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)

CLUB MEDS

McConaughey's crusading AIDS patient powers 'Dallas Buyers Club'

It's hard to imagine a less likely crusader in the fight against AIDS than Ron Woodroof. A coke-snorting, womanizing, blue-collar Texan, Woodroof was diagnosed as HIV-positive in the mid-1980s and given 30 days to live—a death sentence he defied for years to become a pioneer in making "unapproved" drugs from out of the country available to his local AIDS community.

It's a true story that unspools as a tale of bizarre alliances and unexpected heroism in the pugnacious, yet affecting drama, Dallas Buyers Club.

Directed by French-Canadian filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée (switching gears from his best-know film, stateside, The Young Victoria), from a script by Craig Borten and Melissa Wallack, Dallas Buyers Club rests almost entirely on the frighteningly thin shoulders of star, Matthew McConaughey.

Over the last couple of years, the busy McConaughey has been rehabbing his screen image and reclaiming his career from the wasteland of action fare and light romantic comedies in challenging roles in Killer Joe and Magic Mike, among others. (He was exceptional in Mud, earlier this year.)

Playing Woodroof is the cherry on top, and McConaughey gives it everything he's got. His Woodroof is a brash, profane antihero who acquires shading, sympathy, even grace, in the process of rising to meet life's challenges. The actor lost thirty pounds for the role and it's a shock to see him so emaciated.

But he earns his (almost certain) Oscar nomination not for his diet, but for he unquenchable drive and cool chutzpah he brings to the role, and the film. And he's not the only one: co-star Jared Leto (with McConaughey, right) gives an equally bold and vivid performance as a sassy transvestite who becomes Woodroof's business partner.

Jennifer Garner is on hand as a compassionate doctor and low-key potential romantic interest. But the real love affair here is between McConaughey and the acting profession. His bravura performance keeps the movie alive. (Read more)

CAPRA CANNED

Feast your eyes on this fabulous set for the grand finale of Shakespeare Santa Cruz's 2013 season—and possibly forever, at least in its present incarnation.

For this year's holiday show, SSC and the UCSC Theater Arts Department present It's A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, Joe Landry's popular 1997 play in which the beloved Frank Capra Christmas movie is re-imagined as a radio drama being broadcast live, ca. 1946.

Designer Kate Edmunds does a masterful job recreating the Art Deco interior of a vintage radio studio, complete with big-city skyline outside and "Applause" signs above the "studio audience." Six hard-working actors onstage (joined by a trio of chorus girls, who also harmonize on clever jingles during commercial breaks) play all the parts, reading from scripts into stand-up microphones.

While this cast couldn't be any better, I wonder at the selection of this play. SSC has a proud tradition of robust holiday fairy tale pantomimes (Cinderella; Sleeping Beauty) and delightful animal-centric stories (Frog and Toad; The Wind In the Willows). But I fear children might be mystified by this play.

Do modern kids even know what radio is? And even if they do, children who are eager to embrace magical fairy godmothers, drag-queen step-mothers, and grown men as frogs, toads, badgers, and ugly ducklings may not understand a static line of grown-ups standing onstage pretending to be different people.

With the play's single set (as handsome as it is), and no costume changes, the choosing of this play feels like a cost-cutting measure. And that's such a shame. It's a perfectly respectable production in every way. All that's missing is the magic. (Read more)

NaNo No-No

To all you valiant NaNoWriMo scribes out their toiling away, I bring you news from the publishing front. You know that novel you plan to complete between November 1 and November 30? Literary agents do NOT want to see it. At least, not yet.

How do I know this? My own recent agent search has brought me into contact with various blogs and Tweets in which agent after agent expresses dismay over the NaNoWriMo phenomenon.

These folks are quaking in their boots, battening down the hatches, stringing virtual strands of garlic around their inboxes to ward off the annual deluge of half-baked manuscripts heading their way in December.

Trust me, everybody and his dog, Shep, and his Great Aunt Queenie, is getting ready to ship off their newly-minted masterpiece, hot off the keyboard, come December 1st. It's going to get crowded (not to mention ugly) out there in cyberspace, but there are ways to help your opus stand out from the throng. Come November 30, as you gaze in awe at what you've wrought, take a moment to consider these points:

1) What you've written is not a novel. If you've managed to cobble together 50,000 words in 30 days, congratulations! You've achieved major awesomeness, but you have not yet achieved a novel. To do that, you'll have to bump it up to the accepted length of 80,000 words or more.

