LAKEPORT, Calif. – Artists and gallery staff are busy preparing for the Sept. 4 “First Friday Fling” at the Main Street Gallery in Lakeport.
The “fling” is a monthly celebration of the amazing artists in our county that will be showing their work at the gallery each month.
The Sept. 4 event features the artwork of Shelby Posada, Jo Bergesen, Ben van Steenburgh III, Judy Cardinale, Richard Seisser, Jack Southwick, Steve Eichenlaub, Patty Oates, Evelyn Robison, Dennis Robison, Marcie Long, Linda Becker, Bobbi Bridges and George Knauss.
The festivities on Friday are from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. and the public is invited.
Come and meet the artists, enjoy the wonderful local wine on sale from the award-winning Laujor Estates Wines and be entertained by the musical talent of the county’s own singer/songwriter Jim Williams.
The Main Street Gallery is located at 325 N. Main St.
Eight years ago, Timothy Olyphant had the starring role of a humanoid killing machine in “Hitman.” He’s since gone on to better things, such as playing a determined U.S. Marshal in the long run of the TV series “Justified.”
Now, I can’t exactly remember if the original “Hitman” was good enough for a sequel, but somehow, in the back of my mind, the anticipation of “Hitman: Agent 47” to deliver the action goods at the end of summer seemed to be a reasonably justifiable expectation.
In this new “Hitman,” Rupert Friend comes along as the supposedly new and improved model known only as Agent 47, with a barcode tattooed at the back of his neck, which may come in handy when checking out the large stash of weapons he routinely needs for his assignments.
Much like his genetically engineered assassin predecessors, who apparently all used the same tailor, the baldheaded Agent 47’s indistinct style is that of sporting a crisp dark suit, a neatly starched white shirt and bright red necktie.
With his sartorial style accented by a colorful cravat, there’s no way that Agent 47 will inconspicuously blend into the scenery while running through the Berlin subway system or the streets of Singapore.
Whether intentionally drawing notice to himself or not, Agent 47, armed with an assortment of guns and knives, is on the hunt for a mysterious woman named Katia von Dees (Hannah Ware), who has become the object of attention for nefarious purposes.
Another person on the trail of Katia is the suitably-named John Smith (Zachary Quinto), another secretive man.
His intentions initially appear honorable, but he does have a curious interest in Katia’s obsession with searching for a mystery man for reasons unknown even to her.
Katia’s shabby apartment in Berlin includes a giant wall map covered in post-it notes and newspaper clippings, while large scrapbooks contain scribbled writings and renderings. She suffers a lot of flashbacks and exhibits signs of a heightened awareness of her surroundings.
We have no idea if Katia is suffering from trauma or a mental breakdown, but whatever it is, she is taking enough medications that one hopes she has decent health insurance.
Of course, a good health plan is the least of her concerns once the shadowy John Smith and Agent 47 converge on the scene.
What are we to make of Agent 47, a supposedly cold-blooded killing machine absent conscience and human feelings? Is John Smith, a capable fighting force in his own right, really empathetic when he volunteers an escape route for Katia?
At the heart of the mystery is the reclusive Dr. Litvenko (Ciaran Hands), the man who engineered the Agent program years ago and now regrets his invention.
Nefarious bad guys are looking for him to get the program refined to create even more insidious killing machines.
The question that won’t be fully answered here, lest a certain amount of surprise is removed from the equation, is who is mostly responsible for wanting to create more mayhem in an already chaotic world?
There are signs pointing to an organization called Syndicate International, based in a gleaming Singapore high-rise, complete with the obligatory helicopter pad required for the criminal mastermind’s inevitable escape.
Note to self: any time the word “syndicate” is used to describe an organization, it’s an excuse to default to understanding this to be a criminal enterprise. After all, this was the case in the most recent “Mission: Impossible” film.
A good candidate for supreme leader of the forces of evil is Le Clerq (Thomas Kretschmann), if only because he is surrounded by machine gun-toting bodyguards and never leaves his fortified high-rise lair, even to mingle with his own staff.
As the story moves along, Agent 47, an unstoppable killing force of nearly inhuman skills, exhibits traits of humanity beneath the surface. But mostly, he’s just an indestructible machine capable of wiping out platoons of armed assailants.
Strip “Hitman: Agent 47” of its precious few moments of human interaction, and what you get is an orgy of gratuitous violence that is not surprising for a film originally adapted from an eponymous videogame.
The body count is so high in this film that it is easy to imagine that Agent 47 probably killed more people in the opening minutes than James Bond ever did in the entire span of the last 50 years of the 007 franchise.
In the end, it takes more than a plethora of shootings to make an action picture truly memorable on all fronts.
“Hitman: Agent 47,” with its moments of suspense, comes up short on character development. But who has time for that when gunplay and violent mayhem take up almost the entire 96-minute running time?
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – The last event of the Summer Poetry Series is this Wednesday, Aug. 26, at 6 p.m. at the Saw Shop Gallery Bistro, 3825 Main St. in Kelseyville.
Hosted by Lake County Poet Laureate Casey Carney, the reading features poets KC Patrick, Fran Ransley and Sandy Stillwell, with a collaborative performance by poet Sam Flot and saxophonist Jim Leonardis.
Open mic sign-ups are at 6 p.m.
Five poets will be invited to share up to five minutes of poetry each.
