AMERICAN HUSTLE (Rated R)

Readers of this column may be expecting a review of “The Hobbit,” one of the major holiday film releases. Regrettably, a screening opportunity was either not available in time or Warner Bros. felt no great need to promote a sure thing box office hit.

In any case, it’s all for the better because due to my insufficient “Lord of the Rings” knowledge I really wouldn’t know the difference between Bilbo Baggins and the infamous Senator Theodore Bilbo (check out his sordid, checkered career online).

In a pivot away from medieval fantasy, David O. Russell’s “American Hustle,” rooted in the corruption of the late 1970s Abscam scandal, plays out as a fantasy of a different sort in a chaotic world full of con artists and hustlers vying for an edge.

The FBI sting operation that took down various politicians during the post-Watergate Jimmy Carter era seems too ripe for parody, considering that a fake sheik was used to entice the corruptible into accepting bribes in exchange for political favors.

At the film’s opening, a tag line reading “Some of this actually happened” is a tipoff to the playful subversive nature of director Russell conflating actual events and fictionalized accounts that are so fanciful that the shadowy world of undercover operations reeks of ambiguous morality.

Christian Bale is outstanding as hustler Irving Rosenfeld, the Bronx-born owner of a chain of dry cleaning shops who dabbles in phony bank loan schemes that appeal to incredibly gullible or desperate victims.

Overweight and balding (which is ridiculously concealed with a hairpiece that looks like roadkill), Irving’s unvarnished confidence charms the sexy Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), a New Mexico native who passes herself off as Lady Edith Greensly, with banking connections in London.

Fast becoming soul mates in crime, Irving and Sydney team up for more elaborate con jobs to separate the unwitting from their cash. Before long, the duo’s partnership becomes a full-blown love affair, apart from the fact that Irving has a wife and adopted son residing in Long Island.

Too eager to close a fake loan deal one day, Irving and Sydney get tripped up by the wily FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooer sporting a perm and dressed like he came straight out of “Saturday Night Fever”), who offers them a questionable deal to avoid jail time.

Bucking for a promotion and looking for a big takedown, Richie thinks that Irving and Sydney would fit nicely into his sting operation that does not exactly meet with the approval of his superior (comedian Louis C.K., amusing as the bumbling bureaucrat type).

Richie is the type of rogue agent who may have the right motives but seems to be out-of-control. As such, he’s the perfect guy to work with other con artists. You get the feeling that Richie could easily work the other side of the street.

The beauty of the high stakes caper in “American Hustle” is the unpredictable nature of the parties involved. On either side of the law, it’s hard to tell where to draw the line between those being conned and the ones doing the manipulation.

Though big fish like a U.S. Senator and several congressmen are ultimate targets, the sting operation centers first on charismatic New Jersey mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), whose motives appear altruistic when he seeks funding for an Atlantic City casino.

Mayor Polito, though not adverse to a little piece of the pie, really wants to generate jobs and income for a blighted area of the state. Unfortunately, he gets ensnared in a scheme of easy bribes and bad choices.

Helping to weave the web of deceit, a Mexican-American FBI agent (Michael Pena) poses as an Arab sheik, his handlers convinced his darker skin allows him to impersonate a Middle Eastern investor. This is just one of many comical situations.

Robert De Niro shows up as a lieutenant for Meyer Lansky and the Miami Beach mafia, anxious to tap into the potential lucrative business of a legitimate casino, as long as the palms of politicos can get greased to expedite permits and licenses.

As the scamming of crime lords and politicians gets ratcheted up, Irving’s alcoholic, loose cannon wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), her hair swept like a hornet’s nest, enters the fray, manipulating Irving and one of the mafia goons out of Florida.

Speaking of scheming behavior, Sydney (or I should Lady Edith) is also busy manipulating Richie into an emotional tailspin, convincing him that she’s ready to ditch Irving. Nothing is as it seems.

