THEN IS NOW

What reader hasn't wanted to live inside a book at some time or other? Joust with the Knights of the Round Table! Study magic at Hogwarts! Follow Alice down that rabbit hole! Wander the Highlands with Claire and Jamie *sigh*

But probably the one book nobody wants to actually live in is George Orwell's dystopian future classic 1984.  And yet, by some horrendous, impossible turn of events, that's the world we all find ourselves trapped in right now — especially in the last month.

Written in 1949,  Orwell's dark political satire was set in a totalitarian state of the future whose figurehead was Big Brother, but was really run by an elitist behind-the-scenes Party that was constantly rewriting history and reinventing language to conform with the party line.

From Orwell, we get the concept of "newspeak" (words rewritten to mean the opposite of their original intent), "thoughtcrimes" (individual thinking pursued and punished by the "Thought Police"), "doublethink" (unquestioning belief in two mutually exclusive ideas, also called "reality control"), and the "Ministry of Truth," whose entire function is to convince the people that lies are true.

It took a little longer than Orwell envisioned for his political prophecies to come true. But now that we're living in an Orwellian nightmare of "alternative facts," it all seems oh, so horribly relevant.

So relevant that the New York Times reports that sales of the novel have skyrocketed as of January of this year — and we all know what happened then.


But lucky Santa Cruzans won't have to go hunting down your dusty copies from sophomore English or trolling though used book shelves. Our very own Bookshop Santa Cruz is staging a reading of 1984, and you, the public, are invited.


Beginning at 10 am, Thursday, March 2, a rotating lineup of educators, activists, authors, and normal people from the community will read the novel aloud in 20-minute stretches. All of it. Cover to cover. Until the book is finished, whenever that may be.

Chairs will be set up in Bookshop's skylight room throughout the event; fall by and stay for a chapter or two, or stick around for the whole thing. It's up to you; this is a free country (so far).

While you're there, check out the table set up for people to write postcards with 1984 quotes to send to their elected officials.

This event is presented by Bookshop, the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, and Wallace Baine. It's also the opening salvo in Bookshop's new Words To Act On program, to promote community, inspiration, critical thinking, and activism through books.

And, yes, yours truly will be one of the readers. I'm slotted for an evening shift, between 7 and 8 pm Thursday night. But whenever you drop in, it's sure to be a lively crowd, on either side of the mic!

(Top: 1984 cover art through the ages. From designKULTUR online.)

CINEMA SCOPE

Variety, diversity highlight this year's Oscar race

The Oscars are almost upon us; time for my yearly attempt to pretend I know anything about what Hollywood is thinking.

After last year's #OscarsSoWhite kerfuffle, every acting category this year features at least one person of color, and four out of the nine Best Picture nominees revolve around non-white bread protagonists. Let's hope it's not a temporary reaction, but a genuine trend toward equality and diversity. (Not to mention resistance to the current political climate.)

Meanwhile, let's take a look at who may (or may not) go home with the gold:

BEST PICTURE La La Land. Damien Chazelle's reinvented musical comedy is the one to beat, having already cleaned up at the pre-Oscar awards. Process out the four nominees that didn't win nods for their directors, and it's a five-movie race, including, Hacksaw Ridge, Arrival, Moonlight, and Manchester by the Sea. I'd be just as happy if either of these last two won, but I loved La La Land too.

And the nominees are . . .

BEST DIRECTOR Damien Chazelle, La La Land. He's already been anointed by the DGA, an almost sure-fire precursor to Oscar gold. If it were up to me, I'd split the award between Chazelle — for the sheer audacity of getting a movie musical made at all — and Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) for such a smart and precise look at contemporary black lives told in such an original, unexpected way.

Affleck: haunted

BEST ACTOR Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea. He doesn't say much, but he's the center of this haunting drama, and he's definitely got the buzz. Actors in comedies (much less musicals) are not taken as seriously as actors in dramas, so no gold for Ryan Gosling (La La Land) or the mighty Viggo Mortensen (Captain Fantastic).

Perennial contender and SAG  winner Denzel Washington (Fences) already has two Oscars; Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge) is the also-ran.

BEST ACTRESS Isabelle Huppert, Elle. Emma Stone (La La Land) may have some buzz, but she wasn't up against Huppert in any of the pre-season accolades she's won. (They split the Globes for Musical/Comedy and Drama).

Huppert: fearless

You don't find such gutsy roles for women of a certain age in US films, and Huppert's fearlessness onscreen and formidable career should sway Academy voters. (She'd get my vote.)

