JUKE BOX HEROES

Hitmaking funk studio celebrated in rousing music doc 'Muscle Shoals'

Musical heroes don't come much more unsung than the so-called Muscle Shoals Swampers. A handful of young, white hometown boys, session musicians at the FAME recording studio in backwoods Muscle Shoals, Alabama, they were responsible for laying down some of the funkiest R&B and soul tracks to come out of the 1960s and '70s, behind such stellar artists as Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge, Etta James, and Wilson Pickett.

Pretty much unknown to the public, they finally get the recognition they deserve in Muscle Shoals, Greg "Freddy" Camalier's raucous musical documentary on the founding of FAME studio and the distinctive brand of funk produced there.

Aretha and the boys in the band

Muscle Shoals is a rural village on the Alabama side of the Tennessee River, which the Native American people called "the river that sings."

Bono of U2, observing there's always a river involved in musical movements, like the Tennessee or the Mersey in Liverpool, has a more visceral idea: "It's like the songs come out of the mud."

But the chief architect of the Muscle Shoals sound turns out to be Rick Hall, founder of the FAME studio, the son of a dirt-poor sawmiller, and onetime guitarist in a local rock band.

Among the first records he produced were the classic "Steal Away" by Jimmy Hughes, and the Arthur Alexander hit, "You Better Move On."

To cut these records, Hall called in the other guys from his previous band for back-up.

With guitar, bass, drums, and a vibrato-heavy electric organ, they became the in-house rhythm section behind such iconic hits as Sledge's "When A Man Loves A Woman," Aretha's blistering "I Ain't Never Loved A Man," and Pickett's "Mustang Sally." 

"All 'funky' was, we didn't know how to play it smooth," laughs one Swamper. (Read more in this week's Good Times)

HOOK IS ON THE WAY

Exciting news!

So there we were, in the middle of the last day of Open Studios, when Art Boy & I were pretty much running on fumes. During a break in the action, I snuck upstairs to check my email, and discovered that my US editor-to-be had just sent me cover art for the US edition of Alias Hook!

Of course, I can't post it here (not yet! Stay tuned!). And even though I knew there would be a US edition  coming out from Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martin's Press) in May, 2014 (in hardcover, yet!), there's nothing like feasting your eyes on the actual cover art to make it all seem suddenly real.

What's even more exciting? They're keeping the original title, to my great relief.

Could I be any more stoked? I think not!

Since then, I've spent my first day revising with my editor at TDB. 85-90% of his suggestions are right on, and for the rest, there's room to negotiate. Overall, a surprisingly painless experience!

Watch this space for further details...

INSIDE STORY

Where do creative artists get their ideas? Art Boy always used to answer, "The Idea Channel," until he realized people were rushing home to check their cable listings.

In real life, creative inspiration springs from the strangest and often least expected sources, as varied as the artists, writers, musicians and dancers who seize a phantom idea and run with it.

This occurred to me while reading through a new ebook anthology called Story Behind the Book: Volume 1 (Essays on Writing Speculative Fiction). Imagine my delight when I found out an essay I wrote earlier this year on the writing of Alias Hook is included!

The book is presented under the auspices of the fine sci-fi/fantasy book website Upcoming 4.me. Site editor Kristijan Meic edited the anthology with Ivana Steiner. It's an outgrowth of the website's regular feature, "The Story Behind..." wherein sf/f authors reveal the deep, dark secrets of their writing processes.

I’m very pleased to be included in these virtual pages with such distinguished fellow essayists as Jo Walton, Ian Whates, L. E. Modesitt, and Susan Palwick (among many others). Some 40 contributors discuss their inspiration for writing in a variety of speculative genres—epic fantasy, horror, alternative history, sword and sorcery, ghost stories, dystopian future sci-fi, absurdist zombie fiction, and what one author describes as "Hornblower in space."

 The book is up on Amazon and Amazon.uk as we speak! All proceeds will be donated to the Epilepsy Action charity in the UK.

If you want to know where writers really get their ideas, check it out!

FRIENDSHIP FEST

Summer Pasture (China/USA) at the Pacific Rim Film Festival

Pacific Rim Film Festival celebrates 25 years of cross-cultural understanding


Break out the silver confetti! One of Santa Cruz's most beloved cultural events, the Pacific Rim Film Festival, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

Originally inspired by the Hawaii International Film Festival around the theme, "East Meets West: When Strangers Meet," our own home-grown PRFF marks its first quarter-century with an expanded program.

