360 December 19 2013 full

Celebrating the season – Christmas events in the area

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Skagit Valley Herald Thursday December 19, 2013

Movie Villains

On Stage

At the Movies

Who were the vilest and nastiest in 2013? Check out the list

1967 takes to the stage at the Varsity Inn on Friday in Burlington

“Saving Mr. Banks”: The dirt and heartbreak behind “Mary Poppins”

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Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

E2 - Thursday, December 19, 2013

YOUR ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION GUIDE TO WHAT’S GOING ON IN SKAGIT COUNTY AND THE SURROUNDING AREAS

The Year’s Best in Movies / Page 4

Inside

SUBMISSIONS Email features@skagitpublishing.com, vrichardson@skagitpublishing. com (recreation items) Deadline: 5 p.m. Friday for the following Thursday edition Phone 360-416-2135 Hand-deliver 1215 Anderson Road Mount Vernon, WA 98274

The Year’s Top 10 Movies.................... 4 New on DVD....................................... 6 Get Involved........................................ 7 The Year’s Best in Music..................8-9 On Stage, Tuning Up....................10-11 Travel................................................. 12 Hot Tickets........................................ 14 At the Lincoln.................................... 15 Movie Review: “Saving Mr. Banks”...16 Movie Listings, Mini-Reviews.......... 17 Out & About.................................18-19

Mailing address P.O. Box 578 Mount Vernon, WA 98273 Online events calendar To list your event on our website, visit goskagit.com and look for the Events Calendar on the home page HAVE A STORY IDEA? w For arts and entertainment, contact Features Editor Craig Parrish at 360-416-2135 or features@skagitpublishing.com w For recreation, contact staff writer Vince Richardson at 360-416-2181 or vrichardson@ skagitpublishing.com TO ADVERTISE 360-424-3251

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

Thursday, December 19, 2013 - E3

COMMUNITY HOLIDAY TRAIN RIDE: Join Santa Claus aboard the Lake Whatcom Railway’s Christmas train at 9:30 a.m., noon and 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 21, leaving from Wickersham, 10 miles north of SedroWoolley on Highway 9.

Meet Santa and his elf, sing Christmas carols and enjoy music by Ben the banjo player. $25 ages 18 and older, $12.50 ages 2 to 17, free for ages 1 and younger. Tickets must be purchased in advance by mail from Lake Whatcom Railway, P.O. Box 91, Acme, WA 98220. 360-595-2218 or lakewhatcomrailway.com.

HOLIDAY MUSICAL REVUE: Whidbey Playhouse will present “Christmas Snapshots” at 7:30 p.m.

Thursday and Friday, Dec. 19-20, and at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 21, at 730 SE Midway Blvd., Oak Harbor. $14.

360-679-2237 or whidbey playhouse.com.

“SISTER’S CHRISTMAS CATECHISM: THE MYSTERY OF THE MAGI’S GOLD”: 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Dec. 19-20, McIntyre Hall, 2501 E. College Way, Mount Vernon. Employing her own scientific tools, assisted by a local choir as well as a gaggle of audience members, Sister creates a living nativity unlike any you’ve ever seen. $25, $15 ages 12 and younger. 360-416-7727 or mcintyrehall.org.

VETERANS STANDDOWN: The Burlington American Legion Veterans Stand-Down will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday, Dec. 20, at 721 E. Fairhaven Ave., Burlington. A dinner for veterans in need will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Medical and legal services, clothing, hot lunches, hygiene items, employment assistance and more will be

Commerce at 360-293-7911.

BRONN AND KATHERINE JOURNEY and friends will present their annual Holiday Concert at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 23, at McIntyre Hall, 2501 E. College Way, Mount Vernon. Broadway, folk, classical and sacred music will be featured in addition to traditional Christmas classics. $20. 360-416-7727 or mcintyrehall.org.

CHRISTMAS EVENTS IN THE AREA

available to all veterans and their families. 360-757-1202, 425-367-7450, chrisbrock43@ gmail.com, m.holloway@ washingtonvetcorps.net.

FAMILY FUN TIME: 4 to 6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 20, La Conner Regional Library, 614 Morris St., La Conner. Bring the whole family for crafts, stories, songs and treats.