“American Hustle” is a delightful merry-go-round of con jobs and schemes, leading to plenty of unhinged behavior with deliciously comic outcomes. Director David O. Russell has come up with a story where the fiction is even stranger, and certainly funnier, than the truth.

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

UPPER LAKE, Calif. – Returning to the Blue Wing Saloon is CeeCee James, award-winning blues singer and songwriter.

James will perform from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday, Dec. 16.

Recent winner of the 2013 Blues Blast Song of the Year award, James has been winning awards and selling out shows both domestically and internationally with her power house vocals and searing songwriting.

James is one of those performers who comes across with more fire and fever when experienced live than is able to be captured on a recording. Stevie Ray Vaughan was often described the same way.

James has a blistering voice that reaches for every ounce of emotion, sweat and raw power that she can muster.

She is old-school blues – a steamy, sexy delivery of smokey back room stories spread over a bed of greasy slide guitar and pumping rhythms. She oozes blues.

Also joining James for a few special songs will be Lake County local Kayla Bell, lead singer for Ailura Fate.

The Blue Wing Saloon is located at 9520 Main St., Upper Lake.

There is no cover charge, and tips are appreciated. Dinner reservations are recommended at 707-275-2233.

For more information on Cee Cee James visit www.ceeceejames.com .

OUT OF THE FURNACE (Rated R)

In only his second feature film, director and writer Scott Cooper (“Crazy Heart”) takes audiences on an intense, brutal journey into the heart of a dying Rust Belt town where dreams are fading fast in “Out of the Furnace.”

The hardscrabble hamlet of Braddock, Pennsylvania, home to generations of American steel workers, is a recession-weary place that has taken its toll on the local citizens as jobs disappear.

Russell Baze (Christian Bale) is the stalwart grunt at the local steel mill, working under dangerous conditions at the blast furnace. Russell plies his trade as a matter of duty, honor and respect for family tradition, even while his father is dying of cancer.

Meanwhile, Russell’s younger brother Rodney (Casey Affleck), who had escaped the depressing confines of his hometown by enlisting for several tours of duty in the Iraq war, is having trouble finding an emotional or financial footing in the place where he grew up.

Impulsive and often volatile, the unemployed war vet Rodney tries to make ends meet by betting on horses and competing as a bare-knuckle boxer.

Getting deep in debt to his bookie John Petty (Willem Dafoe), Rodney is constantly bailed out of trouble by Russell.

Stoic and steadfast, Russell is loyal to his family, which includes beloved Uncle Red (Sam Shepard), a solid citizen and good hunting partner. Russell is also devoted to his girlfriend Lena (Zoe Saldana).

A cruel twist of fate lands Russell in a stretch of hard time in prison as the result of a very unfortunate circumstance. Sadly, there’s little he can do from the inside to help his family, particularly the trouble-prone Rodney.

With life becoming harder for the Baze family, it’s at this point that the film’s violent opening scene of senseless violence comes to be understood as a precursor of difficult times that now lie ahead.

Woody Harrelson’s Harland DeGroat, a vicious sociopath, is the leader of a ruthless backwoods crime ring that hides out from the law and civilization in the inaccessible Ramapo Mountains of New Jersey.

DeGroat’s penchant for casual cruelty is evident from the beginning when he terrorizes his girlfriend at a drive-in movie by viciously shoving a cigar down her throat as the result of some perceived slight.

Coming to her rescue is a bystander, but DeGroat, hopped up on drugs and fueled with rage, administers a ferocious beating that leaves the man prone on the ground like a victim of the infamous Knockout Game.

While Russell is away during his incarceration, Rodney gets deeper into debt and trouble, causing the normally even-tempered John Petty to become more agitated as the result of his own increased indebtedness to the depraved DeGroat.

Once released from prison, Russell comes to understand that the world has changed for the worse for him, and for his family. For one thing, Lena is living with the local sheriff (Forest Whitaker) and is now pregnant, causing emotional pain to be so evident in the way Russell carries himself.

