COBB, Calif. – Cobb Mountain Artists continues it' “Artist Presents” series Wednesday, April 8, 7 p.m., in the Community Meeting Room of the Middletown Senior Center.

Entrance is in the middle of the building on Highway 29.

Lower Lake textile artist Sheila O'Hara will be doing a show and tell presentation about her tapestries.

You may have seen her wonderful artwork in the harvest festivals at Steele Wine in Kelseyville every October or in the annual quilt and textile show at the Lower Lake Schoolhouse Museum every August.

She will bring several tapestries for display and explain the ideas and techniques used to create them.

Since graduating from California College of Arts in Oakland in 1976, O'Hara has captured imaginary and humorous landscapes in her unique handwoven dobby and handwoven Jacquard tapestries.

Her artworks are collected by museums and private clients and are exhibited nationally and internationally. Articles on her creative tapestries have been published in many books, magazines and newspapers.

O'Hara's entertaining lectures and workshops have been given in Canada, Australia, Europe, and the United States. She teaches weaving out of her home/studio on Spruce Grove Road in Lower Lake on Thursday afternoons.

For more information on her work visit her Web site at www.sheilaohara.com .
 
Cobb Mountain Artists events are free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Alana Clearlake at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 707-928-8565.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Dubbed one of the country’s best female saxophonists, Nancy Wright performs at the Soper Reese Theatre on Friday, April 17, at 7 p.m.

Tickets are $15.

Wright has played her wailin’, soulful blues alongside John Lee Hooker, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Albert King and Lonnie Mack.

She first appeared on the Bay Area music scene in 1984 with the critically acclaimed New Orleans rhythm and blues band, Hot Links.

Following a successful North American tour, Wright and Hot Links were tapped to perform with Swamp Boogie Queen Katie Webster, appearing on her Arhoolie Records release, “You Know That’s Right.” Wright and Webster also performed together at the Chicago Blues Festival and appear together on B.B. King’s album, “Blues Summit,” winner of the 1994 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album.

While the blues thread remains the strongest in the tapestry of Wright’s music, in the late 90’s a new thread appeared – the opportunity to work with local Hammond B3 organ artist Jackie Ivory (who also worked with sax luminaries Junior Walker and Willis Jackson).

This rekindled her love of organ combo music, which led to a performance with monster Hammond star Tony Monaco and to the release of her critically acclaimed debut CD “Moanin’” (produced by Monaco and backed by his trio), featuring a mix of soul jazz, blues, ballads and boogaloo.

Playing with Wright on April 17 is the Rhythm & Roots Band which features Paul Revilli on drums, Anthony Paule on guitar, Lorenzo Farrell on keyboards and Paul Olguin on bass.

Revelli has performed with many great acts including Angela Strehli, Lou Ann Barton, Tracy Nelson, Marcia Ball, and Charlie Musselwhite. Paule has worked with Johnny Adams, Bo Diddley, Louisiana Red and Boz Scaggs. Farrell plays regularly with Rick Estrin and the Nitecats. Olguin has performed with Mary Wells, The Drifters, Roy Rogers and Augie Meyers.

Tickets are available online at www.SoperReeseTheatre.com ; at the theater box office, 275 S. Main St., Lakeport on Fridays, 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; or at The Travel Center, 1265 S. Main, Lakeport, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For more information call 707-263-0577.

Amanda Strand is a poet living in Maryland. I like this poem for its simplicity, clarity and directness. No frills to decorate it, just the kind of straightforward accounting of an experience that Henry David Thoreau said he looked for in an author.

Father and Daughter

The wedding ring I took off myself,
his wife wasn’t up to it.
I brought the nurse into the room
in case he jumped or anything.
“Can we turn his head?
He looks so uncomfortable.”
She looked straight at me,
patiently waiting for it to sink in.

The snow fell.
His truck in the barn,
his boots by the door,
flagpoles empty.
It took a long time for the taxi to come.
“Where to?” he said.
“My father just died,” I said.
As if it were a destination.

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. Poem copyright 2014 by Amanda Strand and reprinted by permission of the poet. 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. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

THE GUNMAN (Rated R)

Increasingly, it appears that the operative maxim in Hollywood action films nowadays is: Old Guys Rule.

Liam Neeson, a few years shy of Medicare eligibility, romps in the “Taken” franchise. Former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan was a killing machine in the recent “The November Man.”

Unlike Neeson and Brosnan, versatile actor Sean Penn is still in his fifties, but edging very close to qualifying for the senior discount at Denny’s.

