As a movie this pretty much stinks, but as a documentary of one the Australian radio telescopes used in the Apollo 11 mission it’s good. The dramatizations are stiff and stereotypical, but the footage of the TV coverage of the first moon walk is given room to breathe. This is really the only place I’ve…

David Duchovny writes and directs his first film, a coming of age story set in 1973 Manhattan. It’s a well-made movie on nearly all levels. It captures a 70’s feel without going overboard, uses symbolism well without being pretentious about it, features strong performances, and tells a very human story. Don’t look for any X-filesqueness…

In an unusual format, the new director of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Jeffrey Kahane, dedicated the entire first half of the evening to an introduction to the 5th symphony, with excerpts and examples played by himself and the orchestra. While I wouldn’t want to do this every time, it was a great change, like having…

This movie lines up five distinctive characters in a row, gives you all their names, then proceeds to mix them all up in a dizzying fashion, like a cinematic shell game. Your task is follow the one with the German boots. Or the psychotic girlfriend. Or the red mitten … ack! I’m afraid I failed,…

I must admit, I was attracted to this book by hopes that it would expand on some of the crazy-sounding stories I’d heard about Momonism and especially its founder, Joseph Smith. The book delivers that, to be certain, with the same meticulous, almost obsessive reasearch Krakauer displayed in Into the Wild. And while the author…

Jodie Foster plays a sort of female Tarzan of the Appalachians. She does a great job, and there are a lot of interesting elements in the story. I especially liked the idea that a person in a small, isolated place would naturally live almost entirely in the moment, far more present than most of us.…

Oh my … great balls of fire. We were sort of on a mission to watch this, having probably missed a dozen references to it for every one we were aware of. It definitely exposed me as a damn yankee, totally unable to call up any sentimentality for the grand days of the old south.…

Watching this movie feels a little like being the subject of a scientific sex study. You learn from the experience, perhaps realize that what you have learned is going to change the world, and feel sapped by examining your sexuality through the eyes of a science that has no regard for what it means to…

This is one of my favorite pieces of music, definitely my favorite choral piece. Based on a collection of secular poems collected by the monks of a Bavarian monastery in the 18th century, it sounds to me almost like a satire of Wagner, very funny, while still supplying a dizzying array of excellent music and…

We don’t go for many Monday night shows in Boulder, but we didn’t want to miss this one. Marie Daulne, the founder of Zap Mama, has explored her musical roots in Zaire and taken them in amazing new directions. Ann has always enjoyed Zap Mama’s many reminders of her childhood in Zaire, and I’ve liked…