Natalie Portman (Jackie), Ruth Negga (Loving), and annual nominee Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins) round out the category.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Mahershala Ali, Moonlight. This may be the Academy's one chance to honor this much-nominated film, and Ali (my favorite) grounds the movie with his solid, charismatic presence. Upset candidate might be Dev Patel (so appealing in Lion), or maybe even the much-beloved Jeff Bridges (Hell Or High Water), over Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea) and Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals).

Ali: presence

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Viola Davis, Fences. She's already won all other awards in this category, and she'll persist over a very strong field: Michelle Williams (Manchester by the Sea), Naomie Harris (Moonlight), Nicole Kidman (Lion), and Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures).

BEST SCRIPT (ORIGINAL) Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea. Lonergan so deserves it for his moving story, sophisticated storytelling, and unexpected humor. I think he'll edge out the scriptwriters for La La Land, 20th Century Women, Hell Or High Water, and The Lobster.

Washington and Davis: now it's HER turn

BEST SCRIPT (ADAPTED) Luke Davies, Lion. Just a hunch, but this is a popular movie based on an irresistible true story. It might just squeak by over the scripts for Moonlight, Arrival, Fences, and Hidden Figures.

MISC: While I don't perceive the popular La La Land as Oscar bait in the acting or script departments, I'd be very surprised if it didn't dance off with the gold in the music categories: Best Song (probably "City of Stars," because, Hollywood), and Best Original Score. (Although I'd give the latter to Nicholas Bitrell, for Moonlight — especially those edgy string interludes, as profound and immediate as a heartbeat.)

Also, look for La La Land to score for Production Design and Cinematography. But it might lose out in the Best Costume race to Madeline Fontaine's retro-chic  60s clothing in Jackie.

    The Academy Awards will be handed out Sunday, February 26. As usal, if my predictions don't pan out, I'll be available the following Monday to blame them on alternative facts.

LOOKING ROSY

What does it mean when a girl gets roses from her editor?

I like to think it means that my novel, Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge is hovering on the brink of production — at long last!

It's been a very lengthy gestation. My editor, Kaylan Adair, and I have always been on the same page. But that culprit, Unforeseen Circumstances kept cropping up, delaying production and sending me back tp the keyboard again and again.

But last week, after I sent in my January edit, I got a note back from Kaylan, that the new revision "absolutely SINGS!"

The next day, I came home from yoga to find these beautiful, blood-red roses, with a lovely note from Kaylan! Roses loom very large in Beast's story, of course, so these were very appropriate — as well as gorgeous!

There was still some minor tweaking to do, but I think Beast is one pawprint closer to a bookstore near you!

Stay tuned . . .

HER FATHER, HERSELF

Family relationships are complicated. Especially the one depicted in the Oscar-nominated German film, Toni Erdmann. On the surface, it seems like a mild comedy about a fun-loving, prankster dad who makes life impossible for his workaholic businesswoman daughter.

But there's a lot more going on beneath the surface in this offbeat meditation on family, aging, the passage of time, and the meaning of happiness.

This is the third movie directed by German filmmaker Maren Ade, and her first to get wide distribution in the States. The story revolves around Winfried Conradi (the wonderful Peter Simonischek), a retired schoolteacher who confounds a deliveryman at the door by pretending to be twin brothers, likes to fool around with a set of fake buck teeth, and puts on zombie make-up to lead a chorus of kids at a school musical recital.

Amicably divorced from his ex-wife, Winfried attends a birthday party for their grown daughter, Ines (Sandra Huller). Briefly home from Bucharest, where the German corporation she works for is setting up business interests in Romania, Ines spends most of her time on the phone with her boss.

Concerned that his daughter is trapped in a joyless life, Winfried "spontaneously" follows her back to Bucharest and shows up at her workplace. His antics drive her nuts, but we begin to understand all the ways that her life is disappointing her, just as her father fears.

Father knows best: Huller and Simonischek

 At two hours and 42 minutes, the movie feels very long; boring business meetings in particular seem to go on forever. But what better way for director Ade to make us feel the crushing airlessness of the business world? Or suggest the complexity of feeling that connects father and daughter?

It's length, accumulation of detail, and humor, that allows Ade to craft her story with such emotional richness.

PS: Jack Nicholson and Kristen Wiig are poised to star in the English-language remake. You heard it here first!

BACKLASH: THE MUSICAL

They had singing and dancing chops then

Now that La La Land has cleaned up at the Golden Globes and BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Awards), and director Damien Chazelle has been anointed with the DGA award, the inevitable backlash has begun — mostly by people saying, you know, it's not that great.

