Just like they play sports, most people play video games for fun. But also just like they play sports, some people play video games competitively, both professionally and in organized amateur leagues. Yes, really. All over the world, big-money tournaments take place constantly, offering the top gamers a chance to…
Koffi Toudji is a welcome,well-known face around Denver: He’s the founder of a traditional West African drum-and-dance ensemble, leader of Koffi Togo Vibe Band and a teacher and performer at the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble. But Toudji also arranges summer tours from the U.S. to his native Kpalimé in…
Summer is all about festivals: There’s no better way to get away for a day without ever leaving town. International fests take you to faraway places right in your own back yard, others celebrate ethnic cultures, urban enthusiasms, arts-and-crafts, the joy of eating or just being yourself in a judgmental…
There are big changes afoot at the Edge co-op, as several members have cycled out, leaving room for new ones. To inaugurate this latest era, Edge has mounted a good-looking group show that reveals some interesting new players. Conceptually Scattered: New Member Show — which is the neatest one-name-fits-all exhibition…
Charles Partridge Adams. Rocky Mountain Majesty: The Paintings of Charles Partridge Adams highlights the career of a prominent turn-of-the-nineteenth-century impressionist who lived and worked in Colorado for decades. Adams first came to Colorado in 1876, when he was only eighteen years old. He was self-taught, but worked informally in Denver…
God of Carnage. Let’s start with the setting, so pristine, white, minimal and tasteful — chairs with gracefully curving legs, a glass table on which art books are meticulously arranged, a vase of white tulips, nicely grouped, with just one flower swaying slightly out to the side. Even if you…
You’re either with Brit Marling or you’re against her. The 29-year-old blond filmmaker (who describes herself on Twitter as a tree climber/actor/writer/producer) catapulted out of obscurity in 2011 with two obfuscatory indies — Sound of My Voice and the mournful sci-fi drama Another Earth. Marling specializes in films about faith,…
It’s to the great detriment of The Kings of Summer that it follows the identically premised Mud by just weeks. Both films tell bittersweet coming-of-age stories about teenage friends who learn how to become men in a soon-to-be-corrupted Eden, and both are questionably embellished by a predictable teen romance, an…
Treating teenage growing pains with a sensitivity that frequently trips into singer-songwriter-ish mushiness, Tiger Eyes nonetheless stands as a respectable first cinematic adaptation of a Judy Blume novel. Directed and co-written by the author’s son, Lawrence, Blume’s tale follows fifteen-year-old Davey (Willa Holland, right) as she relocates, in the wake…
There was a time when many young people believed they could levitate the Pentagon by surrounding it, holding hands and chanting; dissuade a soldier from killing by placing a flower in the barrel of his gun; and put an end to war, corruption, racism, repression and pollution through nakedness, love-making…
George R. R. Martin took a break from killing Starks today to send us this list of the notes he would send to the producers of TV shows if he were put in charge of them. Here’s what he dashed off for us, in between shouting descriptions of imaginary feasts…
Superman is an idea. Okay, fine. Technically he’s an intellectual property—a set of data points slammed together by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the 1930s, sold for $130 to National Allied Publications (later DC Comics/TimeWarner), and subsequently transformed into a nugget of multivariously exploitable content that has netted entertainment…
Anyone trying to run a civilized country should know that throwing musicians in jail for making music is always a bad idea. That didn’t stop Vladimir Putin’s government from arresting three members of the punk collective Pussy Riot, after the group stormed the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the…
Eager young people can’t find jobs; qualified older people can’t find jobs. There’s nothing funny about that, which is exactly why someone ought to be making comedies about it. The Internship, in which downtrodden old-school salespeople Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson enter the 21st century and land internships at Google,…
Burlesque queen and pinup model Bettina May has always been into the vintage pinup look. “I do a really authentic 1940s-1950s style at shows, and I always got asked how I get that look,” she says. But since “you can’t really describe that” at a show, May launched Bettina May’s…
The Sie FilmCenter’s Hey Girl! series generally caters to women by combining a happy-hour shmooze with a slate of chick flicks. But tonight’s installment, happening — perhaps pointedly — in the wake of Denver Comic Con, targets a slightly narrower female special-interest group: women who also like comics. And movies…
Last week, EW columnist Mark Harris tweeted a statistic disturbing to anyone who cares about gender equality on the big screen: “It’s now been 61 days since the last wide release of a major studio movie starring a woman.” Unfortunately, that number will only increase—to 84 days—until Sandra Bullock and…
Judy Blume’s first novel, The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo, was published in 1969, yet it’s only now, 44 years later, that the first big-screen adaptation of her work—Tiger Eyes, based on 1981’s novel of the same name—finally opens in theaters. This is a disgrace. One can…
For artist Gemma Bayly, the mandala is a key to self-awareness that inspires an infinite mirroring of life energies, as tied to metaphysics as it is to quantum physics. The intricate, penciled mandalas featured in Bayly’s solo show Mirrors, which opens today at Hinterland Art Space, are evidence of this:…
The comedians performing in The Duel: An Improv Cagematch may not be fighting to the death, but they are fighting to stay alive into the next round of this improvisational showdown, which pits two comedy teams against each other every Saturday night at the Voodoo Comedy Playhouse. “Each team is…
Yes, there will be pro Halo players and fanatical Street Fighter fans jockeying for the top spots at today’s C3 Fighter Frenzy Campus Tour — but even if gamers only touch their PlayStations when it’s time to belt out “Don’t Stop Believin’” for Rock Band, they’ll find something to love…
First Class Fashionista maven Lonza Dennis had a personal stake in mind when she put together tonight’s Denver Paint the Runway at the Denver Art Society. “My two oldest daughters excelled in math,” she begins. “My youngest struggled throughout high school, but she was a talented artist. She had been…
