Editor's note: This year's Starz Denver Film Festival, November 12-22, features more than 200 films. To help navigate this cinematic abundance of riches, we asked fest artistic director Brit Withey to highlight some worthy selections off the beaten screening-room path. Look for Brit's Picks each weekday through the extravaganza's close.
For the final weekend of this year's fest, Withey has chosen a typically eclectic trio of films to recommend. The diversity of their origins (they were made in the U.S., Denmark and Uruguay) echoes the event's theme this year -- "Destination: Anywhere."
"A Room and a Half, or a Sentimental Journey to the Homeland."
Editor's note: This year's Starz Denver Film Festival, November 12-22, features more than 200 films. To help navigate this cinematic abundance of riches, we asked fest artistic director Brit Withey to highlight some worthy selections off the beaten screening-room path. Look for Brit's Picks each weekday through the extravaganza's close.
Russian animator Andrey Khrzhanovsky waited quite a while to make his feature-film debut, A Room and a Half, or a Sentimental Journey to the Homeland, screening today at 4 p.m. and 6:40 p.m. at the Starz FilmCenter. After all, he's 69-years old. But Brit Withey feels it was worth the wait. His two word synopsis of this initial effort: "It's amazing."
The holiday season is in full swing, and even Denver's monthly Tweetup is getting in on the action.
The November meeting of the Twitter faithful is pairing up with the Denver Santa Claus Shop for the latest event, to help ensure a merry Christmas (or other culturally appropriate winter holiday) for less privileged families. The organizers behind this particular event are going all out: In addition to the usual Tweetup activities of cheap drinks and cheaper socializing, this one also has an embedded Geeks Who Drink quiz, Stranahan's distillery tours and more. In other words, there's probably never been a better time to go to your first tweetup, or to start going again.
Denverite Brian Crecente is sort of the Rupert Murdoch of video games. As the editor-in-chief of the influential video game blog Kotaku, Crecente, a former Rocky Mountain News scribe, was recently named of the twenty most influential people in the video-game industry by GamePro magazine.
Crecente has decided to put that power to good use. Case in point: Kotaku's holding its annual video-game fundraiser tonight at 6 p.m. at Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom, 2637 Welton Street, to raise money for Child's Play, a game-industry charity that provides toys and games to children in hospitals.
Editor's note: This year's Starz Denver Film Festival, November 12-22, features more than 200 films. To help navigate this cinematic abundance of riches, we asked fest artistic director Brit Withey to highlight some worthy selections off the beaten screening-room path. Look for Brit's Picks each weekday through the extravaganza's close.
These days, independent movies that actually employ old-fashioned film are becoming increasingly rare due to the ease and relative economy associated with working in digital. For that reason, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, screening at 4:30 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. today at the Starz FilmCenter, is something of a throwback. "It's a lovely, black and white American independent film shot on 16 millimeter," notes Brit Withey. "That doesn't happen very much anymore. It feels like a film that could have been made 25 years ago."
Have you or your buddies booked a trip to Denver, George?
In our recap of the Ed Harris appearance at the Starz Denver Film Festival last Friday, I noted that organizers of the event have a hard time getting big-name actors to show up. Example: Harrison Ford was in town for a weekend gala at Wings Over the Rockies museum but didn't make time in his schedule for a fest stop.
Now, however, the Starz braintrust has announced that an "award-winning and acclaimed actor" from the cast of a "sneak peek film" will attend a screening of the flick at 4 p.m., Sunday, November 22, at the King Center. Moreover, "The surprise celebrity guest will introduce the non-stop film that's on a clear runway to the Oscars."
The flick that best fits this description: Up in the Air, a heavily hyped offering starring George Clooney as a frequent flier who has an airborne romance.
Editor's note: This year's Starz Denver Film Festival, November 12-22, features more than 200 films. To help navigate this cinematic abundance of riches, we asked fest artistic director Brit Withey to highlight some worthy selections off the beaten screening-room path. Look for Brit's Picks each weekday through the extravaganza's close.
The title of FILM IST. A Girl & a Gun, screening at 7:15 p.m. tonight at the Starz FilmCenter, immediately signals an uncommon creation -- and thank goodness, says Brit Withey. In his words, "It's an experimental film, avant-garde cinema -- and a true piece of art. It's one of my favorite films in the entire festival this year, for sure."
