Unclassifiable, expansive, and breathtaking, Holy Motors, the first feature-length film from Leos Carax since 1999, stars Denis Lavant, the simian, sinewy actor who played the lead in Carax’s first three movies, as a character named Oscar who inhabits nearly a dozen different personas over the course of a day. Steered…
An adaptation of George V. Higgins’s 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade, Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly anatomizes a self-policing underground economy of junkies, killers and administrators to indict a present-day mainstream world — the world into which the film is being released by Harvey Weinstein, heralded by misleadingly generic TV adverts…
Early in Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins with a sack of fat connecting chin to neck) walks the red carpet at the premiere of his 1959 chase film, North by Northwest. “You’re sixty years old!” shouts a reporter to the corpulent master of suspense, then nearing his…
J. B. Priestley was one of England’s most respected writers, turning out novels, essays, reviews and plays until the Angry Young Men of the 1950s — playwright John Osborne chief among them — arrived in a firestorm of fury, working-class rebellion and critical acclamation as the future of theater, and…
The staff at Boulder’s Neptune Mountaineering is encouraging winter revelers to break out their best retro ski duds for the shop’s second annual Winter Fashion Show Fundraiser and Retro Costume Party, which will benefit the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. “We’ll be working our way up through the ages of the…
For a decade and counting, the sport of tennis has been represented by Roger Federer’s emotionless face. But when the PowerShare Series Battle of Champions comes to the Pepsi Center, fans who yearn for the bygone days of John McEnroe’s furious tirades and Andre Agassi’s dazzling mullet will get their…
Sometimes overlooked by those chronicling the Beat Generation, Neal Cassady was the inspirational nucleus of what would become the counterculture movement, inspiring memorable literary characters like On the Road’s Dean Moriarty and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s Randle P. McMurphy, as well as crazed pop-culture intellectuals like Hunter S…
If you see Santa running through Highland in a Speedo today, don’t worry: You haven’t been dosed — nor, presumably, has the guy in the Speedo. He’s just one of the many revelers participating in the Denver Santa Speedo Dash. Squeeze into your skimpiest swimwear, strap on a Santa beard…
Now in its fifth official year, Fancy Tiger’s Holiday Handmade craft show has grown ever grander, having made itself comfortably at home at the ornate, balconied Sherman Street Event Center for the past three. A picture-perfect showcase for the metro area’s accomplished crafters, the carefully juried show is a delight…
From the Muppets to Mr. Magoo, Charles Dickens’s redemptive holiday tale, A Christmas Carol, has been adapted in many incarnations. But the WreckingBall Theater Lab and Band of Toughs musical spectacular Moulin Scrooge is perhaps the first to take Ebenezer Scrooge to a Parisian cabaret. Written by The Colbert Report’s…
Tired of all the carols, the shopping, the waiting in impossibly long lines for a picture with Santa? A refuge awaits at Comedy Works with Chuck Roy’s NAUGHTY (dirty) Holiday Show. “As comedians, we all work squeaky-clean shows during the holidays,” says Roy. “People at a company holiday party rarely…
What started out several decades ago as the Art for AIDS fundraiser has morphed into tonight’s Red Ball, a revamped take on creating awareness of the global AIDS crisis. Now in its fourth year, the Colorado AIDS Project’s fashion-forward benefit brings together twenty designers and more than a dozen salons…
Skulls have long been objects of fascination, serving as powerful symbols of the macabre and dangerous — not to mention being the second most important thing inside your head. Tonight, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science hosts Simon Winchester Presents Skulls, with the best-selling science writer on hand to…
Jewelry maker Melissa Borrell went big — really big — for her current show, tessellate, at PlatteForum Gallery, where the artist worked with youth for several weeks while completing her own installation (see more about the show at showandtelldenver.com). But her residency isn’t quite over: Tonight she’ll change directions a…
“It’s a night of giving and cannibalism.” That’s how Brad McHargue of Mile High Cinema, winner of the 2012 Westword Denver Web Award for best movie blog, likes to describe tonight’s Ravenous Food Drive and Raffle, which pairs a screening of the underrated cannibal flick Ravenous with a food drive…
Art can be appreciated in all shapes and sizes, and the Modest in Scale exhibition at Abecedarian Gallery is meant for appreciating art in one of its smallest forms: All 43 pieces on display are twelve inches or smaller in every dimension. “It’s a great show to have right before…
In this week’s review, Michael Paglia visits William Havu Gallery for the second installment of its Toy Stories exhibit — the first half of which came around in the summer of 2011. The group show features paintings, ceramic works and sculptures that are all inspired by toys — though not…
On November 25, Danny Cisneros set two (unofficial) world records for doing a handstand on his skateboard. He traveled .8 miles, nearly doubling the previous distance record, and was clocked going 35 miles per hour — establishing a speed record that had not yet been set. See also: – The…
Denver’s Sexy Pizza is considering going where no local pizza chain has gone before: into the comedy-club business. And it may not be all that much of a stretch, since people tend to like things that are both sexy and funny. After all, where there is deli luncheon meat, there…
Born and raised in Denver, Heather Dalton has long nurtured affection for one of the city’s proudest cultural alumni: Neal Cassady, the larger-than-life literary macho-muse who inspired the character of Dean Moriarty, hero of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. For the past several years, Dalton, a musician, filmmaker and producer…
Taking over City Hall for one night only this Friday, the Pancakes & Booze art show is exactly that — a showing of work by local artists combined with a smorgasbord of sweet treats and liquor. The traveling party originated in Los Angeles in 2009 and now makes a circuit…
Zombie lit has exploded in the past decade, with the undead menace making its way into everything from award-winning graphic novels (The Walking Dead) to mash-ups with the classics (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). It’s only natural, then, that the zombie is making its way into the corporate world through…
