WEIRD and WONDERFUL

Welcome to the intricate and amazing mechanical found junk sculptures of Belgian artist Stephane Halleux.

Are they not way cool?

There I was, previewing the Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts program over the weekend, when I was beguiled by French filmmaker Laurent Witz's Mr. Hublot.

It's a delirious steampunk fantasy in which Halleux's wacky world of stitched leather cars, mechanical insects, toaster dogs, keypad clothing and serenely winged humanoids comes to life onscreen.

When I looked up Halleux online, I was delighted by the variety and sheer ingenuity of his work. The time it would take just to assemble all these gears, springs, sprockets, rotary blades, clockface dials, bits of pipe, random handles, and grilles is daunting enough.

Then consider the unfettered imagination required to put them all together in such weird and wonderful ways!


Some exhibition sites refer to Halleux's work as "toys," and there is certainly an element of that in their 3D solidity. Maybe it's my misspent past as a doll collector and dollmaker (mine were scrap fabric dolls) that makes me so responsive to these little guys.

Who could resist the urge to pose them and play with them? Let alone the urge to make up stories about them! (Although that might be strictly a writer's thing...)

Now imagine them animated and moving around in an entire retro-urban, slightly crumbling mechanical landscape inspired by the Halleux aesthetic. That's Mr. Hublot.

The Oscar Nominated Shorts programs (one live-action, one animated) opens Friday. (Read my Good Times review here.) But in the meantime, feast your eyes on Halleux's work!

Visit his website (Luddite Alert: it's tricky, so remember to hit every tiny blank square on the Home page to see a selection of work).

Or just Google his name and hit Images.

Prepare to be amazed!

THE RYAN GAME

Durable Clancy hero back in diverting reboot 'Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit'

Jack Ryan has more lives than Morris the Cat. The brilliant CIA analyst-turned-op, fictional hero of some dozen spy thriller novels by Tom Clancy, has also been featured in several high-profile spy movies of the '90s.

Now the folks at Paramount have decided to give the character a face-lift (or should I say a youth potion) and trot him out anew for the next generation of audiences in the sleek, efficient thriller Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.

Scripted by Adam Cozad and David Koepp, this is an origin story that borrows elements from the well-known Jack Ryan canon, but updates and reassembles them for the modern world. The first bright idea was to cast Chris Pine in the role, an appealing young actor whose nifty balance of humor and intensity has already served him well playing the young Captain Kirk in the recently rebooted Star Trek franchise.

But the producers' smartest decision was to hire Kenneth Branagh to direct; his epic sense of drama and full-bore theatricality keeps the story percolating along.

The story begins in London, where visiting Yank, Jack (Pine) is doing graduate work at the London School of Economics when he's politicized by the events of 9-11. After he joins the Marines and volunteers for combat duty, an injury nearly cripples him for life and ends his active service career, but his stint in rehab not only nets him a new girlfriend, Cathy Muller (Keira Knightley), a doctor-in-training, it puts Jack on the radar of Navy commander Harper (Kevin Costner) of the CIA.

Director Branagh casts himself in the juicy role of Cherevin, a sinister Russian mastermind with a Napoleon complex who's plotting to destroy the U. S. by crashing its economy. (Although we wonder why he doesn't just sit back and let Wall Street do it on its own.)

The action is fast and complicated, and the metaphorical blooding of Jack Ryan, from whiz-kid to activated field op, resonates throughout the film. (Read more)

FIRST PASS

The Alias Hook saga continues! In our last thrilling episode, I was fooling around with cover ideas.

This week, I received this manuscript in the mail. It's the hard copy from the US edition coming out this summer from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, all typeset and formatted—cool fonts, and all!

In the publishing biz, they call this a first pass, although, technically, it's my last chance to excise all those embarrassing typos, misspellings, and gratuitous punctuations that will haunt me the rest of my life if they appear in print. The second pass is being performed by a proofreader at TDB as we speak.

This is NOT the time to rewrite a chapter, rename a character, or introduce a clever new plot twist that changes everything that happens in the last four chapters. That time is definitely past!

So far, I haven't discovered anything too dire that can't be fixed in a few swift strokes. The story reads pretty well too!

Why Hook? Why now? For those of you who came in late, read up on my fascination with Captain Hook here. If you're wondering what on earth was I thinking when I started this whole project, find out here.

My new pub date is July 8, 2014. In hardcover, yet! Watch this space for further details!

TALES FROM THE DARK (CHOCOLATE) SIDE

Loot gleaned at the 2014 Fest—I ate all the rest of the chocolate!

Ladies, start your engines. If you haven't yet attended the annual Santa Cruz Chocolate Festival, presented by the UCSC Women's Club, now's the time to plan for next year's event. For those of you who came in late, here's how it works.

While I'm still sucking chocolate out from under my nails after this year's Fest, here are my notes on what's trendy and tasty this year. Salty Caramel, the poster flavor two years ago, and various combination of chocolate and chilis are still popular, but this year, my intrepid tasting buddy, Marta, and I noticed an upsurge of toffee varieties.