So far, you've written a novella, and unless you just want it to go out on Kindle (for which you probably don't need an agent), or your name is Stephen King, chances are an agent can't sell it.

2) What you've written is a first draft. You may feel that it has sprung fully formed out of your brain, like the goddess Athena, that it couldn't possibly be any more perfect. But guess what: it can. You may think if you overwork it, you'll destroy the freshness, but there's a vast and critical gulf between "fresh" and "unripe."

The first draft is a major milestone in the writer's life, but it's only one lap, not the whole race. There's still polishing, editing, and revising (yes, work) to do, which any industry professional will realize the minute they see it, because, hey, they're funny that way. Nothing screams "Amateur!" louder to an agent than sending out a first draft masquerading as a novel.

3) What's missing? After all the blood sweat and tears, not to mention heart and soul and oceans of Denny's coffee you've already poured into your magnum opus, what more can it possibly need? The one essential ingredient: time. A finished novel takes time; it has to marinate in your brain for awhile after the first passionate flush of actual writing.

Cut the cord and put it away for at least a couple of weeks, or at best, a couple of months. When you take it out again, you'll be amazed at how much perspective you've gained, how much work there is yet to be done, and (if you're like me), how many bonehead typos there are that you missed the first time around.

NaNoWriMo is an effective way to jump-start that idea that's been germinating in your psyche forever, but it's no substitute for the plain, hard work of writing a novel. You've already come this far; now give that masterpiece the extra time and thought it deserves.

At the very least, don't send it out until after the New Year!

HOME ON THE STAGE

Diana Torres Koss and Christopher Reber

JTC stages folksy, lighthearted musical revue "Pump Boys and Dinettes'

After the intellectual acrobatics of its last offering, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, the Jewel Theatre Company does something completely different  in Pump Boys and Dinettes, a lighthearted, country-pop musical revue. The Center Stage theatre space is transformed into a roadside diner somewhere along Highway 57 in North Carolina, where a six-man musical combo and two perky waitresses invite the audience in for two fleet hours of songs, dancing, and good times.

With book, lyrics, and music written collectively by John Foley, Mark Hardwick, Debra Monk, Cass Morgan, John Schimmel, and Jim Wann, Pump Boys and Dinettes was first produced on Broadway in 1982. JTC Artistic Director Julie James has appeared in three different out-of-town productions of the show, and had so much fun, she decided to direct this production for JTC, in which she also co-stars as one of the waitress/co-owners of the Double Cupp Diner (along with Diana Torres Koss).

James and company set the folksy, down-home tone right off. Even as patrons are still finding their seats, the musicians are milling around on stage, tuning up and joking around, while the waitresses, in their pink uniforms and paper caps rove up and down the aisles, welcoming everyone in and chatting them up. Ron Gasparinetti's cozily overstuffed set (coffee counter and stools, pink china on the shelves, black and white checkerboard floor, a neon gas pump sign on one side and a "Diner" sign on the other) deftly evokes the kind of homey place where waitresses in beehives call you "Hon."

Brent Schindele and Julie James lead the company in song

 Fans of JTC's terrific film noir musical, Gunmetal Blues, from last season, will be pleased to know that two of its stars reunite in this show. Christopher Reber (the gumshoe in Blues) stars as the guitar-strumming front man in the diner band, and Brent Schindele (beloved in Blues as lounge singer Buddy Toupee) is back at the piano keys.

With its good humor and hard-working cast, Pump Boys and Dinettes is an ideal prelude to the holiday season, a low-stress entertainment that will keep you smiling. (Read more)

NORSE LATITUDES

Despite mangled mythology, Thor: The Dark World delivers the fun

Sometimes, a critic just has to step away from the serious Oscar contenders and go have fun. Which for me this week meant slipping off to see Thor: The Dark World, a movie in little danger of snagging Academy gold, but which, after a rocky start, ratchets up the fun factor big time.

What elevates The Dark World above dozens of other noisy, overproduced comic book movies with Doomsday scenarios? For one thing, it's based on Norse mythology (very loosely based, I'll admit), so it has a more interesting pedigree than your typical guys-in-Spandex superhero movie. (At least the costumes are way more cool, so maybe I should rethink those Oscar chances.)

For another, the script rises above mere jokiness to achieve a refreshing degree of humor and wit as it goes along. Chris Hemsworth's charismatic thunder god, Thor, delivers the eye candy, and Tom Hiddleston's utterly delicious performance as Thor's ne'er-do-well brother, the trickster god, Loki, seals the deal.