Much of the objections stem from Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling not being as adept at song and dance as movie musical stars of yore.

I would remind these critics that the star systems that produced the Judy Garlands and Gene Kellys of the Golden Age of movie musicals (like the Arthur Freed unit at M-G-M) no longer exists. Hell, movie musicals as a genre no longer exists!

Kelly came to the movies from the Broadway hit, Pal Joey. But he still had to work his way up through the studio system in innocuous fluff like For Me and My Gal, and DuBarry Was a Lady (along with a string of wartime dramas in the '40s) before he got a chance to start crafting his own classics like An American in Paris, and Singin' in the Rain.

Chakiris 1954: uncredited

Garland toiled away for a decade in musical shorts and revues before somebody at M-G-M got the bright idea to cast her in The Wizard of Oz.

And look at George Chakiris, an uncredited chorus boy dancing behind Rosemary Clooney in White Christmas in 1954 — one of many musicals, from a variety of studios, that he hoofed his way through during the 1950s.

Chakiris 1961: Oscar bait

(Another one was Gentleman Prefer Blondes, dancing in the chorus behind Marilyn Monroe in the number, "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend.")

In 1961, after a decade of paying his dues, he was cast in West Side Story — and won a Supporting Actor Oscar as Bernardo, leader of the Sharks.

Sure, there are zillions of talented musical theatre performers out there at the regional theatre level, or even on Broadway. But they don't have the brand-name recognition by Hollywood standards that could get a crazed idea for a movie like La La Land financed these days.

Chazelle made the compromises he had to to get his movie made. But the result is something unexpectedly wonderful!

I admit, he had me at the opening dance number on the freeway! Seriously, haven't you always wanted to do this in the middle of an LA traffic jam?

NINE IS ENOUGH

Only nine movies made it onto my "Top Ten" list of favorite movies this year. I don't think this means I'm getting any crankier (who, moi?), or even that the movies overall are getting any worse.

The problem is I only see about half the number of movies per year that I used to. This is largely due to space constraints in the paper, but also because the complicated technology of digital movies has pretty much ended the practice of advance film screenings for regional press.

All of which means there are less chances for me to discover those offbeat, unexpected gems (like, say, The Fall) that used to lead off my Top Ten lists.

Of the movies I did see this year, however, these are the most list-worthy!

How about you? Any unexpected gems you'd like to share?

LA LA LAND It takes a lot of audacity to mount an old-fashioned Hollywood musical in these cynical times. But Damien Chazelle's virtuoso production makes the movie musical sing again. And dance. And how! As dubious as you might find the idea of a modern musical starring actors — Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone — not previously known for their singing or dancing, this is one glorious joyride from start to finish.

Did I mention several scenes are shot in my home town of Hermosa Beach? Shots inside the venerable Lighthouse jazz club (top, left) were especially nostalgic!

THE EAGLE HUNTRESS The best girl-power stories are true. Aisholpan Nurgaiv, the 13-year-old heroine of this stunningly beautiful documentary, is a daughter of Mongolian nomads who defies tradition to master the ancient art of hunting with eagles. Directed by Otto Bell, and shot by Simon Niblett, with great sensitivity to the severe beauty of the vast, craggy steppes of the Kazakh region of Mongolia, and for the folkways of its people.

MOONLIGHT Black lives matter in filmmaker Barry Jenkins' eloquent coming-of-age drama that explores issues of race, culture, and love in unexpected ways. Three terrific actors play the lead character as child, teen, and adult, and Mahershala Ali (left) is wonderfully charismatic as the boy's surrogate father figure. A slice of cinematic poetry with a vision all its own.

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA Writer-director Kenneth Lonergan brings his playwright's instincts to this intimate story of love, loss, and family in a close-knit fishing community on the Massachusetts coast. These rugged folks don't articulate their feelings, but those feelings run deep, and Lonergan finds continually inventive ways to express them in this quietly moving film.

THE HANDMAIDEN It may seem like an odd collaboration: bad-boy Korean filmmaker Chan-wook Park, famed for the violent male revenge melodrama Oldboy, and British author Sarah Waters, whose erotic thrillers are set in the Dickensian underworld of Victorian London. But it turns out to be a surprisingly happy match-up in Park's Asian riff on Waters' novel Fingersmith. It's a sly entertainment of sex, larceny, deception, double-crosses, and female liberation.

