A moment of silence for the passing of a pop-culture icon, gone so young at the age of fifty. Yes, that’s right: Billy Mays, star of Pitchmen on the Discovery Channel, has died, silencing that big voice that had become ubiquitous on late-night infomercials. Mays got his start on the…
Read between the lines: The rationale behind the city’s vote for the next One Book, One Denver selection became clear yesterday, when the Department of Cultural Affairs revealed that the city had received a $20,000 Big Read grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. That NEA program is designed…
I’m about to head to Denver International Airport, which is suddenly in the shadows. Not because of the storm cloud that dumped a record amount of rain on DIA last evening — but because Republic Airways’ $109 million bid to buy Frontier out of bankruptcy could mean that Denver will…
Get in line, suckers. Clear, the private program that let pre-registered (and pre-paid, at $199 a year) customers use special fast lanes to get through airport security once their iris scans were on file, has closed down, its parent company “unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to…
Independence Institute chief John Caldara lost the battle of the sexes shoot-off at the organization’s annual ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — but not in that order) event at the Kiowa Shooting Club on Saturday, but he’s still a master at shooting from the lip. “I always aim for the…
Governor Bill Ritter took a break from his budget-busting business last week to pop by the Paramount Theater, where he presented Loretta Lynn with a plaque commemorating her induction into the Colorado Country Music Hall of Fame. The Colorado Country Music Hall of Fame? Yeah, I hadn’t heard of it,…
For decades, Denver could boast the largest Juneteenth festival in the country, an annual commemoration of the day that slaves in Texas finally learned they’d been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation — celebrated in Five Points, the heart of the city’s African-American community. But over the years, Juneteenth in Denver…
Back East for a conference, Mayor John Hickenlooper popped up to Canada, where his cousin, George Hickenlooper, is filming Casino Jack, a movie based on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff that stars Kevin Spacey. John Hickenlooper was the inevitable star of another George Hickenlooper project, Hick Town, a sweet and savvy…
Both Governor Bill Ritter and Lieutenant Governor Barbara O’Brien were out of town yesterday (he to the Western Governors’ Association meeting in Utah, she to an education confab in North Carolina). And who did that leave in charge? By the Colorado Constitution, the State Senate President. But Brandon Shaffer, who…
The White Way Grill, a classic diner created by Valentine Diners, a Wichita, Kansas-based company that produced “portable steel sandwich shops,” is back in business in Lakewood. Sort of. The White Way was an Aristocrat model, purchased for $3,300 back in 1948 (Valentine made diners between 1938 and the late…
Today’s the last chance to vote for the next selection in the city’s sixth One Book, One Denver reading program — and no, despite the wacky weather lately, not to mention yesterday’s funnel clouds over downtown Denver, the Wizard of Oz is not one of the possibilities. The 27 eligible…
Two decades ago, Simms Landing was still a dining destination, because the view overlooking Denver was so spectacular you could almost ignore how mediocre the food was becoming. (That view even rated a few pre-web archive Best of Denver awards.) And in the intervening years, the place was still packed…
The film stories keep unrolling in Denver, where the Denver Film Society is trying to rebuild after a morale-deadening miss at installing a new executive director, and the just re-established state film office starts the process of luring moviemakers to Colorado. Still, as Imagine That, the Eddie Murphy filmed here…
Late Monday, the Denver Film Society announced that a search was already under way for a new executive director to take the place of Bo Smith, who’d finally been dismissed just two days before. “We are looking for a permanent replacement,” DFS board chair David Charmatz told me. “We’ll decide…
In retrospect, the new executive director’s on-stage debut at the screening of Slumdog Millionaire at last November’s Denver International Film Festival should have been a clue. Bo Smith, who’d been selected by the Denver Film Society board to take over from retiring founder Ron Henderson and two interim directors, had…
Colorado, Take 2 “I found it in Colorado.” That’s how Billy Crystal explains his smile at the end of City Slickers, the 1991 movie filmed largely in Colorado, and it’s the final scene on David Emrich’s promotional reel touting Colorado filmmaking and the more than 375 movies at least partially…
While most of the employees of the Denver Film Society are back at work, they’re not quite sure if they’re still employees, because twenty of them had officially resigned before the board voted to dismiss new executive director Bo Smith last Friday. And there’s also the matter of a major…
If this were a movie, one insider theorizes, it would be like Crash, with everyone going through the same situation — but seeing it entirely differently. Last Monday, as Westword was going to press (we have new deadlines for our new format — although the paper still hits the street…
The last bill of the legislative session has been signed, and it’s all over but the shouting — particularly in front-page stories over the governor’s vetoes of union-friendly bills (and likely when the governor is on Mike Rosen’s show at 9:15 a.m.). But Bill Ritter also managed to please at…
In today’s Denver Post, Bill Husted writes about Jason Sheehan’s upcoming book, Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen, and quotes from a negative (and very entertaining) review published last week in the Los Angeles Times by that paper’s food writer, Russ Parsons. “You…
It was 1969 all over again yesterday, when Governor Bill Ritter signed a bill that, as of July 1, 2009, will establish the Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media. Re-establishes that office, actually: On July 1, 1969, Colorado became the first state in the country with a state film…
As Mindy Sink discovered, it’s not easy being a tourist in your own town — especially when you’re writing a guidebook with a deadline months ahead of when the book actually hits the streets. The Colorado native worked for six months last year on Denver, a Moon Handbooks guide that…
