The notoriously plotless musical comedy Head became an object of cult worship almost from the moment of its release, in 1968; with each passing year, it amuses people even more as a telling artifact of ’60s pop culture. What less could we expect of a movie that stars the made-for-TV…
Robert Lecher says he was born in Spain and grew up in a small town of 5,000 somewhere in the Nebraska heartland before eventually landing here in Denver as a traveling “I Love Dancing Country” workshop instructor. “But my mind,” he notes, “has always been in Hollywood and New York.”…
Thursday, June 17 There’s nothing quite like the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, four days of music, workshops and audience camaraderie at the top of the world, headlined by a seemingly endless roster of acoustic-music performers so delicious that it’s a sensual pleasure just to name them all. We won’t, but their…
The term “striptease” was once a feminist’s four-letter word. But the sass and sauce of the strip have been reclaimed by a younger generation that finds empowerment in the seductive art of burlesque. Among those diving into the rhinestone-encrusted revolution is burlesque betty Michelle Baldwin. The Denver native was originally…
TUES, 6/22 Watch out, Denverites: A new beast has roared into town. The Predator Ridge exhibit, modeled after the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya, opens today at the Denver Zoo. The eight-acre display, which comprises fourteen species of mammals, birds and reptiles, will house over fifty animals, including lions, spotted…
THURS, 6/17 Prepare for a wet and wild weekend at the 56th annual FIBArk Whitewater Festival, held on the mighty Arkansas River in Salida. The festivities get rolling today at 5:30 p.m. with the Bryan Dreher Pro Raft Race, followed by an opening party at Riverside Park, featuring live music…
FRI, 6/18 Last New Year’s Day, while the rest of us were watching Bowl games or trying to figure out where, exactly, we lost that tooth the night before, Emily Blong and Natalie Taylor were frolicking together on a dump truck in north Denver. Summoned to the strange locale by…
FRI, 6/18 At the beginning of Say Goodnight Gracie, comedian George Burns is in limbo. Caught between this world and the next, Burns is unable to reunite with his partner in love and work, Gracie Allen, until he gives the performance of his lifetime to none other than God. The…
For a long time, art done in the Western states during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was held in low regard. It suffered in comparison to both earlier Western art and art done in New York during the same time period. But things have started to change during…
Last summer, the ILK co-op all but disappeared, and for a long time, its space, just inside the main entrance of Pirate gallery, was not only closed, but boarded up. Then a new crew of members, headed by artist and writer Troy Briere, took over and began to present shows…
Abstractions on Paper. The current show at the city’s coziest little art shop, the Emil Nelson Gallery, is a fascinating group endeavor put together by director Hugo Anderson. The exhibit combines historic and contemporary works in the forms of watercolors, prints, drawings and photos by more than two dozen artists…
I enjoyed Tracy Shaffer Witherspoon’s Saints and Hysterics, currently being presented by the Paragon Theatre Company; I found myself for the most part interested and sometimes moved. But I’m not sure it holds together as a play. Genuinely original images alternate with a lot of picked-over feminist ideas, and the…
I was worried as I settled down to watch Born to Be Loud. I’d invited a 26-year-old friend along, and I couldn’t help noticing that the audience was rather, well, elderly. On weekends, the Heritage Square Music Hall audience includes people of many types and ages — young couples, families…
Alarms & Excursions. Alarms & Excursions is minor Michael Frayn, a series of comic finger pieces, but it can’t help bearing the master’s stamp. A group of eight playlets examines the role of technology in our lives and its impact on human communication. In the first, a friendly dinner is…
Beware the exclamation point. When found at the end of a title, it almost inevitably signals a level of self-hype rarely justified by the content of whatever it hopes to name. In the case of the movie Saved! — an amusing if facile comedy about a good Christian girl gone…
The real Melvin Van Peebles shows up just once in Baadasssss!, a fictionalized account of his making of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song in 1971, and it’s at the film’s end; he sits silent, grinning, clutching his ever-present cigar. But he’s all over this movie, in which his son Mario plays…
Devotees of the Boulder Outdoor Cinema all know the drill: You bring your own lawn chair. Or bean bag. Or yoga mat. If you’re strong and ambitious and think you might need a snooze, you bring your own couch. Whatever you choose to sit or lie upon, you get it…
Where do you like to eat in town? Do you have any siblings? What kind of activities are you into? Welcome to the awkward world of speed dating, where an age-old cliche holds true: You never get a second chance to make a first impression. That adage rules at Saturday’s…
Thursday, June 10 Colorado College grad and former Denverite Thaddeus Phillips has done wonders for the curious and unexplored field of one-man tap-dancing as performance art. His imaginative, autobiographical signature piece, Lost Soles, has been thrilling avant-theater audiences across the nation since its debut four years ago in Philadelphia. Apparently…
“I don’t know many people for whom writing novels is a moneymaking proposition, unless you’re someone like Stephen King,” says Richard Price, whose latest book, 2003’s Samaritan, is being released this month in paperback. “I doubt there are fifty novelists in the country who can live and support a family…
SAT, 6/12 Back in 1979, the art of home brewing was just a bit of foam with possibilities, relegated to the garages and basements of plebeian beer tinkerers in such forward-thinking towns as San Francisco, Seattle and Boulder, where fermenting experiments bubbled forth from primitive barrels and jugs. Most of…
SAT, 6/12 Driven by the slogan “A day in the saddle, a world of good,” more than 500 riders will strap on helmets and pedal toward progress at today’s fourth annual American Diabetes Association Tour de Cure bike race. “Not only have we seen a rise in awareness since we…
