THE FAULT IN OUR STARS (Rated PG-13)

John Green’s best-selling YA novel “The Fault in Our Stars” has been adapted into a major motion picture of the same title.

For those, like me, too far removed from the demographic, the acronym “YA” stands for “young adult,” which has spawned a literary genre increasingly making its presence felt big time in popular films.

Fittingly, “The Fault in Our Stars,” directed by Josh Boone, stars Shailene Woodley, one of the very best young actresses on the scene today and still capable of pulling off the role of a teenage girl enduring serious challenges.

The story is about teenagers with cancer, focusing on two central characters developing a bond of friendship in a support group which leads to a touching romance that results in a celebration of life even though longevity is fated to be short-lived.

“The Fault in Our Stars” is a love story about two kids with cancer, but it’s not about cancer. The disease may hang like a dark cloud over the young people, but the two main characters, once they bond and fall for each other, rejoice in life’s possibilities.

The story does not begin so wonderfully for Woodley’s Hazel Grace Lancaster, whose childhood cancer affects her lungs to the extent that her life depends on being hooked up to breathing tubes connected to an oxygen tank that she must wheel around as a constant companion.

Looked after by loving, doting parents (Laura Dern and Sam Trammell), Hazel leads a mostly lonely existence without any real friends, an unfortunate situation that worries her counselor.

Mostly, Hazel, a survivor but nonetheless withdrawn, spends time re-reading her favorite cancer-related novel “An Imperial Affliction.”

Encouraged to join a support group for kids with cancer, Hazel is reluctant to attend. But this is where she meets Augustus “Gus” Waters (Ansel Elgort), a charming, witty, charismatic young man who was once a star athlete until she lost his leg to cancer.

Gregarious and personable by nature, Gus is soon smitten with Hazel, who often prefers to call her Hazel Grace, seemingly making a personal connection to this lovely young girl and setting himself apart from all others who would otherwise overlook Hazel’s middle name.

An unlikely member of a support group, Gus is there mainly to help his best friend Isaac (Nat Wolff), a natural jokester whose unfortunate medical condition will soon result in total blindness.

Though a charm offensive has to be launched through witty texts and sarcastic banter, Gus wows the shy Hazel into a tentative relationship that he almost blows when he pulls out a cigarette and places it nonchalantly between his lips.

Aghast at his insensitive display, Hazel is nearly repulsed until Gus explains that the cigarette is a metaphor. He never lights the cigarette because he wants to demonstrate that it has no power over him.

The film has plenty of metaphors. Even a visit to the house of Anne Frank in Amsterdam is a metaphor. The interest in the author Peter Van Houten (Willem Dafoe), who resides in Holland and wrote Hazel’s favorite novel, may also be a metaphor.

Obsessed with the novel “An Imperial Affliction,” a touchstone for those fighting cancer, Hazel tries desperately to connect with the reclusive author in search of questions left unanswered by the book.

Gus manages to reach Van Houten through the author’s assistant, and it results astonishingly in an invitation to meet the writer in Amsterdam. Of course, there are financial and medical hurdles to clear before taking a European vacation.

As fate would have it, good things fall into place and the two teenagers, accompanied by Hazel’s mother, head over to Holland for an unexpected adventure, including a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant apparently arranged by the author.

Meeting Van Houten, though, is an entirely different story. The enigmatic author is like the Wizard of Oz. The teens expect to meet someone to give them answers, but instead discover a person who is scary, intimidating and not at all friendly or welcoming.

Whether “The Fault in Our Stars” is faithful to the source material of the book is an unanswered question that I leave to others familiar with the work of John Green to decide. Yet, the film succeeds to deliver a touching story that is lifted by a healthy dose of wit and humor.

What the film argues persuasively is that the answers Hazel craves don’t from a book or its cranky author. They come from living a great adventure that Hazel shares with someone she is not afraid to love, who has given them both what she calls “a little infinity – a forever within the numbered days.”

Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort have great chemistry as the romantic couple facing an uncertain future. They share great moments, alternately tender and funny, and always touching.

The audience will be touched as well, and as a result, tears and misty eyes are practically inevitable.

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

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Konocti Fiddle Club will be playing lively music at the Home Wine and Beer Makers Festival on Saturday in Lakeport.

