Science fiction isn’t for everyone. But those who get it really get it. “Comics and sci-fi are the new archetypes of our culture; we relate to Star Wars and Stan Lee’s characters, and we’ve created new mythologies through them,” says Dan Landes, restaurateur and self-confessed sci-fi geek. And this Friday,…
It’s pretend summer in Colorado! You know, that time of year (read: every single month) when it gets up to 80-plus degrees for a few days, long enough to make you forget that it’s probably going to still snow-out your cousin’s wedding in June? Last week, when we experienced one…
After racking up awards — Nebula and Hugo honors for Best Novel — for his debut novel The Windup Girl in 2009, Paulo Bacigalupi followed up with Ship Breaker, set in an equally dismal, dystopian future, and won another round of awards, including a National Book Award nomination and a…
When Tejano director Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi came out in the early ’90s, we’d never seen anything quite like it, though the idea of an edgy, comic Western certainly had precursors, including the piquant Cat Ballou. But El Mariachi, famously — and remarkably — made on a $7,000 budget, is…
Not enough history for you in History Colorado? Did you want more context in the exhibit devoted to the Sand Creek Massacre? That was one of the complaints in the New York Times piece on the new facility — which echoed some of Michael Paglia’s criticisms of History Colorado. There…
The American West as a topic first appeared on the stage of international consciousness in the late nineteenth century, when painters and photographers stumbled on the Rockies, the Sierras, the deserts, the forests, the canyons, the herds of buffalo and elk, the indigenous people and the new settlers. Their images…
The Drowsy Chaperone. The role of the Man in the Chair is the spine for The Drowsy Chaperone, and the primary reason that this lighthearted, inconsequential and very silly show is so much fun to watch: Without him, it would just float off into the ether. But with him, we’re…
As she prepares for a dinner party and fields rude dismissals from her two spoiled sons, journalist Anne (Juliette Binoche) thinks back on her probing interviews for a just-filed French Elle profile of two student-prostitutes who cater to a rich “bored husband” clientele. That entering this line of work was…
At the start of Joss Whedon’s long-awaited Marvel superhero supergroup flick, The Avengers, the Tesseract — a powerful, potentially dangerous glowing cube that fell to the ocean floor after Captain America (Chris Evans) liberated it from the Nazis in his movie last summer — is in the hands of NASA…
Some years ago, writer-actor Luciann Lajoie found herself alone and at loose ends, so she decided to try Internet dating. In Date, seated in what looks like a pretty bare apartment, wearing blue jeans with a hole in the knee, empty chip bags on the table beside her laptop along…
Clyfford Still. For the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, founding director Dean Sobel has installed a career survey of the great artist. Clyfford Still: Inaugural Exhibition starts with the artist’s realist self-portrait and features his remarkable post-impressionist works from the 1920s. Next are Still’s works from the ’30s, with…
Over the weekend, director Skip Armstrong and the Carbondale-based Forge Motion Pictures crew premiered Nomad and The Mother at the 5Point Film Festival in Carbondale. The films are the first in a planned five-part web series titled Of Souls+Water, profiling five different people whose lives revolve around water; the series…
Denver Comic Con is pulling out all of the stops this year with many impressive guest speakers, including the just-announced appearances of three of the stars of AMC’s The Walking Dead. Lauren Cohan, Steven Yeun and Chandler Riggs — who play Maggie Green, Glenn and Carl Grimes respectively — will…
The Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown and Gameroom Expo went down over the weekend, with more than 100 pinball machines and arcade games available — no quarters required. (Attendees paid a flat fee.) “We had about 1,800 people,” says organizer Daniel Nikolich. “I think it went great, we had a lot…
This weekend the New York Times published a review of the new History Colorado Center, which started in a very New York-centric way: An East Coast visitor’s first reaction, provincially enough, has to be skepticism: does Colorado even have that much history?…
The Joy Luck Club, the new production at the Vintage Theatre’s new home, weaves a tapestry of relationships, memories and tragedies in its depiction of Chinese and Chinese-American women…
Friday night’s installment of Feminism & Co., the third in this season’s series at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, was titled simply “Funny Women.” But as the MCA has shown itself to be very good at doing, the museum had booked an expert in the field of funny: comedian…
You can’t take apart the LEGO sculptures at LEGO Kids Fest. I know, because I tried: Turns out the pieces are all glued together, presumably to protect them from assholes like me. Still, that’s about the only thing you can’t do at LEGO Kids Fest (held over the weekend at…
The South Pearl Street boutique 5 Green Boxes, the recipient of Westword Best of Denver kudos for its wonderful window displays, has long carried the socially conscious brand Toms Shoes, the comfy cloth footwear that comes in a rainbow of colors and designs. And there’s an inner beauty to Toms,…
The criticism of Michael Paglia’s review of the History Colorado Center, and his subsequent suggestions for “Ten shows the History Colorado Center should have opened with,” are getting pretty colorful. Says Guest: I don’t understand why you don’t just open your own musuem! I’m quite irritated that you are discounting…
Banking on a “shuffle generation” that will listen to anything that’s good, Colorado Symphony Orchestra resident conductor Scott O’Neil is shooting to shuffle preconceptions of classical music tonight…and attract a new audience that will keep coming back for more. And so “Shuffle” features O’Neil’s favorite pieces that he says are…
Whether you’re an indoor- or outdoor-lover, a literature-aficionado or a film geek, this weekend is packed with something for everyone — from a screening of His Royal Badness’s 1984 classic Purple Rain to free admission at National Parks. And everything in our roundup is under $10! For a full calendar…
