Sandra Wade, Lake County's outgoing poet laureate, introduced her new CD, From There to Here, in a reading of poetry and prose at Watershed Books on Friday afternoon. Wide-ranging choices and conversation with the audience included the joys of gardening and a discussion of the Noetic Institute founded by astronaut Edgar Mitchell.

Wade will introduce finalists in the selection of the county's new poet laureate in a Poetry and Music Interlude from three to 6 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 24, at the Main Street Gallery, 325 N. Main St., Lakeport.

The finalists are Linda Drew, Tom Hardy, Pauline Denise Keil-Stocker and Mary McMillan. The new laureate will be introduced Sunday, March 2, in a 4 to 7 p.m. event, also at the Main Street Gallery.

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Auditions for the event will be held on Saturday, March 15, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Antoinette's School of Dance studio, located at 93 Soda Bay Road in Lakeport.

Audition forms are available at the Lake County Arts Council's Main Street Gallery, 325 N. Main St. in Lakeport, you can have them mailed to you.

If you plan to audition, you must call and schedule an audition time by 5 p.m. Friday, March 9.

All types of dance will be considered for audition and can be solos, duets, trios or larger groups and time limitations for dances are listed on the audition forms.

For more information, please call 263-6658.

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LAKE COUNTY – There are two upcoming opportunities in which community members can hear the applicants for Lake County Poet Laureate 2008-10 read their work.

The hopefuls are Linda Drew, Tom Hardy, Pauline Denise Keil-Stocker and Mary McMillan.

The first is at the opening of the Feb. 24 Poetry and Music Interlude, at the Lake County Arts Council's Main Street Gallery, 325 N. Main St., Lakeport.

The event starts at 3 p.m. and ends 6 p.m. Some or all of the five judges of applicants' work will be present.

After those readings, the Poetry and Music Interlude will proceed as usual as an open mic for writers and musicians, hosted by Lorna Sue Sides. Bring light refreshments if you can.

The second opportunity is at 4 p.m. Sunday, March 2, also at the Main Street Gallery.

At that event, the new poet laureate will be introduced.

After an introduction by the outgoing poet laureate and outline of the duties/ expectations/ creativity/ communications involved, the new poet laureate will read and there will be refreshments.

There is no need to RSVP, just come and bring as many others as possible to welcome and encourage the new poet laureate.

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Harkening back to the 2004 terrorist bombings on commuter trains in Madrid, one has to wonder what the Prime Minister of Spain thinks of Vantage Point, which puts the Spanish town of Salamanca in the crosshairs of a terrorist plot during a landmark summit on the global war on terror.

Gathering the heads of state in any one location runs a great security risk, and Vantage Point is only too willing to explore the possibility of a serious breakdown in the protective guard that surrounds high-profile events of this kind. For good measure, the film taps into sensible paranoia of the modern age.

The action-packed thriller owes much of its perspective to the classic Japanese film Rashomon. The innovative effort of legendary director Akira Kurosawa created an unusual narrative structure that attempted to arrive at the truth of a brutal crime by demonstrating the differing accounts of several witnesses.

While the Japanese classic was heavy on the psychological overtones, Vantage Point leans to the point of view of various players, from the innocent bystander to the active participants in the plot. Hence, the psychology is colored by the level of self-interest of the individual witness.

At the film’s opening, the audience relives the assassination attempt on the president of the United States (William Hurt) from so many angles that it is easy to lose count. The film’s advertising says that eight strangers with eight different points of view try to unlock the truth.

As the president’s motorcade works its way to the site of the summit in the town’s central square, the first view is from the American cable news network covering the historic event, mostly from the perspective of frenzied TV news producer Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver), who working from inside a trailer located on the perimeter has probably the least advantageous observation point.

Other than the actual perpetrators, two Secret Service agents assigned to President Ashton probably have the best view, since they are most attuned to this sort of danger. This is particularly true for agent Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid), who previously took a bullet about a year before while protecting the commander in chief.

Other agents have doubts that Barnes is ready to enter the fray once more, and even Barnes’ partner, agent Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox), is dubious. However, Barnes is the key player because he is more tenacious than a pit bull in doing his job. Under fire when the assassination attempt goes down, Barnes dispels any notion that his psyche is too wobbly for effective action.

