What’s better than celebrating Festivus? Celebrating Festivus with four consecutive days of indie films — and getting lubed on bourbon while you’re doing it. Among the highlights of the fifth annual Festivus Film Festival is the world premiere of the Dante’s Inferno-inspired horror film Lilith, along with a Q&A session…
“A third of all cowboys were black,” says Nickolas Ridley, curator for the Black American West Museum in Denver. “And a black cowboy, Bill Pickett, actually taught Roy Rogers how to do rope work.” But at the 2012 Martin Luther King Jr. African American Heritage Rodeo of Champions, taking place…
As if the Republican primaries leading up to this year’s presidential election weren’t quite farcical enough, longtime Westword contributor and cultural critic Jason Heller has ripped William Howard Taft from the last day of his presidency in 1913 and sent him Rip Van Winkling headlong into the 21st century in…
In the spirit of Grease, High School Musical, Glee and, well, Bring It On the movie, it was only a matter of time before someone staged a musical about cheerleaders. The feel-good, high-energy tone of the film translates perfectly to Bring It On: The Musical, a show put together by…
Some movies are more difficult than others; Wild Strawberries — as well as just about any Ingmar Bergman flick — definitely qualifies. And though this complex film, in which an elderly widower re-evaluates his life through a series of hitchhiker encounters, ends well, it’s also a kind of unfolding psychoanalysis…
You might say curator Petra Sertis of the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art went a little bit out on a limb for her fall exhibitions, which feature a trio of very young regional artists whose previous exposure has been primarily underground. “All three of these artists had already caught my…
When Niza Knoll saw Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” during a visit to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, she was awestruck. “When you study art history in school, you see all the slides, but when you see the original piece, it’s a whole different thing,” she says. The iconic…
The sad-eyed ladies of tattoo artist and painter Sandi Calistro have a compelling way of staring you down, whether they’re inked into the skin or slapped on a wall. Calistro says they’re born from the “heartbreaking experiences” we’ve all been through — which explains why they stay with you for…
Terminal Kings, a new art project commissioned by the Denver International Airport’s Art and Culture Program, is taking off this week, as world-class street artists Sam Flores, David Choe and Highraff work on giant murals — each 100’x8′, painted in panels — that will be used as construction barricades at…
Celebrity fashion icons usually get the credit for their style. When women go to the salon holding a picture of their favorite ‘do, they’re rarely focused on who’s behind the look. Ever Good, a makeup artist and hairstylist at Matthew Morris Salon (the same Matthew Morris who placed third in…
First came the 1940s WWII-Era Ball, which has been transporting revelers back to the time of big bands and brave boys in uniform since 2009. Then there was the Big Band Christmas Ball, a sentimental throwback to the holiday season that started in 2010. And now organizer and vintage enthusiast…
The fully functioning home in which Glenn Grassi is standing in isn’t much larger than his bedroom was that time he joined the circus. It is significantly smaller than the sets he made and won national awards for during the two decades he spent in theater. It is smaller, even,…
Virtually any time a guy has three hot, wild girls in his apartment, he’s dreaming. And yet that’s exactly how a Colorado State University student feels after finding out that he and his business partners are headed to the Super Bowl to compete for $1 million…
Colorado Springs artist Sean O’Meallie and the Business of Art Center put on a once-in-a-lifetime show last October, when they brought the Manitou Chair Project — a 600-chair conga line down the middle of the main drag in Manitou Springs at sunrise — to fruition. We liked it so much…
In a tradition that officially dates back to 1906, and unofficially to the early days of ranching in the West, the National Western Stock Show is in town. And the annual event celebrates a lot more than funnel cakes and cowboy boots. On Monday, Show and Tell asked readers whether…
Denver artist Monique Crine is known as much for her photos as she is for her remarkably accomplished photo-realist paintings. She doesn’t feel, as might be assumed, that her work is based solely in photography, however. It also comes out of the moving-picture tradition, she says, especially classic films. This…
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…
The first ten minutes of Pariah — Dee Rees’s funny, moving, nuanced and impeccably acted first feature, in which coming of age and coming out are inseparable — sharply reveal the conflicts that seventeen-year-old Alike (Adepero Oduye) faces. Riding the bus back to her Fort Greene, Brooklyn, home after a…
A holy hot mess of the sacred and the inane, Joyful Noise, about a small-town Southern gospel choir, lifts from Usher’s “Yeah!” to give us this inspirational lyric: “Now God and I are the best of homies.” The film is Jesus for Gleeks — no surprise, since writer-director Todd Graff’s…
Belgians and Greeks do it, Nice young men who sell antiques do it Let’s do it. Let’s fall in love. The Brontes felt that they must do it, Ernest Hemingway could just do it Let’s do it. Let’s fall in love. Tennessee Williams, self taught, does it, Kinsey with a…
Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s hit play, Carnage, stars Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet as two sets of Brooklyn parents whose social, economic and philosophical differences are leveled in less than eighty minutes by their pettiness and immaturity. Posh pair Alan and Nancy (Waltz…
If you’re on a bike ride on the South Platte trail and you see the below wheat paste, what do you do? Naturally, you post that on reddit. Found by reddit user missjenviolin, it can be seen on the “South Platte trail near Mile High and Elitch’s. There is a…