Tom Hiddleston as Loki: release me and I'll save your movie

Directed by Alan Taylor, The Dark World begins with Odin (Anthony Hopkins), Father of the Gods of Asgard, explaining how the legions of Asgard defeated the evil Dark Elves centuries ago when the Elves tried to unleash a destructive force call Aether.

Thor and Odin: don't call them gods

 Now, the Aether has been reawakened in its cosmic hiding place, and surviving Dark Elf, Malekith (Christopher Eccleston), and his minions, want to use it to destroy the inhabitants of the Nine Realms (a corner of galactic real estate that includes Asgard and Earth) and rule in place of the gods.

Or something.  Who cares?

Hiddleston delivers sardonic lines with insinuating precision, while he and Hemsworth craft a credibly embattled yet compelling rapport that keeps us guessing as their prickly alliance to stop Malekith plays out.

It may be standard Marvel comics fare, plot-wise, and it's extra cheesy that they suddenly make the Asgardians not really gods. Sure, Thor flies through the stratosphere with his magic hammer, Loki shapeshifts at will (watch out for the funny sequence where he momentarily morphs in Captain America), they may live for 5000 years or so, but wait, they're really mortal.

Even worse, Asgard, the so-called fortress of the gods, (defended by stalwart Vikings with swords) is suddenly vulnerable to dogfighting stealth jets and automatic weapons. Snore.

Still, Asgard looks terrific, and in its best moments, The Dark World reminds us how cool Norse mythology can be. (Read more)

(Above: the formidable Rene Russo make her point as Frigga, Mother of the Gods. Natalie Portman as Thor's Earthling love interest? Not so much.)

THEY COULD BE CONTENDERS

Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club: coming soon!

It's early days yet, but here are the men I think most likely to succeed as Best Actor nominees in next year's Oscar race:

Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years A Slave)
Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips)
Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)
Robert Redford (All Is Lost)

 (As yet unseen: Bruce Dern, Nebraska; Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis)

As to the ladies, so far there are only two sure-fire Best Actress nominees:

Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
Sandra Bullock (Gravity)

But femme-o-centric August: Osage County, should earn nominations for somebody, most likely Meryl Streep and/or Julia Roberts.

Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine

And let's not discount the impeccable Emma Thompson as the starchy author of the Mary Poppins books in the upcoming Saving Mr. Banks.

And while I wouldn't dare try to predict all 10 Best Film nominees a this early date (the Academy always likes to throw in at least a couple of weirdsmobile choices just to prove how fresh and unpredictable they are), I'll hazard a guess that the only five that matter will be 12 Years A Slave, Gravity, Captain Phillips, and most likely Alexander Payne's Nebraska, and the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis.

(Although, given their track records, Oscar-wise, we can't overlook Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street or David O. Russell's American Hustle.)

But, hey, I could be proven wrong (and I usually am). The point is to get out and see these movies now, and in the next few weeks as they arrive, while they're up on the big screen. Remember, you read it here first!

REEL/REAL LIFE

How accurately does 12 Years a Slave portray the visual as well as the emotional texture of slave life?

Compare filmmaker Steve McQueen's imagery to the excellent online resource The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record.

This is an incredible collection of period drawings, paintings, and sketches of slave life in North and South America and the Caribbean Islands compiled at the University of Virginia, through the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

In every image, the agenda of each artist cannot be discounted. Some are relatively straightforward; others are propaganda for the fiction of happy slave life, or, conversely, tinged with melodrama to promote the abolitionist cause. But all are fascinating.

These were my go-to images when I was posting my illustrated online novel set against the background of slavery in the West Indies, Runaways: A Novel of Jonkanoo.

If you're interested in learning more about the era depicted in McQueen's powerful film, this is a great place to start.

(Above left: Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 years a Slave)

(Right: A Fugitive Slave, Surinam, 1839. Image Reference BEN1, as shown on www.slaveryimages.org, sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia Library)

NO EXIT

 Chiwetel Eliofor in 12 Years a Slave

Nightmare of slavery depicted in fierce, mesmerizing '12 Years A Slave'

If your idea of slavery in the American South is Mammy in Gone With the Wind fiercely protecting her white "fambly" from the evil Yankees, it's time for a reality check. The blistering 12 Years a Slave, directed by London-born filmmaker Steve McQueen, offers up a fearless, unexpurgated portrait of what slavery was like in the only way that could make sense to modern viewers—by plunging a free man into the depths and degradation of the institution from which he is made to realize time and again there is no possible escape.