In a showy display of his abs, Penn goes shirtless for a surfing scene in “The Gunman” during the midst of turmoil in the Congo.

As the titular character in “The Gunman,” Penn’s Jim Terrier, formerly with Special Forces, is now a mercenary when the film opens circa 2006 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a troubled nation consumed by the violent strife of a bitter civil war.

From the original “Taken” director Pierre Morel, “The Gunman,” from the outset, displays the type of powerful action thriller intensity that launched Liam Neeson into the action hero stratosphere. The same may not be true for Sean Penn, but it’s not for lack of effort on the physical side.

Pegged for deep undercover work that involves the assassination of the Congo’s Minister of Mining, Terrier becomes the designated trigger, and as a result, must immediately depart the African continent, leaving behind his cherished love, Annie (Jasmine Trinca), an idealistic medic helping the impoverished.

Deceived by the shadowy organization that employed him for a security task force, Terrier is forced to go on the run in a relentless game of cat-and-mouse across Africa and Europe. Conveniently, his associate Felix (Javier Bardem) stays behind, profiting from the mining operations.

Eight years later, Terrier seeks redemption by working with a charitable group to bring fresh water and food to an African village. Three armed men storm the encampment, and Terrier is able to fight them off and escape, realizing a price has been put on his head.

First, Terrier travels to London to connect with his old comrade Stanley (Ray Winstone), who reluctantly agrees to help him discover who hired the hit. Convinced his old firm is behind the attack, Terrier heads to Barcelona to confront the oily Felix, who had been the company’s liaison to the client.

While in Barcelona, Terrier finds his ex-lover Annie. She’s surprised by his return, but hesitates to be with him until he reveals the truth about his disappearance. In heroic fashion, he later saves Annie when they are ambushed by gun-toting assassins.

Connecting the dots as to who ordered the hit, Terrier discovers that his old boss, Cox (Mark Rylance), who even looks shifty in his tailored suit and slicked-back hair, heads the division of a company seeking to do business in Africa.

Approached by Interpol agent Barnes (Idris Elba), who prefers to speak in riddles, Terrier realizes that both sides of the law are pressing down, and the best course of action is to solidify his redemption with an all-out battle with Cox’s henchmen, with climactic fights at a Barcelona bull ring and amusement park aquarium.

Does “The Gunman” work for Sean Penn as an aging action figure? While the pace of the film moves briskly for the most part, Penn is not entirely convincing in the role, as it is striking how very much he wants to be seen as the reformed mercenary with a deeply engrained humanitarian streak. Liam Neeson has never displayed any qualms about bashing his enemies into oblivion.

Overall, Pierre Morel’s “The Gunman” won’t be mistaken for “Taken,” and yet with the all the action tropes firmly in place, the result is a boilerplate thriller that offers some fun but is unlikely to be memorable.

TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL UPDATE

This column space has previously touted the wonderful cinematic experience that awaits those trekking to Hollywood for the annual TCM Classic Film Festival, which this year is set for March 26 through 29.

TCM has a rather elastic definition of a “classic film,” and as such, don’t expect to sit in a darkened theater watching only black-and-white films from the 1930s and 1940s.

The George Clooney-Jennifer Lopez sexy caper film “Out of Sight” is not even 20 years old, but it’s on the program.

A more serious film from 1995, “Apollo 13,” the story of intrepid astronauts surviving an ordeal on the trip back to Earth in a damaged shuttle, has the benefit of Captain James Lovell in attendance for the screening.

Great stars are attending the screening of several films that celebrate their 50th anniversary. Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer will be on hand for “The Sound of Music,” while the iconic Sophia Loren will introduce the screening of “Marriage Italian Style” and Ann-Margret does the same for “The Cincinnati Kid.”

Robert Morse, best known today for his role in “Mad Men” even though he was an acclaimed Broadway star in his more youthful days, will present “The Loved One,” a blistering satire on the American funeral industry so irreverent that it has developed a cult following.

Director William Friedkin will present his acclaimed crime story “The French Connection,” one of my all-time favorites. I only wish Gene Hackman would be on hand as well, but Friedkin should have interesting stories about how he filmed the great chase scene on location.

The TCM Festival has so many great films that it will be hard to choose. “Rififi,” a 1955 heist film from American director Jules Dassin that is set in Paris, inspired filmmaker Steven Soderbergh for “Ocean’s Eleven.”