There are other perspectives to the crime. In the crowd is ordinary American tourist Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker), who thinks he’s captured the shooter on his camcorder while videotaping the event for his kids back home. A Spanish police officer (Eduardo Noriega) suspects that his girlfriend is cheating on him and then stumbles on something far more insidious. Not to be left out of all this is the president himself, who has to cope with trusted aides while pondering whether to launch an air strike on a terrorist camp in Morocco.

As each vantage point is explored, it is incumbent on the audience to pay attention to the details, catching a glimpse here and there of potential clues, no matter how remote or obscure. In some ways, the storytelling is akin to peeling layers off an onion, and the mind races to figure out whether discovered tidbits lead to a grander revelation. But you can’t get too comfortable mulling over the various options, because then the movie cranks up the action in a series of gun shots and bomb blasts topped off by a terrific car chase.

Dennis Quaid’s secret service agent shines not just for his nervous, tortured effort to pull himself back into the game. His agent Thomas Barnes is the film’s real action hero, particularly when he commandeers a car to give a nail-biting high speed chase to a fleeing terrorist through the narrow streets of Salamanca.

But for all of its energy and pumped-up action scenes, Vantage Point doesn’t rise above the ordinary as a thriller. Indeed, too many coincidences and contrivances undermine the overall specter of credible action, which for the most part is a jumbled mess of plot twists.

DVD RELEASE UPDATE

Three estranged brothers plan a trip through India to rediscover their familial bond a year after their father’s death. This sounds like a high-brow art film to be avoided, but that would be a mistake.

The Darjeeling Limited features an amazing cast for the siblings, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman. This offbeat movie is a comedic gem, offering up all sorts of unexpected twists and turns for these travelers on a spiritual journey through a mysterious foreign land.

While the brothers may have expected their “spiritual quest” to produce satisfactory results, instead they find themselves stranded in the middle of the desert with 11 suitcases, a printer and a laminating machine. The journey gets even weirder after that.

The Darjeeling Limited DVD includes an odd featurette, Hotel Chevalier, where Natalie Portman plays Schwartzman’s unhappy girlfriend.

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

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The concert, consisting of a program ranging from opera to pop music, will also feature tenor Andrew Truett and soprano Suzanne Lustgarten. All three are veterans of the San Francisco opera scene, as well as many other distinguished music companies. It's a chance for opera lovers to indulge themselves, since the performances of this art form are rare in Lake County.

The concert is the first in the spring series sponsored by Clear Lake Performing Arts (CLPA), the group organized 30 years ago to bring fine music to Lake County.

Pickersgill's mother, Mildred was one of the founding members of CLPA and still plays an active role, serving on its board of directors. Bill, meanwhile, says he's happy to come back as a paid performer to the same theater that charged him 35 cents admission during his childhood.

Andrew Truett's voice has been called "ravishing" by some critics, and his impeccable phrasing and steady stage presence has made him increasingly in demand by west coast impresarios. He was a member of the San Diego Opera Ensemble, and in 2001 made his European debut with Spazio Musica de Orvieto, Italy.

After further performances with the San Francisco Opera Center and two tours of the Western Opera Theater, he spent six months as resident artist with the Cincinnati Opera Ensemble, before returning to the Bay Area as a tenured member of the San Francisco Opera Chorus. He has sung and played scores of roles in dozens of west coast venues.

Suzanne Lustgarten has a master's of music in vocal performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, as well as bachelor's degrees in both Italian and French. Her clear soprano voice and arresting stage presence has made her a regional winner in the MacAllister awards and a district winner in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

Lustgarten She has performed with the San Diego Opera, the Des Moines Metro Opera, the Berkeley Opera and the San Francisco Opera Guild, among many others. She is the wife of tenor Andrew "Andy" Truett.

"Bill" Pickersgill is well-known to Lake County opera fans, having appeared in many past CLPA-sponsored performances. A graduate of Lakeport's Clear Lake High School, he moved to San Francisco and then New York where he was chosen as a Metropolitan Opera Regional finalist, which led to a grant to Graz, Austria, for further studies.

He then joined the Hagen Opera House in Germany where he performed leading roles for two years. He has been a member of the San Francisco Opera Chorus since the early 1980s, and is proud to be a tenured member of that prestigious organization.

The Feb. 24 concert starts at 3 p.m. and admission is $15 for CLPA members and $20 for the general public, with youths under 18 admitted free.

Tickets may be obtained in advance at the Lake County Arts Council's Main Street Gallery, 325 N. Main Street in downtown Lakeport, or at Catfish Books, 1013 11th St., also in Lakeport. Tickets at the concert will be sold from the Soper-Reese box office.