Cristina Pato, Spanish bagpiper, The Music of Strangers

THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS: YO-YO MA AND THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE This beguiling and bittersweet documentary chronicles the efforts of the renowned cellist to found a performing group of international musicians from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, whose existence is dedicated to cultural diversity, and common humanity. Filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom) knows a great music doc needs to feature not only wonderful music, but dynamic personalities to perform it, and this one is incredibly rich in both.

EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT The journey is the destination in Ciro Guerra's haunting meditation on culture, colonialism, and loss, shot in captivating black-and-white, on location in the remote jungles along the Amazon River. An indigenous shaman guides two separate scientific explorers down the Amazon, decades apart in the 20th Century; through his eyes, we see the disruptions of tribal culture before, during, and after exposure to the outsiders. Guerra's dreamlike pacing and sensuous imagery make this an absorbing piece of filmmaking with the power of myth in every frame.

THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS I was completely entranced by the sophisticated storytelling of Derek Cianfrance's film adaptation on the M. L. Stedman novel. Michael Fassbender is terrific as a stoic WWI vet who takes a job as lighthouse keeper on a lonely rock off the Australian coast. Alicia Vikander is remarkable as a local woman who eases past his defenses and changes his life plan. This is movie-making for grown-ups, thoughtfully conceived and beautifully shot.

THE VVITCH Set in early colonial America, and meticulously researched by rookie writer-director Robert Eggers, this is not the cheesy horror movie you might expect, but an often squirmingly intense psychological drama of hysteria and religious fanaticism. Sure, it's still plenty scary (or at least creepy), but it's fearful anticipation that propels the narrative, not in-your-face violence.

BACK to the BEAST

Miss Havisham writes!

Did'ja miss me?

Here are 10 things I didn't have time to do while I was hammering out my last revision of Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge during the entire month of January:

Update this blog. (Duh!)

Update my other social media/book pages.

Clean up my house and my workspace.

Get my hair cut.

Prune my roses.

Weed my yard. (Okay, the constant rain had a lot to do with that one.)

March against the Dictator-in-Chief.

Bake cookies. (Always necessary in desperate times.)

Start reading the book(s) I got from Santa.

Go back to work writing my own next book!

My Beast: SO ready for his close--up!

You known things are pretty dire when I'm looking forward to pulling weeds and housecleaning again! But that's how long I've been sitting at the keyboard, in full-on Miss Havisham mode — except in my case, I'm the one nearly covered in cobwebs (not a moldering wedding cake).

Three days a week, Art Boy unchained me from the keyboard and dragged me out for yoga (yay, yoga!), and once or twice a week (weather permitting) we walked in the harbor. Otherwise, here I sat, pounding away, until it was time to stumble downstairs for dinner, watch an hour of news for our daily dose of outrage, then stagger off to bed.

I've been working on Beast, one revision after another, since May of 2015. (A long story I'll tell you next time I see you, if you ply me with enough Merlot.) This end-of-January deadline was my last chance to get the book onto the Spring 2018 publication schedule, and I decided to kick out the jams and go for it!

I can't say it hasn't been a slog. But my Beast is worth it! I hope you'll think so too!

THE HAUNTING

Life-sized human dilemmas fuel poignant Manchester by the Sea

We think of the movies as a medium of action and image. So it's kind of audacious that most of the drama is internal in Manchester by the Sea. Writer-director Kenneth Lonergan brings his playwright's instincts to this intimate story of love, loss, and family in a close-knit fishing community on the Massachusetts coast.

These rugged folks don't articulate their feelings, but those feelings run deep, and Lonergan finds continually inventive ways to express them in this quietly moving film.   

Lonergan is best known for You Can Count On Me, another look at uneasy, but fierce family dynamics. Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), the taciturn protagonist in Manchester by the Sea has no means of expressing his inner demons, not even to himself.

But Lonergan tells his story through judicious use of flashbacks, and in the ways he interacts with people around him, whether fighting, swearing, or joking around. (Indeed, for a movie whose plot turns on so many tragic elements, the dialogue can be surprisingly funny.)

Affleck and Hedges: new reality

Lee works as handyman and super at a small apartment building outside of Boston. He doesn't say much beyond what the job requires, and reacts with the same apparent indifference, whether he overhears a tenant telling her girlfriend on the phone she has a crush on him, or a tenant cusses him out over a plumbing malfunction.

But when his older brother, Joe, dies suddenly, Lee has to return to his home town of Manchester by the Sea, on Cape Ann. Joe (Kyle Chandler, in flashbacks) was a divorced commercial fisherman raising a son, Patrick, on his own.

