, which is set amid the rough-and-tumble of southeast Alaska, an ex-salmon fisherman with guilty memories (David Strathairn), an itinerant lounge singer with a lousy voice (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and the singer’s melancholy teenage daughter (newcomer Vanessa Martinez) become stranded, Robinson Crusoe-style, on a remote island. This…
Bernardo Bertolucci’s Besieged is a movie of enthralling visual poetry. Set almost entirely within a ravishing Roman villa, the film is a love story played out in furtive glances and stolen looks by characters on opposite sides of the ethnic divide. Culturally, Mr. Kinsky (David Thewlis) and Shandurai (Thandie Newton)…
A 540, switch-foot, tick-flip McTwist–Ev Rosencrans says it’s the hardest trick he’s ever seen executed on a skateboard. “It looks like he goes upside down, but then he spins the board, catches it, ticks it and lands on it again while doing a twist in air…” Well, you get the…
Thursday June 3 In typical form, the theme-friendly Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities opens its summer gallery season with a trio of interconnected shows that seem to go with the flow of summer by exploring family relationships, the lure of the road and teen rites of passage, respectively…
For most of us, twirling a yo-yo for eight hours would be the ultimate display of slacker behavior. Not so for Denver resident Jon Gates, a professional yo-yo player who earns his keep “walking the dog” around the world. “I travel around the planet,” Gates says matter-of-factly, “playing with my…
The Rule Modern and Contemporary Gallery is currently featuring the compelling show Carl Andre and Melissa Kretschmer, which pairs a handful of Andre’s recent sculptures with Kretschmer’s hard-edged tar-on-glass paintings. Both artists share basic aesthetic concerns. “We’re two modern artists who admire each other’s work,” says Andre, “and we happen…
Although this year’s Colorado Women Playwrights’ Festival explores unsettling and disturbing subjects, the first of two festival programs marks a significant improvement over last season’s feeble offerings. Despite a few logistical headaches (like starting a performance twenty minutes late, needlessly allowing a fifteen-minute intermission to run to half an hour…
The peerless Ethiopian distance runner Haile Gebrselassie is a tiny man–5’3″ and barely 115 pounds–but in his native country, his heroism looms large. Since 1994 he has set fifteen world records at five different distances, and at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, he outdueled a trio of favored…
In an early scene in Instinct, released by Touchstone, a division of Disney’s Buena Vista Pictures, we’re told that a brilliant primatologist named Ethan Powell (played by Anthony Hopkins) is being brought back to the United States from Rwanda, where for several years he has been engaged in a close…
Thursday May 27 The Colorado Symphony Orchestra bids its season goodbye with style and splash this weekend. Beginning tonight, a grand reading of Mozart’s Solemn Vespers of the Confessor, featuring voices of the symphony chorus, will be followed by the evening’s centerpiece: Prokofiev’s Cinderella, staged in collaboration with the Cleo…
Deborah Krasnoff is an Academy Award-winning documentarian and a lesbian. But she’s also the mother of two school-aged children, and that’s what originally prompted her to make It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School, airing in Denver Wednesday night on KBDI-TV/Channel 12. “I wanted to make a film that…
It’s a slow Wednesday night at the Rising Phoenix Coffee House, so the kid in the high black boots, black jeans and black T-shirt has the dance floor all to himself. His moves are a lithe combination of what looks like Victorian waltz posturing and liquid meandering. The music is…
Since relocating to the Golden Triangle from LoDo last fall, the William Havu Gallery (formerly the 1/1 Gallery) has greatly expanded its stable of artists. Among the recently snagged talents are those of husband-and-wife painting team Tracy and Sushe Felix, whose latest efforts are featured in the captivating exhibit New…
The Morrison Theatre’s unflinching production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest starts the minute theatergoers enter the cozy town hall that serves as the community group’s performing space. As Lawrence Welk-like tunes play in the background, the patients and staff of a state mental institution mill about in the…
Much of the public discussion concerning the Columbine High School massacre has swirled about in a cauldron of controversy. The memorial service was too secular, too religious or too political. Howard Stern’s incendiary (and stupid) remarks were seen as emblematic of the media’s willingness to champion the right of free…
It has not been lost on the Quinn brothers–actor Aidan, cinematographer Declan and writer/director Paul–that in old Gaelic culture, the tribal bard, or storyteller, was held in the highest esteem. The Quinns want to be Irish storytellers, too, and to that end, they have loaded up This Is My Father,…
Maybe it’s the damned blinking thing, because it’s not simply the foppish hair and boyish face–or, for that matter, even the vaguely befuddled reticence and wry, self-abasing demeanor we Americans prefer to see in our Brits. It’s got to be the blinking. That’s what he does, almost all he does,…
It’s an old Denver story: In 1968, a group of local artists erected nine temporary plywood sculptures in Burns Park, setting slabs of sheer color at playful geometric angles against a background of green grass and blue sky–a visual flight of fancy for passing Colorado Boulevard motorists. Intended to last…
Morris Carter’s voice goes in and out on the cell phone, but it’s no surprise, considering where he’s calling from. “Right now we’re halfway between Lamar and Las Animas on Highway 50,” Carter says. “Earlier we were along the Arkansas River.” He’s speaking from the seat of a Conestoga wagon,…
