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Written by: Elizabeth Larson

Published: 23 June 2025

Created: 23 June 2025

SANTA ROSA, Calif. –  Country Summer presented by Bud Light, Northern California’s favorite country music festival, will return next weekend, Friday, June 27 to Sunday, June 29, for three days of music, sunshine and country music. 

The festival, which takes place annually at the Sonoma County Event Center at the Fairgrounds, will include new VIP experiences, sponsor activations, gourmet food options, festival camping and a stellar lineup of 24 nationally-recognized performers.

The 2025 schedule of performers for the Chevrolet Silverado Main Stage and the Redwood Credit Union Community Stage include:  

• Sam Hunt headlining on Friday, June 27. Gabby Barrett, LANCO, Lily Rose, Clay Street Unit, Dry Creek Station.
• Kane Brown headlining on Saturday, June 28. Mitchell Tenpenny, Eli Young Band, Canaan Smith, Mackenzie Carpenter, Jerrod Niemann, Adrien Nunez, Lauren Watkins, Clayton Mullen, Township.
• Dustin Lynch headlining on Sunday, June 29. Ian Munsick, Hailey Whitters, Elvie Shane, Travis Denning, Avery Anna, Annie Bosko, The Kruse Brothers.

Country Summer, which was recently named to Newsweek’s Reader’s Choice Top 10 Best Outdoor Music Festivals, will kick off at 3 p.m. on Friday, June 27. The festival is welcoming new wine sponsor, Rodney Strong Vineyards, for wine tasting and by-the-glass sales as well as line dancing lessons at the Rodney Strong Wine Garden. 

Also new this year is a cooling tent with seating and a bar, hosted by Sonoma Clean Power; a new Kaiser Permanente Viewing Deck, accessible with upgraded ticket purchase and featuring an elevated view of the stage, access to private restroom trailers and bars, and small snacks throughout the day. 

The festival will also offer new options for guests to store belongings, charge cell phones and rent lawn chairs for the day.

“As successful as County Summer has been, we are always looking for ways to improve the experience for our guests,” Drew Jacoby, an executive producer for Country Summer, said. “We can’t wait to open the gates for this year’s festival and thrill fans with an incredible line up, an expanded selection of craft food and beverage options, and games and activities for all to enjoy. We have a feeling this year will be one for the record books!”

This year Country Summer takes place on the last weekend in June, a departure from past festivals, which were historically held on Father’s Day weekend. “We wanted to appeal to fans who have been unable to attend due to Father’s Day obligations. We’ve had a great reaction to the date change,” said Jacoby. 

Three-day passes to the festival are still available, starting at $225 for general admission. Single-day tickets start at $100 for general admission. Upgraded ticket options, including reserved seating, access to the “pit,” and preferred parking are also available. 

Limited tickets remain for The Country Club, an exclusive area in Saralee and Richard’s Barn with a private cash bar, indoor restrooms and a fully catered dinner offered daily. 

All available tickets, VIP upgrades, and parking passes can be purchased by visiting countrysummer.com. Listed ticket prices are inclusive of fees.

For those hoping to stay on festival grounds, Country Summer has limited tent and RV camping options. To purchase passes or learn more about tent and RV camping, visit countrysummer.com or contact the Sonoma County Fairgrounds RV Park directly. 

Country Summer Music Festival presented by Bud Light is a destination music festival held annually at the Sonoma County Event Center at the Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa. 

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Written by: Tim Riley

Published: 21 June 2025

Created: 21 June 2025

‘YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS’ ON APPLE TV+

Best known for playing Madison Avenue advertising agency shark Don Draper in the “Mad Men” series, Jon Hamm is the perfect fit for the role of hedge fund manager Andrew Cooper in the “Your Friends and Neighbors” series on Apple TV+.
   
Coop, as known by friends and colleagues, finds his life in a downward spiral. It helps little that we first see him on a floor covered in blood next to a dead man presumably killed by gunshot. 
   