Those interested in obtaining member discounts may join CLPA by calling CLPA membership chair Ed Bublitz at 277-8172.

The Soper-Reese Community Theater is located at 275 S. Main St., Lakeport.

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Finally, some good news when it comes to a children’s movie that adults may find equally enjoyable. Based on the beloved best-selling series of books, The Spiderwick Chronicles is a fantasy adventure that reveals a hidden, mysterious world around us, one that is found in an area surrounding an old Victorian home in rural New England. The bucolic setting alone suggests the possibility of magical creatures, many of them downright malevolent and bent on visiting destruction on humans unfortunate enough to discover their presence.

You wouldn’t know if from the monsters, goblins and assorted not-so-enchanting creatures, but Spiderwick is an unusual celebration of family bonds. The Grace family finds itself tested by their own conflicts, especially since the recently separated mother Helen (Mary-Louise Parker) decides to uproot the kids from the comfort zone of New York, moving into the isolated, dilapidated Spiderwick Estate. Jared and his brother Simon (both played by Freddie Highmore) and older sister Mallory (Sarah Bolger) confront the challenges of a new environment.

The rebellious Jared is the most resentful and bitter, remaining anxious to reunite with his mythical good-guy father. From the very moment they move into the aging Victorian home, strange disappearances and accidents start happening.

More precocious than his studious brother, Jared starts poking around the old house, discovering quickly that magical things are truly happening. Poking into an old chest, he stumbles upon a strange and potentially dangerous book written by his great, great-uncle Arthur Spiderwick. The eponymous “Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You” reveals what the naturalist discovered when he uncovered a concealed faerie world.

Finding the book turns out to be a Pandora’s box that unleashes an army of goblins and trolls in the service of the crafty, evil ogre Mulgarath (Nick Nolte, looking something like his infamous mug shot), who is desperate to get his hands on the Field Guide because he can use it to destroy his adversaries.

Meanwhile, Jared discovers that not all creatures pose a hostile, ominous threat. One of them lives in the walls of the manor, and he becomes agitated when Jared dares to open the Field Guide after ignoring the portentous warning on its cover.

Thimbletack (voiced by Martin Short) is a scampering imp known as a brownie. Yet, upon being angered, he turns into a boggart, who can only be placated by guzzling honey from a squeeze bottle. Even though his disposition can be a bit uneven, Thimbletack becomes an invaluable ally in the fight against the dangerous goblins.

Another indispensable collaborator is the wily but friendly hobgoblin named Hogsqueal (voiced by Seth Rogen), who has an odd taste for birds and a knack for spitting in the eyes of the children so that they can actually see the invisible creatures.

As the inquisitive siblings are increasingly drawn into conflict with the monstrous creatures while mom is at work, the confrontation escalates to the point that they need to enlist some help. Thus, Mallory and Jared set out on a mission to find great-aunt Lucinda (Joan Plowright), who long ago was institutionalized because she uncovered the hidden faerie world as she watched her father Arthur construct his “how-to manual.” Fortunately, Lucinda remains lucid enough to provide some useful guidance.

Not surprisingly, Spiderwick exploits its marvelously over-the-top fantasy adventure by realizing a wide range of combative monsters. While many of them look like overgrown toads or reptiles, the nightmarish creatures are decently scary but not overtly frightening. Thus, the violent action that arises from the central front of a pitched battle waged inside the Victorian home does not come across as so scary that it is offensive to the film’s core value of family entertainment. Still, it would seem unrealistic, indeed foolish, to recommend this film for the very young.

The Spiderwick Chronicles, for the most part, inhabits an imaginative world where the kids undertake the serious work of coping with the strange phenomena of goblins and griffins, hobgoblins and trolls, and things that take odd shapes. Freddie Highmore and Sarah Bolger, as the intrepid and plucky siblings, create a rooting interest in their exploits.

DVD RELEASE UPDATE

More and more, Asian horror films are making their way to the DVD market in the United States. A sleeper hit on the film festival circuit, Nightmare Detective is a terrifying thriller that is driven by the suggestion that suicidal impulses abound.

A young detective investigates a mysterious man who invades his victims’ dreams, convincing them to kill themselves in real life.

Eventually, the detective (Japanese pop singer Hitomi) pursues the killer into the dreams themselves, facing her own darkest fears.

Nightmare Detective weaves a hypnotic narrative that explores terror too sinister and imagery too shocking for the waking world.

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

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