Twenty films from twelve countries will unspool over seven days, October 17-23, at four venues county-wide. And as always, except for the closing-night musical fundraiser, every single film will be shown free of charge.

This year's dramas, comedies and docs come from North Korea, Cambodia, Tibet, China, the Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand/Samoa, Japan, Taiwan, India, and the United States. Participating theatres include the Theatre Del Mar, the Rio Theatre, and the Riverfront Twin in Santa Cruz, and Green Valley Cinema in Watsonville.

Q & A sessions with filmmakers will follow select screenings.

Among this year's highlights is Starry Starry Night (2011, Taiwan, 80 minutes). Tom Lin's beauteous live-action adaptation of the celebrated Jimmy Liao picture book captures all the whimsy, magic, and artfulness of Liao's paintings in a very moving story of a 13-year-old girl and boy learning to navigate life, loss, love, and growing up. (Read more)

The kids bond through art (a jigsaw puzzle of Van Gogh's eponymous painting looms large in the story), and their projects bleed into their real-life landscape in fanciful ways. Giant origami animals march over bridges and own city streets; when the kids board a train out of town, it flies through Van Gogh's painted sky.

I was unfamiliar with Liao's lovely book until I saw the film and did some research. Look how gorgeously filmmaker Lin reimagines  some of the book's painted images, with all their humor and soulfulness intact. I loved this movie so much—don't miss it!

(Starry Starry Night plays twice Friday night at the Riverfront, 7 pm, and 9:30 pm.)

TILT-A-WORLD

Santa Cruz artist Susan Else is earning a national reputation for her elaborate fiber sculptures. She makes unique conceptual and figurative pieces entirely covered in quilted, printed and painted fabric.

The onetime Open Studios artist delighted visitors for years with such signature pieces as a complete fabric chess set and board, or a five-foot in diameter rotating Ferris Wheel with her boisterous sculpted figures in every seat (created in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk).

Starting this month, Susan will be showing a collection of her work at the Peninsula Museum of Art in Burlingame (1777 California Drive, Burlingame).

Called "Tilt-A-World," the exhibit will feature Susan's marvelous, whimsical and/or sardonic figures, unexpected fiber landscapes, and large show-stoppers. That's her delightful "When Pony's Dream," above.

"Boundary" by Susan Else

In her artist's statement, Susan says, "I treat cloth not as a flat surface but as a wild flexible skin for three-dimensional objects. Life is always a complicated stew of positive, negative, and shades of grey – all at once – and I want my works to reflect that complexity and ambiguity.”

The show opens October 20 and runs through January 26, 2014, in the East Gallery.

A reception for the artist will be held this Sunday (October 20), 1-4 pm, so if you're in the neighborhood, drop in to cheer Susan on and see a fabulous show!

HIGH ANXIETY

Gripping, intense, emotional 'Gravity' will put you in orbit

It's the perfect set-up. A couple of astronauts on a routine mission outside their spacecraft for repairs suddenly find themselves adrift in space, tethered to each other, and no longer in contact with mission control. Where can they go? What can they possibly do?

The variety of answers may surprise you in Gravity, a smart, lean, elegantly composed and utterly gripping edge-of-your-seat thriller from filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón. Neither sci-fi nor space opera—and far more than simply a star vehicle for appealing headliners Sandra Bullock and George Clooney—Gravity is more like a space procedural in which ordinary people pit their own human ingenuity against ever more incredible and daunting odds.

Scripted by the director and his son, Jonas Cuarón, the story begins in space, where medical engineer Ryan Stone (Bullock), on her first space mission, is outside the craft in her bulky suit trying to repair a communications link-up to send data back to Houston.

Meanwhile, her colleague, veteran mission commander Matt Kowalski (Clooney), is on a long tether, cheerfully chugging rings around her, trying to beat a Russian cosmonaut's record for the longest space walk.

"You're the genius up here," Matt reminds her, "I only drive the bus."

But things change in a heartbeat when debris from some of the myriad international space stations sent into space and abandoned comes hurtling toward them. But that's only the beginning of a taut plot of mounting intensity.

