KRAMPUS (Rated PG-13)

For the first scene of “Krampus,” don’t be fooled by Bing Crosby’s classic holiday song, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” blaring in the background of a big box story opening its doors to Christmas shoppers on Black Friday.

Based on ancient folklore traced back through centuries of European culture, a horned beast named Krampus captured disobedient children during the Christmas season. You could say that the nasty demon with cloven-hooves was the anti-Santa Claus.

It is also possible to think that Krampus might find Black Friday his favorite day of the year, if the European myth should somehow take hold over here. After all, the frenzied scene of deranged shoppers mauling each other for toys would be fertile ground for the demon’s mayhem.

Somewhere in snowy Pennsylvania, the Engel family is only days away from Christmas.

Patriarch Tom (Adam Scott), a workaholic, constantly travels or stays on the phone. His wife Sarah (Toni Collette), a harried mom, strives for Martha Stewart-like perfection.

Teenager Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen) is looking for ways to escape the family to spend time with her boyfriend.

The pre-adolescent yet sensitive Max (Emjay Anthony) wants to believe in Santa Claus but has become disillusioned after too much squabbling with family members.

The Christmas spirit at the Engel household is about to be crushed with the arrival of dreaded house guests, namely Sarah’s sister Linda (Allison Tolman) and her extended family.

A loutish brute, Uncle Howard (David Koechner, always ready for this type of role) is perpetually loud and obnoxious. It might have something to do with the fact that he’s a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, though being a Philadelphia Eagles fan would do just as well.

Howard and Linda’s brood of three bratty children are equally abrasive and insufferable. The chubby Howard Jr. (Maverick Flack) just might eat everything in sight. His sisters Stevie and Jordan (Lolo Owen and Queenie Samuel) dress like tomboys and lack good manners.

But the icing on the cake is taken by the clan’s Aunt Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell), a politically incorrect, hard-drinking naysayer who makes it clear she didn’t even like children when she was one. It doesn’t take long for the cranky Dorothy to complain about the food and decorations.

Tensions flare at the first family dinner when Max’s cousins make fun of his letter to Santa Claus, causing him to bolt to his room. Tearing up the letter, he tosses it into the wind outside his bedroom window.

Of course, this is a big mistake. A freakish blizzard soon arrives to cut off electricity and heat. Cell phones and the Internet get no service. The suburban neighborhood becomes a ghost town. And then ominous snowmen appear in the front yard.

A delivery man shows up with strange packages. Against common sense and everyone’s wishes, Beth decides to go looking for her boyfriend. When she fails to return, Tom and Howard set out as a search party, only to encounter true menace in a subterranean monster.

Retreating back to the Engel home, Tom and Howard warn the others of what becomes readily apparent. Strange, unexplained events are leading to palpable fear that something has gone terribly wrong. Soon enough, the house is under attack from the weird minions of Krampus.

Only Max’s immigrant grandmother Omi (Krista Stadler), who speaks German most of the time, is able to explain that the chaos is caused by the mythical Krampus, who comes to punish the naughty and unleash darkness and mayhem.

All hell breaks loose as the twisted doppelgangers of beloved holiday icons, from frost-bitten snowmen and cherubs, taken on a monstrous life of their own, laying siege to the fractured family’s home and forcing them to fight for survival.

Cuddly teddy bears turn feral and cute little dolls become satanic creatures bent on killing. Even tasty little gingerbread men come alive, gleefully using a nail gun as a nasty weapon. A jack-in-the-box stages a real fright.

Touted as a horror-comedy, “Krampus” lives up to its billing, with some amusing humor interspersed with the family quarrels and the need to take caution with certain holiday baked goods. The horror part is nicely delivered by the imaginative use of making toys deadly dangerous.

But the siege by demonic cookies and toys is just a prelude to bigger things to come. As if to signal Armageddon, the house is invaded by evil elves bent on a deadly mission. And then, Krampus, a hulking beast, finally makes his presence known.

“Krampus” aspires to be a dark and subversive alternative to traditional classic holiday fare, and it does have something to offer if you are game for some twisted holiday fun.

Yet, “Krampus” is not likely to be a holiday classic in its own right, and it certainly is not the type of family-friendly entertainment designed for the enjoyment of younger children.

