The surreal concoction of farce, tragedy and go-to-hell defiance that put Trainspotting on the international movie map also permeates Kevin Allen’s Twin Town. If this is some kind of trend, like, say, Hollywood’s current bout of Tarantino Syndrome, it probably won’t be long before audiences of all ages start separating…
Thursday May 29 The mortal Coryell: Who but Larry Coryell could deliver an electrifying performance even when he doesn’t plug in? The mellowing guitarist, a rocked-up fusion pioneer in the ’60s and ’70s, now seems content to sit down with an acoustic instrument all by his lonesome and just play…
It’s quite unusual for Denver’s gallery-goers to be treated to more than one good photography show at a time. But this spring, interesting shows are popping up the way dandelions are sprouting on lawns. At Camera Obscura–where good things are always developing–the exhibition Willy Ronis provides a retrospective look at…
Since 1992, Nebula 9 has been Colorado’s best (and most popular) electronic-dance duo. But no more. At a time when the rest of the country finally seems to be catching up with the act’s style of music, the team of Jim Stout and Julian Bradley has split. Stout, however, is…
It’s been a long wait, but the Roundfish Theatre Company is back, bold and brassy, with Bobology. These three short one-acts by Denver playwright James R. Cannon present an absurdist attack on economic, political and religious fascism. And though the plays have their weaknesses, the production values are high, the…
Family entertainment doesn’t have to mean mush. The Denver Center Theatre Company began the year with a smart, edgy Peter Pan and followed it with a poignant Christmas Carol, an inventive Comedy of Errors and a delightful Life With Father. Now the DCTC is finishing up the family-fare portion of…
The fictional Yorkshire coal-mining town where English director Mark Herman’s Brassed Off! takes place is called, aptly enough, Grimley. You can feel the layer of soot that has settled into the lives of the beleaguered citizens, and you can sympathize with their struggle to remain human in the face of…
Here are the Joys of Summer…and the Oys of Summer, the nearly 100 movies scheduled to open between now and the end of August. Many of them may even make it to Denver. They’re listed in the order of their L.A. release: May 30 Drunks. Peter Cohn’s look at the…
Does this sound familiar? In Nana Djordjadze’s A Chef in Love, an uncompromising creator of high cuisine stubbornly opposes the philistines and fools who threaten his perfectionism, transforming his kitchen into a kind of metaphoric battleground. This is, of course, the premise of last year’s independent hit Big Night, with…
Thursday May 22 Beck to the future: The performer of the future is here right now. It’s Beck–and not much else. Somehow, though, Beck hauls his turntables and microphones and pale, deadpan eyes on stage with him and manages to deliver a whopping good, charged-up live show for the ages…
Commercial art galleries rarely coordinate their shows. The normal practice for galleries, even those next door to one another, is to schedule shows according to the vagaries of artists’ schedules and the idiosyncrasies of gallery directors. But viewers sometimes luck out, as they did this past winter when Robischon Gallery…
Anyone who’s ever been to Christmas mass at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Denver knows that the church is what the theater wishes it were. It has drama, mystery, joy, a sense of the tragic, a joke or two and, at its best, a feeling of transcendence. Moving the church…
The appearance of The Lost World: Jurassic Park carries a double burden. Not only is it the sequel to the most popular movie ever made but it is also the first film Steven Spielberg has directed since 1993’s Schindler’s List. Now that he has finally won his Oscar and achieved…
Broken English, the first feature by New Zealand’s Gregor Nicholas, is a Romeo and Juliet tale that owes the usual huge debt to Shakespeare and the dozens of variations filmmakers have attempted over the decades. But it is beautiful and disturbing in new ways. Just to start with, Nicholas’s young…
The veteran director Sidney Lumet is one of the few guys on the planet who can make Woody Allen and Spike Lee look like tourists from Des Moines. Lumet has shot 29 of his 40 films on the streets of New York, and he still captures better than any other…
Thursday May 15 Sticks and stones: Behind every great comedian, there’s a guiding philosophy. For pernicious stand-up wit Bobby Slayton, it goes something like this: “If you can’t laugh at yourself, make fun of other people.” Be forewarned–meanness is Slayton’s oeuvre. Slayton says himself that even Don Rickles apologizes at…
Sure, he’d hate it–and it’s hard to imagine that he could squeeze more schmoozing time into any given day. But imagine if Denver Art Museum director Lewis Sharp were the city’s omnipotent art czar. Oh, the disappointments we might have been spared. The $7 million-plus art collection at Denver International…
All that bastardization of African-American music by white rock-and-rollers produced some terrific stuff. But white pop music is pasty indeed compared to original rhythm-and-blues masters like Aretha Franklin, Chuck Berry and Little Richard. The rock musical A Brief History of White Music, in which a trio of black performers belts…
The musical version of Jan de Hartog’s Tony Award-winning play The Four Poster is called I Do! I Do!–and if it weren’t for two fine performers who pump their life’s breath into it at Littleton’s Town Hall Arts Center, it would be a resounding I Don’t. The songs are uniformly…
Here’s more good news for independent filmmakers living on macaroni and cheese in studio apartments everywhere. The 25-year-old Australian director Emma-Kate Croghan shot Love and Other Catastrophes in seventeen days on a budget of $30,000, and Fox Searchlight Pictures picked it up. Here’s the bad news: Croghan didn’t spring for…
Gummy with heartfelt folderol and overbearingly chummy, Fathers’ Day comes across like a feature-length expansion of its sniffle-and-giggle trailer. Prior to this teaming, Robin Williams and Billy Crystal had never been in a movie together–though, along with Whoopi Goldberg, they appear together annually on the televised Comic Relief fundraiser–so there…
The unlikely heroine of Peter Duncan’s Children of the Revolution is one Joan Fraser (Judy Davis), a red-haired, bug-eyed Australian Communist whose fervor doesn’t stop with belting out “The Internationale” in the corner pub or forcing leaflets on bemused passersby. Joan is so hot for Bolshevism that she sends a…