Cuarón doesn't waste a single frame, and every one of the film's 90 minutes counts.

And as if the adrenalin-rush storyline were not enough, the movie is astonishingly beautiful to look at. It looks as if the entire film were shot at zero-gravity; nothing looks fake or CGI. But Cuarón's emphasis is always on the human element. Awesome on so many levels, Gravity will put you in orbit. (Read more)

Here's something else to ponder: George Clooney in Gravity, and Buzz Lightyear: separated at birth? It's all about the chin, and the eyebrows. Just sayin'…

HAPPY (OS) TRAILS

Another fabulous Open Studios event at the home of Beth Allison Gripenstraw!

At the sign of the burro (with his payload of fresh flowers), visitors were invited to follow the cacti/agave trail to Beth's Mexican Hacienda "installation." Beth doesn't just show art, she transforms her entire home into an irresistible fantasy environment!

A person has to snoop around thoughtfully to appreciate all the details. In the Mercado room, Beth showed colorful ceramic fish, turtle, and jellyfish platters, along with a cornucopia of ceramic earrings—cacti, palm trees, Dia de los Muertos, big cats, fruit, and on and on.

In the dining room (past the Mariachi guitarist complete with sombrero, napping in the window seat), a marvelous series of stacking tableware was on display, platters, plates, and bowls in a cactus motif in shades of terra cotta, turquoise and black.  A few steps away on the balcony was the tequila bar, where visitors were invited to sip the wares in tiny pottery shot "glasses" given away as souvenirs.

And in the sunroom stood an amazing Dia de los Muertos altar (complete with a vintage ceramic tile Virgin of Guadeloupe, sugar skulls, and doggie biscuits) dedicated to the iconic and beloved terrier Benny—whose last adventure in Mexico earlier this year is immortalized in a painting next to the altar. Of course, Beth's charming watercolor paintings decorate every room.

Beth's explosive creative energy is an inspiration to all of us! It's such a treat to have her in our community.

OPEN STUDIOS 101

The first three weekends in October are fast approaching, and we all know what that means! Time to strap on your pith helmet, grab your treasure map, and head out to Open Studios, the self-guided art tour to visit Santa Cruz County artists in their natural habitats—studio, garage, kitchen table, or whatever workspaces they call home.

Most local art lovers already know the drill. But if you're new to the Open Studios experience, here's a handy guide to getting the most out of your custom-designed art adventure.

(And because I'm a journalist, I'll stick to the facts, Ma'am.)

WHO do you really want to see? With over 300 participating artists, you can't possibly see them all (even over three weekends), and following all those giant green signs around the neighborhood can be so random.

Best have a plan for ferreting out your new favorites—which means investing $20 in an OS Art Tour Guide (above) featuring a full color image from every artist in the event, as well as maps, addresses, and contact info to show you how to reach them.  (That's the treasure map I was talking about.)

The Guide also functions as a gorgeously illustrated year-round calendar. Pick one up a bookstores, galleries and art supply stores county-wide.

WHAT does the work really look like? A 2.5-inch square image in the OS Guide is a terrific appetizer. But if you want to know how the work stacks up as a main course, if it can nourish and sustain you over the long haul in your own home, go down to the OS Preview Exhibit at the Santa Cruz Art League (526 Broadway, S C) to see the work in person.

Viewing art, up close and personal

With one life-sized piece from every OS artist on display, the show helps give you a sense of color, texture, quality, materials, and anything else you need to know about the work. The exhibit runs through October 20; hours are Wednesday-Friday, 11 am to 5 pm, and Saturday-Sunday 10 am to 5 pm. (And while you're there, pick up a free color postcard from your favorite OS artist!)

This year, there's also a sister exhibit of North County OS artists—from Davenport, Bonny Doon, San Lorenzo Valley, and Scotts Valley—at the R. Blitzer Gallery (2801 Mission Street, SC). This show is also up through October 20, Tuesday-Sunday 11 am to 5 pm.

WHEN is your designated artist 's studio open? OS is so colossal, its intrepid organizers at the Arts Council of Santa Cruz County have to divide the county in half so visitors aren't completely overwhelmed. This year, North County artists (everyone north of the yacht harbor) open their studios the first weekend, October 5-6.