Best of show for me were the toffee samples at Goose's Goodies. We got two hefty, brittle-like toffee samples per tasting ticket, and while the Mexican Chocolate Chile and Pepitas was good, the Dark Chocolate, Orange Peel and Cashew toffee combo was a religious experience! A perfect combination of dark, dark chocolate (my favorite) and crunch. Of everything I tasted, this was the goodie I most wanted to take home, but, quel horreur! When we returned to the booth, they had run out of that flavor! Next year, get there early and buy immediately!

(Goose's Goodies are local, but they have no storefront; at the moment, their only contact info is their Etsy shop online.)

We also loved the pudding-rich dark hot chocolate from Harwell Hot Chocolate in Freedom. (We didn't even bother sampling the Milk Chocolate variety—we have our standards!) And we discovered a gorgeous Dark Chocolate Cabernet Truffle from Lula's in Monterey (above). Not much of a Cabernet flavor on the tongue, but you could sense the presence of the wine in an impossibly smooth and sophisticated chocolate mouthful. Yum!

A returning favorite was Theo Chocolate from Seattle. They advocate for sustainably produced chocolate items (their dark chocolate is now GMO free), and while I was seduced by their combustible Pili Pili Chili variety last year (it burned so good!), this year I discovered a very tasty 70% Dark Chocolate and Ginger bar with a nice candy crunch inside.

Also popular this year was Mission Hill Creamery, serving up a nicely complex Lime Cardamom Yogurt dipped in (what else?) dark chocolate. Marta had hers rolled in nuts too, but I took mine straight!

Marich Confectionary from Hollister had a novel set-up. One ticket bought you a small paper cup, into which you could scoop as many of their chocolate-covered treats as you could cram in from deep, fishbowl-like display jars. We sampled, chocolate covered blueberries, strawberries, cherries, curry cashew, and, of course, toffee.

For the terminally sugared out, there was David Jackman from Chocolate dishing out Chicken Mole, and Joe Schultze from India Joze doling out savory Chocolate Pork. Several local wineries were pouring as well (a tasting glass costs $5 in addition to the $15 entrance fee, which buys you six tastings), but, hey, we were there for the chocolate!

The event is a fundraiser for Re-Entry Student Scholarships at  UCSC. So make plans for next year, and taste away with a clear conscience—it's for a good cause!

A STUDY in SHERLOCK

It seems like such a crack-brained idea—adapting Sherlock Holmes to the modern era. Arthur Conan Doyle's eminent, erudite High Victorian consulting detective stranded in the frantic modern world of bullet trains, Tweeting (not to mention twerking), and Reality TV? Oh, please.

But the PBS series Sherlock made a believer out of me. Only three episodes are produced per season, but each episode is a complete 90-minute feature film, and, boy, are they fun! After a long hiatus, the third season begins this Sunday night (January 19) on PBS. Since I just caught up with the first two seasons last month, I am primed and ready!

The principal key to the show's success is, of course, Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role (his naturally fair hair dyed brown, and curled, because, seriously, update, reboot, or no, you can't have a blond Sherlock Holmes). Touchingly naive at times (mostly involving "normal" social concourse), with an intellect so restless, it's exhausting, the marvelous Cumberbatch plays Sherlock with every ounce of the character's famous wit, eccentricity, and ego intact, but it's all refracted in the prism of 21st Century life and culture.

Fancier toys: Sherlock's kitchen chem lab

And it all works. It's wicked, scary good how well it works!

This energetic, thoroughly modern Sherlock still resides at 221B Baker Street, with a motherly landlady downstairs called Mrs. Hudson. ("I am not your housekeeper!" she keeps reminding him.)

His keen interest in forensic science remains; he just has fancier toys to play with in the age of digital information. But it still takes his superior brain to assemble all the factoids, readouts and graphic imaging into a coherent deduction.

Vintage Holmes at work

Martin Freeman co-stars as Dr. John Watson, Holmes' friend and biographer, rescuing the character from the dufferdom rampant in so many past Holmes adaptations. A military man just back from the Afghanistan and in need of lodgings, Watson is as awed by Sherlock's brilliant mind as he is appalled by his manners. In the first episode, he appears with a cane and a limp, but he quickly loses both, revitalized by the dangerous adventures Sherlock leads him on.

(And, of course, in the digital age, Watson's stories about Holmes' cases aren't published in anything so fusty as a magazine; he posts them online on his blog.)

As roommates and co-investigators out about town together on a case, Watson has to keep calmly, but determinedly, deflecting assumptions that they are a gay couple. Watson enjoys women and is often surreptitiously lining up dates in the course of their adventures, but such assumptions roll right off Sherlock's back. As does the opinion (voiced by someone or other every couple of episodes) that he may be a virgin. Sherlock does not protest, one way or the other; idle speculation about his sex life simply does not register among the subjects that interest him.

Not that kind of couple

The filmmakers have fun with the Holmes canon. Every episode is named after a famous Conan Doyle story, with a twist. (A Study in Scarlet becomes A Study in Pink, featuring a pink cell phone as a key piece of evidence.)

Cumberbatch and Pulver: scandalous

 A Scandal in Belgravia (not Bohemia) introduces the formidable Irene Adler (Lara Pulver), but in this version, she's not a stage actress, but a high-priced dominatrix with an exclusive client list.

