The LIDA Project was named for a Soviet device that was supposedly capable of manipulating human brain-waves through the use of low-frequency radio, and for nearly two decades, this innovative theater company has offered productions that often incorporate technology in unusual ways. It latest effort is a modernized version of…
So you spent all your money buying your mom a nice present for Mother’s Day. Aww, how sweet! And your generosity will be rewarded with lots of opportunities to have fun in Denver this weekend that don’t require you to dig too deep in your wallet — everything from a…
Shayna Ferm, a prodigal Coloradan returned from years in the New York comedy scene, hosts and organizes a monthly show called Pump and Dump, designed to engage with young moms and provide a sorely needed evening of fun. Ferm, young mother herself, was frustrated by the lack of entertainment opportunities for new moms and created a show specifically suited to their unique needs. In so doing, she has not identified an underserved demographic, but brought cathartic laughs to many overstressed local mothers. I met with Ferm to discuss Pump and Dump, moving back to Denver and the Highlands mommy mafia.
You really don’t have to celebrate Mother’s Day like everyone else. Modern moms are an independent bunch, and they may not want to spend their big day knitting by the hearth or enjoying whatever stereotypical pastime they’re supposed to prefer. Moms just aren’t like that anymore. Following are five places…
What could a fresh coat of paint, live music and a comfortable place to enjoy a meal outdoors do for a block in your neighborhood? Residents of Five Points could find out this Saturday, May 11, when Denver’s second Better Block project focuses on the 2400 block of Welton Street…
#71: Lauri Lynnxe Murphy In Denver’s close-knit arts community, everyone knows Lauri Lynnxe Murphy. Even when she’s gone, as she was for a couple of years while she was earning a graduate degree in Ohio, she remains a force here. Murphy sometimes shrugs it off, asking, “Why me?” But while…
On the surface, Darren Aronofsky’s bleak masterpiece Requiem for a Dream, the screwball musical nun-comedy of Sister Act and a spaghetti Western from Thailand don’t have much in common. In the eyes of Denver Film Society programming director Keith Garcia, they all share one important trait: They’re good movies that…
Maria Bamford has long been a comedian of choice for those who enjoy offbeat humor grounded in absurdist, sharply observed character sketches. Over the last decade and a half, Bamford has raised her public profile with appearances on the Comedians of Comedy Tour, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!…
Dr. Charles “Baba Chuck” Davis founded DanceAfrica almost four decades ago as a unique celebration of Africa and its diaspora. For the next two weekends, DanceAfrica will partner for the third time with the forty-year-old Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble on DanceAfrica Denver, which will feature not just performances of…
Walker Fine Art is one of the largest galleries in Denver, which means it can accommodate a couple of solos and a group show and still have plenty of open space (not to mention the back room and the corridors). Right now, the enormous front section houses the solos: Gather,…
Ania Gola-Kumor. One of Colorado’s greatest abstract painters is the star of Ania Gola-Kumor: Moving Paint, at Sandra Phillips Gallery. These large oil paintings, along with small works on paper that were done in oil stick and oil bar, represent both a continuation of Gola-Kumor’s longstanding interests and a new…
Olivier Assayas’s gorgeous, freewheeling, semi-autobiographical Something in the Air is an ode to both youth’s universal qualities and the specifics of Assayas’s youth in particular. The picture opens in the suburbs just outside Paris in 1971, among a group of teenage students still energized by the explosive student and worker…
There’s a scene in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby in which Leonardo DiCaprio’s hyper-rich, super-awkward Jay Gatsby takes it upon himself to redecorate the bachelor pad of his less-prosperous friend, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire). Gatsby’s old flame, Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), is coming to Nick’s house for tea. Eager to…
Farm films blow up human drama to mythic, big-sky terms in which the world itself is represented by a character’s land, hard-earned and easily lost. Vast landscapes, both psychic and literal, are threatened by unstoppable outside forces. Like zombie movies, farm films are vast canvases for directors to project whatever…
If I were as intensely clever as playwright Itamar Moses, author of Bach at Leipzig, and as fond of intellectual games, I would write this review first as a review, then as an analysis of the forms of the review and the ways in which my piece of writing does…
In the course of reviewing movies in the early 2000s, just as computer-generated special effects were becoming radically sophisticated and were also, increasingly, becoming the chief selling point of big-ticket movies, I found myself more and more often invoking the name of Ray Harryhausen, who died on Tuesday, May 7,…
In his new film, the social drama At Any Price, director and co-writer Ramin Bahrani examines how the transformation of food into intellectual property through seed patents has corrupted, impoverished or dissolved the American family farm. As with the Iranian-American director’s previous films (Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo),…
Uwe Boll will no longer fight you — at least, not with his fists. Often lambasted by critics as the worst of the worst, Boll once literally got into the boxing ring with four film bloggers, but these days, he prefers to combat negative press with what he claims are…
All semester, students at the Colorado Film School have been writing, developing and producing their own original short films. Tonight they’ll unveil these projects to the public at the Spring 2013 Student Show, an opportunity to present their films in high resolution on the big screen. “The nicest thing is…
A young woman with a supernatural talent for finding things goes looking for trouble and discovers it in the form of a monstrous man who uses children for his own dark ends. This is the plot of Joe Hill’s new novel NOS4A2. The best-selling horror novelist’s third tale delves into…
Part biopic, part fabled rock tale, Greetings From Tim Buckley, opening tonight at the Sie FilmCenter, tells the story of the connection between the singer, who died in 1975 at the age of 28, and his son, Jeff Buckley, who never knew his famous father. Set in New York City,…
With her menagerie of voices and characters and keen insight into human psychology, comedian Maria Bamford has been a darling of fans of smart, eccentric humor since the early 1990s. Bamford began her career while in college, and her cartoonish portrayals of secretarial and temporary work, as well as glimpses…
