If you’re a parent trying to teach your sullen teenage kids that movies with subtitles aren’t all bad, take them to see Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor). Like Christophe Gans’s The Brotherhood of the Wolf or Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it’s a foreign-language film that proves that geekdom observes…
The world premiere of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party at the Toronto International Film Festival last September had the vibe of a sold-out concert — all those spotlights beaming to and fro in front of a venerable old theater, all that pushing and shoving for the best seats, all those celebs…
Didn’t Richard Donner retire? A 1980s star-director name, among many, that should now send bolts of discouraging dread down your spine, Richard Donner may well be seeing his filmmaking skills peak with 16 Blocks — even if saying it’s his best, least flatulent, most efficient film is tantamount to saying…
What do little girls want? If we are to follow the emotional heart of Aquamarine, a new film about two thirteen-year-olds who help a runaway mermaid fall in love, the answer isŠbling. Hailey (Joanna “JoJo” Levesque, pretty much a Lindsay Lohan ringer) and Claire (Emma Roberts) are best friends in…
Financed on a budget of just $500,000 (by San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos) and produced by a skeleton crew of four young filmmakers, a new World War II documentary called The 11th Day is earning attention and provoking amazement as it quietly makes its way around the country without…
In the late 1960s and through the 1970s, there arose what has come to be called the “art of identity.” This genre was — and is — art by members of identifiable groups trying to explicate their specific and peculiar struggles for social justice and equality. To call something “art…
In the western half of Spark Gallery (900 Santa Fe Drive, 720-889-2200) is ADVENTURES, a solo of strange sculptures by Lydia Brokaw-Nelson. Some are fairly interesting — such as the one of a log with its bark removed in a continuous piece — but others, including the dress made of…
Abstract Symbols. No sooner had Tracy Felix taken down his show at the William Havu Gallery than Sushe Felix, his wife, put up her own, a major exhibit with some three dozen paintings. The show has an epic-length title — Abstract Symbols From Nature and the Unconscious, new paintings by…
As the Bush administration moves America toward a permanent state of war against an undefined and therefore unconquerable enemy — war that is leaching the country’s coffers, grinding up young soldiers, causing suffering overseas and enriching the president’s cronies — it’s good to hear the cynical, angry voice of Bertolt…
A Delicate Balance. The setting is the living room of Tobias and Agnes, a wealthy East Coast couple, and the play is a twisted descendant of the classic drawing-room comedy, although no one is likely to enter from the garden holding a racket and crying, “Tennis, anyone?” Edward Albee uses…
Walk the Line (Fox) No matter what a junkie does with his spare time — say, redefine country music, or forge one of history’s most enduring personas — movies about junkies are a drag to watch. So it’s too bad this Johnny Cash biopic is a by-the-numbers fall-and-redemption tale. A…
Annie Duke’s Conquering Online Poker (Big Vision) The Avengers: The Complete Emma Peel Megaset (A&E) Battle’s Poison Cloud (Cinema Libre) Bleak House (BBC Warner) Camara Oscura (Warner Bros.) Charmed: The Complete Fourth Season (Paramount) Death Tunnel (Sony) The Hobart Shakespeareans (Docurama) The Ice Harvest (MCA) The Lords of Discipline (Paramount)…
Last fall, Microsoft hyped its pricey Xbox 360 by promising to reinvent gaming as we know it. The blockbuster “next generation” titles were supposed to harness the machine’s awesome power to deliver high-definition graphics and impossibly realistic action. But a funny thing happened on the way to the future. The…
Standup comedy hasn’t evolved much since the glory days of ventriloquist and puppet. Every so often, there’s a Gallagher smashing watermelons or a musical funnyman like Jack Black, but for the most part, comedy is a dude on a stage with a microphone, plodding through a joke-punchline-new-joke routine. Boring! Well,…
It’s not easy being a local playwright. David McClinton and Karl Kopp (the well-known minister of Denver’s First Divine Science Church, who died in October), both veterans of the 2004 Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region, reached this dire conclusion when they noticed that last year’s showcase replay featured only…
This weekend’s Sex and So Much More Show at the Colorado Convention Center just isn’t getting the kind of attention that a sexpo featuring porno bigwigs Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson deserves. For one, Focus on the Family hasn’t gotten involved, but things would sure be a lot more interesting…
“I feel as if the Denver dance-music culture is one of the strongest in the entire nation,” says Ryan Dykstra, the man behind Ryan Dykstra Nightlife and the event promoter of 2K6, today’s mind-blowing conglomeration of the hottest names in electronic music. “It’s a very loyal following.” For this special…
Unless smiled upon by the pooh-bahs of PBS or the lords of cable, the makers of most short films are doomed to obscurity — at least in this country. Even the lucky ones can expect little more than a hard-earned glimpse at the odd film festival, followed by orphanhood. Thank…
If you have any awareness at all of the existence of Running Scared — no, not the Gregory Hines/Billy Crystal cop buddy comedy, but the new film written and directed by Wayne Kramer — chances are you have but one question: How in God’s name does anyone expect us to…
For a while there, Mel Brooks made a fine career out of satirizing Hollywood itself, taking dead aim at Alfred Hitchcock suspense thrillers, classic Westerns and, most hilariously, the Frankenstein franchise. Spaceballs, released in 1987, arrived just in time for the tenth anniversary of the first Star Wars blockbuster. If…
Cydney Payton, director of Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art, is very adept at keeping all the balls in the air. I really don’t know how she does it without going stark raving mad, but I admire her for it. With only a skeleton staff at the museum, she practically runs…
Sandy Sardella’s swank Pismo Fine Art Glass (2770 East Second Avenue, 303-333-2879) in Cherry Creek North is unique among Denver galleries because of its specialty. With an exhibition space as nice as any around, Sardella is able to give glass artists the same opportunity for proper exhibitions as is ordinarily…
