LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Wine Studio is hosting local artist and Serendipity Boutique owner Diana Liebe, to present two art workshop classes to learn how to paint on silk.
Liebe will demonstrate the process and each participant will paint and take home a hand-painted silk scarf or bandanna.
Class dates and time are Sunday, Sept. 18, 1 p.m. 2:30 p.m., and/or Sunday, Sept. 25, 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Materials fee is $10 for a bandanna and $15 for a scarf. Class space is limited to 10 persons each class – sign up now by calling Susan at 707-293-8752 or visiting Lake County Wine Studio.
Liebe is the artist on show at LCWS for the month of September with both watercolor paintings and hand-painted and dyed clothing on display.
A former art teacher at both the high school and college levels, Liebe has been very involved in the Lake County Arts community since moving here from Mendocino County seven years ago.
The Wine Studio is located on the corner of First and Main Street in Historic Upper Lake across from the famous Tallman Hotel and Blue Wing Saloon & Café.
Regular hours are 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, and 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday.
Sam Peckinpah’s controversial 1971 film “Straw Dogs” captured the scary intensity of a story about shocking violence and the exploration of the darkest human behavior.
Now director and screenwriter Rod Lurie updates Peckinpah’s tale of psychological terror by moving its setting from rural England to a small town in the Deep South.
This review will skip the comparisons with the original because the Peckinpah classic is 40 years old and today’s audience is not likely familiar with it anyway.
The setting of Blackwater, Mississippi is not the bucolic paradise that it appears to be at first glance. It’s immediately obvious that the central figure is a fish-out-of-water.
David Sumner (James Marsden), a bespectacled Hollywood screenwriter, and his actress wife Amy (Kate Bosworth) move to her small hometown in the South after her father’s death.
David’s first visit to Blackie’s bar should have been enough of a clue to this Harvard-educated country club sort of intellectual that he was entering hostile territory.
But to make matters worse, David seemingly thinks it is a good idea to hire Amy’s former boyfriend Charlie (Alexander Skarsgard) and his crew of redneck hillbillies to perform construction work on their dilapidated barn.
David and Amy take up residence in the sturdy family farmhouse. He views it as the perfect place to work on his screenplay about the pivotal Battle of Stalingrad during World War II.
While the locals mostly drive pickups and standard American sedans, David rides around in his vintage Jaguar convertible, as if he were on his way to lunch at the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel.
David is something of a squish that smiles softly and tries too hard to be engaging, but comes across as a wimpy nerd. His effete attitude shines through when he tries to order a Bud Light in the midst of a hard-drinking crowd.
On the other hand, David’s wife, having once been the town’s beauty queen and prominent cheerleader, slips back into being the hometown celebrity, even if her old friends are jealous.
But Amy has enough good sense to insist that they drive her father’s old car instead of the Jaguar when attending to the town’s Friday night football game ritual.
Meanwhile, tensions build in the Sumner marriage and old conflicts re-emerge with the locals, notably when Charlie brings a primal menace to the jobsite, leering at the sweaty Amy when she goes jogging braless.
The sense of intimidation grows when Charlie and his crew, including former football teammates Bic (Drew Powell), Norman (Rhys Coiro) and Chris (Billy Lush) push the limits of David’s tolerance.
Tension builds slowly at first, as Charlie and the gang annoy David by blasting loud music and flaunting their lackadaisical work ethic, leaving work early to go hunting.
One of the workers has no problem with walking into the Sumner house uninvited, retrieving beers from the refrigerator and then complaining that they are not cold enough.
Meanwhile, a subplot involves former football coach Tom Heddon (James Woods), a violent, angry drunk, who gets absolutely obsessed that his teenage daughter has caught the attention of the mentally challenged Jeremy (Dominic Purcell).
When the coach’s daughter goes missing, Heddon takes the law into his own hands, enlisting Charlie and his boys to help him search for her and setting into motion a series of events that ultimately leads to an explosively violent confrontation.
Leading up to the extremely brutal and violent climactic showdown at the farmhouse, it appears that both David and Amy had made a series of bad decisions that aggravate the situation.
To what purpose does the teasingly sexy Amy decide to suggestively flash Charlie and his crew after taking a shower? It’s red meat thrown to the wolves.