Editor's note: This year's Starz Denver Film Festival, November 12-22, features more than 200 films. To help navigate this cinematic abundance of riches, we asked fest artistic director Brit Withey to highlight some worthy selections off the beaten screening-room path. Look for Brit's Picks each weekday through the extravaganza's close.
Brit Withey's description of Protector, aka Protektor, on view at 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. today at the Starz FilmCenter (the second screening is sold out, but rush tickets may be available an hour before showtime), initially sounds like a variation on Mel Brooks' The Producers. "There's some really interesting use of music and dance -- but it's about the Nazi invasion of the Czech Republic," he says.
This time around, though, there's no springtime for Hitler. "It's a very serious film," he stresses.
Because that would have been swell. Either way, it was a wild weekend in Denver, with midgets wrestling and people trying out for The Real World at Hooters and bodies flying at the Ski Expo and dance-music kids dancing at Cervantes and lots of other shit we don't even know about.
Little-known fact about Denver Arts Week? Along with fine art, theater, dance, music and all that good stuff, the culinary arts also figure into the community event's general cultural blend. And here are just a few of the edible bargains you can take advantage of while out and about in the city tonight.
Restaurants offering $52.80 meal deals include Cilantro Fusion (1531 Stout Street, 303-685-4986), the Living Room (1055 Broadway, see website) and Shazz (4262 Lowell Boulevard, 303-477-1407). And many others, from Fruition and Il Posto to Maggiano's and Mangia Bevi, are presenting menu specials or local artwork. In addition, Larimer Square favorite Rioja went all-out to come up with special desserts inspired by the works of local artists and artisans. Sweet! Get all the details at the Denver Arts Week website.
Editor's note: This year's Starz Denver Film Festival, November 12-22, features more than 200 films. To help navigate this cinematic abundance of riches, we asked fest artistic director Brit Withey to highlight some worthy selections off the beaten screening-room path. Look for Brit's Picks each weekday through the extravaganza's close.
Moviegoers will hardly face a shortage of options during the first big weekend of the film festival. But Brit Withey feels viewers can't go wrong with his top choices for Friday, Saturday and Sunday: Harmony and Me, Con Artist and October Country.
MTV is looking for overweight home-schoolers who have been affected by natural disasters for the next season of The Real World -- and it's coming to find them in Denver, which hosted its own cast of seven strangers picked to live in a house in 2006 and 2007.
Real World casting directors will be at a Hooters at 1390 South Colorado Boulevard tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., where, we imagine, they will sift through hundreds of hot, bicurious babes and Red-Bull-and-vodka-swilling dudes to find the one plus-size model who was caught in a tsunami when her home-school group went on a field trip to Indonesia one time.
Know a kid age twelve and under in need of some holiday cash? Then encourage him or her to come up with a name for this penguin, the mascot of the 35th annual Parade of Lights, scheduled for December 4 and 5. The winner will receive, among other things, a $1,000 contribution to a college savings account and a $500 American Furniture Warehouse gift card -- because what youngster wouldn't love a new ottoman for Christmas?
Entries have to be in by November 20; get the rest of the details below. And remember: The name "Dinger" has already been taken.
The Starz Denver Film Fest opened last night with a screening of Precious followed by a party at Suite 200. Aaron Thackeray crashed the bash, camera in hand. To see the stars, and the shots, click here.
Get inside the heads of a group of top local Chicano artists who work in a variety of media at tonight's 7 Minutos slide jam, hosted by Westword favorite Jerry Vigil and featuring Al Cardenas, digital media professor Rafael Fajardo, muralist Emanuel Martinez, mixed-media artist Jerry De La Cruz and santero/scholar Jose Esquibel. Each artist will present a short slide presentation and discuss their work, as well of the work of their fellow panelists, at the periodic event hosted by the Museo de las Américas, 861 Santa Fe Drive.
7 Minutos begins tonight at 6 p.m. at the Museo. Different this evening, in the spirit of Denver Arts Week, is the two-for-one admission fee, which works out to be $2.50 per person for every pair attending -- a real pittance, all things considered. Get information at the website or call 303-571-4401.
The tiara-topped, oversized red guitar sitting on the new Westwood welcome sign seems to have magically appeared out of nowhere last weekend, but it has actually been over ten years in the making.
