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380 Ed. note: TIO's Denver-based contributor Tracy Shaffer muses about the play she has written, which is being performed this week by the Paragon Theatre Ensemble.

After years of living with these characters inside my head and seeing them come to into two-dimensional existence with various staged readings, my play (W)hole is finally on its 3-D feet in Paragon Theatre Ensemble's World Premiere production. I sat down for lunch at Cholon Bistro (more on that) with Telluride Playwrights Festival Director, Jennie Franks, who came to town this week to see my play, discuss our new Colorado playwrights group, Collective 7, and brainstorm about the 2011 Playwrights Festival. As Denver Post Theatre critic, John Moore, wrote in his advance press piece, (W)hole was started years ago and has been the beneficiary of input from various theatre companies along its way.  I wasn't writing or shopping the play around the whole decade, but revising drafts and submitting as time allowed.

30 October, 2010 /

  Some things are just too good to be kept secret. Such as an undergarment decorated like a disco ball, or a brassiere covered with candy. Or the most racy, fun fundraiser of the year: Ah Haa's Bravo Show, where local men (firefighters,...

20 October, 2010 /

Minds of Mountainfilm - Tom Shadyac from Mountainfilm in Telluride on Vimeo.

 

 

This weekend, people enjoying the 2010 Mountainfilm program will be surrounded by skyscrapers instead of mountains—the film festival is screening some of its finest flicks in New York City at the Lincoln Center this Oct. 22-24, including Tom Shadyac's I Am and Reel Thing Productions' Bag It. Mountainfilm is also sharing its message about the extinction crisis (the festival's 2010 theme) by hosting a discussion with a panel of experts at the event.

Over the years, Mountainfilm in Telluride has evolved from its roots as a cinematic collection of outdoor adventures into something even more significant. Today, Mountainfilm offers a broader perspective on the world, a group of films, books and conversations by people who share a love for the natural world and a passion for protecting our place in it. The documentaries presented still portray the pioneering adventurers of the outdoors, but now films like I Am and Bag It also make another type of connection with audiences. They ask tough questions about how over-consumption and greed are affecting our world.

18 October, 2010 /

 

 Above is a snippet of the Popovitch Pet Theater act, which will perform at the Palm Theatre Sunday Oct. 17 at 4 p.m.; the show is for all ages and is a benefit for Wags and Menace Foundation in support of animal shelters.

 

When Gregory Popovitch moved to the U.S. from his Russian homeland, he was a gold medal juggler who had been scouted by the Ringling Brothers Barhum & Bailey Circus. Only a world-class juggler could manage his life these days: Popovitch's act includes 14 cats and 10 dogs, trained to perform with him, that he takes on tour in a special custom trailer when they are not at home in Las Vegas.

How long has he been doing this? "All my life," says Popovitch. "I was born in a circus family. My mom and Dad worked in the circus. For me it was normal, this style of working with the pets."

14 October, 2010 /

 

 

 

Above is a trailer from Ticked Off Trannies With Knives, another of the feature films set to screen at this weekend's Telluride Horror Show. This film made a big splash at the Tribeca Film Festival.The following is a continuation of yesterday's Q&A with festival director Ted Wilson. Read the first segment here.

Telluride Inside: Does the horror film industry have its own set of stars? Actors, screenwriters, producers?

Ted Wilson: If you’ve made a horror film that had an audience, you’ll always have a place in the horror world, even if you haven’t made a film in thirty years. The legends of horror never die and remain revered by fans forever. Wes Craven, John Carpenter, George Romero, Roger Corman, and on and on. We hope to have them all at the Horror Show some day!

14 October, 2010 /

 

 

 The excerpt above is from "The Translator," a film by Sonya Di Renzo, and one of the films selected for the Lunafest from the 600 or so entries the organization receives each year from aspiring women filmmakers. Women make less than 6 percent of the 250 top-grossing films in today's industry, and Lunafest offers a venue for women to break through and get their work seen.

These are not "chick flicks." The films that get selected and screened by Lunafest are created by women, about women and for women, but these are not saccharine romances with corny dialogue and predictable endings. This is cinema at its most powerful: great storytelling with compelling subjects and important messages, and above all, entertaining.

12 October, 2010 /

 

(Above is a trailer from Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, one of the feature films playing at the Oct. 15-17 Telluride Horror Show.)


One of my earliest childhood memories is of being shooed out of the TV room when the movie my aunt and uncle were watching turned really gory. I can vividly recall the scientist, whose arm had just been torn off by the monster he’d created, streaking blood across the wall as he died a slow, horrific, cinematic death. I don’t remember my first day of kindergarten or much else from those tender years, but that movie has stuck with me all this time.

Over the years, there were other things that contributed to my closet fascination with the horror genre: old Twilight Zone reruns, Stephen King novels, a masked Michael Myers lumbering after Jamie Lee Curtis in "Halloween." Scary movies are one of my guilty pleasures, but it’s always been hard to find someone to catch a flick with me. Until now.

11 October, 2010 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Cindy Lee]

 

 

Popovich_2 Telluride is known for many fine things: gnarly ski terrain, a robust cultural economy – and the fact we are a pet paradise. Raise your hand if you are a local who weeps at the thought of an animal in need. That's most of us, right? (Ok, except the guy at the east end of town who messed with the poop.)

On Sunday, October 17, 2010, 4 p.m. Telluride's Michael D. Palm Theatre presents the Popovich Comedy Pet Theatre, featuring Gregory Popovitch and his 16 cats and 10 dogs, all rescues from animal shelters. The event sponsor is Cindy Lee's Wags & Menace Foundation, also a big-time supporter of Second Chance Humane Society. Second Chance plans to bring a cast of thousands from its Ridgway shelter to the show in the hopes of finding some of them loving homes. Popovitch could be the show that keeps on giving.

10 October, 2010 /

by Tracy Shaffer

As the leaves turn in the high country, Denverites turn out in style. Theatres open their season, ball fields close up shop and a flurry of arty events fills the calendar.

There's a not-to-be-missed show at the Denver Center Theatre  as four actors glide through more than fifty characters as fluidly as a flip-book. The 39 Steps is a Hitchcock spoof extraordinaire led by DCTC staple, Sam Gregory as our Everyman caught in a high-stakes international crime caper. Mr. Gregory is always good, but watching him in this film noir frolic opens up the throttle of his comic talent, while Victoria Mack makes an impressive Denver debut as the vixen, victim and vamp. It is by far, the boffo ballet of Rob Nagle and Larry Paulsen that brings this roller-coaster to its vaudevillian knees. My jaw was on my chest in simultaneous awe and laughter. Director, Art Manke, takes the play out of the script's British music hall setting and brilliantly lands it smack in the middle of a black & white movie reel: fast and suspenseful, like Cary Grant running from a crop duster. The result is perfection. Also at the Center, the Caridad Svich adaptation of Isabele Allende's gripping novel, "The House of Spirits", starring the amazing Franca Sofia Barchiesi in the role of Clara, and Thursday's opening of Bram Stoker's "Dracula". Three medium adapted for stage... spooky.

09 October, 2010 /