“You can’t have it all unless you’ve been cloned.” That’s not the motto of the TCM Classic Film Festival, but it would be the only practical way to enjoy too many great movies during the short span of the long weekend that just occurred in the film capital of Hollywood.

Now in its sixth year, and thriving as the mecca for cinema devotees, the TCM Festival typically offers five or six films at a time and the occasional panel discussion that overlap during the course of a day that approximately runs from 9 a.m. to midnight.

The definition of a classic film ranges the gamut of popular culture. From the opening night ceremony associated with the screening of the 50th anniversary edition of “The Sound of Music” to a mix of classics like “Roman Holiday” and “Inherit the Wind,” TCM offers something for everyone.

Being selective and willing to endure the daily slog is the only hope for enjoying old favorites and discovering the wonders of films rarely seen. One such find on opening night, in a brilliant stroke of counter-programming to “The Sound of Music,” was the film noir classic “Too Late for Tears.”

Not familiar with the film lovingly restored only last year by Eddie Muller’s Film Noir Foundation? Well, neither was I, though star Lizabeth Scott, the ultimate femme fatale, should be widely known as a leading lady of the genre in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Arguably, Scott, the sultry blonde with a husky voice, was at the top of her game as a duplicitous schemer in “Too Late for Tears,” feverishly manipulating her husband (Arthur Kennedy) when they discover a suitcase full of stolen loot. Then, homicidal complications set in a when a grifter (Dan Duryea) comes looking for the cash.

Another great discovery was “Don’t Bet on Women,” a sophisticated comedy from 1931 in which Jeanette MacDonald had her only non-singing role, here the neglected wife of Roland Young’s judge. Disillusioned playboy Edmund Lowe bets the judge he can get the next woman to enter the room to kiss him within 48 hours.

You’ve probably guessed the identity of the unwitting subject of this bet. In short order, MacDonald figures out what is going on, and takes the whole affair into her own hands, displaying under-appreciated comedic talent to trip up the designs of her husband and the playboy.

What “Don’t Bet on Women” and “Too Late for Tears” both have in common is sharp dialogue and brilliant witticisms.

More comedy genius was on display with screenings of vintage films starring W.C. Fields and Buster Keaton.

At the screening of “The Bank Dick,” hailed as one of the funniest of his career, Fields’ grandsons Ron and Allen Fields engaged the audience in a discussion of their mission to keep his brand of humor alive.

Having been born in Philadelphia, Fields always disparaged his hometown. The grandsons revealed that the true line he claimed to wish for his tombstone was, in fact, “I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” Instead, his graveyard is marked with only the dates of birth and death.

Actress Illeana Douglas, also participating, observed that W.C. Fields had a disdain for moral authority. He also didn’t care much for children and dogs. His inspired brand of misanthropic comedy made him an unlikely star during Hollywood’s glamour days.

In “The Bank Dick” Fields’ inveterate tippler kept stumbling into jobs, first as a movie director and then as a bank’s security guard. The grandsons confirmed that Fields constantly improvised and did not follow the script, much to the consternation and dismay of studio executives.

Another great gem at the TCM Festival was the brilliant staging of Buster Keaton’s silent film comedy “Steamboat Bill, Jr.,” featuring a live orchestra conducted by legendary silent film composer Carl Davis in a world premiere performance of his new score.

A great score adds much to a film’s appeal, and yet Buster Keaton, starring as in the inept son of a paddle steamer in love with the daughter of his father’s wealthy business rival, delivered of one of his funniest and most elaborate slapstick comedies.

“Steamboat Bill, Jr.” allows Keaton to transition from subtle pantomime in early scenes to manic slapstick for the film’s climax, where a cyclone includes the iconic image of Keaton doggedly trying to walk against wind that won’t let him move at all.

The screening of old favorite “The French Connection” was worthwhile, not just to see it on the big screen, but for the discussion that followed with director William Friedkin, as he was interviewed by Alec Baldwin.

The director spoke at great length about the making of the film, including the famous white-knuckle chase scene.

Though it would be hard to imagine this film not starring Gene Hackman, Friedkin revealed that Jackie Gleason was the first choice, who was rejected by studio chief Dick Zanuck. Peter Boyle was then offered the part, but he wanted to do romantic comedies.

Friedkin admitted that Hackman was never one of his choices for the role of hard-nosed detective Popeye Doyle.

The spectacular chase scene, with Hackman chasing an above-ground runaway subway, was filmed mostly without permits, according to Friedkin, who said the production hired some off-duty cops and had the help of the original NYPD narcotics detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso.

With a small budget, “The French Connection” had to be filmed entirely on location, and with no constructed sets.

The result is a documentary-style crime film, capturing the gritty streets of New York in 1971, that remains to this day one of the very best police dramas. In a manner of fashion, it’s almost like a film noir of the period.

The TCM Classic Film Festival is now firmly set as a first-rate film lover’s experience, and one should plan now for the seventh one next spring.
  
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

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.

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.

Poetry is a good way to capture epiphanies, and this poem by Penny Harter does just that. Harter lives and teaches in New Jersey.

In the Dark

At bedtime, my grandson’s breath
rasps in and out of fragile lungs.
Holding the nebulizer mask
over his nose and mouth,
I rock him on my lap and hum
a lullaby to comfort him.

The nebulizer hisses as steroids
stream into his struggling chest,
and suddenly he also starts to hum,
his infant voice rising and falling
on the same few notes—some hymn
he must have learned while in the womb
or carried here from where he was before—
a kind of plainsong, holy and hypnotic
in the dark.

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 2013 by Penny Harter, “In the Dark,” from The Resonance Around Us (Mountains and Rivers Press, 2013). Poem reprinted by permission of Penny Harter and Mountains and Rivers Press. 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.

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.

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.