Artbeat

Space Gallery (765 Santa Fe Drive, 720-904-1088) usually has a group show, but right now there’s a group of shows — a pair of solos up front and a painting quartet in the back. First up is LuCong: Figurative Realism, which is hung in the north half of Space. The…

Oh, Brother!

The Paragon Theatre Company originally scheduled Michael Frayn’s Alphabetical Order as the last show of the 2002-’03 season. Instead, the company is showing a piece by David Sedaris and his sister, Amy, called The Book of Liz. I have no idea why Paragon’s plans changed, but as Hamlet so memorably…

For Love of the Game

He knows there are people, too many, who do not like him. He has to know. They’ve told him to his face–the studio executives who slice and snip the scenes he loves the most and suffer his outbursts for it, the directors he’s pushed out of the way so he…

Into the Sunset

Kevin Costner appeared in his first Western when he was thirty and looked to be in his early twenties. He was a slender, restless actor in Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado, the 1985 film in which Costner played the blithe brother of a somber Scott Glenn — all giggles and gunshots, a…

Le Fromage

Ah, Paris: City of Light, of Love, of Liver Damage and Lung Cancer. C’est formidable, non? Who in need of a posh vacation would turn down the opportunity to luxuriate in its finest hotels, stuff themselves with sumptuous snails and work on a terribly flat romantic drama called Le Divorce?…

Home Run

Every Christmas Eve, my family watches home movies from Christmases past, remembering fondly the year my brother thought he was Luke Skywalker and waved around his new light saber, or the time we built a windsurfer in the living room for my mother. But by far, everyone’s favorite is 1981’s…

This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks

Thursday, August 14 For the best combination of beats and bands in town, hip-hop over to the Universal Lending Pavilion (next to the Pepsi Center) for the two-day Sprite Liquid Mix Tour, a music festival mixing all sorts of grooves and roots on stage. Headliners N.E.R.D. (the live subsidiary of…

Spirit Signs

Xpstva in Vogue, Joseph Triscari’s exotic fashion photographs of his muse, Xpstva, is hanging in the very non-exotic back room of Stella’s Coffee House. But look closely at “Spirit and X at Jefferson Memorial.” Exactly what is streaking through the bottom left corner? Triscari says that blur is a ghost,…

Talking Shop

Boasting such lovely items as antique iron bed frames and a dark red Chinese wedding wardrobe, the new Paris Loft overflows with stylish furniture and trinkets to decorate everything from LoDo dens to suburban shelters. “Our focus is to offer affordable elegance,” says co-owner Maria Fair. “And things that are…

Up in the Air

SAT, 8/16 How’s your flash with triples? Can you chase the sun? If so, make your way to Fillmore Plaza in Cherry Creek at 11 a.m. today to register for the first Rocky Mountain Juggling Convention and Tournament. The contest officially begins at noon, and events will run until about…

Hurry Putter

SAT, 8/16 In the mini-world of miniature golf, there are courses with windmills, giant gorillas and zigzag downspouts. But none of these have the decorum of a regular golf course. For that, you’d have to visit a place like Go Putt!, at 9741 Park Meadows Drive in Lone Tree. The…

Comics Uncaged

THURS, 8/14 Laugh like a hyena this evening as the Third Annual Comedy Night cracks up the Denver Zoo. Hosted by Colorado comedian Kevin Fitzgerald, Animal Planet’s infamous Emergency Vet, the chucklefest promises to be more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Fitzgerald, a hunky featured favorite at the Comedy…

Ticket to Ride

FRI, 8/15 I remember the first (well, the only time) I saw Riders in the Sky, back in the ’80s. It was at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, where I actually had gone to see the other half of the double bill: Cheap Suit Serenaders, cartoonist Robert…

Jetsons in Jeffco

It’s hardly news that a multimillion-dollar house has been put up for sale in the suburbs of Denver. What makes this particular offering newsworthy, however, is that the big-ticket property in question is not a stucco monstrosity with a design that recalls some imaginary past (unlike most others of its…

Artbeat

Charles Deaton, the creator of the Sculptured House wasn’t the only local architect with a flair for the theatrical. James Sudler was one, also. Whereas Deaton was a self-taught high school graduate who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, Sudler was a bon vivant Yale grad — and one of…

Clean Scene

Joel Fink has brought a strong directorial hand and some judicious cutting to Cymbeline. The result is a clean, clear, very watchable production. It’s hard to classify this play as comedy or tragedy, but a self-assured cast makes sure you know when to laugh, when to shiver in empathy and…

Grabbing a Folk Tale

When Dario Fo won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1997, it was a bit of a shock in many quarters. The Italian writer considers himself a jester, and his plays are cheerfully but powerfully anarchic. He mocks authority, turns officialdom on its ear, unearths unpopular truths and speaks consistently…

True Feelings

Credit the quality of a superior educational system. Or the native wit of two quick thinkers with a gift for understanding the human animal. Or the power of happy collaboration. In any event, Lawless Heart, the second feature co-written and co-directed by young Brits Neil Hunter and Tom Hunsinger, is…

The Big-Bang Theory

Not to worry: Whenever summer machismo levels threaten to fall below mad-dog range, Hollywood invariably steps in to restore the status quo. Witness S.W.A.T. , a thoroughly unremarkable police action movie starring the magnetic Samuel L. Jackson as L.A.P.D. Sergeant Dan “Hondo” Harrelson, known affectionately to his men as “the…

Stupor Freak

The hormone-crazed teens who jam into the multiplexes this week to watch Freaky Friday will likely have no idea that this domestic fantasy about a fifteen-year-old girl who switches bodies with her mother for a day is the remake of a movie Disney released 25 years ago. They won’t know…

Flick Pick

For those who missed last year’s first run of the extraordinary French/Brazilian co-production City of God, here’s a second chance to taste, smell and feel the Cidade de Deus of the title — a 1960s-era housing project that, by the 1980s, had degenerated into the most violent slum in all…

Dead Heat

By August, it’s easy to become deathly sick of cultural festivals, street fairs and mountain-bike races. So if you’re dying for something new, drop in on Saturday’s lively Cemetery Skills Competition in the maintenance area of Mount Olivet Cemetery in Wheat Ridge. Inspired by the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Thomas…