The $10 admission includes a glass of wine, an appetizer and $20 in Saw Shop bucks, to be redeemed at the patron’s convenience.
Twenty years ago my wife and I had visitors from New York, and their car broke down on a country road about a mile from our home.
One of them panicked because there were no phone booths from which to call for help. Nebraska is a place where there can be a lot of room between one land-line and the next.
Carol V. Davis of California did a residency at Homestead National Monument, and this is one of the poems that came out of it.
Animal Time
I do better in animal time, a creeping dawn, slow ticking toward dusk. In the middle of the day on the Nebraska prairie, I’m unnerved by subdued sounds, as if listening through water, even the high-pitched drone of the cicadas faint; the blackbirds half-heartedly singing. As newlyweds, my parents drove cross country to Death Valley, last leg of their escape from New York, the thick soups of their immigrant mothers, generations of superstitions that squeezed them from all sides. They camped under stars that meant no harm. It was the silence that alerted them to danger. They climbed back into their tiny new car, locked its doors and blinked their eyes until daylight.
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 2013 by Carol V. Davis, “Animal Time,” from Harpur Palate, (Vol. 13, No. 1, summer/fall 2013). Poem reprinted by permission of Carol V. Davis 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 2004-06.
The sixties, which to this day generates feelings of nostalgia for what many view as the coolest decade, enjoyed a long run of spy capers that might have been, in certain ways, the antidote to anxiety about the tensions underlying the height of the Cold War.
Early in the decade, James Bond, the suave, cool superspy, made his debut with “Dr. No,” quickly followed by “From Russia with Love,” “Goldfinger,” and an endless stream of 007 adventures.
Less serious efforts mimicked the Bond popularity, with James Coburn as master spy Derek Flint and Dean Martin as secret agent Matt Helm.
Like James Bond, both Flint and Helm, exuding sixties cool, were popular with the ladies.
The spy business was not confined just to the big screen.
Of course, there was the hugely popular 1960s television series “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, which has now been adapted by director Guy Ritchie for a fresh take on the stylish spy genre.
Set in 1963 at the height of the Cold War, Ritchie’s “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” developed as an origin story, centers on the seminal yet reluctant alliance of two agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain given the mission to stop a mysterious international criminal organization.
Henry Cavill’s debonair CIA agent Napoleon Solo, dressed in a natty suit, is first seen crossing Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin.
His mission is to extract the daughter of a vanished German scientist, who is the key to infiltrating the criminal organization.
Armie Hammer’s rough-edged KGB agent Illya Kuryakin, a volatile yet loyal soldier for communist Russia, has also been sent to East Berlin to snatch the same vital German asset.
When Solo and Kuryakin first meet, they are trying to kill each other.
Meanwhile, in an exciting, breakneck, winner-take-all street chase, Solo makes his way to the free world with Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander), a whip-smart East German auto mechanic who is the estranged daughter of Dr. Udo Teller, once Hitler’s favorite rocket scientist.
The German scientist has gone missing, presumably now in the clutches of the secretive criminal cabal, which happens to be organized by neo-fascist Italian heiress Victoria Vinciguerra (Elizabeth Debicki), an attractive ice queen who looks like a model in Vogue magazine.
Given the high stakes of dealing with a rogue terrorist group with Nazi ties, the Soviet and American agents are forced by their handlers to work together to find the missing scientist and avert nuclear disaster.
Sworn rivals, Solo and Kuryakin vent their national and professional antagonism in a bare-knuckled, bust-up-the-furniture fight designed to convey in no uncertain terms that they might be stuck with each other, but they don’t have to like it.
What results from lingering hostility is a strange sort of buddy movie, with Solo as the suave and often self-serving agent (we learn that he was an art thief after World War II, then given a job in the CIA rather than jail time).
Solo’s background sounds very much like the premise for Robert Wagner’s thief-cum-agent Alexander Mundy in the late Sixties TV series “It Takes a Thief.” Both Solo and Mundy are the sophisticated playboy types.
For his part, the petulant Kuryakin, faithful foot soldier for his authoritarian homeland, deals awkwardly with his newfound role of cooperative spy, and yet he manages to pretend to be an architect engaged to Gaby as a cover when they arrive in Italy.
Using his playboy charm and skills as a thief, Solo gets close to the villainous Victoria, finagling his way into her exclusive party held during an auto race where her husband (Italian actor Luca Calvani) spends his time mostly on the track.
In the hands of Guy Ritchie “The Man from U.N C.L.E.” proves to be an interesting and entertaining summer action film.
As a director, Ritchie has an interesting career, starting with great crime films “Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch.”
More recently, Ritchie directed the acclaimed blockbusters “Sherlock Holmes” and “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.”
However, he is not immune to bad judgment; while married to Madonna, he co-wrote and directed the execrable “Swept Away” for this then-spouse.
Fortunately, the director knows how to stage impressive set pieces and thrilling action sequences where the stunts are remarkably striking in their execution. “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” has plenty enough of both.
The best of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” involves many moving parts, from the chemistry that develops with the trio of Gaby, Solo and Kuryakin to the sometimes playful, lighthearted tone where humor is an important ingredient.
The film is also visually dazzling, where the setting of 1963 appears so authentic that the scenic locations in “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” are indistinguishable from the style of the predecessor movies and TV shows that were actually filmed during the sixties.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
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