Art postcards at the SC Art League

South County artists (south of the yacht harbor to Watsonville) open their doors the second weekend, October 12-13. And just to make it interesting, all North and South County artists are invited to participate in Encore Weekend, October 19-20, if they so desire.  To find out when yor artist is open to the public, and whether or not he or she will be open for Encore, refer to your handy OS Guide.

WHERE the heck are these crazy artists located, anyway? That's why you need the map! from the wilds of Ben Lomond and Boulder Creek to the back roads of Live Oak to the hidden byways of Aptos and La Selva Beach, artists tend to stray off the beaten path. It's your job to plot a course to find them. Pick your favorites, then try to find two or three other likely-looking prospects to visit in the same neighborhood, so you can spend less time in your car and more time viewing art!

WHY? Because art matters. It's not extracurricular, it's not an afterthought. It's not a privilege or a luxury. Art is essential to life. Take the tour. Plot your course. Feed your soul.

In other OS news...

Painter, ceramicist, and jewelry-maker Beth Gripenstraw doesn't just show her art. She creates entire fantasy environments. Two years ago, she turned her home into an African safari during Open Studios; last year, she delighted visitors be recreating Paris in the 1920s.

This year she's turning her home into a Mexican hacienda, complete with coordinating paintings, jewelry, and tableware (like these cool pots with a cactus motif). Last I heard, she was painting life-sized masonite burros and looking for a baby pig to borrow for the weekend!

Whatever she comes up with for this year, trust me, you won't want to miss it!  Beth is a North County artist and she will only be open this weekend, October 5-6, 11 am to 5 pm. She's on Towne Terrace in Santa Cruz, # 93 in your Artist's Guide.  I'll see you there!

MODERN FAMILIES

Romantic, parental relationships at heart of engaging 'Enough Said'

In her last two films, writer-director Nicole Holfcener's sensibility was way off the mark. The characters in Holfcener's Friends With Money and Please Give were distinguished by their fuzzy motivations, unconvincing friendships, and often baffling behavior.

But the filmmaker is back on track with Enough Said; her focus is sharper and the results far more rewarding in this wry, engaging, life-sized modern comedy about refreshingly real people. And it doesn't hurt that Holfcener had the wit to cast the late, beloved James Gandolfini in a rare romantic role.

In Enough Said, larger themes of class, money, and privilege that have been obsessing Holofcener lately are relegated to subtext. This time, she moves personal relationships to the forefront—romantic, parental, and marital, along with her trademark friendships between women.

 And as our tour guide into this milieu, she gives us protagonist Julia Louis-Dreyfus, at her most appealing and least snarky, as a long-divorced single mom unexpectedly trying to navigate the dating game at a crossroads in her life.

Eva (Louis-Dreyfus) is a mobile masseuse who schleps her massage table around to the homes of her various clients in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Cheerful and tolerant of her clients' quirks, she's also dreading the imminent departure of her teenage daughter, Ellen (an impressive Tracey Fairaway) to college.

At a party, Eva meets Marianne (Catherine Keener), a professional poet, who becomes Eva's new client. Eva is dazzled by Marianne's beautiful house, perfect furniture, and excellent taste, and they become fast friends.

Meanwhile, Eva also meets big, warm-hearted bear of a man, Albert (Gandolfini), a divorced father whose only daughter is also college-bound. They start dating and having a great time together.

The only sour note is sounded by Marianne, who keeps harping on the copious faults of her own ex-husband, and disparaging the very idea of romantic relationships. Soon enough, Eva is viewing her romance with Albert through the prism of Marianne's negativity. (Read more in this week's Good Times)

PLEASE MISS POSTMAN

Beatles secretary and fan-wrangler celebrated in irresistible 'Good Ol' Freda'


Talk about a dream job. Freda Kelly was just 17 when she landed a job as personal secretary to The Beatles in 1962. No one had any idea how big the band would become, and Liverpool homegirl Freda rode that colossal wave with them for the next 11 years. But unlike so many others with even the most tenuous claim to having once known The Beatles, Freda never sought the limelight—no rounds of chat shows, no tell-all autobiography. Her unique story has remained untold—until now.

Ryan White's documentary, Good Ol' Freda, is as ebullient, down-to-earth, and irresistible as Freda Kelly herself. "I was just a secretary," she shrugs, with typical lack of pretension. "Who wants to hear the secretary's story?"