Free. 360-466-3352.

AN ELVIS FAMILY CHRISTMAS: 6 p.m. Friday and 1 and 6 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 20-21, Wa-Walton Event Center, 12885 Casino Drive, Anacortes. Enjoy Elvis Presley’s Christmas classics with Danny Vernon. $12 adults, $5 ages 18 and

younger. 888-288-8883 or swinomishcasinoandlodge. com.

mountbakertheatre.com.

PANCAKES & SANTA: 10 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 21, Stanwood Community and Senior Center, 7430 276th St. Includes pancake breakfast, kids’ crafts and a visit with Santa. Bring your camera. $5 adults, $8 kids.

360-629-7403.

HOLIDAY CONCERT: The Shelter Bay Chorus will perform “Comfort and Joy!” at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Dec. 20-21, at the Shelter Bay Clubhouse, La Conner. $10 suggested donation. 360-466-3805.

HOLIDAY CONCERT: The Stanwood-Camano Chorale, with small ensemble Trouvere, will present “FUM, FUM, FUN: A Festive Feast of Frolicking Frivolity” at 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 21, at Stanwood United Methodist Church, 27128 103rd Drive NW, Stanwood. A freewill offering will be accepted.

360-445-2721.

“NATIVITY: WE DANCED OUR BEST FOR HIM”: 6:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Dec. 20-21, Mount Baker Theatre, 104 N. Commercial St., Bellingham. Enjoy the Nativity story told through the language of dance — jazz, lyrical, modern and ballet. $12-$15. 360-734-6080 or

HORSE-DRAWN TROLLEY RIDES: Enjoy free horsedrawn trolley rides from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 21, around downtown Anacortes, starting from Upstage Boutique & Men’s Store, 520 Commercial Ave. For information, call the Anacortes Chamber of

COMMUNITY CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION: The fourth annual Anacortes Community Christmas Celebration featuring violinist Geoffrey Castle will take place at 4 and 6:30 p.m.

Saturday, Dec. 21, at the Transit Shed Event Center, 100 Commercial Ave., Anacortes. The 4 p.m. matinee show will be geared toward families with children. Food and beverages available.

Admission: suggested donation of a new unwrapped toy or nonperishable food item.

Reserved seating: suggested $25 donation to the Anacortes Seafarers’ Memorial Foundation through Brown Paper Tickets at 800-8383006 or brownpapertickets. com/event/498635. For information, to volunteer or learn about sponsorship opportunities, call 360-7087770.

LIGHTED BOAT FLOTILLA: Decorated boats will parade up and down the Guemes Channel beginning about 6 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 21, starting from Cap Sante Boat Haven in Anacortes. Subject to weather. 360-293-3134.

“THE NUTCRACKER”: Northwest Ballet Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 21-22, McIntyre Hall, 2501 E. College Way, Mount Vernon. $24-$35. 360-416-7727 or mcintyrehall.org.

CANDLELIGHT SERVICE: The Chancel Choir of Mount Vernon First United Methodist Church will present its annual Candlelight Service at 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 22, at 1607 E. Division St. The Christmas story will be told through scripture and song. Free. 360-4243628.

See EVENTS, Page E5

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

E4 - Thursday, December 19, 2013

MOVIES

I

n surveying the year at the movies, the topography is rich.

From the dusty, dying towns of “Nebraska” to the rooftop Roman parties in “The Great Beauty” to the sleek future Los Angeles of “Her,” 2013 has been a trip. But has it been a great year?

Negativity reached a fever pitch in the summer when Steven Spielberg lamented Hollywood’s risk-adverse, finance-driven blockbusterism. The grim, humorless “Man of Steel” and its careless backdrop of mass destruction was a low point: the epitome of everything bad about movies today.

Yet ambitious films gathered in number as the year went on, and many began calling 2013 a historically excellent year for film, after all. Here are one critic’s top picks of the year, all of them reasons why 2013 was a good year for the big screen: 1. “12 Years a Slave” — Steve McQueen’s masterful adaptation of Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir is simply a powerhouse.