The festival will be at Lakeport's Library Park from 1 to 5 p.m.

There will be music by David Neft and the Konocti Fiddle Club, art and craft vendors, food, tasting of amateur wine and brew, raffles and an auction.

The Fiddle Club is a family-oriented group of musicians of all ages, from pre-school to grandparents.

They will have a jam session in their booth or stroll around the park starting at about 1:30 p.m. and then will play a set at 3 p.m.

The festival is a benefit for the music programs of the Lake County Symphony Association. Many in the Fiddle Club are also members of the Youth Orchestra and the Symphony.

Come on down to the park and join the party.

Bring your lawn chair, and listen to some toe-tapping fiddle music, and feel free to ask us about the Lake County Symphony Association youth music programs.

“Halt and Catch Fire,” or HCF as it is known to computer geeks, refers to computer machine code instructions that cause a computer’s CPU to cease meaningful operation.

As a borderline Luddite, and one who struggled with a recent change to my PC’s operating system, I must confess that I had to look up the meaning of HCF, because I don’t even know the difference between a byte and a microchip.

In any case, the AMC cable network, fresh off its half-season run of “Mad Men,” has launched new summer series “Halt and Catch Fire,” the fictional drama about the early days of the personal computing business, when IBM ruled supreme and tried to crush anyone that interfered with its global designs.

The time period is 1983 and the setting is Texas, where the Silicon Prairie is the Lone Star state’s answer to the tech worlds anchored on both coasts.

Texans aim big, and that’s the case for Cardiff Electric’s chief operations executive John Bosworth (Toby Huss).
   
The good folks at Cardiff Electric would probably keep plowing ahead on their own steam, but then along comes charismatic outsider Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace), a former IBM sales executive from the East Coast.

His take-no-prisoners approach is clear from the opening scene when his fancy sports car flattens an unfortunate armadillo that got in his way.

Talking a good game, Joe MacMillan essentially bulldozes his way into a senior position on the Cardiff sales team.

Once he has the job, he immediately initiates a risky scheme to reverse-engineer the flagship product of his former employer.
   
Restless in his quest for new opportunities, Joe is an enigmatic figure, often expressing random thoughts that sound like a riddle. “Computers aren’t the thing. They’re the thing that gets us to the thing,” he says, explaining his vision.

Joe needs help to build a better product, so he enlists the help of frustrated genius engineer Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy), an alcoholic who is sleepwalking through his job and life, but would love to regain his glory days before his own computer experiment failed drastically at a trade show.

For a computer programmer, the evident choice is the outcast Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis), a spiky-haired rebel who would prefer to play video games where she’s able to rig the coin slot for continuous free play.

And, by the way, in their first encounter, Joe has wild sex with Cameron in the stockroom of a cocktail lounge.

From what was presented in the series premiere, “Halt and Catch Fire” seems to have some dramatic promise, making the world of the computer business more interesting than I could ever imagine.

It remains to be seen if the AMC series will catch on with the general audience, but there was potential at the end of the first episode when the Cardiff corporate office is suddenly awash in a platoon of IBM suits on a search-and-destroy mission. Trouble is certain to follow.

The Starz cable network has teamed up with executive producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson for the new crime drama series “Power,” an oddly commonplace title for the sleek nightclub scene and the tawdry drug-dealing on the streets of New York.

Best known as a rapper, 50 Cent apparently was dealing drugs during his teens, and then later, when he had transitioned to the music world, he was shot at and struck by nine bullets.

Now, as a veteran of this culture, he is producing a show about the drug-dealing thug life.

Consistent with the swagger of its key player, “Power” may have this title only because the magnetic character at the center of the action is James “Ghost” St. Patrick (Omari Hardwick), a smooth operator who has it all – the beautiful wife, a swank Manhattan penthouse and the hottest nightclub in Manhattan.

An alternative title might be “Truth,” which is the name of Ghost’s up-and-coming new nightspot, a prime venue which is getting a major boost when Vogue magazine rents the joint for an exclusive party involving models, celebrities and high fashion.

The truth of the matter is Ghost wants to build a club empire, where he can establish himself as a legitimate businessman, even if it allows the laundering of drug money. Besides, he likes to wear tailored suits and drink expensive champagne.