Casey Affleck: stuck in Purgatory

Although the brothers were close, nothing breaks through Lee's tight-lipped impassivity — until he hears that Joe has named him the legal guardian of 16-year-old Patrick (Lucas Hedges).

As Lee and Patrick cope, Lee's memories play an ever more crucial role in the storytelling. The story of how Lee got stuck in his own haunted purgatory is revealed in small, heartbreaking increments, in counterpoint to the larger story of Lee and Patrick learning to navigate their strange new reality.

Affleck offers up shading in the smallest of gestures. His scenes with Hedges give the film its backbone. Michelle Williams provides fire and grace in her few scenes.

This is a life-sized story about recognizably human characters whose dilemmas stay with us.

PHONE TAGS

You've probably seen these two dueling phones ads by now. (Especially if you go to the Nickelodeon as often as I do.)

The first is unabashedly holiday-oriented, and because I'm such an easy mark, I always tear up. An old guy in shabby clothes with an aura of Frankenstein's monster about him shuffles into a village square populated by holiday revelers.

It's nighttime, and he pulls out two light bulbs, one red, one green, and screws them into the bolts in his neck.

When they light up, he hits a button on his iPhone to start the music, and begins to tentatively warble the first line of "There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays."

But then, one of the bulbs goes out, and he flounders to a halt with embarrassment.

Until — a small, delicate, utterly adorable little girl, a live-action Cindy Lou Who, stretches up to screw the errant bulb back in, and then sings the second line of  the song. Then the entire square full of people join in to complete the verse.

The old guy is not quite homeless; we see him receiving the bulbs in a mailbox at his remote shack in the snow. But it's understood he's some kind of outcast or at least an outsider; parents sweep up their kids and back away slightly at his approach. But when he gets there, he's not panhandling. He's just trying to share a little holiday spirit.

That they not only "let" him participate, but join in with such warmth and gusto sends a very affecting message — especially in these dark and cold political times. The tagline is "Open your heart to everyone."

The sponsor is the Apple iPhone, of course. But what they're really selling is a narrative about community and inclusiveness.

The other spot begins well, with an image of hats viewed from above. In the middle, a yellow beret with a black puff ball tilts up to reveal the face of the woman wearing it. She sings one note and lowers her face again; other hats tilt up to reveal other faces singing more notes in an intricate, a cappella pattern.

The image gradually expands into a phone-shaped rectangle, which tilts up on end, with the Google logo below it. Who's the sponsor? The Google Pixel phone. What are they singing? "Just The Two Of Us."

Wait, what? Although the tagline reads "Together by you." ("Phone by Google"), what they really seem to be selling is isolation and exclusiveness. Me and my phone, just the two of us. Who needs real-life interaction? It's us against the world.

THEY LOVE LA

Movie musical reborn in glorious joyride La La Land

It takes a lot of audacity to mount an old-fashioned Hollywood musical in these cynical times. Once a genre unto itself, usually a romantic story expressed in song and dance numbers ("All singing! All dancing!" the ads used to scream), the movie musical has been devalued in the age of irony.

Audiences who readily lap up zombies, vampires, and skyscraper-sized aliens are unable to suspend their disbelief for people breaking into song in the middle of their daily lives.

Only in Disney Princess cartoons do characters sing their hearts out onscreen (which is okay, because they're not, you know, real), or in the occasional film set in a musical milieu, like Once, where the characters bond through performing together.

Stone, Gosling: twilight

But Damien Chazelle's masterful La La Land makes the movie musical sing again. And dance. And how! As dubious as you might find the idea of a modern musical starring actors — Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone — not previously known for their singing or dancing chops, this is one glorious joyride from start to finish.

The stars are capable and appealing, the locations all around greater Los Angeles County (including my home town of Hermosa Beach) look as magical as any film set, and Chazelle finds exciting new ways to reinvent the genre at every turn.

Gosling: piano man

Chazelle was smart enough to commission an original musical score from composer Justin Hurwitz and lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, which gives the movie its own upbeat and modern identity.

Appropriately enough, for a movie set in LA, the story begins on a freeway during a traffic jam. As horns blare, and traffic slows to a halt, the overhead camera zeroes in on one woman driver who starts singing. She emerges from her car and starts dancing, with other motorists of all ages, shapes, and colors (just like the population of LA) climbing out of their cars and join in.

It's a massive production number ("Another Day of Sun") that not only makes brilliant use of the freeway structure and immobilized cars as dancing props, it shows us just how much fun this movie is going to be.