McQueen, I suspect, will never make a comedy; his three movies (“Shame,” “Hunger”) reveal him a harsh storyteller, drawn down dark rabbit holes. But his lack of sentimentality gives “12 Years a Slave” its clarity: a long overdue correction to cinema’s reluctant treatment of slavery. As Northup, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s soulful eyes carry us through a nightmare odyssey of America’s past.

2. “Mud” — From the plantations of mid-19th century Louisiana, we travel up river to contemporary Arkansas in Jeff Nichols’ Twain-esque tale of boyhood on the Mississippi. With the wisebeyond-his-years Tye Sheridan as the 14-year-old Ellis, “Mud” is a full-hearted American fable.

3. “Frances Ha” — Full disclosure: I’m in love with Greta Gerwig. That bias notwithstanding, Noah Baumbach’s latest — co-written by and starring Gerwig — is a lovely ode to its title character (who has much in common with Gerwig, herself). Frances is an idiosyncratic 27-year-old finding her place in New York; where the “Ha” comes from is answered

could make the case that Alfonso Cuaron’s 3-D spectacle is a bit Fox Searchlight via AP banal. But, man, is it something to look at. The movie won’t be remembered for its thin story, but at a time when television’s rise is much discussed, “Gravity” reinvigorated the big-screen experience.

8. “Blue Is the Warmest Color” — Several films this year were fascinating snapshots of lives in motion. The powerful, simply told Bill Moyers’ documentary “Two American Families” kept up with two struggling middle-class families for 20 years.

And Richard Linklater has covered two decades in the lives of a Paris woman (Julie Delpy) and American writer (Ethan Hawke) in his day-in-a-life series, culminating in “Before Midnight.”

But Abdellatif Kechiche’s Palme d’Or-winner (also called “The Life of Adele: Chapters 1&2”) is the most memorable for its extreme closeness in portraying a teenager’s awakening to herself and the world. Adele Exarchopoulus’ performance is staggeringly open. The irony is that the infamous sex scenes in this flawed but arresting coming-of-age tale are easily the most artificial parts in it.

9. “This Is the End” — The

By JAKE COYLE / AP Film Writer jokes just come and come.

Nobody had a better time mak“Mud” ing a movie this year than Seth Roadside Attractions via AP Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and it’s written all over their self-parodying apocalypse comedy.

10. “The Spectacular Now” and “Short Term 12” — Movies that honestly represent teenage life are seldom, but both of these films magically move from familiar plot lines to somewhere honest. The high-school comedy of “Frances Ha” “The Spectacular Now,” starring IFC via AP Miles Teller, smacks up against hard realities. “Short Term 12,” in the film’s sweet final moment. disharmony. ini looms large in Paolo Sorrenti- starring Brie Larson, tenderly 4. “Inside Llewyn Davis” — no’s portrait of Rome in decadent depicts a foster-care facility and 5. “The Hunt” — In the most its young supervisors without Like Frances, Llewyn is a striving haunting film of the year, the decay. Sorrentino is an exquisite resorting to clichés.

Manhattanite without an apartweak binds of a seemingly close- stylist (the opening minutes of Also: “Her,” ”Nebraska,” ment or a steady job. But he’s his “Il Divo” are pure, blistering knit Danish community disintemuch angrier about it. The Coen grate when a kindergarten teach- cinema), and “The Great Beauty” “Rush,” “A Band Called Death,” brothers’ melancholy story of a is manic and overstuffed. But it’s “Elysium,” “Fruitvale Station,” er (Mads Mikkelsen) is unjustly bitter, unfortunate folk singer is a accused of sexually assaulting a bursting with life. (Literally. It’s “Captain Phillips,” “Upstream wry commentary on the cruelness child. got a giraffe.)

Color,” “Enough Said,” “Blue of fate, and melody born out of 7. “Gravity” — So simple you Jasmine.”

6. “The Great Beauty” — Fell-

“12 Years A Slave”

The top 10 movies of 2013

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

Thursday, December 19, 2013 - E5

COMMUNITY

w Events

FUNKY SANTA COSTUME PARTY: 7:30 p.m.