(Last season ended with Sherlock's spectacular, apparently fatal plunge off a high building—and yes, Reichenbach Falls are referenced—in broad daylight, in front of witnesses. But even though we (if not Watson) know Sherlock is not dead, the question of how the heck they'll explain it remains.)

The ever-harried Inspector Lestrade, the slippery Mycroft Holmes, the nefarious criminal mastermind, Moriarty (an unexpectedly boyish Andrew Scott, who's won two BAFTA Awards in the role), they're all here and waiting to be rediscovered by an eager public. (That's you!)

Showtime is 10 pm (after Downton Abbey) for the next three Sunday nights. You know where I'll be!

BOOMERS on BROADWAY

Spirit of the '60s alive in Stockton's entertaining 'Are We There Yet?'

They say if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. But don't say it to Richard Stockton.

The longtime stand-up comic, monologist, and chief perpetrator of the Planet Cruz live comedy revues not only remembers the 1960s (and the postwar decade that spawned them), he traces the influence of that era on the popular and political culture of today in his entertaining one-man comedy extravaganza, Are We There Yet? at the Broadway Playhouse.

Three years in the making (not counting the lifetime of experience distilled into the show), Are We There Yet? is a multi-media celebration of the Baby Boom generation. While the show is mostly storytelling, Stockton has also composed a handful of songs to highlight certain themes (like the title tune, which metaphorically refers to the Boomers' progress through life, and "Things We Had Then We Don't Have Now"), which he sings con brio, accompanying himself on guitar or banjo. He also employs a video projector which sets the tone with newsreels, pop culture montages from the era, and a reel of vintage TV commercials.

The resulting show is a sort of Boomer Hit Parade of cultural touchpoints from the '50s, '60s, and into the '70s. And even as the Boomers age (Stockton salutes our generation's collective passage "from Hi-Fi to WiFi...from Jonathan Livingston Seagull to crow's feet"), he traces the ways that the seeds sown in our youth have borne fruit in the socio-political landscape of today. There's plenty to resonate with people of a certain age; on opening night, audience members were shouting responses like "Amens" in a Baptist church. (Read more)

WALKING TALL

Man behind myth explored in 'Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom'


Due to the usual nutty holiday deadlines at this paper, it's taken me this long to catch up with Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. The good news is this biographical drama from Justin Chadwick (The Other Boleyn Girl) is in many ways as thoughtful and imposing as both its subject, the formidable Nelson Mandela, and its impressive star, Idris Elba.

The real-life Mandela passed away this past December, at the age of 95, lauded and eulogized the world over as an icon of peace, humility, forgiveness and cooperation. But Mandela was far more complicated than the stoic, sagacious, grandfatherly peacemaker so beloved by the world in his later years.

 Chadwick's film (based on Mandela's own autobiography) is a manful attempt to explore the currents of deeply ingrained racism, political injustice, and corrupted human nature that turned an ordinary South African child into a lawyer, activist, and uncompromising fighter for social justice and racial equality—at any cost.

The story touches all the known incidents of Mandela's political life: his trial for conspiracy (and his famous speech professing himself "prepared to die" for the ideal of equality), his 27 years in prison, mostly spent in one tiny cell. (Where black inmates suffer such petty indignities as being made to wear short pants.) 

But the film is most effective in showing the toll Mandela's activism takes on his personal life.

Driven off not only by his dangerous politics, but by Mandela's extramarital affairs, his first wife leaves him and whisks away the children he rarely sees again. After he marries vivacious Winnie Madikizela (a vibrant Naomie Harris), she bears two daughters, but they're still small children when Mandela goes to prison.

Elba's presence centers the story as his Mandela evolves and matures. And the film succeeds in portraying both Mandela and Winnie with human faults intact on their respective long walks to their destinies. (Read more in this week's Good Times)

GOLDEN GIRLS

Fey and Poehler: not sick of 'em yet

OK, it was less uproarious than last year's show. But Sunday night's Golden Globes telecast, the annual doling out of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's movie and TV awards—it's like a dress rehearsal for the Oscars, with alcohol—still provided its share of refreshing irreverence, thanks to returning co-hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

(Because, as Fey pointed out, "In Hollywood, if something works, you just do it over and over again until everybody's sick of it.")

The industry and its denizens were the ripest targets for stealth zingers. That perennial nominee Meryl Streep was in the running again proved, according to Fey, that there are still "great parts for Meryl Streeps over 60" in Hollywood. Poehler 's take on Gravity was that "George Clooney would rather float away in space and die than spend another minute with a woman his own age."

Cate Blanchett: extraordinary year

To play an AIDS patient in Dallas Buyers Club, Fey noted that Matthew McConaughey "lost 45 pounds. Or what actresses call 'being in a movie.'" (Okay, clumsily worded, but point taken about how much harder women have to work to be considered camera-ready.)

Accepting her Best Actress (Drama) award for Blue Jasmine, Cate Blanchett opined "It's been an extraordinary year—the last ten years, really—for women in the movies."