There’s a flashback to four months earlier at a bar where alluring Olivia (Kitty Hawthorne), her shirt halfway unbuttoned, approaches Coop after ignoring a pair of obnoxious patrons she refers to as Patrick Bateman fanboys.
   
No longer married after 18 years, Coop claims to be old for someone who turns out to be 28 years old. It should come as no surprise that a consensual relationship would soon to follow.
  
A little introspection dawns when Coop recalls falling madly in love at a young age, moving quickly up the ladder at work and taking on greater financial burdens as he and his wife Mel (Amanda Peet) take on bigger mortgages for larger homes. T
   
Then one day he comes home early from work to find his wife in flagrante delicto with his best friend Nick (Mark Tallman), a former NBA champion who lives in the neighborhood in his own mansion with trophies and artifacts of his career on prominent display.
   
Coop’s circle of friends and colleagues all seem to live in the exclusive fictional New York suburb of Westmont Village, an ultra-wealthy enclave where many residents belong to a country club and dress formally for cocktail parties.
   
Less than 15 minutes into the first episode Coop is sitting casually in the spa of a high-end gym with his slimy boss Jack Bailey (Corbin Bernsen), only to find out he’s being fired for having sex with Olivia, a subordinate at the firm.
   
Protesting that his tryst with Olivia was a weekend fling, Coop claims to not knowing of her position in the company, and then Jack drops the absurd notion that the young woman is on track to be a vice president.
   
Appearing to be vindictive, Jack arranged the visit to the gym so that the computer and proprietary information in Coop’s office could be seized, along with his capital account that is his only source of savings.
   
Sacked from his corporate perch, Coop loses his client list based upon a non-compete clause that is in effect for two years. Making the rounds to other hedge fund firms goes nowhere for the now unemployable former managing director.
   
Living in a rented home and without job prospects, Coop is still paying to support his ex-wife and two children, Ivy League college-bound Tori (Isabel Gravitt), a top-rated tennis player, and high school drummer enthusiast Hunter (Donovan Colan).
   
Meanwhile, Coop has a volatile sexual relationship with Samantha (Olivia Munn), whose husband Paul (Jordan Gelber) has left her for a younger model. It’s Paul who was found dead when Coop woke up in a pool of his blood.
   
There’s now a mystery going on about who killed Paul, or did he commit suicide. The twists and turns on the probe into his death won’t be revealed here for fear of spoiling the eventual denouement.
  
Adding to his distress, Coop finds that his sister Ali (Lena Hall) is struggling with mental illness, and needs to move in with him to avoid an ongoing toxic relationship with their mother.
   
Things get interesting when Coop, knowing a lot about his wealthy neighbors, turns into a cat burglar with his first score of a wad of cash and a priceless watch that leads him to deal with an illicit pawnbroker in the Bronx. 
 
A life of crime ensues because it’s the only way Coop can keep up mortgage payments on the mansion his ex-wife acquired in the divorce, along with buying a drum set for his son and ponying up college tuition money.
   
What does a hedge fund guy know about breaking into homes? He acquires an accomplice in Elena (Aimee Carrero), a housekeeper he encounters during a break-in who then hooks him up with some real criminal talent.
   
“Your Friends and Neighbors,” focused as it is on a bunch of privileged folks often whining about a lifestyle out of reach for most people, allows a voyeuristic audience to indulge either in a resignation to guilty pleasure or revulsion at some unlikable characters.
   
This series satiates a fascination with obnoxious buffoons and distasteful situations, and considering that odious persons populated popular TV shows like the ad men in “Mad Men” and the sleazy lawyers in “Suits” it is no wonder than the talented Jon Hamm is perfectly cast.
   
Controversy over the show has arisen as the result of the advocacy group CatholicVote and other Catholics expressing outrage at the scene where Coop and his ex-wife break into a church and commit gratuitously sacrilegious acts. 

