I tried to watch English director Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels on video once, but I gave up after thirty minutes or so. Maybe there’s something about the combination of wretched and unlikable protagonists, aimless activity, a snickering approach to violence and lots of splattered blood that’s…
Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Hello, Mr. Hundert. If we can judge from the new Kevin Kline vehicle, The Emperor¹s Club, the notion remains alive (if not particularly well) that a self-sacrificing boarding-school teacher can enrich the lives of his students while subsisting in relative emotional misery himself — and that the…
The tragedy is that even those who should have known better didn’t know at all. How could they? The people whose names they sought weren’t listed; their contributions weren’t cited; their influences weren’t credited. So even those who spent hours and days and forevers wearing out the grooves in search…
After more than 400 books, countless TV documentaries and half a dozen movies, can the huge, untidy pile of dark speculations about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination support one more theory? Writer/director Neil Burger thinks so. Shot with a hand-held camera in jittery mock-doc style, Interview With the Assassin (opening…
Elyse Singleton has been supporting herself as a freelance writer for years. She’s had articles and columns in the Denver Post, the Miami Herald, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune and Westword. She’s done a lot of travel writing and also turned out pieces for women’s magazines. But all that time,…
Denver’s nomadic CityStageEnsemble could almost be counted among the city’s disenfranchised: After losing its permanent home a few years ago, the company founded by Dan Hiester and David Earl Jones went into hibernation. But now CityStage is back to pick up the pieces, with or without a venue. And if…
Now in its 22nd year, Boulder’s Imagination Makers Theater Company does something rare and wonderful for kids: It gives credibility to their own sweet, immature voices. Instead of force-feeding them drama created by adults who think they know what kids will like and understand, this troupe plucks its productions from…
Nothing announces the start of the snowriding season like Warren Miller’s annual late-fall film extravaganza, and this year is no exception. Storm, Miller’s 53rd adventure epic, takes moviegoers on screaming rides down vertical cliffs in our own back yards of Breckenridge, Aspen and Steamboat. It also ventures up the steep…
Who knew? Golden-based Fulcrum Publishing is the largest independent book house in Colorado, and its output includes hundreds of titles geared to readers in the West: From xeriscape gardening to hitting the trails, Fulcrum’s drawn a bead on Colorado interests without an ounce of help from the big publishing firms…
On the frigid night of November first, hundreds of art enthusiasts made their way to the opening of the Four Year Anniversary Show at the William Havu Gallery. The occasion, of course, was a celebration of the gallery’s fourth year in business. “We’ve never had an opening like it,” says…
The Soup Gallery (554 Santa Fe Drive, 720-946-2899) is run by artist Josh Bemelen in the space that was formerly the home of the ILK co-op. Sadly, ILK exists today only as ILK @ Pirate, where it started — and where, if rumors are to be believed, it will soon…
The Denver Center complex hummed with activity last Saturday night. On the streets outside, cars circled aimlessly around the full parking structure. In the Buell, Tony Curtis maundered onto the stage in Some Like It Hot, and a stage away, playwright Martin McDonagh’s mean-spirited brothers tormented each other in The…
So, you wish to know if Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is as good as the first Harry Potter movie? Is it as charming, visually gratifying and faithful to filthy-rich author J.K. Rowling’s inescapable books? Well, that’d be “yep” times four, as it’s definitely an enchanting spectacular for…
The current TV ad campaign for the sleeper hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding plays cleverly on the film’s cross-cultural appeal by substituting the words “Italian,” “Jewish” and “Russian” for “Greek.” The implication: A person from any ethnic or religious background will relate to this story’s characters, drama and humor…
Movie buffs who are in the mood for a little blood, deceit and darkness need look no further than this week’s second annual Longmont Film Festival, which presents three film noir classics Thursday and Friday at the Longmont Performing Arts Center, 513 Main Street. At 7 p.m. Thursday, Colorado Public…
As candles burn brightly along the wall at the Funky Buddha Lounge on a chilly Tuesday evening, the conversations below revolve around Bill Kinsey’s creepy, crawly 3-D bug masks hanging in each of the venue’s booths. Not exactly your style? Don’t worry: Next week’s feature will be Sumi ink sketches…
Faithful followers of Sex in the City must suspend their belief in return for the emotional paydirt: Though adorable Sarah Jessica Parker and her licentious single cohorts flounce their way through various escapades of the heart (and other body parts) each week, the comedy always seems to come to roost…
When I was a little girl, my grandfather had a train table. Somehow, though, the word “table” doesn’t do it justice: The site was an entire miniature town and took up more than half the basement. This fantasy place had a lake that was dotted with sailboats in summertime, a…
Eric Saperston certainly isn’t the first person to ever climb into a vintage VW bus with his dog to follow the Grateful Dead on tour. But the upshot of his travels, which began in 1993 and continued for seven amazing years, turned out to be a different story altogether –…
The fall/winter show at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art, POPjack: Warhol to Murakami, is a thoughtful and thought-provoking survey of the interrelationships between the American art of the 1960s and ’70s and Japanese and American art from the last five years. The compelling exhibit is highly unusual, even if the…
Spark Gallery, the city’s oldest co-op, is hosting a pair of intelligent and complementary solo shows, Sue Simon: How Many? and Foci: Photographs by Barbara Carpenter. Simon, a former scientific illustrator, has created a group of abstract paintings that vary widely in appearance even though they are apparently all part…
I must admit, I don’t see the point of Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West, a play about a pair of hateful and hate-filled brothers, set in a bleak Irish village called Leenane (this is the third of a trilogy of plays set in this place). One of the brothers, Coleman…