When traffic starts up again Mia (Stone) has a fleeting, rude encounter with Sebastian (Gosling). She's an aspiring actress on her way to work at a coffeeshop on a movie studio backlot, where she can be close to the auditions she's always running off to. She shares an apartment with three other hopeful actresses in an old Art Deco building; after they drag her off to a party, she's on her way home when she wanders into a piano bar where Seb is playing.

Dancing with the stars: Griffith Observatory

Now the movie switches over to Sebastian's story after the freeway incident. He's a jazz musician reduced to playing Christmas carols in the bar (it's winter, when the story begins) to fund his dream of opening his own jazz club one day. (J. K. Simmons — co-star of Chazelle's last film, Whiplash —cameos as Seb's deadpan boss.)

Mia is drawn to a particularly hypnotic refrain Seb is playing, that echoes throughout the story. But even though their second encounter does not go well, they begin circling into each other's orbits and their relationship blossoms.

The rest of the story is best left to the viewer to experience. The themes are universal—pursuing dreams; staying true to oneself — but the storytelling is fresh. Mandy Moore's choreography is outstanding, from that huge freeway number to Mia and Seb's lovely tap duet as they start to fall in love, on a ridge overlooking LA at twilight. In a fabulous fantasy duet, they rise up into the starmap of the interior dome of Griffith Park Observatory — literally dancing with the stars.

Stone and Gosling: to the Lighthouse

Both Stone and Gosling have musical experience — she starred in a Cabaret revival on Broadway a couple if years ago, and he played multiple instruments (including piano) in an indie rock band. Chazelle chose to shoot their duets the old-fashioned way — in Cinemascope, in one take — and both performers are up to the challenge; their dancing is fluid and relaxed.   

Using iconic LA landmarks and neighborhoods —the venerable Lighthouse jazz club in Hermosa (and the beachfront and pier); Watts Towers; The Grand Cenral Market; the vintage Rialto Theatre, the Angel's Flight cable car — Chazelle creates a visual reverie on the City of Dreams, an LA that may only exist in the imagination.

And while he stays true in spirit to classic musicals, Chazelle's wistful, and poignant finale gives the movie an unexpected edge. La La Land is a virtuoso production that gives us all something to sing (and dance) about.

BIRD MEETS GIRL

Girl defies tradition in soaring Eagle Huntress

The best girl-power stories are true. Fiction can inspire, but what better validation can there be for girls in the audience than a young woman who beats the odds in real life to excel at some traditionally male-dominated activity that she loves?

Someone like Aisholpan Nurgaiv, the 13-year-old heroine of the stunningly beautiful documentary The Eagle Huntress, a daughter of Mongolian nomads who defies tradition to master the ancient art of hunting with eagles.

Directed by first-timer Otto Bell, the film was shot by Simon Niblett, with great sensitivity to the severe beauty of the vast, craggy steppes of the Kazakh region of Mongolia, and for the folkways of its people. Nomadic families move out into the grasslands with their yurts to graze their sheep during the warm weather, but band together in their village of stone bunkers when winter comes.

Aisholpan's father is distinguished among the villagers as an eagle hunter, a skill learned from his own father. Indeed, the men in their family have been eagle hunters for twelve generations.

Like father, like daughter

Anyone bred into the brotherhood learns to capture his own baby eaglet from an untended nest, bond with the bird he trains to respond to his commands, and hunt the small game the nomads need to provide fur lining for their winter clothes. At the end of seven years of service, the hunter returns his bird to the wild with a ceremony of thanks.

It's always been a skill handed down from father to son, but Aisholpan has been fascinated by her father's birds from a very young age. He's taught her to feed and handle the bird, and to wear the forearm cuff on which the eagle perches.

Eagle hunting is "a calling," he says, "it has to be in your blood." So when his daughter wants to train to be an eagle hunter, he encourages her — and the filmmakers are there every step of the way.

Aisholpan and her eagle: bonded

Her father takes Aisholpan out into the mountains where she must "earn an eagle of her own," by scrambling down a cliff to snatch a female eaglet out of a nest. We see her feeding and cuddling with her eagle (a juvenile, yes, but still an enormous bird), and teaching her bird to respond to her particular voice commands.

Aisholpan is the youngest and the first-ever female to compete at a festival for eagle hunters from around the region. But the real test comes when she and her father take their shaggy ponies and their birds out into the mountains in deep winter to hunt for real.


The movie came about after Niblett heard about an eagle hunter teaching his craft to his daughter and took a series of still photographs of them. Director Bell signed on to make their story into a film, with Niblett as cinematographer, and when they showed their early footage to Star Wars franchise heroine Daisy Ridley, she begged to be involved, as both narrator and co-producer.

