A final vote from the Colorado Reapportionment Commission yesterday announced a consensus on the state's first new legislative maps in the past ten years. The commission is led by its sole politically independent member, Entravision CEO Mario Carrera -- and he's got some ideas about how to make the process work better.
Denver's Senate map.
Write Comment
Email to Friend
Aurora mayor Ed Tauer's eight-year, term-limited reign will come to an end later this year, and the race is on to replace him, with a vote coming up on November 1.
Steve Hogan.
Six candidates filed to run, all with different backgrounds and different takes on what they believe is important to Aurora residents.
Westword sent questionnaires to all six candidates. Today, meet Steve Hogan.
More >>
Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer's eight-year, term-limited reign will come to an end later this year, and the race is on to replace him, with a vote coming up on November 1. So far, six candidates have filed to run (the deadline is August 23), all with different backgrounds and different takes on what they believe is important to Aurora residents.
Debbie Stafford
Westword sent questionnaires to all six candidates and has received answers from four.
Today: Debbie Stafford.
More >>
Full-sized comic below.
Colorado gubernatorial candidates John Hickenlooper (above, left) and Tom Tancredo (above, right) answer a Seventeen.com Twilight quiz to help fans of the novel and film series elect a governor based on whether he would play on Team Edward, or Team Jacob...
It's the middle of the afternoon and Mike Fallon is at Pint's Pub. The Republican candidate for Colorado's 1st Congressional District wasn't driven to the bottle by the rigors of campaigning, however.
Mike Fallon
Rather, he's holding the first in a series of town-hall meetings that will take place at bars and coffee shops around Denver.
Still, one could sympathize with Fallon if he did need a drink. He's running in a district that hasn't elected a Republican since 1970.
More >>
Colin Beavan with Isabella.
Author and self-proclaimed No Impact Man Colin Beavan is loved and hated with equal passion. In 2006, the New York City resident came up with an idea for a new book: He and his family, consisting of wife (and BusinessWeek writer) Michelle Conlin and toddler Isabella, would spend a year trying to make no impact on the environment (or at least as little as possible), and he'd write about the process. The clan subsequently gave up everything from TV to toilet paper as Beavan energetically publicized his efforts via regular appearances on Good Morning America and interviews with pretty much any media outlet that would provide him with a forum (and plenty did). Along the way, he was either celebrated as an ecological hero or savaged as a egomaniacal putz trying to ride a stunt to fame.
Today, Beavan remains in promotional mode. He's just published No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process, and he's at the center of a No Impact Man, a documentary film that opens today at the Chez Artiste. Look below for an extended conversation with Beavan about both projects, during which he alternately defends himself from criticism and does his best to focus attention on what we can do to improve our lives and the planet -- his oft-stated goal.
More >>
The Broncos start training camp today, and, sure, you could go watch. But unless you sneak into the locker room and hide behind Brandon Marshall's ego, going to camp won't give you even a hint of what life is really like for the Broncos. For that, you'll have to hit your favorite bookseller.
Almost exactly three years ago today, the Broncos started the 2006 training camp with 3/4 an extra body in camp: Author Stefan Fatsis, who somehow had managed to persuade the team to let him go through camp as a kicker, to see and feel and smell (and write about) what it's like to endure the six weeks of hell that precede each NFL season. The book -- A Few Seconds of Panic: A Sportswriter Plays in the NFL, which comes out in paperback next week -- is a uniquely fascinating look at what it takes to be an NFL player, told through the trembling legs of Fatsis and the shockingly loose lips of such introspective characters as Jake Plummer, Ian Gold, Nate Jackson and Preston Parsons.
It's the best dissection I've read of what it's truly like to play in the NFL. But just in case my endorsement doesn't convince you, I harassed Fatsis via email for the short Q&A below. He lives in DC, by the way, with his excessively cool NPR-hosting wife, so presumably he answered these while smoking a tobacco pipe and arguing about the relative merits of a single-payer health system, and whether the Car Talk guys are really brothers. Just in case you needed a mental image.
More >>
Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond in a scene from director Jennifer Lynch's "Surveillance."
It's been a long time between films for director Jennifer Lynch, whose latest offering, Surveillance, unspools today at the Chez Artiste. Her debut, 1993's Boxing Helena, about a surgeon (Julian Sands) who prevents the woman he loves (Sherilynn Fenn) from leaving him by amputating her limbs, received some of the most negative reviews of any film in the past twenty years -- a reaction that may or may not have been amplified by accusations of nepotism focusing on Lynch's father, Eraserhead and Blue Velvet director David Lynch.
Lynch speaks candidly about her years in creative limbo and plenty more in the revealing Q&A on view after the jump.
More >>
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Sam Rockwell in "Moon."
Moon, which opens on Friday, July 3, at the Mayan Theatre, is a low-budget science-fiction film that shoots for the stratosphere using ideas, not computer graphics and flashy effects. That it does so well with so little is a testament to the performance of Sam Rockwell, as an astronaut (or two) trying not to lose his marbles while working on an isolated mining station with no one to keep him company but GERTY, a robot programmed with the voice of Kevin Spacey. But it's also a tribute to first-time feature director Duncan Jones, whose father, rocker David Bowie, named him Zowie -- a moniker he chucked faster than you can say "Apple Paltrow-Martin." Jones' background may be in television commercials, but his film isn't slick or superficial, and neither is he, as he makes clear in the following Q&A.
More >>
Tenzin Zopa in an image from director Nati Barartz's "Unmistaken Child."
Unmistaken Child, which opens tomorrow, June 26, at the Mayan Theatre, is a remarkable documentary about a fascinating ritual of Tibetan Buddhism: the search for a reincarnated master in the body of a child. Tenzin Zopa is chosen for this task after the 2001 death of 84-year-old Geshe Lama Konchog, for whom he served as an attendant for over two decades. Director Nati Baratz's camera follows Zopa over the course of several years, during which he finds a child he believes is his beloved Geshe-la come back to both physical and spiritual life -- but that's hardly the end of the story. The child must pass a series of tests designed to confirm Zopa's opinion, after which he is separated from his parents in order to begin his fulltime indoctrination into a world of tremendous rigorousness and austerity.
Earlier this week, Baratz, speaking from his native Israel, talked at length about the long road to this cinematic accomplishment. Click "Continue" to read the complete Q&A.
More >>