The newly landscaped corner lot where Morrison Road meets South Sheridan Blvd. was originally part and parcel of a neighborhood bond issue approved by Denver voters way back in 1998. What was once a weed-filled vacant lot is now "Un Corrido Para La Gente," Denver artist Carlos Fresquez's public art assemblage of sculptural forms inspired by items found in neighborhood shops. The big guitar connects to a super-sized shovel through a kinetic papel picado, designed to swing in the breeze.
Celebrate Denver Arts Week by giving in to the printed word tonight, when author and journalist Arial Sabar speaks and signs his National Book Award-winner, My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq, at the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture, 350 South Dahlia Street in the Robert E. Loup Jewish Community Center, as part of the center's ongoing Jewish Arts, Authors, Movies and Music Festival.
The true story of an all-American L.A. native who learns to understand his roots while traveling with his immigrant father to the older man's native Kurdistan, My Father's Paradise is also MACC's Denver Jewish Community Reads selection for 2009 and will be avaialble for purchase during the event. A subsequent free community book discussion led Dr. Robert Hasan will take place at 7 p.m. in Phillips Hall at the center on November 16.
Hear Sabar in the Shwayder Theater tonight at 7 p.m. Get tickets, $6 to $8, and information at www.maccjcc.com or call 303-316-6360.
As noted in Westword's summer-long "Urbavore's Dilemma" series, Denver's in the midst of an urban-gardening renaissance, with city dwellers tending chickens and turning their yards into Green Acres. While the growing season might be over, the seeds for future urban farming are already being sewn. Case in point: Will Allen, the celebrated Godfather of the urban homesteading, will be coming to town this weekend.
Allen, a MacArthur Genius Fellow who's received national attention and even plaudits from President Bill Clinton for his ambitious Growing Power farming project based in downtown Milwaukee, will be helping Feed Denver, a new urban-greenhouse program, build a pilot farm and regional farming training center at the Urban Farm at Stapleton. To spread Allen's message and raise money for the project, Feed Denver will be holding "A Feed Denver Evening with Will Allen" this Saturday, November 14, at 7 p.m. at FUEL Cafe at Taxi, 3455 Ringsby Court. An RSVP and $35 donation not only gets you front-and-center with the man who's literally turning our cities green, but also goodies from local faves FUEL Cafe, Infinite Money Theorem winery and New Belgium Brewery.
So what are you waiting for? Spring is just around the corner.
Editor's note: This year's Starz Denver Film Festival, November 12-22, features more than 200 films. To help navigate this cinematic abundance of riches, we asked fest artistic director Brit Withey to highlight some worthy selections off the beaten screening-room path. Look for Brit's Picks each weekday through the extravaganza's close.
It's not easy being green, but plenty of organizations are trying -- which is why the fest has put together an environmentally friendly panel discussion and a mini-series of four similarly themed movies. Withey talks up two of them: Garbage Dreams and So Right So Smart.
Arts Week plows forward tonight: Opera Colorado's special $52.80 Arts Week ticket offer is still on the table for 7:30 performances of Tales of Hoffman at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House tonight and Friday, for instance (get tickets online at Ticketmaster, using the promotional code ARTSWEEK).
Or, indulge the art lover in you at the opening reception for the Denver Plein Air Arts Festival exhibition, featuring 120 works by artists who participated in the annual September festival in the Golden Triangle Museum District by painting area sights on location. Juried by Jil Rosentrater of the Colorado Council of the Arts, Rose Frederick of the annual Coors Western Art Exhibit and Dean Sobel of the Clyfford Still Museum, the show is a colorful splash of familiar Civic Center sites, painted in a variety of styles; it opens tonight from 6 to 9 p.m. on the seventh floor of the Denver Central Library, 10 West 14th Avenue Parkway. The works remain on view through December 31; go to www.gtmd.org for information and a preview.
Editor's note: This year's Starz Denver Film Festival, November 12-22, features more than 200 films. To help navigate this cinematic abundance of riches, we asked fest artistic director Brit Withey to highlight some worthy selections off the beaten screening-room path. Look for Brit's Picks each weekday through the extravaganza's close.