Ghost’s style clashes with his primary business, the lucrative drug trade. It also causes friction with his childhood pal and business partner Tommy Egan (Joseph Sikora), a mercurial but loyal associate. Tommy finds the money, power and control of the drug trade is what is truly addictive and appealing.

Meanwhile, Ghost’s drug business is under attack from mysterious parties that have the muscle to steal from his couriers.

On top of that, Puerto Rican gang leader Carlos Ruiz (Luis Antonio Ramos) is part of Ghost’s distribution network, but he is chaffing under Ghost’s autocratic rule and is looking for a chance to strike out on his own.

The dapper Ghost would have us believe that he’s never strayed from his wife Tasha (Naturi Naughton), even though he’s surrounded by the hot women who love to party at the hottest nightclub that he owns and operates.

Other complications are sure to follow when Ghost’s old school flame Angela Valdes (Lela Loren), who grew up with him in a rough neighborhood, suddenly reappears in a chance encounter. Angela’s smart, beautiful and ambitious, and she looks as tempting as forbidden fruit.

Though Angela makes it known that she’s now a lawyer working for the government, what Ghost doesn’t know is the extent of her legal work goes deep into investigating the criminal world. It’s inevitable that Ghost and Angela will tangle, most likely both romantically and professionally.

“Power” is about the corrupting force of power and how the trappings of success in the criminal world are inherently seductive. Ghost’s double life seems to be on a collision course.

Whether Starz has a hit with “Power” may depend on whether future episodes become bogged down in the familiar turf of similar crime dramas or something more compelling is realized.   

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

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County Arts Council's Main Street Gallery is putting out the call to all Lake County artists regarding its June theme show.

The June theme is “Lake County Summer-time.”

The painting can be of any subject that pertains to summer: activities, water sports, agriculture, festivals, landscapes or whatever depicts summer happenings in Lake County.

Bring entries for the show to the Main Street Gallery anytime before 1 p.m. Sunday, June 29.

The cost is $5 per painting.

The works should not be bigger than 16 by 20 inches. Any painting media is accepted.

A peoples' choice winner will receive a choice of prizes including for nonmembers a years' membership in the Lake County Arts Council, a $25 value, and current members will be given a month's wall space in the Main Gallery, a $35 value.

The Main Street Gallery is located at 325 N. Main St. in Lakeport, telephone 707-263-6658.

Diane Gilliam Fisher, who lives in Ohio, has published a book called Kettle Bottom that portrays the hard life of the West Virginia coal camps. Here is just one of her evocative poems.

Violet's Wash

You can’t have nothing clean.
I scrubbed like a crazy woman
at Isom’s clothes that first week
and here they come off the line, little black
stripes wherever I’d pinned them up
or hung them over—coal dust settles
on the clothesline, piles up
like a line of snow on a tree branch.
After that, I wiped down the clothesline
every time, but no matter, you can’t
get it all off. His coveralls is stripy
with black and gray lines,
ankles of his pants is ringed around,
like marks left by shackles.
I thought I’d die that first week
when I seen him walk off to the mine,
black, burnt-looking marks
on his shirt over his shoulders, right
where wings would of folded.

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 2004 by Diane Gilliam Fisher from her most recent book of poems, Kettle Bottom, Perugia Press, 2004. Poem reprinted by permission of Diane Gilliam Fisher and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2014 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. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

One of the wonders of poetry is a good poet’s ability to compress a great deal of life into a few words. Here’s a life story told small, by Ivan Hobson, who lives in California.

Our Neighbor:

Every family that lived in our court
had an American truck
with a union sticker on the back

and as a kid I admired them
the way I thought our soldiers
must have admired Patton
and Sherman tanks.

You once told me
that the Russians couldn’t take us,
not with towns like ours
full of iron, full of workers tempered
by the fires of foundries and mills.

It wasn’t the Russians that came;
it was the contract, the strike,
the rounds of layoffs that blistered
until your number was called.

I still remember you loading up
to leave for the last time,
the union sticker scraped off
with a putty knife,

the end of the white tarp draped
over your truck bed
flapping as you drove away.

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 Ivan Hobson. Poem reprinted from Plainsongs, Vol. XXXIII, No. 3, Spring 2013, by permission of Ivan Hobson and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2014 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. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.