Now a middle-class matron (still working as a secretary)—with the best memorabilia ever in a box under the eaves in her attic—she decided to share her amazing story so that some day her grandson will know that, back in her youth, she'd done something fun and exciting. It is, as a friend says, "one of the last true stories of The Beatles you will ever hear."

Freda was a typist in a secretarial pool at a Liverpool office on the fateful day some mates took her out to lunch round the corner at the Cavern Club. The cellar location "had a very unique smell," she recalls as "disinfectant and sweat." But it was the band onstage, not the ambiance, that kept local kids coming back, and White employs what scant footage exists of John, Paul, George, and Pete Best in action at the Cavern, augmented by tons of still photos to get the idea across.

Wrap your head around this: going to see The Beatles live at the Cavern on your lunch break. Every day. The group played some 284 gigs at the Cavern, and Freda estimates she saw 190 of them. In between sets, they hung out in the band room, chatting with their loyal fans.

Brian Epstein (fondly recalled as "Eppie") managed the NEMS record store an kept an office in the building where his family sold furniture. When he came to the Cavern to see what all the fuss was about, the group was on its way. As their new manager, one of the first thing's Epstein did was hire Freda as their secretary. Her job was mainly to answer fan mail and to make sure "the boys" produced enough autographs and signed photos to go around.

"I was one of them, " Freda says of the fans, "I knew how they felt," and she did her best to accommodate their requests. She couldn't send Paul round to a birthday party, for instance, but when a girl sent in a pillow case, Freda took it to Ringo's mum to see that he slept on it for a couple of nights. Her duties soon expanded to running the official Beatles Fan Club, and writing a regular fan newsletter. On a 1963 recorded Christmas greeting sent out to Fan Club members, the boys included a special shout-out to "Good ol" Freda!"

Her insights into the group are fond, never catty. Paul was always "nice and friendly," John was "a man of many moods," and "quiet Beatle" George "was never quiet with me." While she picked a new favorite every day, depending on who was nicest to her, she does not divulge if she ever had a deeper relationship with any of them. "That's personal," she smiles.

Her friend says "The Beatles saw her as a sister and their families saw her as a daughter." When Ringo joined up, motherless Freda became especially close to his mum. George's parents, the Harrisons, she recalls, "enjoyed the fame more than the other parents." And as that fame grew, and Freda's workload increased from 200 fan letters a week to 2-3000 a day, she became even more tenacious in guarding their privacy, not putting up with anyone "telling lies about her boys."

Which doesn't mean she couldn't give back as well as she got from the boys themselves. Once when John—evidently in one of is moods—threatened to sack her for being late, she told him she'd continue to work for the other three and he could do his own mail. To which he immediately back-pedaled that he was only kidding!

Freda today at the Cavern—where it all began

White assembles a great collection of vintage still photos and newsreel footage to tell this story. The soundtrack is full of period music, mostly R&B originals (like "Twist and Shout" and "Please Mr. Postman") later covered by The Beatles. Viewers might wish for more actual Beatles recordings, but that White managed to secure the rights to the four Beatles originals he does use is pretty impressive for a Kickstarter-funded project.

From early days (when no one could imagine bigger success than Playing the Empire Theatre in Liverpool at the bottom of the bill with Little Richard), through worldwide celebrity, marriages, divorces, death, children, movies, the foundation of Apple Corps, and the final divergence of four individuals going their separate ways, Freda has seen it all. Her common sense, good humor, and irrepressible sense of fun make her a most personable tour guide through an extraordinary cultural era.

MARGERY MYSTICAL TOUR

Shannon Hemphill and Ali Eppy

Marriage, sex, bloody religious infighting, a pervasive rape culture, the role of women in society—all these thematic elements might lead you to expect a play called Cell Talk: 1410 to be an edgy contemporary drama involving iPhones. But, no.

In author Dana Bagshaw's pop-up theatre production, the "cell" in question is a Spartan monastic room, the kind to which a woman under holy orders might retreat to live out her days in contemplation. A woman like the historical Julian of Norwich, whose conversations with another real-life medieval mystic and pilgrim, Margery Kempe—ca. 1410—make up the bulk of Bagshaw's ambitious play of ideas.

