The 1932 film version of Grand Hotel is best remembered for Greta Garbo’s languid “I vant to be alone.” A better signature line was never invented for an actress–particularly since Garbo was a famous recluse. No one could ever read that line again without invoking her presence as the elusive…
In these days of mindless Hollywood conformity and obscene movie budgets set aside for the destruction of cars and helicopters, the career of the magisterial Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray should be a lesson to us. In 1952, when the former economist and advertising man was working on Pather Panchali, the…
To hear Ethan and Joel Coen talk these days, they’re a couple of plain-spoken, rock-ribbed Midwesterners whose simple hearts remain in their home state of Minnesota. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course: The dominant qualities of the brothers’ work–from Raising Arizona to Barton Fink to The Hudsucker…
Thursday March 7 One to wash: It’s cute and kicky–it’s Suds, a goofy, melodramatic musical romp through the innocent Sixties. A despondent 16-year-old girl decides to end her life in a laundromat dryer but is saved by three angels: a bubbly Gidget clone, a Capri-pants bad girl and–who else?–a glowing…
Greg Esser wears so many hats in the local art world that he’s reminiscent of Peter Sellers in one of those madcap Sixties comedies in which the British comic plays half a dozen roles. For starters, Esser’s the public art administrator for the Mayor’s Office of Art, Culture and Film…
It’s Arthur Miller time in Denver; works by the American playwright have been staged by no less than three local theaters in the past month. And Industrial Arts’ moving, if somewhat choppy, production of Miller’s timeless All My Sons provides an interesting contrast to his more popular but less dynamic…
Agatha Christie’s wonderful murder mystery Ten Little Indians showed up in the movies as And Then There Were None to creep out several generations of fans. The 1970s musical spoof of Christie’s original, Something’s Afoot, adds another dimension of macabre merriment to the legacy. Christie’s original plot may be more…
When it comes to portraying the TV news biz, Hollywood is naturally drawn more to the glitz than the grit. Why make a big deal out of a fatal prison riot when you can have Robert Redford massage Michelle Pfeiffer’s foot? Who gives a damn about Latin American politics when…
Kenneth Branagh’s A Midwinter’s Tale is another sweet comic valentine to those batty but lovable show folk. So if you’re less than enthralled by the vanities and insecurities of actors, you may as well stop reading this and start shopping for another movie. Now that half the house has departed,…
Thursday February 29 Old-time religion: While the membership of Blind Boys of Alabama has evolved, the gospel-singing group’s name has remained intact for nearly sixty years, as has its pious intent. Best of all, when the boys fire up their voices to praise the Lord–Lord, what God-given, soul-stirring voices they…
It may be tempting for viewers to lump all abstract paintings that feature drips, runs, scratches and splashes into the abstract-expressionist camp. But look before you leap to any conclusions. Making the point that not all expressionist abstracts are abstract-expressionist are the nearly twenty gorgeous oils in the exhibit Sam…
Inside a moral vacuum is a bad place to be: Not only is it fraught with violence and suffering, it’s boring, too. But somehow that boredom is conveyed without boring the audience in The Lida Project’s consuming production of Edward Bond’s notorious urban horror story Saved. It all takes place…
Materialism is destructive, especially when its false ideals lodge in the breast of a man who is too good for them. In director Jeremy Cole’s beautifully realized staging of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman’s wrenching descent into madness and death speaks eloquently to the “winners and losers”…
French director Barbet Schroeder’s fifth American film, Before and After, strains to say something important about families–what binds them together, what tears them apart–in an age of moral ambiguity. In a more oblique way, this was also the subject of Martin Scorsese’s harrowing remake of the classic thriller Cape Fear,…
Have Messrs. Ivory and Merchant shown you into one too many drawing rooms? Just about had it with the Jane Austen craze? Up to here with Victorian-class warfare? How about the eternal feud between manners and desire? That’s okay. A lot of people feel the same way. But before you…
Thursday February 22 Oz capades: Imagine Dorothy, Toto and the rest lifted right off the screen and plopped down on an ice rink. That’s just what the creators of Wizard of Oz on Ice did, but with a few ingenious twists. Though the familiar movie characters and songs are all…
Given Colorado’s relatively small population and isolation from the centers of American culture, the high level of art the state has supported over the years is nothing short of amazing. In fact, there’s only one thing that prevents Colorado from dominating the artistic culture of the mountain west–New Mexico, which…
The archetypal tale of Beauty and the Beast takes many cultural forms. In all of them, a “beast” loves a “beauty,” wins her love and is then saved by her love from the curse that turned him into a beast. Edmond Rostand’s flagrantly romantic version of the story, Cyrano de…
However extravagant it may seem to say so, Ad Hoc’s production of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters is simply fabulous–hauntingly beautiful and ultimately even inspiring. It’s not perfect, because not all the actors are equally gifted. But those imperfections never detract from the production’s effect on the viewer: nothing less than…
My favorite public official, the profoundly corrupt James J. Walker, is said to have spent all his waking hours between 1926 and 1932 lolling in a first-base box at Yankee Stadium, visiting his tailor, brokering crooked deals in speakeasies and throwing dice in a back room at the old Central…
Assorted Hollywood hotshots are still going downhill fast in Aspen and Telluride, but for the most part they regard Denver as fly-over country. So when the Mile High City shows up in a movie–even a movie as scummy as Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead–it’s a good bet…
Wednesday February 14 Blues period: When a big band and the blues collide head-on, you can count on a full dance floor–that’s the main objective of Roomful of Blues, a Rhode Island-based combo with a revolving membership of great musicians. Over 25 years after guitarist Duke Robillard first formed the…
