Like gay marriage, marijuana use and tattoos, public perception of female sex toys is not what it used to be. While male sex toys still weigh heavy on the shame scale, a female pleasure device is mostly seen as a cute novelty. Encountering one while snooping is comparable to finding a rutabaga in the fridge or a Kid 'n Play record on the shelf: more "Oh, that's interesting" than "You filthy slut."

In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play, which opens tomorrow at the Bug, takes us back to a time before female sexuality was acknowledged, when the buzzing phallus was used to treat women for "hysteria" -- and once its alternative uses were made known, was vilified as an unmentionable weapon of evil, a disgusting appliance of hell-bound harlots.

In honor of this theatrical monument to the social evolution of female sexuality, we are proud to present this brief pop-culture history of the vibrator:

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Derby Baby: A Story of Love, Addiction and Rink Rash, the long-awaited roller derby documentary from Denver-based filmmakers Robin Bond and Dave Wruck, will get its local premiere on June 16 at the Denver FilmCenter with screenings at 2:30, 5 and 7:30 p.m., all presented by both the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls and the Denver Roller Dolls. The local leagues are featured prominently in the film, which also explores the recent national and international growth of the sport; their role as co-presenters of the Derby Baby screenings will be a rare break from their long rivalry.

On Saturday at the 1STBANK Center, DRD's Mile High Club beat RMRG's 5280 Fight Club 169-145, DRD's Bruising Altitude beat RMRG's Contenders 120-108, and RMRG's junior squad the Rocky Mountain Rollerpunks creamed DRD's Glitterdome Gladiators 134-4 -- so it's nice to see there are no hard feelings.

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Update: Two corrections have been made: Tropic Thunder is now the only June 18 film, and viewers can vote on which film they'd like to see on July 16.

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It's finally here.

The 2012 Film On the Rocks summer line-up at Red Rocks Amphitheatre was announced this evening, and many movies that made the cut were picked for the people, by the people. Though carefully curated by the Denver Film Center -- and led by FOTR Program Director Britta Erickson -- if the inclusion of a film like The Notebook rubs watchers the wrong way, look no further than the audience itself:

"It wasn't just because this seems to be the year of Ryan Gosling," says Karla Rodriguez, Audience Development and Social Media Manager for FOTR. "It's because The Notebook has been one of our top five most-requested films consistently since it came out. From crowd surveys to Facebook polls, this is what the people want."

Read more about tonight's announcement and see the full schedule below.

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While it often gets overshadowed by the music scene, Denver actually has a rich history of underground literature. From the Kerouac-inspired bohemian coffee and bookshops of 1960s Colfax to the Yellow Rake readings at Old Curtis Street Tavern, our city has been spawning independent works of fiction and poetry for decades. And there are few locals today more closely associated with DIY publishing than Charly "The City Mouse" Fasano. Whether hustling his books of poetry or impressively crafted audio-books, or giving one of his now iconic readings (he once opened a sold-out show at the Gothic -- an audience size almost unheard of for a live poet), Fasano has rooted himself in this city, becoming as much a part of the creative fabric as home-brew or cutesy indie-folk bands.

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Faced with the postponement of two screenings of the highly anticipated film The Beatles: The Lost Concert, Boedecker Theater manager Glenn Webb didn't cry in his kidney pie. Instead, he secured a replacement reel: Paul McCartney Is Really Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison, a comic mockumentary corroborating the famous "Paul is Dead" controversy of 1969, based on a rumor that the cute Beatle had been killed in an accident in 1966 and replaced by a look-alike.

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Young filmmaker Blaine Davies's new trailer for the 2012 Crisis Skateboards team video nails the perfect mix of what everyone wants to see in a proper skate vid: It's a combination of equal parts mind-blowing, technical, holy-shit skateboard prowess and people wrecking themselves over and over again, as if you can't fully appreciate the one without the other. The forthcoming video features Crisis Skateboards owner Jeremy Frankovis as well as team riders for the skate shop at 6821 West 120th Avenue in Broomfield, including Connor Grosh, Carleigh Samson, Kevin Davenport, Chris Schwartz, Keenan Meyer and Justin Rice.

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If there's anything we can learn from A Bag of Hammers, it's that you can't judge a movie by its title -- because if you could, the trailer for A Bag of Hammers would be about twenty times badasser. As it is, though, it's yet another low-key-indie-humor Buddy Comedy not by Judd Apatow, which means it's pretty much Judd Apatow but with fewer weed jokes and neither Jason Segel nor Craig Robinson to be hilarious. Instead, we get Jason Ritter and Jake Sandvig, whose head looks like somebody drew hipster hair on a Popsicle stick, starring as a couple of hetero-life-mate ne'er-do-well-but-big-hearted car thieves who learn some lessons about life, about love, and about friendship.

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If you lean toward the campy, low-budget cinematic underground of John Waters and Andy Warhol, you'd do well to familiarize yourself with Mike and George Kuchar, twin brothers who rose through the ranks of avant garde filmmaking in the '60s and '70s by making such classics as Thundercrack, Sins of the Fleshapoids and The Devil's Cleavage. In the forward of their memoir Reflections in a Cinematic Cesspool, Waters himself wrote: "The Kuchar Brothers gave me the self-confidence to believe in my own tawdry vision." Strong words, given the source.

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courtesy Steve Forker

Alexander Hacke and Danielle de Picciotto at the Berlin screening of The Glasshouse

Danielle de Picciotto relocated to Berlin in the late '80s for a change of scenery and to get away from the violence of New York City, where the artist/musician had been living. In Berlin, de Picciotto quickly became immersed in the rich creative community of the city, and she co-founded the Love Parade, today perhaps the largest and most successful electronic music festival. It was during this time that she met her future husband, Alexander Hacke, who was, and is, in the groundbreaking and influential industrial/avant-garde band Einstürzende Neubauten. The couple is currently touring with de Picciotto's silent film, The Glasshouse, which tells the dramatic story of her final night before moving to Berlin. The film will screen at the Denver FilmCenter on Saturday, May 12; David Eugene Edwards of 16 Horsepower and Wovenhand fame will join Hacke and trumpeter Steve Forker to provide live music at that showing.

We recently spoke with de Picciotto and Hacke about the film and its exploration of the fear that de Picciotto feels is pervading the world:

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MirrorMask: Words to screen.

It's one of those eternal questions: Which was better, the movie or the book? You may find the answer tonight, when Cinema in the Stacks, a monthly literary film series hosted by the Aurora Central Library, kicks off for the summer. For the most part, perhaps because the library is a family kind of place, the films are family-friendly fare, but MirrorMask, which screens at 6 p.m., might be the most adventurous choice.

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