Santa Cruz author Bagshaw lived in England for 18 years, where early versions of the play were staged at offbeat but atmospheric venues like medieval churches. Cell Talk: 1410 had its American premiere last Sunday at Calvary Episcopal Church in downtown Santa Cruz, and will be performed again next Sunday, September 29, at the First Congregational Church on High Street.

The play is largely based on Kempe's book, The Book of Margery Kempe,  (dictated to a priest, since she never learned to read or write), considered to be the first autobiography in the English language. Bagshaw distills the fascinating events of Kempe's life to a series of vignettes in which Margery (Shannon Hemphill), tells her story to Julian (Ali Eppy), or interacts with her long-suffering, yet loyal husband, John Kempe (Rick Kuhn).

A self-defined visionary and mystic, Margery had her first apocalyptic vision after the difficult birth of her first child. Chained up as a madwoman for a while, she only recovered after Jesus appeared to her to talk her down—beginning what she claimed was a lifelong series of conversations with her Savior.

After bearing 14 children, Margery made a bargain of celibacy with her husband, visited Julian, another famed mystic, for confirmation that her visions were of Divine and not demonic origin, and spent most of the rest of her life on holy pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Assisi, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela.

 At a time when the Holy Church was routinely burning "heretics," Margery was tried and briefly imprisoned for heresy. She outraged church fathers for daring to have a personal relationship with Jesus outside of the church, and even for wearing white, supposed to be the sole province of virgins or women in holy orders.

Bagshaw's play is thoughtfully directed by Matt Matthews (making smart use of the outdoor space, a walkway alongside the Calvary library). It begins with Margery's first terrifying visions, and her husband's bewildered response. (The affable and funny Kuhn's John Kempe is the audience touchstone throughout.) They have a couple of more scenes together, including the entertaining moment when Margery prevails upon the disappointed John to embrace celibacy. But the rest of Margery's story unfolds in conversations with Julian.

Rick Kuhn, Shannon Hemphill, Ali Eppy

These mostly concern the quality of spirituality and the goodness of the Lord, along with the revelation of Margery's "secret sin," stemming from a rape she endured as a young girl. (Some graphic descriptions in this scene may not be suitable for young children.) Some of these conversations could stand a little pruning to sharpen their focus. But all is redeemed in their final encounter, when Bagshaw's themes of the triumph of the God of Love over the punishing God of wrath, and intuitive feminine mysticism over rigid church doctrine, register with gusto.

As Margery, Hemphill is a tad girlish and modern at times, but she also has moments of humor and warmth. Eppy's elegant Julian is the voice of serenity throughout. And the use of a quartet of musicians on hand, playing authentic medieval music between scene breaks, is an especially nice touch.

Cell Talk: 1410 plays next Sunday,  Sept. 29, 4 to 5:30 p.m., at the First Congregational Church, 900 High Street,  Santa Cruz. Tickets available at the door for a $10/15 donation.

LIFE IMITATES ART

Art, life, past, present merge in meditative 'Museum Hours'

If you've ever been to the venerable Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, you're in for a nostalgic treat with the film, Museum Hours. But you need not have ever been to Vienna to be drawn into the odd, languid spell cast by this Austrian-American co-production. Anyone who has ever haunted any 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.

The film is written and directed by American Jem Cohen, who has an extensive list of credits in music videos and documentary shorts. Museum Hours has a bit of a documentary vibe to it; the main character, a museum guard, narrates his thoughts and observations as he goes about his daily life, and onscreen conversations have an unscripted feel. There's not much in the way of plot or action, yet the film is thematically rich in its ideas on the secret symbolism of pictures, and art as the social media of its day.

Bruegel, "Fight Between Carnival and Lent," 1559

Johann (Bobby Sommer) is a uniformed guard at the KHM. He spends his days on a chair in a niche before a heavy wooden door and behind a red velvet rope, although he often gets up and wanders around the colossal picture galleries.

His favorite is the Bruegel room, large canvases teeming with messy life in all its diversity—allegorical wedding or hunting scenes, religious or mythological scenes radically reimagined in terms of 16th Century peasant life.

Johann "always sees something new in the paintings" that continue to speak to the human condition.

