Opinion & Commentary

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…

The name “Commerce City” may not be the most marketable. Still, two years ago residents voted two-to-one to keep the business-boosterish name. But that doesn’t mean Commerce City can’t work on its tarnished image — and, in fact, it’s paying a consultant $80,000 to help bring high-end projects to the…

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the “Rush to the Rockies.” As rumors of the May 1859 gold find echoed back east, hordes of fortune-hunters started the arduous trek across the plains to the confluence of the Platte and Cherry Creek. Many never made it to what was then…

Here’s the great thing about a book. Once you have it in your hands, it never goes offline. The Denver Office of Cultural Affairs hasn’t been so lucky with the web site where the city’s residents are invited to help choose the next One Book, One Denver selection. Voting allegedly…

Now that we won’t be spending the week buying our Birdman hair gel and getting our support-the-Nuggets tats, it’s time to get back to reality. And there’s plenty of that. Today marks the start of Denver’s “Home Renovation Bonanza,” a two-week period in which homeowners and licensed contractors can get…

The U.S. Department of Education is eliminating several regional director jobs, disappointing Coloradans hoping for an appointment, the Denver Post reports today. According to a notice outlining the job eliminations,”These political appointees have not had substantial policy or administrative functions.” Maybe not while they were in the office — but…

John Hickenlooper’s political career was launched when the then-barkeep campaigned to keep the name “Mile High Stadium” at the new football palace the taxpayers were building for Pat Bowlen and the Denver Broncos. Hick didn’t win that one: The stadium district overseeing the project sold the naming rights to Invesco,…

Former Westword staffer and Denver native Julie Jargon is now a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, on the restaurant beat, and proving with every story just how interesting the restaurant industry can be. Last week’s front-page story, “A Fan Hits a Roadblock on a Drive to See Every Starbucks,”…

Yes, we know the class of 2009 is graduating into a world that does not give extra credit for spelling skills, or fact-checking. As proof, Boulder Valley School District handed out 395 diplomas to Monarch High grads with the wrong town listed for the school — it’s in Louisville, not…