But you wouldn't know it from the dearth of females nominated for anything in the non-actress categories. I counted a grand total of three, two of whom—one of them Taylor Swift—received co-credit for writing two of the nominated songs.

At least the third, Jennifer Lee, who won with Chris Buck for co-directing the Best Animated Feature, Frozen, got a chance to come up onstage and claim her honor. Unlike Brenda Chapman, creator of last year's Disney Princess movie, Brave, who never even got invited to the party after she was removed from the directors chair halfway through the project.

Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee

Fey and Poehler's traditional halftime costume change, with cocktails, was pre-empted this year by Emma Thompson (looking fabulous in a gold burnout top and platinum hair). She arrived onstage to present the Best Screenplay award clutching her high heels in one hand and a martini in the other. As an actor, she said, "I appreciate a good script. And as a writer, I know how hard to is to get one." (Thompson won an Oscar awhile back for adapting Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.)

Diane Keaton was her relaxed, wonderful self accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award on behalf of Woody Allen. The Allen clip reel was a highlight of the show, and La Keaton even sang a sweet little Annie Hall-style song commemorating their 45-year friendship.

Emma Thompson: shoeless

Matthew McConaughey, accepting his Best Actor (Drama) award for Dallas Buyers Club, gave a shout-out to his mother, who never let her kids absorb too much TV or other media. "She said, don't watch somebody doin' something, go out and do it yourself!"

The technical glitches were kept to a minimum this year. The only weird thing was that the section for television nominees was about three zip codes away from the stage, which made for some long, long marches to collect awards.

But otherwise, a fairly brisk and breezy show. And with Globes divided up between American Hustle (Actress (Comedy) and Supporting Actress; Best Comedy/Musical), Dallas Buyers Club (Actor and Supporting Actor), The Wolf of Wall Street (Actor, Comedy/Musical), Gravity (Director), and 12 Years A Slave (Best Picture, Drama), looks like it's anything goes (again) at the upcoming Oscars.

LIFT-OFF

New musical, 'Lunch,' launches at Cabrillo Stage

You can't get much further off-Broadway than Cabrillo Stage, at least geographically. Yet CS may be instrumental in launching a new musical on the road with its spirited production of Lunch. Instead of its usual year-end holiday production, CS opted this season for a new year's show, a modern urban fable about life, love, answered prayers, and second chances—a subject the authors know something about.

With a book by Emmy-winning TV writer Rick Hawkins, and songs by award-winning composer Steve Dorff and lyricist John Bettis, Lunch was first produced in 1994, when it went on a five-city national tour. Its collaborators moved on to other things until a series of serendipitous events—including a request from CS Artistic Director Jon Nordgren—led them all to reconvene in 2013 to revamp the show. This CS production of Lunch has a rewritten and updated book, ten new songs, and a hard-working cast directed with verve and chutzpah by CS veteran Andrew Ceglio.

When conductor Nordgren raises his baton in the pit, we hear not the expected musical overture, but a montage of city sounds—footsteps, bits of conversation, traffic, a hot dog vendor, screeching brakes. The curtain rises on a scrim of heavenly clouds and an ornate gate which admits a confused Mackenzie Richards (the affable and reliable Max Bennett-Parker) into a reception area presided over by chain-smoking, unflappable Mona (a very funny Samantha Pistoresi).

Mackenzie, who's just met his untimely demise via hot dog cart, finds himself knocking on Heaven's door, but given his line of work as a Wall Street player, he'll be fast-tracked straight to Hell unless he can prove himself worthy. He has one hour, from noon to 1 p.m. (the "Lunch Shift"), to answer the prayers of four random people in downtown Manhattan. (Read more)

I confess, I had some problems with the book. The "prayers" were often so nebulous and unformed, I wasn't always sure how or if they were being answered. Since this is the central premise of the show, some clarification is in order. But this is a great cast featuring such CS stalwarts as the scene-stealing Nicholas Ceglio and Ashley Rae Little, with her big, powerhouse voice. They give Lunch a hearty and heartfelt lift-off.

JUDGING A BOOK...

Happy 2014 to all!

Out with the old year, and on with the show!

While we've been enjoying our holiday revels, the merry elves at Thomas Dunne Books are busily cooking away on the forthcoming US edition of Alias Hook.

While it would probably be illegal, immoral, and fattening to reveal the cool new cover art they've devised for the book at this early date, I can show you some of the sketches I sent in when they flattered me by asking if I had any cover ideas.

(As I told the brain trust at TDB, try to imagine these as rendered by a professional designer who actually knows what she's doing.)


This is my attempt at being graphic (above). That's a swatch of fairy dust curling across the sky, along with a Red Moon that figures prominently in the plot. At this point, there was talk of changing the title, so I didn't include any verbiage on this image.

I notice the actual TDB cover art is similar in color scheme to this sketch, except much more graphic and interesting!

And here's another idea I submitted, going for mood and narrative this time, instead of a clean design. I'm so partial to this one—I managed to sneak in a mermaid and a fairy!

