Tidy little Montecarlo, Georgia, which is the setting for Jonathan Lynn’s The Fighting Temptations, is a perfect movie fantasy town. At the picturesque train station, the ticket agent will call you a taxi or serve you a plate of Southern-fried chicken. The house band at the local nightclub is dynamite;…
If your name ends in a vowel and your people came over in steerage a hundred years ago, you will almost certainly find yourself in the kitchen these days, wooden spoon in hand, plum tomatoes draining in the colander, thoughts drifting between sweet nostalgia and the malaise of indefinable loss…
Devotees of grim drama and great acting are in for a treat this Saturday, September 20, when the 1964 British classic The Pumpkin Eater screens at the Tattered Cover Free Film Series at the Starz FilmCenter. Adapted from a best-selling novel of the day by Penelope Mortimer, it features Anne…
Boulder’s Nomad Theatre delves into life’s origins and what happens after we die in tonight’s premiere of Darwin in the Dreamtime. Written by Boulderites David and Lila Sophia Tresemer, Darwin in the Dreamtime is the story of Charles Darwin’s fictional great-great-granddaughter, Sarah Darwin, as she lies on her deathbed pondering…
Thursday, September 18 CU-Boulder’s Artist Series gets started tonight when renowned classical guitarist Christopher Parkening teams up with baritone Jubilant Sykes for an evening of music by Piazzolla, Albéniz and Copland, as well as traditional spirituals. The 7:30 p.m. concert, held in Macky Auditorium, will be preceded at 6:45 p.m…
Vince Ku quietly excuses himself from his martial arts class, bows to the shrine of the three compatriot warriors to show his respect, then sprints upstairs to fetch the lion. Returning, he pulls a huge papier-mâché head from a canvas bag, hoists it above his shoulders and brings the animal…
SAT, 9/20 They will not go quietly, these little critters. Instead, Boulder’s prairie dogs — creatures with names such as Viktor the Victim and Prairie Home Protection — will hold their polyether-resin heads high at a final celebration tonight at 7 p.m. at the Odd Fellows Hall, 1543 Pearl Street…
THURS, 9/18 Bone-crushing tackles come as no surprise in a football game played without protective gear, and such action is at the black-and-blue heart of Aspen’s Ruggerfest 2003. The 36-year-old demolition derby, held every September in the Rockies, features the toughest rugby teams from across the country. The gathering’s a…
SAT, 9/20 It seems incredible that books are still subject to witch-hunts, but in the 21st century they most certainly are, particularly when it comes to literature written or recommended for children and young adults. According to the American Library Association, the ten most challenged books or series last year…
FRI, 9/19 You don’t have to be American to know about the Pony Express, but it’s a saga that Americans, particularly Westerners, all grew up with: Nary an oater has flashed upon the silver screen in the past hundred years without making some reference to the mid-nineteenth-century version of express…
SAT, 9/20 In pagan lore, the autumnal equinox, or Mabon, celebrates the harvest season in what amounts to an early precursor of the American Thanksgiving. In other words, when the shadows grow long and the sun dips low, it’s time to make merry and share abundance with others. Leave it…
It’s hardly news that Denver is a sports town — think of all the money the city has thrown at its professional sports teams in recent years — but this is something of an art town, too. Those of us in the visual arts march to a different drummer than…
The Camera Obscura Gallery (1309 Bannock Street, 303-623-4059) opened in the 1970s, making it the granddaddy of Colorado’s photo galleries. Its creator, octogenarian Hal Gould, a photographer and curator, is the granddaddy of local photo enthusiasts. Fifty years ago, even before he launched the gallery, Gould began to collect photos…
It’s hard for me to review Suddenly Hope, currently playing at the New Denver Civic Theatre. On the evening I attended, the auditorium was filled with people who looked and sounded like my New York aunts and uncles or my cousins from Israel. Also, the musical celebrates a concept of…
Four years later, the Columbine massacre (and school shootings elsewhere) leaves more questions unanswered than resolved, despite the relentless efforts of psychiatrists, social commentators of every political stripe and baffled law-enforcement officers to explain them. In his remarkable first feature film, Home Room, writer-director Paul F. Ryan declines to analyze…
Many observant Jews in Israel and America are outraged by writer-director Eitan Gorlin’s brash first feature, The Holy Land, and it’s easy to see why. It’s not every day you encounter a film about an uncertain rabbinical student who falls in love with a Russian prostitute — in the holy…
Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki is not just one of the world’s great fantasists; he’s one of the most painterly filmmakers alive, and a vivid thinker who revels in taking chances with moods and spells and narrative experiments. Princess Mononoke was the first Miyazaki film to enjoy great acclaim in America,…
“For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Albert Einstein said that, but Peter Barton lived it. And exactly a year ago, the legendary entrepreneur, sports enthusiast, rock-and-roll fan, husband and father of three escaped the boundaries of time altogether, dying…
Thursday, September 11 Local photographer Nanette Martin made five trips to Ground Zero between September 2001 and May 2002 to chronicle the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks. The result is a new photo memoir, The Thousand-Mile Stare: Images From Ground Zero, and a subsequent photography exhibit. Thirty-three black-and-white…
Karen Finley is in the middle of what she describes as a “star-studded week.” No longer fighting Jesse Helms and the National Endowment for the Arts “decency clause” in front of the Supreme Court, Finley’s overbooked calendar calls for performances with Lou Reed, a video shoot with Sonic Youth’s Kim…
SUN, 9/14 Soon You’ll hear a tune That’s gonna lift you out of your seat It could be sweeter But then the meter Was written especially for your feet — Irving Berlin, “Everybody Step” If the term “tea dance” evokes visions of grannies a-go-go shuffling their walkers to elevator music,…
SUN, 9/14 Chuck Trujillo raised a lot of eyebrows in the competitive running community four years ago when he announced plans for a regular Denver marathon. Plenty of these epics already clogged the fall calendar in places like New York, Chicago and even Minneapolis. But all of those places had…
