Maybe you’re not quite ready to quit that cushy office job for an adrenaline-powered, snowboard-punk stoner lifestyle, but after watching films included in the 33rd annual Banff Mountain Film Festival, you might feel like you could. The festival took place last November, but some of the top movies are now…
Food is one area of my life where I very rarely cut corners to fit a budget. Sure, I could poke through the discounted-produce bin at the supermarket — but why would I bring home an almost-wilted head of romaine lettuce when, for a few extra cents, I could have…
OBJECT Project is a traveling art exhibition featuring fifteen contemporary realists who all focused on the same five objects: a clear glass of water, a moth, a ball of string, a bone, and a mirror. The point was to see how each artist would interpret the five items, and the…
Like Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, Kate Hudson and Chris Robinson and that dude with the dreads from Counting Crows who dated every actress you’d ever heard of in the ’90s, Hollywood has always flirted with rock-and-roll stars. Add some fire to the flames at the Denver Film Society’s rock-and-roll-themed…
Long ago, before our kids were born, my wife and I used to pick a day in February to see all five movies nominated in that year’s Academy Awards Best Picture category. The hardest part was coordinating times and locations all over town, especially when one or two of the…
For 32 years, the Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute offered opportunities unique to the region: It provided female literary, performing and visual artists a breather from the real world to pursue creative ends, by offering one-year stipends and, in earlier times, studio space, to a handful of lucky applicants annually. Each…
Her lingering recovery after Hurricane Katrina ensures that New Orleans is never far from the nation’s collective mind. But as Boulder journalist and author Dan Baum notes on his website, “Hurricane Katrina is hardly the most interesting thing about New Orleans.” A city with deep roots, a lazy but enduring…
Black History Month couldn’t have a better spokeswoman than Awele Makeba, an award-winning actress/storyteller/educator who channels historic figures into learning experiences for all ages all over the nation…and the world. The vivacious Makeba engages all her talents in I’m Not Getting On Until Jim Crow Gets Off, a unique one-woman…
The Denver Public Library’s Fresh City Life program holds one of the most egalitarian fashion stances around. It promotes local designers at such events as the enormously successful Frock Out Denver and by sticking to the general view that everyone can enjoy fashion — not just the rich and famous…
Besides possessing a great name, San Diego quintet Goblin Cock has the brains to go along with its ballsy brawn. Led by former Pinback frontman Rob Crow, the band has all of the subtlety of a pitbull–and that’s exactly what makes the band a wonder to behold. Channeling everything that…
Marc Moline, creative director and park designer at Echo Mountain ski resort, has long been a fan of TransWorld Snowboarding’s annual Team Challenge, in which the world’s best riders don silly uniforms for a competition that is as much about style as it is about skill. “It always looked like…
There is little left to say about the singular Celine Dion that anyone who has ever been near a radio or TV set doesn’t know already. If you love her, you probably know all about her recent past, in which she held court in Las Vegas for five years. You…
An evening celebrating art and sensual stimulation, featuring the Westword Masterminds awards, fashion show, gourmet cuisine, live music and performances, art exhibits and more. Festivities begin at Vinyl and continue at 1144 Broadway and City Hall Amphitheatre; a portion of the proceeds benefit the Love Hope Strength Foundation. Sat., Feb…
Tyler McNally of the Denver Gaels says the local Irish sports club, which promotes the rarefied games of Irish Football and Hurling, is growing all the time. That, he notes, is because, more than anything, it’s purely authentic. “A lot of our members are the real thing – expatriates from…
The Carson van Straaten Gallery (760 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-8585, www.vanstraatengallery.com) is currently showcasing a paean to nature in the form of a strong solo, New Works by Lorey Hobbs, installed in the front spaces, and a handsome duet, Colorado Abstract: Homare Ikeda & Lorelei Schott, in the back. Hobbs,…
Damien Hirst. You’d have to be living under a rock — or have absolutely no interest in contemporary art — not to know that Damien Hirst is a superstar, and that everything he makes is worth millions of dollars apiece. The tight solo at MCA Denver (formerly known as the…
It doesn’t get more minimal than this: As You Like It performed by six people on a stage where the set consists of little besides a large rock, swaths of fabric and a wooden swing; echoing footsteps announce an actor’s entry minutes before he or she actually appears; and everyone…
Shakespeare’s Richard III is the quintessential story of power-lust, of a man willing to murder his relatives, betray his supporters and shed any amount of blood to acquire the crown of England. While Macbeth took us inside the villain’s psyche and made us understand both his craziness and his grief,…
Nothing But the Truth, the opening-night attraction for the Thursday, February 12, launch of the Boulder International Film Festival, is an old-fashioned Hollywood flick in the best sense of the term. The plot, about a reporter (Kate Beckinsale) who goes to jail à la New York Times lightning rod Judith…
The Confessions of a Shopaholic we need right now would be a handheld doc featuring former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain sobbing into the camera and begging the American public to forgive him for purchasing a $35,000 commode. With its curious release date — the film is meant to be…
Dusty and the Big Bad World. We all know about the Christian right’s attacks on textbooks, teachers, Halloween, the arts, public television and the words “happy holidays.” And we know what happened when these people finally got their very own president. Dusty and the Big Bad World is based on…
Global warming will, sooner than later, fry the planet; free-for-all globalization will decimate our common concepts of commerce; unchecked overpopulation and its voracious demand for resources will burden the earth beyond its capacity to renew. And that’s the good news. The bad is that America’s addiction to foreign oil is…