And since my editor wants potential readers to know the book is female-friendly, I put my heroine's face on prominent display to suggest that the book is, in fact, a love story. In general, I'm not a fan of characters' faces plastered on the cover, for fear of interfering with the reader's imagination. (Unless the book is, you know, The Girl With the Pearl Earring.)

But, happily, the design team at TDB came up with a way to suggest a feminine presence in the cover design without resorting to a conventional portrait. How did they do it? Stay tuned.

Oh, those clever elves!

SURVIVOR: HOLLYWOOD

Space patrol: Gravity

Big and small films to remember from 2013

What is it about these angsty times that's causing the movies to go all Gloria Gaynor on us? The biggest trend in the films of 2013 was the simple fight for survival—on land (Dallas Buyers Club; 12 Years a Slave), sea (All Is Lost; Captain Phillips), outer space (Gravity), even in the music biz (Inside Llewyn Davis; 20 Feet From Stardom). Some of these were great, but I was mostly drawn to small human stories this movie year. Here are a few of my favorites (including some you might have missed):

GRAVITY A couple of astronauts on a routine mission outside their spacecraft suddenly find themselves adrift in space. What can they possibly do? The variety of answers may surprise you in this smart, lean, elegantly composed edge-of-your-seat thriller from filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón. Neither sci-fi nor space opera, it's a space procedural in which ordinary human ingenuity meets ever more incredible and daunting odds.

Mud: McConaughey's performance of the year

20 FEET FROM STARDOM Morgan Neville's documentary tribute to the heroines of rock, the background singers, is as incendiary as the voices of these incredible vocalists. The stories of these primarily black women—how they were used, abused, and/or empowered by the industry, whether or not they dared to take that 20-foot walk into the spotlight—are a remarkable cultural document of five rich decades in the pop music scene. And OMG, the singing!

MUD Jeff Nicholls' hypnotic tall tale simmers with danger, disillusion, humor, and heart, and Matthew McConaughey's star performance radiates all of the above. Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland are astonishingly good as two 14-year-old boys growing up on the banks of the Mississippi in rural Arkansas who get involved in the crazed romantic schemes of a disheveled desperado. An entertaining yarn of fathers, sons, and surrogates.

BLANCANIEVES Pablo Berger's flavorful retelling of Snow White is a silent film (no spoken dialogue, but a vivid musical soundtrack), shot in luminous black-and-white, set in Seville, Spain, ca, 1920. The heroine is a young lady matadora, and her story unspools in a heady milieu of flamenco music, bullfighting, and women's emancipation.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Who else but Joss Whedon could set William Shakespeare's romantic comedy (original Elizabethan-era wit and wordplay intact), in modern-day Santa Monica, and shoot it in black-and-white? This visual detail suggests the sparkling vintage screwball comedies of the 1930s, an impudent idea, realized with great charm and affection.

GINGER & ROSA The remarkable Elle Fanning and a very affecting Alice Englert star in Sally Potter's simple, yet potent story about teenage girlfriends, mothers, fathers, and daughters, and all the ways those delicate balances can be tipped. The touching authenticity of these young female voices will speak to anyone who has ever been a 17-year-old girl.

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS This harrowing true story about an unarmed US freighter captured in 2009 by four trigger-happy Somalis with automatic weapons is a bracing dose of recent history from director Paul Greengrass, told with his typical no-frills realism and escalating intensity. Tom Hanks' is riveting as the cargo ship's captain; Barkhad Abdi is excellent as the leader of the Somalis.

Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender: 12 Years a Slave

12 YEARS A SLAVE Chiwetel Ejiofor gives a haunting performance in Steve McQueen's blistering, unexpurgated portrait of what slavery was like in the pre-Civil War American South. Based on the true story of Solomon Northrup, a free black New Yorker abducted and sold into slavery in 1841, the film shows with heartbreaking precision how the loss of common humanity is the true cost of slavery. A film of rare courage that educates and mesmerizes.

THE HUNT A child's remark brings lives to the brink of ruin in Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg's complex drama, set in the twilight zone between acute moral responsibility and witch-hunting. The film plays like a compelling thriller, with Mads Mikkelsen giving a performance of astonishing force and subtlety.

Girl Power: Darlene Love: 20 Feet From Stardom

MUSEUM HOURS Anyone who has ever haunted an Old World museum with a rich collection of Late Middle Ages and Renaissance paintings may find herself strangely beguiled by this meditation on art and life, past and present, and the many ways and places in which they intersect.

JUST FOR FUN:  GOOD OL' FREDA Freda Kelly was just 17 when she landed a job as personal secretary to The Beatles in 1962. Ryan White's documentary is as ebullient, down-to-earth, and irresistible as Freda herself.

GUILTY PLEASURE:  THOR: THE DARK WORLD Chris Hemsworth's charismatic thunder god, and Tom Hiddleston's utterly delicious performance as his ne'er-do-well brother, the trickster god, Loki, propel this idiotic, yet surprisingly fun mangling of Norse mythology.

SONGS in a MINOR KEY

Great music, atmosphere, problematic character in "Llewyn Davis'


The new film, from Joel and Ethan Coen, Inside Llewyn Davis, may not quite be what viewers expect. After the Coens celebrated the rural, regional folk music of the American South of the 1930s in O Brother, Where Art Thou, a few years back, fans may expect more of the same from the new film, with a more urban vibe.

