It is pointless to argue whether or not Disney’s “Live Action” version of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Jungle Book‘ is a good movie or not. It is. It engages its audience from the first images of young Mowgli swinging through the jungle, pursued by some unseen danger. The combination of nostalgic connection to the beloved 1969…
The Bible, as anyone knows who’s ever opened it, is fairly bursting with sex. From Old Testament stories of kings and concubines, to New Testament tales of reformed prostitutes and virgin mothers, sex is pretty much everywhere. But who knew how big a role sex played in the creation of the longest lasting and best-loved…
“A man can die but once,” wrote William Shakespeare in “King Henry IV, Part II.” That’s true enough, but few among us can hope to have our one-and-only death remembered – or our lives and accomplishments celebrated – a full 400 years after the fact. One can’t say the same about Shakespeare. This weekend, to…
QUESTION: When is a play not a play? ANSWER: When it’s a concert. Plays, generally speaking, have plots. And concerts, generally speaking, um . . . don’t. That’s the argument some have made against the rise (and strange popularity) of so-called “jukebox musicals,” the cutely coined nickname for stage shows consisting primarily of a catalog of songs…
For one full year, director Bennett Lasseter has been touring the world, visiting film festivals from Hollywood to Cannes in support of his award-winning short family drama “Stealth” – as it has racked up a pile of rave reviews and audience accolades. To Lasseter, a Burbank resident, it has been quite a ride. But through…
“The Loner Stoop.” That, laughs singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop, now of Manchester, England, was her name for the space just outside the theater department at Santa Rosa High School. It was in the early 1990s, when Hoop, who describes herself as a less-than-overachieving student, found an unexpected place of acceptance at SRHS. “That spot outside of…
On April 23, William Shakespeare will have been dead for exactly four full centuries. “This is so exciting,” says Leslie McCauley, director of Santa Rosa Junior College’s upcoming presentation of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night.’ McCauley’s enthusiasm has less to do with 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death than the fact that her new Shakespearean production will be…
(This review originally appeared in the North Bay Bohemian) Two commanding dramas—one a classic, one destined to be—are now playing in the North Bay. Each is worth discovering. In 1948, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons became his first critical hit. Not an easy show to pull off, Miller’s ingeniously unfolding post-WWII drama gets a solid, emotionally truthful…
I’m always wiped out after watching a Zack Snyder movie,” says Andrew Farago, raising his voice slightly to be heard above the booming end-credit music of Zack Snyder’s 150-minute comic-book extravaganza Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. As roughly 10,000 names scroll up the screen, we duck out early, having confirmed that there is no post-film…
It’s been a while since Jesca Hoop played a concert on her home turf. She wasn’t famous then; just one of those people everyone said was destined for fame. Those people were right. When the Santa Rosa-born singer-songwriter returns next weekend for an intimate performance at Sebastopol’s Main Stage West theater, those locals who remember…
North Bay Stage and Screen 