While there are no rules to being a geek, there are definitely some guidelines. I’m not interested in telling you what sort of geeky activities aren’t actually all that geeky, or in calling out anyone for being a “fake” geek for any reason, but I do think there are certain…
Director Rachel Talalay will descend upon the Alamo Drafthouse Friday to share and discuss her 1995 cult gem Tank Girl with an audience that will fill up on her memories and a special three-course dinner from Alamo executive chef Seth Rexroad. Talalay, a mainstay in John Waters’s ’80s staples and the Nightmare…
Steve Allen didn’t know what to make of Frank Zappa. The clean-cut young musician was promising to “play the bicycle” on the set of The Steve Allen Show in 1963, spinning the wheels and tapping on the spokes. The result, with the help of a tuneless orchestra behind him and…
In Patricia Rozema’s quiet, sci-fi-lite thriller Into the Forest, the power goes out pretty quickly, but the film itself is electric. Nell (Ellen Page) studies for the SAT and chats with her boyfriend on a futuristic floating computer screen, while her sister Eva (Evan Rachel Wood) twists her body into…
Patricia Rozema is what you might call a “working director.” Her first credit was Second Assistant Director on three episodes of the acclaimed children’s series, Sharon, Lois & Bram’s Elephant Show in 1984, and since then she’s written, directed and produced art-house shorts, film-industry docs, a music-and-dance film (Yo-Yo Ma…
The ludicrous but amusing teen social-media thriller Nerve is committed to pinning its characters into a world we understand as ours. It opens with Skype, Spotify, Gmail and Chrome, all on the MacBook screen of a mousily beautiful teen, Vee (Emma Roberts), who you just know is one horrific adventure…
A more appropriate title for Jason Bourne might be Walking: The Motion Picture. This fifth entry in the franchise loosely (very loosely) based on Robert Ludlum’s best-selling novels brings back director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon to continue the tale of the good soldier-turned-amnesiac-assassin-turned-rogue agent doing battle against his…
Café Society is surprisingly ambitious by the standards of late-period Woody Allen — a veritable epic taking in a broad swath of a young man’s life and charting his progress from wide-eyed innocent to cold, confident operator. But that’s also why the film, in some senses, could only have been…
FutureFest, a new kind of mini-con and tech fair with a Burning Man vibe, brought drones, ‘bots, steampunk fashion and virtual reality to City Hall on July 23. Photographer Ken Hamblin brought back a taste of all the fun and games. Now see the full FutureFest slide show…
For years, Quincy Jones was known in the independent comedy scene in Los Angeles for his welcome presence and laidback observational humor. Like most fledgling comics, he hustled hard at local shows and open mics, longing for the opportunity to get a crack at the infinitely larger audience that a…
The sixth annual Denver County Fair unpacks this Friday, July 29, at the National Western Complex, where it runs through Sunday, July 31. In a summer full of festivals, shows and events, this extravaganza has built its own strong following by celebrating all that is weird and wonderful about Denver. The Kitten Pavilion will…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we look at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. “Photography is just a hobby, really,” says Colorado native Andrew Koch, who turned…
In Little Shop of Horrors, currently showing at Miners Alley, Seymour, a nerdy young guy who works in a failing florist shop that’s situated, inexplicably, on skid row, is hopelessly in love with fellow worker Audrey. Unfortunately, she is in a relationship with Orin Scrivello, a sadistic dentist, and is…
Alec Baldwin is no Steve Harvey. Unlike Harvey, Baldwin seems diminished on the set of a retro ’70s game show dedicated to getting contestants to say gently dirty nonsense. On ABC’s baggy, boozy Match Game, Baldwin crabs into a skinny last-century microphone about how everything’s stupid: his celebrity panelists, the…
Drawing Never Dies, an interesting and somewhat provocative examination of contemporary drawings — at least that’s purportedly its subject — is nearing the end of its run at RedLine. The show was juried by Donald Fodness, a Denver artist, and Daisy McGowan, director of the Galleries of Contemporary Art at…
Nothing has ever persuaded me more that our dialogue is broken than the current political quagmire. When I began the Mayday Experiment, one of my goals was to try to change the conversation and have in-person dialogues about sustainability, as opposed to arguing about the existence of climate change —…
The inaugural Tattoo Masquerade brought tattoo artists from across the nation to Colorado for a body-art convention that went a step beyond by also presenting fine artists, holistic-health practitioners, burlesque dancers and side-show performers at the Colorado Convention Center from July 22 through 24. Here’s a look at the action…
As a person born and raised in Denver who is very vocal about her love for (and criticisms of) the Mile High City, I often get asked to recommend things to do and places to see when people are visiting Denver. I’m no tourist information center, but do I spend…
The side of Cold Crush at 2700 Larimer Street carries a powerful new statement: the boxing-style propaganda mural called “Bad Cop Versus Good Cop.” Cold Crush co-owners Musa Bailey, Eric Cunningham and Brian Mathenge have had a wide range of local and national artists to put their spin on the “phoenix wall”…
The fourth annual High Plains Comedy Festival begins just thirty days from now, and the 2016 lineup has all the makings of an old-fashioned giggle gauntlet. From August 25 through August 27, over 100 of the country’s funniest people will descend upon Denver’s Baker neighborhood to crack wise, tickle fancies and…
What’s on your list for summer reading? A dark Peckinpah-esque page-turner? A celebration of national parks? Or both, with a new helping of Harry Potter to balance everything out? Here’s where to learn more. Donald Ray Pollock, The Heavenly Table Tattered Cover Colfax Avenue 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 27 2009…
Jennifer Ling Datchuk has always felt torn between two worlds. Growing up with a Chinese immigrant mother and a half-Russian, half-Irish father in Ohio after the family moved from Brooklyn, the 2016 Black Cube artist fellow says she’s always felt sort of like an imposter. “I had a really interesting…