But while Llewyn Davis is set in the Greenwich Village folk scene ca. 1961, and positively teems with yearning, vintage-sounding music that might very plausibly have come from that era, it mines a much darker vein of experience as a down-on-his-luck, would-be folk singer struggles against all odds to get a foothold in the music business.

In fact, the new film has more in common with the Coen's A Serious Man, an ironic update of the Biblical story of Job, in which a hapless suburban Everyman had to cope with one damn thing after another thrown into his path by an unforgiving universe. The protagonist in Llewyn Davis also endures trials, but they mostly stem from his own bad judgment and bristly personality.

The problem is,the character as written is all angsty exterior. Oscar Isaac, an appealing actor who has been wonderful in supporting roles for years, manages to bring moments of poignancy, even fleeting tenderness, to the title character. He even turns out to be a terrific singer.

But we never do get inside Llewyn Davis; the journey he takes in the course of the film, both physically and emotionally, lands him back in exactly the same place.

But where the movie comes alive is in the music, and the spot-on depiction of the era. (The legendary T Bone Burnett, along with Marcus Mumford, produced the music.) Isaac sings Llewyn's gritty solos with plenty of verve.

And the novelty song, "Please Mr. Kennedy (Don't Send Me Into Space)," that he sings with Justin Timberlake, with the very funny Adam Driver providing bass and counterpoint (above), is exactly true to the era, and hilarious too. (Read more)

Btw, much is made in the movie of Llewyn hauling a friend's runaway orange cat all over New York City until he has time to return it to its owner. I can't imagine what they gave that cat to mellow him out.

I'm sorry, but if I tried to take one of my cats on a noisy subway at rush hour, my back would be shredded like the Watergate transcripts.

BRAVE NEW GIRLS

What Disney Princess movies say about gender, culture, and romance

What would the holidays be without a new Disney feature cartoon? With Frozen, the studio is in full "Disney Princess" mode—the line of femme-centric fairy tale movies designed to market Mattel dolls, outfits and accessories to little girls. (Especially now, as the holiday buying season ramps up.) A marketing ploy made all the more obvious when the movie is animated via CGI, and all the characters already look like plastic dolls, with their smooth, unlined skin and dimensional shading.

Let's take a moment to consider the history of the brand. At least since the revisionist '70s, we've all been yammering on about the evolution, or lack thereof, of Disney's fairy tale cartoon heroines, but I think it's interesting to see how they've reflected their times.

  Snow White was sort of a neutered '30s chorus girl (Betty Boop, without sex), with her bobbed hair and baby-doll voice, pining for her prince to come. Cinderella was the obedient drudge, ca. 1950, sublimating her own desires. A decade later, Sleeping Beauty could let her hair down, but she was still the poster girl for passivity; her most dynamic action was to fall asleep for 100 years.

But since the resurgence of fairy tale princess movies that began in 1989 with Ariel in The Little Mermaid, Disney heroines have become more resourceful, spunky (and, oh please, don't make me write "pro-active"), in taking charge of their lives. And more ethnically diverse—grudgingly—if you count Chinese warrior princess Mulan, and Jasmine, from Aladdin, although it took 72 years for the first black Disney cartoon heroine, Tiana, from The Princess and the Frog in 2009.

Very loosely inspired by Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen's classic tale, The Snow Queen (although it has only the vaguest nodding acquaintance with the source material), Frozen is one of the whitest of all Disney Princess movies. Not only is it set in a Scandinavian island kingdom perched on a fjord and full of Nordic blondes, but there's the whole snow thing—a princess with uncontrollable magical powers whose touch turns everything to ice.

After Princess Elsa accidentally freezes the kingdom in perpetual winter, she flees up into the mountains and magicks herself a crystal ice palace. The rest of the movie follows her sister, Princess Anna, on a trek across the snowy mountains to find her sister and save the realm. Her unlikely guide is humble woodworker and ice delivery man, Kristoff, while she leaves the kingdom under the protection of neighbor Prince Hans.

For those of you keeping score at home, that's two Disney princesses, one handsome prince, and one roguish commoner.

Which brings us to another topic: the evolution of the Disney cartoon hero. Seriously, does anyone even remember the bland, boring, cookie-cutter "Prince Charmings" of those earlier films? The first one to distinguish himself from the pack was Beauty's splendid Beast in 1991, and even he morphed back into a (yawn) prince at the end.

But finally, the folks at Disney are starting to perceive that their new breed of heroine deserves better, maybe a male counterpart with, you know, a personality.

Frog Prince Naveen was a charming wastrel with a line of corny, yet good-natured patter; unfortunately, he spent most of the movie as a green amphibian.

Flynn Rider in Disney's 2010 Rapunzel movie, Tangled, wasn't even a prince, but a thief and a rogue, on the lam from the palace guard. Sure, the rascal hero is as old a cliché as the bland prince, and if wisecracking Flynn were a live-action hero, he'd be pretty obnoxious, but as a new Disney hero, he had his points. And in the landmark Brave in 2012, there was no romantic hero at all; bow-and-arrow sharpshooter Princess Merida was too busy finding herself.