What makes David so obliviously accommodating to Charlie and his buddies that he hires them in the first place and then decides to go hunting with them in the off-season to prove his manhood?
Despite the mistakes made by the Sumners, it is abundantly clear that director/screenwriter Lurie expects the audience to cheer David’s ultimate transformation into fierce protector of his wife and the farmhouse.
The central actors are engaging, complex characters. Though James Woods gives another over-the-top performance, he is something to behold.
“Straw Dogs” may lack the necessary subtlety and nuance, as well as psychological ambiguity, but it delivers the goods on vengeful violence. That may be enough for contemporary filmgoers.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
NORTH COAST, Calif. – The North Coast Resource Conservation & Development Council is holding its inaugural “Cultivating Commerce Poetry Competition” with the themes of agriculture and natural resources, including farm and ranching life.
Submission fees are $10 per poem, and the first prize is $100.
Poems of any length and style may be submitted, and contestants may submit an unlimited number of poems.
The competition ends Sept. 30.
The proceeds from this competition will be used to further the group's mission of improving pollinator habitat, enhancing agritourism, supporting eat local/grow local gardens and fostering sustainable biomass energy production.
In addition, the funds will be used for the new initiative Cultivating Commerce which will provide entrepreneur support for business start-up or expansion in agricultural and natural resource areas.
The council is a nonprofit organization serving Mendocino, Lake, Sonoma, and Marin counties.
Founded as a grassroots organization in 2003 to support sustainable agriculture and resource use, the council has worked on local projects ranging from constructing rainwater collection systems at local schools – including the catchment tank for the Fort Bragg High School Learning Garden rainwater collection system – and funding a pollinator planting at Salmon Creek School in Occidental, with native species for pollinator use.
The council has held educational workshops throughout Sonoma and Lake counties with landowners to increase pollinator habitat, help create and expand community gardens, educate landowners to prevent the spread of sudden oak disease, prepare detailed feasibility studies for biomass-to-energy production in Fort Bragg and the Mendocino County area, and has conducted workshops with ranchers and farmers interested in adding an agritourism element to their operations.
The Fargo Brothers will perform at the Soper Reese Community Theatre in Lakeport, Calif., on Friday, October 21, 2011. Courtesy photo.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – This Oct. 21 at 7 p.m. the Soper Reese Community Theatre presents veterans of the stage, Michael Barrish and the Fargo Brothers.
Third Friday Night Live continues to bring live music to the community. So bring your dancing shoes and make your way to the Soper Reese Community Theatre.
The Fargo Brothers have been burning up stages since 1979.
Veterans of well over 4,000 live shows from California to the Canadian border, these four seasoned professionals deliver a brand of roots Rock and Roll with a fire and intensity that only three decades together can bring.
Known for their vocal harmonies and tight ensemble playing, The Fargo Brothers always put on a show that is not to be missed.
Michael Lester Adams rocks the vocals and guitar while Russ Whitehaed provides vocals and plays the Bass.
Joost Vonks keeps the beat with drums and back up vocals while “Mojo” Larry Platz tickles guitar strings and sings along.
The group says they have fun performing and the audience can feel it.
Opening for the Fargo Brothers is Michael Barrish, a lifelong musician, has been writing songs for over 30 years.
The songs cover a variety of styles from cowboy songs to the blues.
After playing in various cover bands, Barrish has been promoting his own material performing music in a sing/songwriter format for the last five years.
He is a past winner of the Best Performance Award for the West Coast Songwriters, San Luis Obispo County.
In 2006 Barrish made his debut CD entitled “The Old Adobe” which includes 12 songs showcasing his abilities as a songwriter and performer with the help of his friends Chris Hillman, David West, and Tom Ball on selected tracks.
All seats for “Third Friday Live” are $10.
Get your tickets online at www.SoperReeseTheatre.com or at the Theatre Box Office, 275 S. Main St., Lakeport or call 707-263-0577.
The box office is open on Thursdays and Fridays, 10:30 am to 5:30 pm, and on the day of the show for two hours before show time. Look for updates on upcoming headliners and opening acts at www.soperreesetheatre.com. Get ready for a night of grooves and moves, see you at the theatre.
Michael Barrish will open for the Fargo Brothers at the Soper Reese Community Theatre in Lakeport, Calif., on Friday, October 21, 2011. Courtesy photo.
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