One day, he strikes up a conversation with Canadian visitor, Anne (Mary Margaret O'Hara). A distant cousin is in a Viennese hospital, and in the absence of any other family, Anne has come to spend time with her. Johann offers his services as a translator, and soon they become allied art explorers, soaking up the pictures and viewing art through the lens of life (and vice versa). It's especially fun to see the way filmmaker Cohen composes every exterior shot like a Bruegel canvas. (Read more)

The lack of narrative drive will frustrate some viewers, but Museum Hours is more about reverie than story. It would make a great double-bill in your Netflix queue with Lech Majewski's splendidly nutty Bruegel-movie mash-up, The Mill and the Cross, but it will be so much more compelling on a big screen.

Meanwhile, take a mini virtual tour of the museums of Vienna in this blog I posted after my visit there last summer!

PINING AWAY

Tatou shines as pre-feminist desperate housewife in 'Thèrése'

Audrey Tatou continues to grow in complexity onscreen. In the handsome and elegantly mounted period drama, Thèrése, the former Amelie gamine stars as a young woman entangled in bourgeois dynastic obligations in the southwest French countryside in the 1920s.

It's a part that calls for brisk intelligence (but not warmth) quiet desperation and a soupcon of cold fury, and Tatou plays every note with striking precision.

The final offering from the late French filmmaker Claude Miller, the film is adapted from the 1927 novel, Thèrése Desqueyroux, by Francois Mauriac. (Miller co-wrote the screenplay with Natalie Carter.) Although the novel was written long before modern notions of feminism had gained much currency, its portrait of a woman trapped in an ill-fitting social role continues to have resonance today.

As young girls, Thèrése and her best friend, Anne, grow up as best friends in adjoining estates nestled in a vast pine forest outside of Bordeaux. Anne is active, uncomplicated, "simple;" Thèrése always has her nose in a book. Everyone assumes that Thèrése will marry Anne's older brother, Bernard Desqueyroux, uniting the families' properties, and so it comes to pass—although his mother (the great Catherine Arditi) worries that Thèrése "thinks too much."

Thèrése (now played by Tatou) jokes to Bernard (Gilles Lellouche) that she's marrying him for his pines; theirs is not a love match, but she tells Anne (played as an adult by Anais Demoustier) she hopes marriage will "save" her and put the chaotic ideas in her head into some kind of order.

But marriage to pompous Bernard is hardly salvation. Uninterested in him physically, yet rushed into motherhood, she finds herself confined, not liberated, by her wifely duties.Oppressed by every aspect of her life, Thèrése begins to take a perverse interest in the arsenic-laced medicinal drops Bernard takes for his health.

If the novel had been written, say, half a century earlier, this would be a very different scenario. Viewers expecting a conventional morality play a la Anna Karenina, say, complete with passionate awakening and forbidden love affair, may be surprised at the way these events play out. It all adds up to an engrossing portrait of psychological turmoil in an era of simmering cultural upheaval. (Read more)

MAJOR TOM

Stoppard's ambitious 'Arcadia' launches new JTC season

Tom Stoppard's plays are not for the intellectually faint of heart.

In his dazzling and accomplished Arcadia, the playwright's roving mind and lively wit concoct a densely-packed thematic narrative touching on mathematics and physics, English history and culture, landscape gardening, the Romantic movement, academic infighting, Lord Byron, and—of course—sex and literature.

It's a long, smart, frequently funny play, and Jewel Theatre Company enhances its reputation for ambitious productions by staging Arcadia to kick off its ninth season.

Hannah Mary J. Keller and Robert Anthony Peters

The play is written as a kind of literary mystery, which plays out alongside its resolution in two separate time periods, 200 years apart, on the play's single set, a drawing room at an English country estate. Returning JTC stalwart Susan Myer Silton directs with efficiency and aplomb, keeping characters moving crisply in and out of Ron Gasparinetti's handsome, stationary set.

She also manages the tricky dance of keeping each character true to his or her historical and cultural era, even when they (occasionally) occupy the same set at the same time.

In 1809, at the country estate of Sidley Park, a proper young lady of the Regency era, Thomasina Coverly (a spirited Hannah Mary J. Keller), is attempting to study Fermat's Theorem with her self-possessed young tutor, Septimus Hodge (the very effective Robert Anthony Peters).