Friday, Dec. 20, Conway Muse, 18444 Spruce/ Main, Conway. Enjoy music by the Chris Eger Band and dancing, with prizes for the best Mr. & Mrs. Santa. $10 cover. 360-445-3000.

Continued from Page E3

CHRISTMAS CAROLERS: The Adoramus Carolers will present an hour of traditional and modern Christmas carols, songs and sing-alongs at 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 22, at the Whatcom Museum Old City Hall, 121 Prospect St., Bellingham. $3 suggested donation, free for museum members. 360778-8963 or whatcommuseum.org.

INDEPENDENT WREATHMAKING: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily through Dec. 24 at Christianson’s Nursery, 15806 Best Road, Mount Vernon. Wire rings and greenery are available for purchase, or you may bring your own. There is no charge to use the machines, but reservations are required. 360466-3821 or 1-800-585-8200.

YULETIDE CONCERT: “Yuletide Baroque & Beyond: Jazzin’ with the Classics for Christmas”: with Linda Tsatsanis, soprano; Jeffrey Cohan, flute; and Martin Lund, piano, clarinet and flute: 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 28, Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center, 27130 102nd Ave. NW, Stanwood. $15 suggested donation, free for ages 18 and younger. 360-629-6110 or candlelightseattle.org.

HOLIDAY ART FESTIVAL: The 34th annual Allied Arts Holiday Festival of the Arts will take place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Wednesdays through Sundays, through Dec. 24, at 1825 Cornwall Ave., Bellingham. The festival will close at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 24. The festival features the work of more than 100 local artisans and craftspeople offering handmade products including jewelry, paintings, wearable art, specialty foods, repurposed art and more.

Enjoy live music, artist demos and workshops, and fun art projects for kids. For information, contact Katy Borden at 360-6768548, ext. 5, or visit alliedarts.org.

SANTA AT THE MALL: Visit Santa daily during mall hours through Dec. 24 at the Cascade Mall Center Court, 201 Cascade Mall Drive, Burlington. 360-7572072.

made in the 1930s) recently handquilted by the Guemes Island Women’s Fellowship. $7 admission, $5 military and students, free for members and ages 11 and younger. 360-466-4288 or lacon nerquilts.com.

SKAGIT CHRISTMAS: Check out special exhibits showing how early Skagitonians celebrated the Yuletide season, through Dec. 31 at the Skagit County Historical Museum, 501 S. Fourth St., La Conner. Museum hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through “A CHRISTMAS CAROL”: Seat- Sunday. $5, $4 seniors and ages tle’s ACT Theatre presents Dick- 6 to 12, $10 families, free for ens’ classic holiday tale through members and ages 5 and younger.

Dec. 29 at The Allen Theatre, 700 360-466-3365 or skagitcounty.net/ Union St., Seattle. Showtimes museum. vary. $27-$65 plus applicable fees.

206-292-7676 or acttheatre.org.

WINTERFEST: Enjoy free and affordable activities and “AN IMPROVISED CHRISTentertainment through Dec. 31 MAS CAROL”: 8:30 p.m. Thursat Seattle Center, 305 Harrison days through Saturdays and 7 St., Seattle. Visit Center House ‘TIS THE SEASON: Check out p.m. Sundays, through Dec. 28, at for free performances of music the historic 1891 Gaches ManUnexpected Productions’ Market and comedy, jazz and dance, culsion decorated for the holidays Theater, 1428 Post Alley, Seattle. tural celebrations, ice sculpting, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday “An Improvised Christmas student showcases and more. The through Sunday, through Dec. Carol” brings Charles Dickens’ Winterfest Ice Rink will be open 29, at the La Conner Quilt & Christmas classic to the stage through Jan. 5. Admission/skate Textile Museum, 703 S. Second with a twist. The audience gives rental fee applies. 206-684-7200 or St., La Conner. See a special suggestions up front, and Unexseattlecenter.com. display of seasonal quilts from pected Productions’ improvisers the museum’s permanent collec- use the suggestions to tell an CHRISTMAS TREES: The tion, including one of the oldest all new tale of how Christmas Mount Vernon Lions Club will pieces in the museum’s colleccan (or can’t) change Ebenezer offer Christmas trees in exchange tion — an 1840s Bethlehem Star. Scrooge’s life. $15 plus applicable for a donation through Dec. 21, Also on display is a red and white fees. 800-838-3006 or unexpected at 2111 Riverside Drive. DonaLog Cabin quilt (whose top was productions.org. tions will be accepted at all hours.