The film is based on a horrifying true story. Solomon Northrup was a free black New Yorker abducted and sold south into slavery in 1841; he was unable to claim his freedom again until 1853, when he wrote the memoir which inspired McQueen's film.

His was a harrowing journey, which McQueen and scriptwriter John Ridley depict in all its brutality. Those expecting an action-packed escape adventure, or an inspirational Hollywood movie about the triumph of the human spirit had best look elsewhere. 12 Years A Slave is as excruciating as it needs to be in excruciating circumstances, presenting a monstrous chapter of American history in a way you will never forget.

The wonderful Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things; Kinky Boots) gets a starring role worthy of his considerable talents as Solomon Northrup. A devoted husband and father in Saratoga, New York, he earns a handsome living playing violin at swanky society dances. Affable, accomplished, and not terribly worldly, he moves in an upscale social circle of genteel whites and free people of color.

So he thinks nothing of it when a pair of traveling performers offer him a fiddle-playing gig down in Washington City for a couple of days. The next thing Solomon knows, he wakes up in chains in a bleak cell, soon to be shipped downriver to a slave auction house in the Deep South.

Solomon's odyssey takes him into the possession of one relatively benign, but ineffectual owner (Benedict Cumberbatch), and one belligerent psycho (a bravura, willies-inducing performance by Michael Fassbender, left). Ejiofor is nuanced and electrifying as Solomon maintains a desperate grip on his identity during his long season in Hell.

But as property without rights, there is no way for these enslaved men and woman to behave with dignity, or maintain any kind of inner moral compass. McQueen shows with heartbreaking precision how this loss of common humanity, even more than chains and beatings, is the true cost of slavery. (Read more)

(Filmmaker McQueen has an unerring eye for the indelible image. In one sequence of calm, spellbinding horror, the victim of a near lynching, with the rope still around his neck, struggles to remain standing on his toes—for hours—while the other slaves go about their business until someone authorized to cut the rope arrives.)

There's already Oscar buzz for the dynamic Lupita Nyong'o (center) in 12 Years a Slave

Perhaps it requires a perspective from overseas to depict American slavery with such cold clarity. (Although a similar story could be set in any of the British, French, Spanish, or other colonized Caribbean sugar islands as well.) 12 Years A Slave is a film of rare courage that both educates and mesmerizes.

DIRE STRAITS

Redford powers through solo screen voyage in 'All Is Lost'

Actors don't get much more iconic than Robert Redford. A Hollywood superstar since the 1970s, he founded the Sundance Film Festival, Institute, and cable TV channel in support of emerging filmmakers, and has been a tireless activist for the environment. His one-man seagoing thriller, All Is Lost, is a gift to fans who want to see Redford in action.

But it also feels like a gift from a grateful industry to Redford, a harrowing physical workout of a film that shows off what his 77-year-old body is capable of, while proving that Redford can still command the screen for 100 minutes all by himself.

The movie is written and directed by J. C. Chandor (Margin Call)—although "written" is a relative term in a film that is almost completely without dialogue, except for a few sparse sentences spoken at the very beginning. There is a definite narrative shape to the story, however, and a strong emotional arc that Redford's character undergoes. 

 Like Gravity, it begins at what seems to be an ending: a lone sailor finds his craft and equipment disabled hundreds of miles from anywhere out in the middle of the ocean. It's a slightly less enthralling, more claustrophobic experience than Gravity, but All Is Lost is similarly intense in exploring the outer limits of human tenacity.

1700 nautical miles from the Sumatra Straits in the Indian Ocean, an unnamed sailor wakes up to find his 39-foot yacht taking on water. We have no idea why this obvious Yank of a sailor (his boat is called the Virginia Jean) is out here alone, and we never find out. 

All we know is that water is suddenly rushing in through a window over his desk in the cabin below, flooding his computer and radio equipment. 

To avoid spoilers, any further discussion of the plot should end here. Suffice it to say that tribulations involve a massive storm at sea, dwindling food and water supplies, desperate repairs, an inflatable life raft, sharks, and of course, fear itself.

Redford resonates with the audience as a gritty Everyman who refuses to give up. Kudos are due the veteran star in this physically and emotionally exhausting turn for keeping viewers involved—as the sailor keeps his wits together— through sheer strength of will. 

The filmmaking drifts here or there, but Redford powers the story through. (Read more)

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)