 Meanwhile, her mother, Lady Croom (a terrific Shannon Warrick), is suffering the renovation of her formal, Classicist garden with an overlay of faux-wild, gothic elements, in keeping with the fashion for Romanticism that's becoming all the rage.

In alternating scenes in the present day, a pair of literary scholars (Jeff Garrett and Julie James, left) attempt to piece together a mystery from the past, and adroit comedy is made from the juxtaposition of the modern academics' theorizing and the way events actually play out.

Garret's hilarious Bernard Nightingale is the raucous centerpiece of this production, a volatile academic hell-bent on pummeling a few scant crumbs of historical possibility into the proof he needs to support his pet theory. (Read more)

(Photos by Steve DiBartolomeo)

GIRL POWER

What? You haven't seen 20 Feet From Stardom yet? Not even once?

Why are you still sitting there?

Morgan Neville's documentary tribute to the often unheralded, and yet so necessary heroines of rock—the background singers onstage and in the studio—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, and how they fared—are a remarkable cultural document of four or five rich decades in the pop music scene.

But OMG, the singing! When these ladies open their chops, either on record, or in vintage concert clips, or for Neville's camera in the present day, I promise you will find true religion. You'll rock, you'll roll, and I defy you not to tap or hum or sway along.

Ready to rock: Darlene Love, Tata Vega, Merry Clayton, Judith Hill, Lisa Fischer

I came because I love Merry Clayton, whose powerhouse contribution on the Stones' "Gimme Shelter" is arguably (by me) the most iconic back-up performance of all time. ("Rape! Murder! It's just a shot away, it's just a shot away-e-yay...")

Clayton tells a funny story of being rousted out of bed in the middle of the night and escorted to the studio in hair curlers and silk pajamas because the Stones thought the song needed "another voice"—yeah, one that can sing like wildfire!

But every singer in this movie is a treasure. Take Darlene Love, longtime indentured servant to Phil Spector, whose era-defining lead vocals on hits like "He's A Rebel" and "Da Doo Run Run" went uncredited for years in songs attributed to The Crystals, and other artists. Still full of sass and vinegar, and still in full possession of a great set of pipes, Love's induction, at long last, into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame ("...and about time, too!" beams presenter Bette Midler) concludes the movie on a high note.

In some classic '70s footage, Claudia Lennear (allegedly the inspiration for the Stones' "Brown Sugar"), a former Ikette, works out onstage with Joe Cocker and Leon Russell on the "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" tour, and leads the back-up choir at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh. From the next generation comes the phenomenal Judith Hill, who is shown rehearsing with Michael Jackson (she was chosen as his duet partner) on the ill-fated "This Is It" tour. Hill also sings a soulful composition of her own, "Desperation," accompanying herself on piano, that has "Spotlight" written all over it.

But my favorite in the film (and someone I'd never heard of before) is the divine Lisa Fischer. For years an accomplice of Luther Vandross, a confederate of Sting, and a fixture in every Rolling Stones tour since 1989, Fischer's voice is an incredible instrument of melody, color, and soaring emotion. Private and personal, or big and powerful, trading saucy licks with Mick Jagger onstage, she is a hypnotic performer, not to be missed.

For a little indie doc, this one is breaking records all over the country. Here's the trailer, to get you in the mood. Don't let me find out you missed it!

HAPPY DANCE TIME PART DEUX

Hey, kids!

It's Happy Dance time again!

Just back from two week's vacation when I got the email I've been waiting for for months—the good news that the long-missing contracts between my UK publisher, Snowbooks, and my soon-to-be US publisher have finally been signed, sealed and delivered.

Which means that, yes, a US edition of Alias Hook will be coming out from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press in Spring/Summer 2014! I'd be jumping up and down, but I don't want to spill the champagne!

Many large and sincere thanks are due to TDB senior editor Pete Wolverton, and his most excellent assistant editor, Anne Brewer, for shepherding me through the process so far. (Thanks for all the pep talks and virtual hand-holding!)

I am SO looking forward to working with these two on the US edition. They even asked me for suggestions re: the new cover design—how cool is that?

For those of you who came in late, feel free to bop over to my Alias Hook Facebook page and read all about it.

And of course, if you just can't wait till next year, the Snowbooks edition of Alias Hook (with a dynamic cover designed by Anna Torborg) is available as we speak online from The Book Depository —with free shipping worldwide. Such a deal!