It’s a good sign when you hear people laughing in the parking lot after a comedy and describing their favorite moments to each other, complete with crazy gestures. In its second week of a now-extended run, The Foreigner was still filling the comfortably worn auditorium of the John Hand Theater…
The death of Amy Winehouse, in July 2011, at age 27, was one of the first great tragedies of 21st-century pop music, an event — like the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Kurt Cobain in the last decade of the twentieth — that emphasized the jarring contrast between the fragility…
Dana Nachman’s Batkid Begins marches in with the mini-movie you’ve already seen. (Unless, as Bruce Wayne suffered in The Dark Knight Rises, you’ve spent months in a hole.) On a November weekday in San Francisco — a/k/a Gotham-by-the-Bay — five-year-old cancer survivor Miles Scott rode shotgun in a Lamborghini Batmobile,…
Hollywood lives by the simple, sad axiom “Where there’s money, there’s more money,” which is how we get remakes of movies that sometimes shouldn’t have been made in the first place, two Spider-Man reboots within five years, and a Star Wars franchise that ensures our children’s children will revere George…
There’s no one right way to show mental illness in the movies, yet there are hundreds of ways to get it wrong. Even though certain disorders come with specific traits, a diagnosis is not a human being, and doomed is the actor who just cycles through symptoms rather than working…
I got my first job when I was fourteen. I was a gymnastics instructor during the school year and a camp counselor in the summer at a place that was nice enough to employ a cigarette-smoking teen like me (which still surprises me to this day).So during those non-school months,…
Ding-dong, the witch is dead. And by witch, I mean Bertha: my cranky, undependable but still beloved 1992 Ford F250 diesel truck. I bought Bertha when I decided to go forward with this project, simply so that I could buy supplies and transport the tiny house — but just driving around…
After many high note-saturated years, the long-in-the-tooth American Idol will sign off after this upcoming fifteenth season (premiering in January 2016). But if your dreams of being America’s next golden throat are still red-hot, fear not: AI will kick off auditions for its epic swan song this Friday in Denver, so pour…
A capacity crowd crammed into Civic Center Park Friday evening for the annual Independence Eve Celebration hosted by the Civic Center Conservancy and Anadarko, with live music by Funkaphino followed by more patriotic fare courtesy of Buckley Air Force Base’s 101st Army Concert Band. It all wrapped up with the…
Hundreds of art-lovers flocked to the cordoned-off streets of Cherry Creek North over the Fourth of July weekend for the 25th annual Cherry Creek Arts Festival, which featured work by 260 artists in thirteen media categories, as well as live music, eats and hands-on art activities for all all ages…
In the current Westword cover story, artist Lauri Lynnxe Murphy (who writes about her Mayday Experiment here every Tuesday) talks about the changing area where she lives, the Whittier neighborhood, and describes how a class of students from Manual High School have been involved with the Gentrification Project, studying the…
The dynamic, successful blend of tradition and innovation continues this summer at Central City Opera, which opens on Saturday, July 11, with its production of Verdi’s La Traviata. “We juggle all these different audiences,” says CCO General/Artistic Director Pelham G. Pearce. “We want to not do something for these folks…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we’ll be looking at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. Pastel painting is enjoying a renaissance, and Coloradan Sandy Marvin’s right there…
The Fourth of July weekend is over, but you can still have a blast checking out all the free entertainment options in Denver, including spy talk, nature and jamming on the plaza. For more events, go to the Westword calendar — and let us know if we missed any bargains by…
Reading Gregory Daurer’s novel A Western Capitol Hill is a bit like taking a long ride on the Number 15 bus — eclectic, disorienting, occasionally appalling, but never dull. Part picaresque, part political spoof, the ebook focuses on unsavory goings-on in the Denver of a decade ago, from the gold…
Emily Griffith’s story deserved a happier ending. After giving so much to so many — she founded the first free adult-learning institution in the country, the Opportunity School — she retired in 1933 and moved to a cabin up in the mountains. And there the founder of the Emily Griffith…
Art is elemental to skateboarding. It’s the only sport where artwork comes as part of the essential equipment. Add the designated art-space on every skateboard deck to a culture with no teams and a bunch of hot-dogging outcasts with a penchant for self-abuse, and you get an aesthetic that tends…
It’s the Fourth of July weekend, which means you can go camping, smoke some weed or do whatever it is that makes you feel free — as long as you’re not infringing on the freedoms of others. Pepper in some fireworks, movies and cultural events, and you can let freedom…
Pirate Contemporary Art will host a closing reception tomorrow, July 3, from 6 to 10 p.m. for Charles Livingston: Spaces Between and Other Anomalies, an ambitious conceptual solo in the main gallery, and for Priscilla Fowler: Biomorphic Abstraction, a tidy abstract show in the associate space. Both shows are worth…
The upcoming Amy Winehouse documentary Amy is one of the best music docs Village Voice film critic Stephanie Zacharek has ever seen, and she explains why to Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl and LA Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson this week. Also this week: The confusing (yet really, really enjoyable) explanations…
Though First Friday in July will have to compete with fireworks shows and weenie roasts on Fourth of July eve, there’s still plenty to do and see in Denver galleries this summer. Get outside this weekend while the weather’s nice, and participate in the local art-walk tradition. Video Dialogue Series:…
July is here, and fashion is out in full force. This month is packed with everything from boutique launch parties to sidewalk sales; there is even a new Steampunk fashion festival. Here are our ten favorite fashion events for the month (so far), in chronological order. 1) Kismet at Cherry…