“HAM FOR THE HOLIDAYS: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE PORK RIND”: Lisa Koch and Peggy Platt present their 13th holiday comedy extravaganza through Dec. 22 at ACT’s Falls Theatre, 700 Union St., Seattle.

Enjoy an evening full of wickedly funny social satire, musical parody and razor-sharp zingers roasting the holiday tradition. Tickets Proceeds will be used to provide start at $28 plus applicable fees. eye exams, eyeglasses and hearing Discounts are available for students and seniors. 206-292-7676 aids for those in need. 360-424or acttheatre.org.

1888.

THE LIGHTS OF CHRISTMAS: More than a million Christmas lights will be displayed at the annual Lights of Christmas, from 5 to 10 p.m. daily, Dec. 18-23 and Dec. 26-29, at Warm Beach Camp, 20800 Marine Drive, Stanwood.

The largest holiday light display in the Northwest covers 15 acres and features family-oriented entertainment, live music, theater, crafts, food, pony rides, a petting farm, Polar Express Train rides and overnight getaway options.

Meet Santa Claus or talk with “Bruce the Spruce” Christmas LIONS CHRISTMAS TREES: The Oak Harbor Lions Club will tree. General admission: $10-$15. sell Christmas trees from 10 a.m. Pay-what-you-can night: Dec. 29. to 7 p.m. through Dec. 23, or until Theater events are extra. 800-228sold out, at the Chamber of Com- 6724 or warmbeachlights.com. merce, 32630 Highway 20, Oak “SCROOGE: THE MUSICAL”: Harbor. Four- to nine-feet Nobel, Douglas, Grand, Fraser and Nor- Enjoy a ghostly holiday tale dman Fir trees cut in Washington. based on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” through Dec. Proceeds benefit Lions causes, such as health screenings, eye and 22, at Seattle Musical Theatre, 7400 Sand Point Way, Seattle. ear exams, hearing aids, scholar$30-$40. 800-838-3006 or seattle ships and more. For more informusicaltheatre.org. mation call 360-279-2802.

DROP & SHOP: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 21, Skagit Valley Family YMCA Activity Center and Pool, 215 E. Fulton St., Mount Vernon. Kids ages 3-12 can make holiday crafts, bake and play games while their parents go holiday shopping.

Children ages 6-12 will have the option to go swimming. Snacks will be provided. $12-$20. Prior registration required: call 360336-9622 or email j.kerkvliet@ skagitymca.org.

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

E6 - Thursday, December 19, 2013

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“Elysium”: The prized possession in the futuristic sci-fi thriller is a medical bed that can cure anything from leukemia to a missing face. Too bad there wasn’t a machine that writer/director Neill Blomkamp could have used to heal his script; it has more holes in it than 30 golf courses. Matt Damon, on a mission to save a polarized world, does his best, but the script takes a trek where many science fiction writers have gone before. If the story had been even one-tenth as strong as the movie’s sharp look, “Elysium” would have been a surprise hit. Sadly, it’s not. What saves the film are the magnificent visual effects.

“The Lone Ranger”: The story is a standard Western tale, with the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) and Tonto (Johnny Depp) trying to catch the evil Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner), who is in cahoots with some dastardly businessmen. Hammer is likable enough, both as attorney John Reid and as The Masked Man. If you can accept this film is not your father’s — or even grandfather’s — “Lone Ranger,” then this latest adventure for The Masked Man and his faithful sidekick has a few fun moments. If you’re loyal to the brand, then you and your ke-mo sahbee should ride off into the sunset.

“Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters”: The film — just like the 2010 release “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief” — continues to fill in that action film void between little kids and savvy teens. It is a balanced blend of the kind of action that’s found in “The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” series and a touch of the teen angst that has made the “Twilight” series so popular.