 Aisholpan's story in this soaring film inspires that kind of devotion.

WATER WHIRLED

Action in the Pacific in Disney's girl-powered Polynesian adventure Moana

If Disney's gazillion-dollar-grossing Frozen was the perfect holiday animated feature of 2013, with its snowy Nordic landscape, and supporting cast that included a snowman and a reindeer, Disney's new cartoon feature, Moana, is the perfect holiday movie for the opposite reason — enveloped in the landscape and folklore of the Pacific Islands, it's a sunny, beachy, gorgeously animated antidote to winter.

Moana is directed by Disney veterans Ron Clements and John Musker and their creative team, the brain trust behind The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and The Princess and the Frog, among others. The movie's story and look are steeped in Polynesian mythology, and it features a principal voice cast of mostly Pacfic Islander descent, along with a songwriting team that includes Broadway wunderkind Lin-Manuel Miranda, of Hamilton fame.

The result is a wonderful, girl-power tale of a young woman on a quest to find herself and fulfill her destiny.

Moana: Chosen by the Sea

Scripted by Jared Bush, from a story concocted by Clements, Musker, and their minions, Moana begins with an origin myth about the creation of life in the world, and a slumbering earth goddess in the shape of an island.

But a trickster demigod called Maui stole the sparkling green heart of the goddess, and now the seas are restless, and life in the islands is imperiled.

This tale is told by Gramma Tala (Rachel House) to an audience of rapt island children, and none are more thrilled than her own granddaughter, Moana.

In a brief, frisky montage, we see Moana as a toddler, child, and tween, repeatedly sneaking down to the beach to commune with the sea, only to be dragged back to the village by her father, the chieftan (Maori actor Temuera Morrison). The sea is dangerous, he keeps telling her, but life is beautiful in the village, where her destiny is to lead the people one day.

Moana discovers forbidden boats: love the design on that hull

But the sea herself disagrees. One day when little Moana protects a sea turtle hatchling from predator birds as it crawls into the sea, a wave rises up in a beautiful green spout and deposits a trail of conch shells leading into the ocean at the child's feet.

Her grandmother tells her the sea has chosen Moana to find Maui and return the heart to the sleeping island, far away across the ocean — even though her father forbids anyone from sailing their outrigger boats past the reef that surrounds their island.

Gramma Tala communes with the Sea

But by the time Moana is a young woman (now voiced by Auli'i Cravalho), a coconut blight, and a dwindling fish supply, put island life in jeopardy. The sea reveals the lost heart to Moana, and, at her grandmother's urging, she sets off past the reef, through stormy seas, to find Maui.

The relationship between girl and grandmother is very tender. When Moana is reluctant to leave her granny behind at the start of her quest, Gramma Tala tells her "There is nowhere you can go that I won't be with you."

Navigating by a constellation shaped like the Maui's fabled fish-hook, Moana finds the desolate salt island where the demigod has long been stranded for his crime. With a body full of tattoos, and plenty of attitude, Maui (voice of Dwayne Johnson; turns out he's part Samoan), doesn't care about Moana's quest, but he covets her boat.

When the sea prevents him from throwing Moana overboard, Maui reluctantly adopts a big brother attitude toward her, and they set out to fix the mess he's made.

After a bizarrely funny encounter with a few boatloads of ferocious pirates made out of coconuts, they visit a scavenger crab (Jemaine Clement provides its sleepy hipster voice) to retrieve the magic fish-hook that allows Maui to shape-shift. (Although, when he wants to soar like a raptor, he's just as likely to find himself transformed into a bug, instead, or an airborne shark.)

A pet chicken provides comedy relief, and the movie spoofs the whole Disney Princess brand. When Moana bristles at that designation, Maui cracks, "If you wear a dress and you have an animal sidekick, you're a princess."

Moana's determination to become a Wayfinder echoes another great girl-power movie, Whale Rider. And, most cool are Maui's tattoos, which not only move around and tell their own animated stories, but act as Maui's conscience.

Maui's animated tats: Every picture tells a story

 Like Brave before it, Moana is a newly-minted adventure that's not based on a classic fairy tale, and a Disney Princess movie that doesn't need a prince. It's also great to see the folks at Disney pursuing diversity with such a vengeance, after their first 60 years of all-white heroines. (Remember when it was a big deal that Belle in Beauty and the Beast had brown eyes, not blue?)

