FINLEY, Calif. – On Saturday, July 8, Big Valley Hall will host a Blues Benefit from 7 to 10 p.m. at 1510 Big Valley Road.

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"You can't go home again," said Thomas Wolfe, and you can't put your hand in the same river twice. Change is relentless. 

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TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT (Rated PG-13)

It is probably too much to hope for that the fifth installment of director Michael Bay’s overwrought “Transformers” franchise of robot wars proves to be so nonsensical that we could finally see the enterprise go down in flames in a well-deserved death spiral.

Sadly, there will be an audience for “Transformers: The Last Knight” but the fervent wish is that this column could serve as a cautionary warning to save your hard-earned money from being used by the film’s numerous producers to buy some Caribbean islands.

The most charitable thing to say about “The Last Knight” is that it is a chaotic, jumbled mess of brutal action that serves to turn medieval and even more contemporary history completely on its head in a bizarre twist of revisionism.

According to the geniuses behind this action misfire, the Transformers were around during the Middle Ages to save King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table from being wiped off the face of the Earth by barbarian hordes, with Merlin (Stanley Tucci) playing a role to summon their help.

In what figures to be a key plot point in the present day, Merlin’s magical staff has a lot to do with King Arthur’s battlefield success against all odds and could serve to repel more contemporary evil forces.
 
The shape-shifting robots, including a gigantic fire-breathing dragon, also had something to do with battles at Stonehedge, but now I can’t really recall the purpose of this particular scene. But then, a lot of things make little sense or, in most cases, none at all.

Entering the modern era, we find that the Transformers joined forces with the allies to defeat the Nazis. I guess we can now forget about how the steadfast, resolute Winston Churchill so valiantly rallied Great Britain in the war effort until the United States became involved.

Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) is off sulking on some distant planet, and even if he were around at the start one could wonder if he would take the side of the humans fighting the bad robots.

On Earth, the Transformers have been declared illegal and a military task force under the command of William Lennox (Josh Duhamel) hunts down all Autobots, leading to a remote junkyard somewhere in flyover country where Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is hiding out with his sidekick Jimmy (Jerrod Carmichael).

While navigating the urban wasteland of an abandoned city, Cade comes across a spunky 14-year-old Izabella (Isabela Moner), a street-wise orphaned girl who looks like a young Jennifer Lopez tough cookie in training more than willing to join the robot wars.

Now, “The Last Knight,” so lacking in coherence and any resemblance of realism, suddenly has Cade and his crew ending up in Great Britain in search of Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins), who lives in a castle that might hold the key to unlocking mysteries of the Transformers.
 
The search for enlightenment, or whatever, leads them to sexy Oxford professor Viviane Wembley (Laura Haddock), apparently the only living descendant of King Arthur who just might know where to find Merlin’s magical staff to summon the help of good robots.

The only thing interesting about the learned professor is that, aside from her smug sense of intellectual superiority over the unwashed American visitors, she looks great in a low-cut black dress that might be worn by a stripper.

Coherence in the plot is a problem that cannot be easily disguised by the constant cacophony of clashing robots amped up for mass destruction. Why is Agent Simmons (John Turturro) in Havana making calls on a pay phone in the public square?

How did a submarine ride come into play nearing a climactic action sequence under the sea where action shifts to a place that seems to be an underground grotto? Maybe I suffered mental fatigue after too much sound and fury amounting to bombastic foolishness.  

Fittingly enough, “Transformers: The Last Knight” has been rated PG-13 for “violence and intense sequences of sci-fi action, language and some innuendo.”

It’s curious then that the material may be inappropriate for children under 13 because, if anything, the target audience appears to be that of 12-year-olds eager to see Hasbro toys animated into weapons of mass destruction.

On the cinematic front, the worst news to come to my attention is the possibility of a sixth chapter for “Transformers” or a spinoff where the Autobots are created by the vintage body parts of Ford Pinto station wagons. I may be alone on this but I hope it does not come to pass.

I was hoping to have some fun watching “Transformers 5” and I hate to be disappointed. Mark Wahlberg had his moments delivering some snarky one-liners, but other than that the human actors come up short.   

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Lakeport Cinema 5 is once again offering its free summer movie series for children.

The movies are shown every Thursday through Aug. 3. Doors open at 9 a.m. with the movies starting at 10 a.m. or earlier if the auditoriums fill up. Arrive before 10 a.m. for the best seating.