Since the film has only been available in muddy video transfers, TCM will screen “Rififi” in a digital restoration. This is probably one of the must-see films.

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

LAKEPORT, Calif. – La Voce del Vento Chamber Players present the last in a series of chamber music concerts on Sunday, April 12, at 3 p.m. at the Soper Reese Theatre. 

The program features harpsichord and woodwind selections, both ancient and modern. 

Lake County pianist, Tom Aiken, will play the harpsichord.

Reserved seat tickets are $20 and $15, and are available online at www.soperreesetheatre.com ; at the theater box office, 275 S. Main St., Lakeport from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Fridays; or at The Travel Center, 1265 S. Main St., Lakeport, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

For more information call 707-263-0577.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – “Jesus Christ Superstar” will open at the Soper Reese Theater in Lakeport on Friday, March 20.

The production will run through Saturday, April 4.

Tickets are $23, $20 and $15, and are available at the theater box office on Fridays from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at 275 South Main St.; online at www.soperreesetheatre.com ; or at The Travel Center, 1265 South Main Street in Lakeport, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Dedication, love and sacrifice are three commonalities possessed by the cast of the Soper Reese Theatre’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Dedication to getting it right: the notes, the meaning, the rhythm and the staging. Love of the show. Many of the cast have fond memories about the music which came out in the 70s and can tell you about the first time they saw the show or heard the music, and what it meant to them. And, sacrifice. These folks aren’t getting paid and yet they are rearranging their lives to do this show.

Three cast members drive 45 minutes to an hour each way. Several are juggling work, school and the show. Some are juggling multiple jobs and the show. One cast member is also caring for a parent. Several cast members are pretty sure they won’t be winning any parent-of-the-year contests.

Charise Reynolds is one of those parents. She plays Judas. She has always been active in theatre and ended up taking a nine year self-imposed hiatus to get married and start a family. She was looking for a show worthy of the time she knew would be spent away from her husband and five year old son when she came across the audition notice on Facebook.

“I was supposed to be installed as the vice president of a local youth soccer league and was killing time before the board meeting,” she said. “Three little words caught my attention: ‘gender blind casting.’ I immediately dug out my copy of the CD and blared it all the way to the meeting. Once there I resigned from the board so I could focus on preparing for the role of Judas, a role not traditionally offered to actresses.”

Six weeks later she auditioned and got the role.

After work she picks up her son from daycare, rushes home to make him dinner and then leaves him with one of her two sitters until her husband gets home from work. She typically doesn’t get home until after they are both asleep. On the weekends her husband often takes their son out so she can practice. “I never was as happy as the day I found out rehearsals wouldn’t conflict with T-ball,” she now laughs.

Jonathon Wynacht is also juggling his duties as a parent. “Right now, with three practices a week and a single father, sometimes I find myself doing midnight laundry sessions and sneaking off to Safeway in the late hours to make room for the practices. But my boys have been awesome and supportive, and it's a pleasure getting to know this cast of characters."

Katy Tipton is another working parent. She plays Mary Magdalene and is the director of the show. She, too, took a 10-year break during which she got married and started a family. She initially just came out to audition for the role of Mary. After winning the role she found herself being asked to direct as well, when the crew was reorganized.

Her routine is pretty similar to Reynolds’ with the exception that she doesn’t have to worry about T-ball so much. Instead she needs to get her oldest off to dance lessons before she gets herself to rehearsal.

On directing while acting in a show Tipton said, “This is a challenge for me. When I direct, I need to feel like an objective observer in order to have the show come out right. In other words, I have to be able to see the big picture. It's hard to do that when you have to insert yourself into the action. It's a balancing act, for both your concentration and your ego. Does the set look right; are the actors moving correctly; does this person have enough time on stage; am I putting 'myself' on stage too much?

“What's this thing over here and what can I use it for? Does it come in green? Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to sing right now. Can I sing this and not let the other two soloists down and still make sure the entire cast is doing what they're supposed to do? Why is the cast not with the piano? Is it time for a water break, yet? Plus, it's the weirdest thing ever to tell your former teachers what to do, and to be asked to call them by their first names. It's also really, really cool.

“So, basically, I'm freaked out and grateful and humbled that I was asked to do something this big, especially since I've been on a break from Theater for the past ten years. Amazing way to come back to it, you know, especially with this cast and crew. It's really nice to work with a bunch of talented singers and musicians who want to work and do the best they possibly can. It's wonderful,” she said.

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