Included in this year's schedule is Festival de Cine Mexico, a salute to the cinema associated with our neighbor to the south. "It's a really nice, diverse program, from one of the more interesting countries in terms of what's being produced there right now," Withey says about the eight films grouped under this umbrella. "You can often identify the films from a certain country pretty easily just by their style. You can say, 'That's so Danish,' or 'That's so Italian.' But the variety coming out of Mexico is incredible, and it's fun having so many different things coming into one program."
The Mile High Mamas are demanding stronger protection against household toxins via an event called "The Million Baby Crawl." Hope somebody invests in a whole lotta kneepads...
Denver Infill would love for you to attend tomorrow's "A Night in Union Station" gala, to raise funds for the revival of the building's historic Welcome/Mizpah arch. Don't be an arch nemesis.
Dr. Doolittle talked with the animals. He also walked with the animals. But leave it to the Denver Zoo to paint with the animals.
As part of Denver Arts Week, November 6 through 14, visitors can watch the zoo's two elephants, Mimi and Dolly, paint with their trunks every day at 11:30 a.m. Both elephants are experienced painters, but the exercise is particularly good for Dolly, who has some paralysis in her trunk and uses painting to help strengthen it, says zoo spokeswoman Tiffany Barnhart. "We only do this a couple times a year, so it is pretty special," Barnhart adds. "Although it is enriching for the elephants, there are a lot of other more natural behaviors they practice throughout the year."
Some previous work (abstracts done with oils on canvas) is already available in an online auction at the zoo's website, along with work by macaws Azul and Nuba, gorillas Charlie and Curtis, rhino Mishindi, and orangutans Robin and Sally, among others.
This city really knows how to kick off its third annual Denver Arts Week: Tonight's Know Your Arts First Friday, an amped-up First Friday art-walk event, will step up to the plate to showcase local artists and galleries all over town. The fun then continues with a slew of art discussions, demonstrations, receptions and other events scheduled throughout the span of Arts Week (visit the Denver Arts Week website for a complete schedule). But here are a couple of tonight's hot spots, just to get you going.
"A lot of people consider the practice of journalism with a lot of scorn, and sometimes it's deserved," says veteran newsman Greg Dobbs, who'll talk about his new book, Life in the Wrong Lane: Why Journalists Go in When Everyone Else Wants Out, at 6 p.m. tonight at the Denver Press Club. "But journalists do put a lot on the line to give people the news and perpetuate the free flow of information. And I think it's a good thing people know that."
Nonetheless, Dobbs didn't want to recount his years as an international correspondent for ABC in a dry or didactic manner. "I don't think there's a chapter where there isn't a funny, or at least a bizarre, story," he maintains. "The book's about the funny, funky, scary, stupid, dangerous, distasteful, unwise and unbelievable things journalists experience just getting to the point of reporting a story."
Standing in lines at Division of Motor Vehicles offices is typically like participating in the Bataan Death March -- long and agonizing, with no guarantee of survival. But there's one notable exception to that rule, which my wife discovered yesterday. As a principal of a school that's been closed for two days, she had time on her hands, so she decided to brave the elements to visit the DMV office at 6004 S. Kipling to take care of some paperwork she'd been putting off. And lo and behold, she found the place practically deserted, save a handful of employees so underworked that they actually seemed excited to help her. She was in and out in minutes.
Let that be a lesson to all of us: When the weather goes to hell, go to the DMV.
The engraving on the case containing this commemorative basketball reads: "Dan Issel -- All Time Kentucky Fantasy Five -- The Fan Favorite."
Those of us making ends meet on modest salaries are always astonished when we hear about celebrities who earn much, much more but still manage to piss it all away. Case in point: Denver Nuggets legend Dan Issel, who declared bankruptcy in June thanks to debts estimated at $4.5 million. His belongings are being peddled as part of an online auction that ends at 6:30 p.m. tonight, and the assortment of goodies, many of them one of a kind, is flabbergasting. There are 410 items in all, ranging from personalized awards, many of them decorated with horses per his nickname, to all manner of jewelry and sundry doodads, including a 14 karat gold toothpick.
Paging through all this stuff may offer a voyeuristic jolt, but it's also more than a little sad to think of such a seemingly indefatigable player brought low by financial realities. Even after everything's gone, he still won't be just like the rest of us -- but he'll be a lot closer.
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