After seeing “Krampus,” I am taking no chances. A letter to Santa Claus is in the mail as soon as I find a stamp. And I am not asking for anything for myself, for fear of a strange package showing up at my door.

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

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. on Friday appointed Dana Gioia as California Poet Laureate.

Gioia, 64, of Santa Rosa, has been the Judge Widney professor of poetry and public culture at the University of Southern California since 2011.

As chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 to 2009, Gioia launched several nationwide programs to expand public support for the arts and for arts education, with a focus on fostering youth creativity and expression.

These initiatives include the Poetry Out Loud contest for high school students, the Big Read program to promote community reading initiatives across the country and Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, a project to support returning troops and their families.

In 2003, Gioia compiled the anthology California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present as part of the California Legacy Project.

The collection, which has been praised by the Los Angeles Times Book Review and California State Librarian Emeritus Kevin Starr, features poetry from 101 authors and explores California’s cultural history, a prominent theme in Gioia’s writings.

The California native’s body of work has received wide critical acclaim, including his 1991 volume Can Poetry Matter? which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award and triggered national discussion on the role of poetry in American public culture.

Gioia is also a winner of the American Book Award and was honored with the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2008 for his public service in support of the arts.

He earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Stanford University, a Master of Arts degree in comparative literature from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University.

This position requires Senate confirmation and the California Arts Council provides an annual stipend. Gioia is a Republican.

LOWER LAKE, Calif. – The Lake County Theatre Co. will stage “A Tuna Christmas" Dec. 4 through 20 at the Lower Lake Schoolhouse Museum's Weaver Auditorium.

The play follows the Christmas yard display contest in the fictional small town of Tuna, Texas, and the “Christmas Phantom” that is vandalizing the displays.

Performances are at 7 p.m. Dec. 4, 5, 12, 18 and 19, and at 2 p.m. Dec. 6, 13 and 20.

Ticket prices range between $12 and $15 – add $3 if purchased at the door – and are available at www.lakecountytheatrecompany.org , at Pieces Boutique, 155 N. Main St. in Lakeport, or at the Game Hub, 9800 Highway 53 in Lower Lake.

For more information call 707-533-3406 or 707-995-3565.

The Lower Lake Schoolhouse Museum is located at 16435 Morgan Valley Road.

Debra Marquart, who teaches at Iowa State, is a poet, a memoirist, a writer of stories and a singer with her own R & B group, The Bone People.

She knows the musician's life, and here's a road poem from her most recent book from New Rivers Press, Small Buried Things.

Traveling with Guitar

For you can travel with a screaming red rolling bag
and float unnoticed on conveyors, through terminals

or you can lug half a moose rack from Maine
to Minnesota, carry it like a broken wing through airports

as my friend Gro did, and draw only the curious touches
of children waiting at gates. But dare to travel with a guitar

and invite confessions from strangers in pinstripe suits
of garage band summers, invite winks, gotcha smiles,

and devil's horns rock on gestures. Invite finger points
and winks, the long tongue licks, and the rubberneck glance

to check if you are someone famous. To dare to travel
with a guitar is to mark yourself charismatic megafauna

of the airport terminal. Old friend, what else could I do
but carry you? I have stored you in closets, propped you

in corners, hunched over you late-nights, staring perplexed
at the mysteries of your neck. Body of my body, string

of my strings, see how the world began to hum and sing
that day at thirteen when I opened the big birthday box.

American Life in Poetry 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. They do not accept unsolicited submissions. Poem copyright ©2015 by Debra Marquart “Traveling with Guitar,” from Small Buried Things, (New Rivers Press, 2015). Poem reprinted by permission of Debra Marquart and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2015 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.

CREED (Rated PG-13)

Rocky Balboa is back in the thick of boxing action almost 40 years after the original “Rocky” film lifted an essentially unknown Sylvester Stallone, who wrote the script for his starring role, from obscurity into a major player in Hollywood.

Aside from garnering box office gold, “Rocky” won the Academy Award for Best Picture, while John Avildsen took home the Oscar for Best Director.

The film became such a fixture in the culture that a statue of Rocky Balboa was erected long ago in the boxer’s hometown of Philadelphia.