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

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Written by: Tim Riley

Published: 15 June 2025

Created: 15 June 2025

'BALLERINA’ RATED R

Summer season for the movies arrived on Memorial Day weekend when the eighth installment of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise delivered the action thrills that come with Tom Cruise’s over-the-top action stunts.

But if anyone ponders whether the seasonal expectations of action cinema have yet to fully materialize, then the unwieldy-titled “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,” arriving with a surfeit of violent action and chaos, should remove any reservations.

Under the direction of action maestro Len Wiseman (“Live Free or Die Hard”), “Ballerina,” with a new spin, taps into the ethos of the “John Wick” franchise not just in name, but for the hallmark elements of its adrenaline-fueled action.

Set oddly for a timeline during and after “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum,” the only connection that makes sense is the ballet training school run by Anjelica Huston’s mysterious The Director.

Arguably, in some ways this thriller takes the action to a higher level with propulsive set pieces, intricate fight choreography, and an arsenal of inventive weaponry, from ice skates and samurai swords, to ice axes and flamethrowers.

Previews have already revealed that Keanu Reeves’ John Wick will be in the film, but the titular character is Ana de Armas’ Eve Macarro, whom we first see as a child (Victoria Comte) fascinated with a music box that has a mechanical dancing ballerina.

She is soon robbed of childhood innocence when a band of killers come looking for her father at their home, resulting in a daring escape through secret passageways that only Eve survives.

Orphaned and scared, Eve is recruited by Winston (Ian McShane), manager of the infamous Continental New York hotel that is a safe harbor for assassins, to join the ballet school that is a gateway to the Ruska Roma criminal organization.

As the ruthless head of Ruska Roma, The Director runs her school like a military boot camp and the ballet training results in Eve acquiring a killer instinct inspired by rigorous physical feats far beyond working off a balance barre.

The training program is run by Nogi (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) who wisely tells Eve to “fight like a girl.” Karate kicks and gunplay level the playing field for a female assassin overmatched by the brutal strength of male opponents.

Besides a career path of a female assassin, Eve is consumed with exacting revenge for the party responsible for the murder of her father, though The Director warns against such action as it would upset a centuries-old truce in the underworld.

A trip to the Continental Prague has Eve on Ruska Roma business in pursuit of Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus) who happens to be part of the assassin cult run by The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne).

After checking into the room next to Pine’s, Eve discovers that the assassin is looking to get out from under the thumb of The Chancellor’s cult because he has a young daughter he wants to protect from a life of crime.

Meanwhile, Eve has also learned that someone who tried to kill her had the same “X” tattoo on his wrist as that of the person who murdered her father, and this distinctive marking points to The Chancellor as the one behind his death.

The plot may be relatively thin, as it relies on relentless action scenes with Eve plowing her way through one ambush after another, but all roads end up leading to a snowy Alpine village run by The Chancellor.

Stopping at the town’s restaurant for a cup of coffee, Eve ends up in a death match with an assassin followed by a fight with the cook where dinner plates and other utensils become the weapons of choice.

The quaint Austrian village turns out to be entirely populated by members of The Chancellor’s cult, and this is when the action really kicks into high gear, with Eve resorting to using grenades, swords, and guns in fighting relentless foes.

Action scenes seem obviously inspired by the “John Wick” franchise, but Eve gets to ratch up the stakes with an awesome flamethrower battle that literally lights up an onslaught of thugs, and then hand grenades also prove effective in the mix.

With the timeline of “Ballerina” falling somewhere between the third and fourth chapters of “John Wick,” we get not only the benefit of Ian McShane’s urbane manager running the Continental, but also the return of fan favorite Lance Reddick as Charon, the stoic hotel concierge.

Reflecting on the last moment in the film, it seems almost like a sure bet that Ana de Armas will return for a sequel, if for no other reason than we have been left hanging with the idea that her battle with the underworld has no quick end in sight.

If there is a “Ballerina 2,” the legion of fans for the “John Wick” franchise will be anticipating the return of the female John Wick. The only question might be whether Keanu Reeves is still up for another cameo turn.

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