The excess of heroes in Frozen might suggest a regressive step back to the old days, except for the surprisingly clever, even subversive way the love stories play out. And it's interesting to watch the Disney tale-spinners create more evenly-matched romantic figures, characters who grow and endure trials together, and end up together because they deserve each other, not just because they're the only prince and/or princess in the movie.

But wouldn't it be refreshing if a Disney heroine wasn't a princess at all, but an ordinary girl? Now that would be brave.

SSC PLAYS ON

'Tis the season for tidings of joy, and this one's for you, fans of Shakespeare Santa Cruz: the show may yet go on! The entity organized to preserve the goals of SSC and orchestrate its future, Shakespeare Play On, has a couple of announcements.

First, the organization now has its own website, a virtual clearinghouse for information.

Secondly, as we speak, SPO and UCSC are in negotiations to produce a 2014 season in the Stanley-Sinsheimer Festival Glen under the Shakespeare Santa Cruz name.

And finally, SPO has been incorporated as an independent California non-profit. It also has a new fiscal sponsor in place—The Arts Council of Santa Cruz County—which means ACSCC is now enabled to accept donations from intrepid arts supporters like YOU, the Public, to help fund this upcoming season.

Here's how it works: between now and January 15, 2014, the group plans to raise the funds to finance the 2014 season and hire the artistic talent. Revenue from the season will fund the 2015 season, and so on. The goal is to raise $885,000, and contributions from SPO board members and friends in the community have already raised a quarter of the funds.

So, in this season of gifting and giving, consider making a contribution to support entertaining and challenging world class theatre, right here in River City. Operators are standing by at the ACSCC donation site. Type "Shakespeare" in the special purpose dedication box, and dispense some genuine holiday cheer.

Trust me, you'll thank yourself next summer, under the redwoods!

AMERICAN GOTHICS

Speaking of potential Oscar nominees, I also recently saw Bruce Dern in Nebraska.

For old times' sake (and the dues he paid in all those AIP biker movies), Dern will probably score a nomination for his befuddled, alcoholic Midwesterner whose stubbornness compels his long-suffering son (Will Forte) to drive him from Billings, Montana, to Lincoln, Nebraska, where the old man thinks he's won a million dollar prize.

Director Alexander Payne shoots the film in black and white, which is a very cool thing.

But I confess, I just couldn't get into the sensibility of the story. While striving for ironic humor, the overall tone of Bob Nelson's script comes off as condescending and obvious.

The portrait of generations of Midwestern males whose minimal mental radar only blips for beer, football, and motor vehicles occasionally conveys the gravity of missed opportunities and wasted lives—along with those random, uncomfortable moments when adult children realize their parents had lives before they were born. But mostly the whole thing just gave me the willies.

Dern and Forte play the prickly father-son relationship deftly enough on their road trip across heartland America. (It's no accident Dern's character is named Woody Grant, a literally backwards homage to the painter of "American Gothic.") And June Squibb provides some feisty laughs as Woody's perpetually irritated wife.

But for all its visual stylishness, there's very little there there, in terms of story or characters, or the audience's investment in either.

La DENCH DELIVERS

Looks like I'll have to revise my fearless (and/or clueless) Oscar nomination predictions posted here a few blogs back. I just caught up with Philomena, and my guess is perpetual Oscar magnet Judi Dench will score another nomination for Best Actress —a category she has never actually won, despite multiple nominations.

(In fact, her only Oscar gold has been in the Supporting Actress category for the seven minutes she spent onscreen as the splendidly caustic Good Queen Bess in Shakespeare In Love—which shows you what a formidable contender she can be!)

Despite a preview trailer that passes it off as sort of a treacly feel-good movie, Stephen Frears' Philomena, is an adroit and fiercely moving drama.

At its heart are the notorious Magdalen Institutions that flourished for nearly three centuries (notably in Ireland), Catholic convents where young women "in trouble" were abandoned by their ashamed families.

You'd think it was a Doris Day comedy from this twinkly poster

La Dench is marvelous as Philomena, a retired nurse living in London who's searching for the son she was forced to give up 50 years earlier.

Our entry into her story is cynical Martin Sixsmith (the great Steve Coogan, who also co-wrote the script, based on a true story), a recently sacked political journalist forced to accept a freelance human interest story about the "little Irish lady".

But as Martin politely squires her around, he and we are sucked into the profound tragedy and injustice of Philomena's story. (Sophie Kennedy Clark—below—is excellent playing teenage Philomena in flashbacks.)

In return for taking in the young women, the convent received four years of indentured servitude, and while the nuns delivered the unwed mothers' babies, they also sold the  resulting children to the highest bidder—which in the postwar 1950s meant Americans.

As they travel to the US on the trail of her lost son, Dench reveals a core of deep feeling, steely resolve, and generosity beneath Philomena's flighty-seeming, romance novel-quoting exterior. What she achieves playing someone less sophisticated than the actress herself, or the characters she usually plays onscreen, is a wonderfully subtle and shaded performance that finds the character's common humanity and strength. It's a lovely thing.

