“Government officials often intrude on everyday choices that touch on drinking, smoking, moral matters and a bevy of other issues,” says David Harsanyi, who’ll speak tonight about his succinctly titled new book Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America Into a…
When Robert Frank developed his Wall Street Journal column “The Wealth Report” into the non-fiction book Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich, there was only one place for him to learn about serving the newly affluent: the Starkey International Institute of…
Kevin Larson is having a ball. After a six-year hiatus, Kevin Larson and a host of hip hosts have come together to throw the 2007 Platinum Ball, the town’s only black-tie gala geared toward thirty-somethings. The ball had disappeared along with Colorado’s economy, but over the past few years, that…
Twenty years ago, Verne Carlson was driving back to Colorado from South Dakota when he happened upon a tornado. He’d been driving beside what he thought was a “regular thunderstorm” when he saw the funnel cloud. “They’re just amazing to see,” he says. “When you’re up close to one, it’s…
A trip to Pittsburgh last weekend made me realize what an eccentric and wonderful city I once inhabited. Sure, it’s not high on the hipster scale, and people say things like yinz, and there are too many mullets, and the bar for good taste is, like, ankle-level with most cities…
Whether you ride a pimped-out Harley or drive a 1983 rusted Dodge, you’re invited to partake in Dogs, Hogs & Rods. It’s the second annual poker run/rally/car show to benefit Table Mountain Animal Center, and this year, organizers are throwing in a dog walk, too. During a traditional poker run,…
In case you were wondering whether the 39th annual Oktoberfest Denver celebration will be worth the price of parking, consider that the first three hours of the free, two-weekend festival (October 19-21 and 26-28) will feature beer-belly, pretzel-eating, chicken-dancing, keg-rolling and beer-pong competitions. Chew over the fact that the price…
Some of Academy-Award winning director Hayao Miyazaki’s early work comes to Colorado for the first time tonight when Anime Bento presents 1979’s Lupin the III: The Castle of Cagliostro at four metro-area theaters. Miyazaki rose to mainstream awareness with Spirited Away, the 2001 film that netted him an Oscar. Before…
In my opinion, the mark of a good artist is the ability to turn the ugly or the offensive, or even the commonplace, into something greater. Look at Warhol or Duchamp, or even Pryor. Yes, I’m talking about Richard Pryor — so pay attention. Remember that standup act where he’s…
While I’ve never been much of a fan of the elaborate updos seen at the Emmys and Oscars, there is definitely something to be said for the stars walking the red carpet with flowing, beautifully arranged, “natural” looking hair. However, whenever I try to achieve this look, my curly, frizziness-prone…
In the new Neil Jordan movie, Jodie Foster plays New York talk radio DJ Erica Bain, who survives a vicious Central Park mugging and becomes an urban crusader devoted to cleaning up the city — with a Glock instead of a broom. Yes, The Brave One is that movie: the…
This is a mockumentary, right?” I’ve been asked that question at least a dozen times since The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters made its bow at the Slamdance Film Festival in January. Quite simply, some folks just don’t believe that Seth Gordon’s film about two men vying for…
The Salton Sea is an ecological disaster, a man-made mistake that was supposed to become a resort to rival Palm Springs. Instead the sea has turned into a replacement wetlands refuge for sea birds whose habitats were consumed by such densely populated Southern California cities as San Diego and Los…
It’s pretty much a toss-up which I love more: gorging on cinema or getting up at noon. And so, on the first day of the Toronto International Film Festival, in lieu of contemplating Bela Tarr’s The Man From London, I lingered in my pajamas anticipating The Breakfast From Room Service…
Look at me,” Uncle Peck pleads to his young niece, the narrator-protagonist of How I Learned to Drive. “Listen to me.” And that’s just what she does. Deeply and over a period of years, she ponders her relationship with the uncle who first molested her when she was eleven, a…
From the moment you walk into the theater and see the topsy-turvy set, the central metaphor of Vote for Uncle Marty is obvious. And although the suggestion that we live in an upside-down world isn’t particularly original, the play certainly is, since it arises from the collaborative work of Buntport’s…
All in the Timing. David Ives’s six one-acts are all about language, communication and understanding, and also chance and fate. The dialogue is light and funny and fizzy, and it gets your frontal lobes buzzing as you attempt to catch and process all the flying puns, allusions, jokes, rhythms and…
Some people follow art as though it were a religion, and I’d include myself in that eccentric group. But I think it’s just a coincidence that onetime houses of worship so often wind up as art galleries. That’s the case with the church-then-synagogue that is the Emmanuel Gallery on the…
Clyfford Still Unveiled. A master and pioneer of mid-twentieth-century abstract expressionism, painter Clyfford Still was something of an eccentric in the artist-as-egomaniac stripe. His antisocial behavior led to a situation where 94 percent of his artworks remained together after he died — a staggeringly complete chronicle of his oeuvre that…
The Graduate: 40th Anniversary Edition (MGM) Fifteen years after its last home-video commemorative edition (extras from which appear here), The Graduate once more gets the bonus-laden makeover — and if ever a movie deserved its kudos, it’s Mike Nichols’ masterwork. That said, the movie is its own bonus; not since…
Andre Rieu: Live in New York (Denon) Away From Her (Lionsgate) Bones: Season Two (Fox) Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (HBO) Casper Meets Wendy: Family Fun Edition (Fox) Charmed: The Final Season (Paramount) DOA: Dead or Alive (Weinstein) Ever Again (Starz) Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes — Volume Two…
Typically, first-person shooters are a lot like virtual shooting galleries: Great fun, yes, but not exactly thought-provoking. So it’s nice when an FPS comes along that’s trying to be something more — and even better when it actually succeeds. Sometimes you know it in the first few minutes. Take Half-Life:…
