For many, New Year’s Day is the unofficial closing of the holiday season — the last hurrah before school and work recommence. Since it’s a federal holiday, a lot of places close down, but there’s still plenty to do, and we’ve compiled a list of interactive museum exhibits, restorative yoga…
In 2013, we’ve gone to Paris at the Denver Art Museum and invited the rest of the world in for the city’s second Biennial of the Americas, visited galleries in garages and warehouses, and found unexpected art wheat-pasted on brick walls, projected from LED screens and gracing billboards. To be…
Ice sits in the bottom of glasses, decorates parties in elaborate formations, makes snowy Colorado roads slick in the winter. It also forms glittery structures, one of which stands tall at Breckenridge Riverwalk Center, on West Adams Avenue. The ice castle opened on December 26 there — just the third…
If you resolve not to go into debt in the new year, you’ll want to take advantage of some of the free activities in town this week. From fireworks to an art opening to a free screening of Love Actually, you can go out in Denver over the next few…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we’ll be looking at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. Newbie artist Maggie Osterbauer of Wet Paint Designs is currently carving out…
Since some people just can’t wait for Christmas to be over, 3 Kings threw open its doors on December 25 for the annual F%CK Xmas! celebration, a night of anti-holiday carousing with PBRs and the lovely ladies of Ooh La La. Photographer Brandon Marshall joined in the fun, snapping these…
Eight of the top ten finishers in Vail Resorts’ Epic Race to Ski the World — at all 26 resorts covered by the Epic Pass — are from right here in Colorado, including winners Nick and Scott Annis. Their prize? Lifetime Epic Passes that they’re sure to put to good…
Before you run out to see one of the several movies opening on this Christmas Day 2013, listen to this very special Voice Film Club podcast: Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl runs point while Voice film critic Stephanie Zacharek and L.A. Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson run down their top…
If your wallet is still suffering after extravagant present purchasing, don’t worry. We may not be able to help you pay the rent, but we can help you enjoy the weekend in Denver with our list of ten things to do that each cost less than $10 — from comedy…
Boulder Outdoor Cinema may have temporarily moved indoors, but that doesn’t mean the unsympathetic winter chill is keeping audiences from enjoying some heart-warming cinema. After a killer lineup of holiday films like Elf, A Christmas Story and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, this free-of-charge series will round out its holiday theme…
Christmas is all about traditions, sure, but MCA Denver’s Black Sheep Fridays introduced a new holiday custom: decorating anatomically correct dirty cookies and making sparkly pasties pretty enough to adorn an adults-only Christmas tree — or something else. Photographer Ken Hamblin III shot the action as pastie-making expert and burlesque…
Bucket lists, by their very nature, are a celebration of the ephemeral – a wish list of fleeting activities to experience before the mortal coil goes into a death spiral. The
following experiences,however, are united by a sense of enduring history, of continuing traditions that will persist past the expiration dates of our own lives.
I’ve been at Westword for a long time, and during that two-decade stretch, my job description has changed and morphed. But in the present, I’m enjoying a renaissance of pure, unabashed fandom. This professional pastime reached a pinnacle for me in 2013 as I curated the 100 Colorado Creatives blog…
Reading is about more than following a narrative or learning facts; it can also be a profound shared experience that culminates in a better understanding of ourselves and each other. In that spirit, welcome to the Westword Book Club, a weekly feature celebrating the books that inspire Denver artists.
The clock is ticking on 2013. In less than a week, we’ll be closing the door on yet another trip around the sun, and embracing the greatest of all arbitrary calendar events, the new year. That means it’s time for that greatest of arbitrary life events: resolutions! No new year…
Kathleen Hanna is not a name that may be well known to the mainstream masses — but as feminist, musician, activist, zine-maker and cofounder of the riot grrrl movement, she’s been a key figure in underground culture for decades. Regularly misrepresented — and often not acknowledged at all — in…
In honor of tonight’s event, Westword revisited the filmography of John Cusack and hand-picked his most definitively Cusackian roles. These movies are each thoroughly entertaining on their own merits, but together they illuminate the precise nature of Cusack’s appeal. Old-school Cusack fans may notice the conspicuous absence of his broader 80s comedies. Unlike the man himself, Cusack movies like Better Off Dead have aged very poorly. 1985’s The Sure Thing is a film that, like promise rings and the music of Rush, is strictly intended to entertain virgins. True fans can hardly begrudge this list however, as it covers every shade of Cusack, and includes a legitimate masterpiece, two beloved cult classics, a half-forgotten potboiler that deserves a critical reappraisal, and a movie that features what is arguably the best boyfriend of cinema history in its ranks.
While their Christian brethren gathered in churches and around the tree with family and friends on Christmas Eve, Denver’s young professional Jewish community came out to party at Heebonism 2013, which also served as the first big event to show off the newly renovated and renamed 1UP Colfax. Photographer Brandon…
Live music and film are strange bedfellows in the modern age, but it wasn’t always so. In the silent era, a live accompaniment was standard practice for all films. Local musician and filmmaker Paul Buscarello is resurrecting that long-gone experience with a performance of his new, original score for the…
Clark Richert. In the few years it’s been in business, Gildar Gallery has mostly showcased young and up-and-coming artists, but with Dimension and Symmetry: Clark Richert, the intimate space on Broadway has moved to Denver’s big time, as Richert is among the best-known artists in the state. The show comes…
In the twenty years since Reality Bites, his directorial debut, Ben Stiller has metastasized from sketch-comedy lunatic to Generation X darling to blockbuster king. Among the funnymen, most of whom have calcified into cliques (yawn, Anchorman 2), he’s the last of the triple-threat writer-director-stars, and the only one who would…
Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is the kind of movie directors make when they wield money, power, and a not inconsiderable degree of arrogance. Sprawling and extravagant, it revels in all manner of excess, including sexual debauchery, hearty abuse of liquor and quaaludes, even dwarf-tossing. Its antihero, the…