Bursting with color, music, beautiful seagoing vistas, and the mythology and folkways of the Pacific Islands, Moana is guaranteed to cure your winter blahs.

FLAME ON

Santa Cruz media icon Christina Waters is a true Renaissance Woman.

A journalist whose newspaper stories on arts and culture have been entertaining readers for decades, she's been nominated for the James Beard Award for her food writing (Spirits, Wine and Beer category).

She's a classically trained musician who sings in the University Choir, an accomplished painter, an educator at UCSC with a PhD in Philosophy, and a world traveler always eager to jet off to Milan or Bayreuth for the opera, or London for the theatre.

Now Christina can add "Author" to her impressive list of credits. Her new book, Inside the Flame: The Joy of Treasuring What You Already Have, is out this month from Parallax Press, in Berkeley. Part memoir, part dispensation of accumulated tribal wisdom, it's a collection of punchy, short pieces that exhort us to live now, in the present moment, in the real world — and offers suggestions on how to make our sensual, intellectual and emotional experiences of life even richer.

Christina and I have known each other since the Late Pleistocene Age; we met in the lobby of the Nickelodeon when we were both reviewing movies for rival papers, and we've been friends ever since. But even I was surprised at the sheer variety of life experiences revealed in Inside the Flame, and the depth of her willingness to share them with her readers.

If you're looking for someone to give you tips on how to live life fully, Christina is the mentor for you!

Her thoughtful, often playful pieces have provocative titles, like "Perfume Tattoos," "Up High and Down Low," "Purposeful Wandering,", and "When the World Touches Back."  In "Freestyle Craftiness," she celebrates "the rule that you don't require rules," in the act of creation.

In praise of the rougher, less genteel surfaces found in nature, she writes, "Texture is the world's way of getting our attention." In the piece, "Swimming In the Rain," she turns a story about diving into a public pool in the middle of a summer thunderstorm into an erotic confession.

In these brief, potent vignettes, Christina Waters celebrates the deeper meanings lurking beneath everyday experience, and through a collection of memories and suggested activities, invites us to reimagine our own lives.

Christina will read from Inside the Flame, sign books, and supply witty answers to your questions Monday night, November 28, at Bookshop Santa Cruz. She's liable to have a pretty big cheering section, so get in line now!

BIPOLAR EXPRESS

Mental disorder handled with heart, wit, in exuberant Next To Normal


One of the most interesting things about the Jewel Theatre Company is its choice of material. Sure, they produce their share of the classics — Pinter, Shepard, Athol Fugard, Noel Coward — but Artistic Director Julie James also has a sharp eye for innovative work less familiar to local audiences.

Case in point: Next To Normal, the exhilarating second production in JTC's  ongoing 12th season. This show also marks the company's first anniversary in its new space, the Colligan Theater at The Tannery (where they opened last November with Guys And Dolls).

Next To Normal is also a musical, but there's nothing old-school about it. Produced on Broadway in 2009, the show won a couple of Tonys, along with a  Pulitzer Prize, for its audacious depiction of a wife and mother with bipolar disorder whose struggles to cope with her husband, her family, and herself, are surprisingly universal.

Schmitto, with Payne: outstanding

With music by Tom Kitt and book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, this is not the kind of musical that comes with show tunes and a chorus line.

It's more like a rock operetta, with almost non-stop music provided in this production by an onstage jazz-rock combo (ably led by keyboardist Katie Coleman) and a cast of six terrific singers.

The music ranges from lyrical to powerhouse, the lyrics are insightful, and the singers perform it in an endlessly inventive series of duets, quartets, and counterpoints.

The story revolves around Diana (Lee Ann Payne), a suburban housewife struggling to get a grip on herself in order to hold her family together. Husband Dan (Christopher Reber) has stuck with her through all the peaks and valleys of her illness.

Payne and Reber: getting a grip

Son Gabe (the outstanding Coleton Schmitto) is the apple of his mother's eye. Teenage daughter Natalie (a poignant, affecting Brittany Law), a scholastic overachiever, also plays keyboards, embracing the classical precision of Mozart as an antidote to the chaos at home.

Payne sings up a storm; she captures Diana's wry wit, and articulates the emotional terrain of each number. Reber's rumpled, loyal Dan, trying to do his best, partners her beautifully. Married in real life, they last appeared onstage together for JTC in the fabulous film noir musical, Gunmetal Blues. (He was the gumshoe; she was the blonde who popped up in all the female roles.)

James (who also directs this production) keeps the action brisk and the audience engaged. The exuberance of this production is what live theatre is all about.