As to my own early predictions, I will happily plug in Dame Judi's name over any of the embattled. Southern-fried viragos in August: Osage County. I haven't even seen it yet, but I've endured the interminable trailer so often, it already sets my teeth on edge.

CELEBRATING SSC

SSC program 2000, design by Mott Jordan

Hark ye, all friends and fans of Shakespeare Santa Cruz: here's how to show your support for 32 years of imaginative, inventive, world-class theatre right here in our own backyard.

This Sunday, December 8, at 6 pm, will be the final performance of the final production of SSC as we now know it. Come celebrate the company and all it has meant to the Santa Cruz community by turning out for the last performance of the current holiday show, It's A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, the final joint production between SSC and the UCSC Theater Arts Department.

Even as we speak, plans are afoot for SSC to reinvent itself and rise phoenix-like from the challenges of these last four months as a new, independent enterprise. At the moment, this entity is called Shakespeare Play On, whose organizers have issued this open invitation to the community re: the closing night of It's A Wonderful Life:

"Let’s fill the theater on the evening of the 8th with SSC patrons and friends.  Come and show your support and appreciation for SSC’s 32 years of artistic excellence at UCSC and learn what the future holds for this nationally-recognized theater company."

Sharon Shao, Julia Finch, and Rosie Glen-Lambert

Written by Joe Landry, It's A Wonderful Life is a re-imagining of the beloved Frank Capra holiday movie staged as a radio drama being broadcast live ca. 1946. The hard-working cast of six actors and three chorus girls/commercial jingle singers voice all the parts and provide all the hands-on, in-studio sound effects for a charmingly retro and warm-hearted dose of holiday cheer.

At this, the closing of the (first) SSC era, let's stop and remember what a challenging and provocative 32 years its been. In addition to dynamic productions from the Shakespeare oeuvre every season (and I mean all of the oeuvre, from crowd-pleasers like A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth, to thornier work like Cymbeline and Titus Andronicus), local audiences were also treated to the best of world theatre, both classical and modern.

SSC presented Albee, Moliere, Chekhov, Ibsen (hands up everyone who remembers a pre-Walter White Bryan Cranston in A Doll's House, 1992), and Tom Stoppard, to name but a few. (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead played in rep with Hamlet in 1985, with the same actors in the same roles in both plays.) Non-Bard offerings might be anything from the Stephen Sondheim musical, Company, to Amadeus, from Waiting For Godot to The Three Musketeers.

And let's not forget the exquisite holiday pantomimes (not as in Marcel Marceau; these were "pantos," as Yuletide fairy tale extravaganzas are called in British theatre)—Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Wind in the Willows, A Year With Frog and Toad. Sigh.

Personally, I was hoping there would be a bit more panto in SSC's last holiday extravaganza, but that's just me.

Once upon a time, it just wouldn't be Christmas without Mike Ryan and a dancing bear!

Still, for anyone who has ever loved this company, this is a great opportunity to celebrate all Shakespeare Santa Cruz has been in its glorious past, and look forward to all it might yet be. Get your tickets now!

WORDS OF WONDER

Reading an antidote to war in beautifully acted 'Book Thief'

You need not have read Markus Zusak's bestselling YA novel to be drawn to The Book Thief. Bibliophiles will find the premise of a child who steals books because she is so addicted to reading just about irresistible.

As usual with literary adaptations, there's a lot more going on in Zusak's 500-plus-page novel than ever makes it to the screen. But the essence of Zusak's story about a girl whose love of books helps her to survive devastating times—the rise of the Nazis in a World War II-era German town—retains its power.

Scripted by Michael Petroni (who's had a hand in adapting authors as diverse as Anne Rice and C.S. Lewis for the screen), The Book Thief is directed by Downton Abbey veteran Brian Percival. It's a stately looking film that wisely concentrates on personal dynamics, while the escalating horrors of the war are kept mostly offstage.

And it succeeds on an ensemble of absolutely lovely performances led by Geoffrey Rush as the girl's warm-hearted foster father, Emily Watson as his crusty-seeming wife, and beguiling 13-year-old French-Canadian actress Sophie Nélisse in the title role.

Taught to read and write by her new foster father, young Liesel (Nérisse) awakens to the transportive wonder of words just as the Nazis come to power with their campaign of moral and intellectual "cleansing." When books are burned in the square, she can't resist smuggling a smoking volume home—or sneaking into the Buergmeister's house to "borrow" books from the family library.

But Liesel's petty crimes pale next to the war encroaching steadily into the town: neighbors are conscripted into the army, Jews are dragged out of their homes for an unknown fate, and terrifying air raids disrupt everything. Tensions mount when Liesel's foster parents shelter Jewish refugee, Max (Ben Schnetzer), in their basement—a young man who also loves words and encourages Liesel to tell her own story.

That the worst of war's brutality is kept offscreen fits with the viewpoint of children who can't really comprehend what's happening in the larger world. But the emotional connection between the characters—especially the moving relationship between Rush's humble Hans, struggling to retain his humanity, and his devoted Liesel—gives the film its validity and grace. (Read more in this week's Good Times)