If St. Nick enjoys a choice malt beverage, he’ll be especially jolly when he rolls into town in a couple of weeks. Just in time for the holidays, microbrewers along the beer-blessed Front Range are breaking out their inspired seasonal brews, upping the ante on our state’s already rich rep…
For its holiday offering, LoDo’s Robischon Gallery has teamed up a pair of disparate shows that together give viewers some sense of the pluralism reigning at the end of this century. In the series of rooms that make up the gallery’s main space, including what is from time to time…
Near the end of Riverdance–The Show, there’s a brief yet moving scene that beautifully clarifies and unifies all thirteen of the Irish dance extravaganza’s far-flung episodes. To the bow-shredding accompaniment of a lone violinist, the fervent company of singers and dancers–who transport us to such outposts of the unofficial Irish…
Setting his huckster’s sights on no less a prize than the United States presidency, a slick-talking loudmouth unabashedly declares, “Truth is in the eye of the beholder or the mouth of the seller.” Before his TV-reporter girlfriend can convince him otherwise, the smooth operator embarks on an ambitious though clearly…
According to the sparse information available in standard reference books, Chilean expatriate director Ral Ruiz, still in his late fifties, has made more than a hundred films since 1960; apparently only fifty or so are features, but that’s still an impressive stat. He’s been a staple on the festival circuit…
In the rancid nightmare farce called Very Bad Things, Peter Berg, in his movie writing-directing debut, creates characters that you immediately want to see killed off. From the title to the ads to the Web site (which features a Vegas stripper who will dance just for you), Very Bad Things…
Since their first gig in Denver last spring, Jon-Paul Johnson & the 3rd Degree have made rapid-fire gains on the local circuit. The high-octane blues trio (guitarist Jon-Paul, brother/bassist Adam Johnson and drummer Jeff Hieatt) has opened for Dick Dale, George Thorogood, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and a handful of local…
In a season when people might as well carve reindeer into their Halloween pumpkins, beleaguered shoppers looking for unique gifts should head to places where they’ll never see a mall Santa. At the Denver Art Museum shop, posters and reproductions neatly coat the walls, and minimalistic household items such as…
It sounds like the plot of a made-for-the-holidays TV movie: Cowboys save Christmas for cancer-stricken youngsters. But in this case, it’s a real-life drama, one you can help resolve. Wild West re-enactors The Hole in the Wall Gang are seeking donations for the Candlelighters of Southern Colorado, a Colorado Springs…
In the expansive Hamilton Galleries on the first floor of the Denver Art Museum is a glorious show, Inventing the Southwest: The Fred Harvey Company and Native American Art, which highlights a dazzling array of American Indian art. The Fred Harvey Company was a hotel and restaurant chain in the…
What, exactly, constitutes our national character? Are we largely the sum of our popularly determined and time-tested beliefs? Or is our collective psyche a more mercurial interfusion of passionate and ephemeral desires? Before you get all centrist-minded and declare in your best chardonnay-sipping, Brie-nibbling way, “Why, a healthy mixture of…
A third of the way through Home Fries, you may begin wondering if the filmmakers haven’t outsmarted themselves. Overloaded with oddities but a bit short on horse sense, this is one of those stubbornly defiant, attitude-driven movies that’s so busy scrambling genres, breaking rules and dashing expectations on the road…
Surprise and pleasure come wrapped together in A Bug’s Life. This big adventure about tiny critters is the latest piece of robust whimsy from Pixar, the computer-animation studio that broke into features with the 1995 smash Toy Story. Toy Story opened up the secret lives of toys in suburban bedrooms;…
Here we go again. Enemy of the State is Fascism in America 1998, Chapter Four…or Five…or whatever we’re up to. It readily invites comparison to The Siege, but for better or worse, its goals are more mundane. While The Siege seems like an ideological agenda driving a film, Enemy of…
When you’re out holiday shopping this season and they ask, “Would you like that in a box?” say yes. Boxes this time of year can be packed with more than your average magic. Lined up in shop windows in Larimer Square and along the 16th Street Mall will be 47…
Thursday November 19 If you’re one of those insensitive types who thinks feeding the area’s hungry is a laughing matter, tonight you could actually be right. The Comedy Works is hosting another evening in its month-long Dennison’s Chili Stand-Up Comedy series, with a performance by Showtime favorite Robert Schimmel. Bring…
Long before Gene Autry paid tribute to life on the range, a different shade of cowpoke was singing out where the longhorn cattle fed. In post-Civil War America, one of every four trailblazers was African-American, and these generally unsung men and women played a vital role in settling the western…
Ron Judish Fine Arts, which opened just this past spring, has already distinguished itself as one of the city’s finest commercial galleries. But the current Judish show, Andres Serrano: A Survey, which sketches out the career of one of the nation’s most famous photographers, really puts the place on the…
Soon after Tennessee Williams finished writing his last great play, The Night of the Iguana, in 1961, America’s preeminent dramatic poet plunged into a severe decline marked by acute drug and alcohol dependency, extended periods of mental illness for which he was hospitalized, and macabre public appearances where he seemed…
For a touchy-feely play written at the beginning of America’s politically correct modern age, Michael Brady’s To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday is surprisingly humorous, delightfully risque and impishly entertaining. The romantic drama about a strong-willed widower’s long-running bout with mourning sickness is being presented by the Morrison Theatre in…
Even students of English history may have trouble sorting out the palace intrigues and intra-governmental conspiracies that fill Elizabeth, the handsome new production about Queen Elizabeth I’s ascension to the British throne in 1558. With the bewitching Australian actress Cate Blanchett (last year’s Oscar and Lucinda) in the title role,…
Holed up with his Sidney Bechet records, old flannel shirts and dog-eared copy of War and Peace, Woody Allen has made a second career of shunning fad, fashion and fame–and of ostensibly keeping to himself in the most populous city in the United States. No nouveau-grooveau glitz or designer drugs…