One auditorium will be set aside for those with sensory sensitivity, sponsored each week by People Services. Sensory sensitive shows will start at 9:15 a.m. They will turn the volume down and keep the lights up so everyone is comfortable. Guests are welcome to stem or script or generally move about in whatever way is comfortable for them.

All ages are welcome to the weekly showings on a first-come, first-served basis.

The cinema will offer a $4 drink and popcorn special at the snack bar.

The lineup for the rest of the summer is as follows:

– June 29: “The Secret Life of Pets,” rated PG for action and some rude humor. Runs one hour, 35 minutes.

– July 6: “Ice Age: Collision Course,” rated PG for mild rude humor and some action/peril. Runs one hour, 35 minutes.

–July 13: “Storks,” rated PG for mild action and some thematic elements. Runs one hour, 35 minutes.

–July 20: “Trolls,” rated PG for some mild rude humor. Runs one hour, 35 minutes.

–July 27: “Sing,” rated PG for some rude humor and mild peril. Runs one hour, 50 minutes.

–Aug. 3: “The LEGO Batman Movie,” rated PG for rude humor and some action. Runs one hour, 45 minutes.

For more information visit http://www.lakeportcinema.com/kidshows/ .

Kelly Madigan lives in Nebraska and this poem is from her book, The Edge of Known Things, from Stephen F. Austin University Press. Did you think that you were all that different from a porcupine? Well, poetry reaches for and seizes upon connections, and here's an example of that.

Porcupine

You think we are the pointed argument,
the man drunk at the party showing off
his gun collection, the bed of nettles.
 
What we really are is hidden from you:
girl weeping in the closet among her stepfather's boots;
tuft of rabbit fur caught in barbed wire; body of the baby
in the landfill; boy with the shy mouth playing his guitar
at the picnic table, out in the dirt yard.
 
We slide into this world benign and pliable,
quills pressed down smooth over back and tail.
Only one hour here stiffens the barbs into thousands
of quick retorts. Everything this well-guarded
remembers being soft once.

American Life in Poetry does not accept unsolicited submissions. It is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2013 by Kelly Madigan, “Porcupine,” from The Edge of Known Things, (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2013). Poem reprinted by permission of Kelly Madigan and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2017 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – The Middletown Art Center, or MAC,  begins its third workshop series as part of the Resilience project – “Painting Resilience” – on Sunday, June 18.

Resilience is open to adults of all ages and teens ages 12 up. All levels of experience novice to professional are encouraged to attend.

The project consists of classes in four art disciplines: Photography, poetry/written word, painting and drawing/printmaking.

Classes are generally held on Saturdays but this week Painting Resilience will take place on Sunday because of Middletown days.

Next week, on Saturday, June 24, MAC will offer a drawing and printmaking class. Each class session costs just $5 or $60 for a full workshop series (12 sessions). Participants can come to as many or as few classes as desired.

Classes will cycle through the first through fourth Saturday of the month until May 2018. Check the MAC Web site for scheduling exceptions due to holidays.

All classes run from noon to 5 p.m. to correspond with Lake County Transit buses. MAC can help with bus passes and subsidize the cost of class if needed.

The public is invited to participate, collaborate and create in a year-long project that includes spoken word performances, guided nature walks and other community events that culminate in countywide exhibits, and a printed chapbook of writings and images.

“The first in a series of three summer classes called ‘Just Paint’ are based on the Intuitive Painting Process,” explained artist and instructor Sage Abella. “Here, we tap into our feelings and intuition through the act of painting. We explore our relationship with our own creativity and how it can support growth and blossoming in other parts of our lives. Nature’s resilience and regeneration after the fires teaches us that we too can spring back, grow new shoots, clear old things and make room for new ways to express ourselves in our individual and wild complexity. Over the next 3 months painters will play with 3 ways we interact with our experience of nature: through animals, the elements, and nature’s cycles.”

Abella’s classroom welcomes you with bright colored paints, jars of brushes and big pieces of white paper suggesting endless possibilities. Some participants have never picked up a brush in their life, some paint all the time.

“The beauty of the class is that it doesn’t matter if you’ve painted before because what we are all really doing is opening up a conversation with our intuition and everyone has an intuition. We are born creative!” Abella said.

Join Sage Abella at MAC this Sunday, June 18, from noon to 5 p.m. Bring a lunch or snacks. The next class will be Saturday, July 15. Bring painting clothes or a smock.

Resilience is funded through a Local Impact grant from the California Arts Council with additional local business and community support. Come take advantage of this exciting creative opportunity.