Arts & Culture

Author Jonathan Lethem created a huge fan base with the rich, imaginative fiction of Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude, books that catapulted him to the heights of the literati. But he let us down with You Don’t Love Me Yet, a hollow, ill-conceived, spare yet clunky paean to the…

The inmate who renamed himself after a Hollywood action star has been incarcerated for all but a few months of the past 34 years — thirty of them spent in solitary — having strategically attacked a succession of guards, attendants and fellow inmates to parlay his initial seven-year sentence for…

Halloween’s over, and you know what that means: The holiday shopping season is on. It’s time to start hitting the craft sales and markets, and one of the nicest around — the enormous Handweavers Guild of Boulder Fiber Art Show and Sale — can be found this week at the…

Denver’s large Latino population ensures plenty of Day of the Dead activities in these parts, but there are few as perfectly distilled as tonight’s Día de los Muertos Procession on Santa Fe Drive, which goes straight back to the root of the holiday that honors the dead in an upbeat…

Election day is right around the corner, and that’s downright spooky. That message will be taken to the hilt tonight when New Era Colorado and Deproduction/Denver Open Media host a volunteer Trick or Vote canvassing event, followed by a blowout Media Monster Halloween Bash at DOM Studios, 700 Kalamath Street…

Sleuths, grab your magnifying glass and a beer and get ready to solve Denver’s latest murder mystery. At today’s Murder on Broadway mystery scavenger hunt, you can bar-crawl on South Broadway while deducing whodunit. The interactive mystery begins with registration from 2 to 2:30 p.m. at 3 Kings Tavern, 60…

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science has more than its share of creative thinkers working behind the scenes, and astrobiologist David Grinspoon is most certainly one of them. An author, music lover, expansive scientist and all-around nice guy, Grinspoon is one of those folks who can plaster a big…

Fresh City Life’s big blowout bash Awful Things in Denver begins tomorrow at the Tivoli Turnhalle Opera House on the Auraria campus. The annual fundraiser raises money for the Denver Public Library’s adult cultural programming. But the fun starts tonight with a Bette Davis Bar Crawl, which kicks off at…

Genuine tequila is a remarkable product. Why? Blue agave. “It’s not like a grape or a field of wheat, where you’ll most likely get a crop every year,” explains Brian Selbitschka, bar manager at Boulder’s Zolo Southwestern Grill. No, the blue agave plant only reaches harvest maturity after eight to…

If you’re sick of being stuck in an orgy of candy and costumes, you should know that the origins of Halloween were about communicating with the dead. And today, those who want to get a little more spiritual oomph out of their Halloween can head to Isis Books & Gifts…

A haunted hotel didn’t work out so well for the Torrance family in The Shining, but local promoter Kevin Larson is sure guests will find his haunted hotel much more appealing than the Overlook. Larson is expecting about 2,500 people to attend his Haunted Hotel Colorado 2009 — billed as…

There’s no place more spooky on Halloween than a graveyard, particularly one like Denver’s historic Riverside Cemetery, which is one of the area’s oldest (and, let’s face it, slightly unkempt) boneyards and is full of famous dead people. But that’s especially true when some of those renowned residents — such…

Halloween weekend starts tonight with the one and only Buffy the Vampire Slayer, at the Buffy Sing-Along at City Chicks Food & Flicks, 138 Main Street in Lyons. Obviously, the classic musical episode “Once More, With Feeling,” which chronicles the gang’s struggle with the demon Sweet in a musical duel…

“Most people have come to realize that it doesn’t matter where you come from — everyone can honor their ancestors,” says Longmont Museum education curator Jill Overlie, who believes that the museum’s traditional Día de los Muertos Celebration has mass appeal. The family-friendly event centers around the museum’s current art…

This year’s sixteen-day JAAMM Festival (that’s short for Jewish Arts, Authors, Movies and Music) at the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture is just as JAAMM-packed as it sounds. The extraordinary cultural cornucopia will take off from its early origins as a festival of books and authors by not only…

Jen “Hurricane” Nordhem, Denver Bicycle Film Festival producer and former bike messenger and street racer, can easily find her way around what’s generally thought of as a man’s world. But when she entered her first criterium race, she realized that she’d never raced against women. So in an attempt to…

The freshly reunited Grateful Dead cover band One Kind Favor has decided to resurrect the Dead for one night only: Halloween, naturally. When One Kind Favor was playing regularly years ago, explains Swallow Hill’s Rudy Betancourt, “American Beauty was one of their warhorses. They’d play the entire album front to…

Even bands like to dress up for Halloween. Last October, Boulder funk outfit the Motet picked the Talking Heads as the inspiration for its annual string of tribute concerts — but this time around, the funk will be a bit less tidy. The Motet is taking on the music of…