Even more troubling is that Rodney has gotten completely out-of-control on his gambling debts, to the point that he’s unwisely begging his bookie to set up a lucrative bare-knuckle match that is run by DeGroat’s criminal enterprise.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing that Russell can do or say to dissuade his younger sibling from making an extremely bad decision to throw in with DeGroat’s corrupt and violence-fueled world.

Petty and Rodney set off for a big fight in the remote mountains of New Jersey and never return. At this point, it is clear that DeGroat’s depravity and Russell’s implacable moral code inevitably put them on a collision course that will alter the course of their lives.

After pleading vainly with the authorities for intervention, Russell decides that it is up to him to step in and bring justice for his brother where others are afraid to act.

Calm and collected, the brooding, reflective Russell seems an unlikely vigilante. There’s a scene where he could not pull the trigger with an easy shot on a deer. So how is it that he can take up arms to track down the man responsible for his brother’s disappearance?

The answer rests with Russell’s emotional journey to redeem both himself and his brother. He’s not exactly Charles Bronson in “Death Wish.” Keeping DeGroat clearly in sight, Russell’s moves are calculated to minimize any collateral damage and maintain a sense of balance.

“Out of the Furnace” is not always fluid in its storyline, but it does set up many scenes that are at once electric, powerful and poignant. The superb cast brings great strength and intensity to the performances.

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

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Symphony Association, in conjunction with a grant from the Lake County Wine Alliance, will offer free violin, viola and cello lessons to fourth grade through high school students.

The classes are for beginning students with little or no musical experience.

A meeting for more information and registration will be held on Sunday, Jan. 12, at 3 p.m. at the Kelseyville Presbyterian Church, 5340 Third St. in Kelseyville.

Classes are scheduled to begin in February at different locations around the lake.

Instruments are not included with the class but are available for rental or purchase through several local stores.

For more information contact Sue Condit at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Many of us feel a great sense of pride as we watch our children discover the world for the first time.

Here, Kathleen Driskell, a Kentucky poet, shows us her own daughter taking that first taste of a late summer watermelon she has grown herself.

Seed

In first grade, you met Squanto,
nearly naked and
on his haunches, showing
those thick-headed pilgrims
how one must plant fish
to grow maize. And in autumn
you dove into the lobotomized
pumpkin, into the gooey pulp
and seeds, raising a clump
like a slimy chandelier
from the Titanic. And now
in late summer, daughter,
you smile, holding a ripe watermelon,
cut in half, exposing the black
seed within its bright red heart.
Your melon. How proud you are
to think you grew this delicious
thing all on your own.

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 2009 by Kathleen Driskell, whose most recent publication is Peck and Pock: A Graphic Poem, Fleur de Lis Explorations, 2012. Poem reprinted from Seed Across Snow, Red Hen Press, 2009, by permission of Kathleen Driskell and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2013 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.

I once wrote a not-so-very-good poem called “Picking Up After the Dead,” about the putting-in-order we feel compelled to do when a family member has passed on.

In this poem Sherod Santos, who lives in Chicago, writes what I wished I could have written.

Out of the World There Passed a Soul

The day of my mother’s funeral I spend clearing out
her overgrown flower beds, down on my knees
in the leaf rot, nut shells, tiny grains of sandlot sand
spilling from the runoff gullies. The hot work was to see
not feel what had to be done, not to go on asking,
not to wonder anymore. Full from scraps I’d found
at the back of the refrigerator, her mongrel dog
lay curled on a stone and watched me work.
It was Sunday. The telephone rang, then stopped,
then rang again. By the end of the day, I’d done
what I could. I swept the walk, put away the tools,
switched on the indoor safety lamps, and then
(it hardly matters what I think I felt) I closed
the gate on a house where no one lived anymore.

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 2012 by Sherod Santos, whose most recent book of poems is The Intricated Soul: New and Selected Poems, W. W. Norton & Co., 2010. Poem reprinted from The Kenyon Review, Vol. XXXIV, no. 4, by permission of Sherod Santos and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2013 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.