Though the script was not written by Stallone this time, “Creed” could easily be considered the seventh “Rocky” film, not just because Rocky Balboa is still in the picture, but for the lively spirit of an upstart boxer making his mark.

In the film’s initial flashback, a young boy named Adonis Johnson is bounced around foster homes. He’s rescued from juvenile detention by Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad), the widow of heavyweight champion Apollo Creed, former rival and later best friend of Rocky Balboa.

Followers of the franchise should recall that Apollo died in the ring in a bout with Ivan Drago. Around this time in his life, Apollo was involved in an affair, the result of which was the birth of his son Adonis after his death.

Flash forward to the present, Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) has boxing DNA coursing through his veins, and despite his white collar job in Los Angeles, he spends weekends in gritty Tijuana venues fighting other boxers.

Even though his adoptive mother disapproves, Adonis, or Donnie as he’s known to friends, decides to leave the comfort of the Creed mansion for Philadelphia, where he hopes to get trained by the venerable Rocky Balboa.

Now a senior citizen facing medical issues, Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa runs the Italian restaurant named after his late wife Adrian, and though he was obviously close to Donnie’s father, he now has no desire or interest in returning to the boxing world.

Moving into an apartment building where his neighbor is the beautiful aspiring singer Bianca (Tessa Thompson), the self-trained Donnie doesn’t shy away from hard work, which says a lot to someone like Rocky, who decides to take him on despite his original misgivings.

Anxious to keep a low profile and to earn his stripes on his own merit, Donnie refuses to use his famous surname to get ahead, though soon enough his identity becomes known after some initial success impresses observers of the sport.

For his part, Rocky has gone full circle in his life. At one time, he was a lonely guy just trying to be a fighter. Then, he had success and formed a relationship with Adrian that blossomed into a lifelong love.

Now with family and old friends gone, Rocky is alone once again, but not looking to fight anymore, at least not in the ring. Donnie’s presence, which proves persuasive, forces the old boxer to rethink his priorities.

The nice thing about “Creed” is more than its crowd-pleasing reboot of a successful franchise in the hands of youthful writer-director Ryan Coogler, who has reinvented the underdog story in a way that excitingly connects with the legion of “Rocky” fans.

Without the benefit of any background knowledge of how the novice Ryan Coogler came to represent the new face of the franchise, it is readily apparent that the theme of a sentimental journey through the “Rocky” legacy has the Sylvester Stallone stamp of approval.

Where Donnie is brash, anxious and willing to take on all comers, the aging Rocky is all-too-aware that he is looking at the mirror image of his youthful self. Rocky needs his protégé to understand that boxing is as much a mental game as a physical one.

Donnie show early promise, and then things start to move very fast when agents for British light heavyweight champion “Pretty” Ricky Conlan (Anthony Bellew) seek to stage a big fight with Donnie in Liverpool for an HBO telecast.

Facing legal troubles in his homeland, the arrogant Conlan seeks to fight Donnie on the condition that the American boxer uses his given surname of Creed. Staging a fight with the offspring of a legend will only increase the return of a major payday.

Naturally, the big fight with Conlan is the climactic showdown, and without giving too much away, the match is brilliantly staged to maximize the emotional impact on the audience, reminiscent of earlier “Rocky” films.

Almost without question, Sylvester Stallone turns in one of the most impressive performances of his career, even if he appears to be called upon for little more than to be a mentor, much like Burgess Meredith in the first film, to a willing young charge. 

With Michael B. Jordan proving worthy for his titular role, “Creed” should be a major contender at the box office because this surprising film delivers a real knockout punch with action and nostalgic sentiment.

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

MENDOCINO, Calif. – The Redwood Community Chorus Fall Concert will take place Friday, Dec. 11, and Saturday, Dec. 12.

It will be held at 7 p.m. Dec. 11 and 2 p.m. Dec. 2 at the Mendocino Presbyterian Church, 44831 Main St., Mendocino.

Admission is Free. A donation is requested.

The Trebl’d Women will open the concert with a medley of songs.

Music from Christian and Jewish traditions plus the English folk carol “The Holly and the Ivy,” and the carol “Angels We Have Heard on High” are included.

A highlight is the song “Inscription of Hope” with words inscribed on the walls of the cellar of the Cologne Cathedral, where World War II Jewish refugees hid from the Nazis.