Director Thor Freudenthal shows the wisdom of Athena as he sets a quick tempo for this tale that takes the young heroes from battles in the woods to high seas adventures. A few of the special effects are weak. But the film moves at such a rapid pace, there’s not much time to dwell on any visual miscues.

“One Direction: This Is Us”: Morgan Spurlock’s film about a British boy band is a melodic blend of concert footage and behind-the-scenes moments that range from comical to touching.

Spurlock doesn’t just rely on the inherent popularity of the boy band. Instead, he strips away the hysteria to offer a glimpse of the guys to go with the energetic stage shows. Spurlock doesn’t shortchange the musical performances.

He takes the viewer from front-row seats to a perspective so close to the

Upcoming movie releases Following is a partial schedule of coming movies on DVD. Release dates are subject to change: DEC. 24 Insidious: Chapter 2 — Sony DEC 31 Don Jon — Fox JAN. 7 Closed Circuit — Universal Inequality For All — Starz / Anchor Bay Runner Runner — Fox Thanks for Sharing — Lionsgate JAN. 14 A.C.O.D. — Paramount Blue Caprice — IFC Carrie — MGM Enough Said — Fox Fruitvale Station — Anchor Bay Lee Daniels’ The Butler — Anchor Bay Riddick — Universal Short Term 12 — New Video Group The Spectacular Now — Lionsgate 20 Feet From Stardom — Starz / Anchor Bay You’re Next — Lionsgate n McClatchy-Tribune News Service

group that it feels like the audience is the sixth member of the band.

“Burn Notice: Season Seven”: Includes the series finale.

“Prisoners”: Two families go to extremes to find their missing daughters.

“Justified: The Complete Fourth Season”: Series stars Timothy Olyphant.

“The Graduates”: Two-part special from filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz.

“Night Train To Lisbon”: A look at a man’s quest for self-discovery.

“The Family”: A mob family is moved to France under the witness protection program.

“Shameless: The Complete Third Season”: Showtime series starring William H. Macy.

“Omnibus: Gene Kelly — Dancing: A Man’s Game”: Release marks 55th anniversary of telecast.

“Contest”: Bullied student cautious of new friendship.

“Crawlspace”: Landlord keeps a close eye on his female tenants.

“Force of Execution”: Steven Seagal stars.

“Greek Gods, Heroes and Monsters”: History Channel series explores Greek myths.

“Line of Duty”: Loyalties are tested. n Rick Bentley, The Fresno Bee

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

Thursday, December 19, 2013 - E7

GET INVOLVED ART CALL FOR ARTISTS: The Anacortes Arts Commission invites artists to submit twoand three-dimensional artworks on the theme “Winter at PLAY” for a show set for Friday and Saturday, Jan. 3-4, at the Depot Arts & Community Center, 611 R Ave., Anacortes. Space is limited. No applications, first come, no fees. Contact Karla Locke at 360-588-6968 or email kklocke1@mac.com.

RECYCLED ART CONTEST: Entries will be accepted through Jan. 23 for the fifth annual Recycled Art Contest, set for Jan. 25-26, at the Concrete Community Center. Entries must include at least 60 percent recycled or repurposed materials and should be easily portable.

Entry forms are available at Annie’s Pizza Station or Northwest Garden Bling in Grasmere Village, Concrete.

Prizes will be awarded by popular vote in youth and adult categories. No entry fee. For information, entry forms and rules, call Athena at 360-708-3279 or email pizzaannieb@netscape.net.

POSTER ART CONTEST: The Mount Vernon Farmers Market seeks submissions of artwork by Jan. 25 for its 2014 poster. Artists may submit up to three images in any medium. The winning artist will receive $500. Send images in jpeg format via email to mvfarmer1@hotmail.com. Mail submissions to P.O. Box 2053, Mount Vernon, WA 98273. mount vernonfarmersmarket.org.

Bowman’s materials. 360464-2229 or anacortescenter forhappiness.org.

“FIRE & ICE” (ANIME STYLE): 4 to 6 p.m. Tuesdays, Feb. 4-26. Create four artworks in the popular anime style, with subject matter from fantasy to sci-fi, dinosaurs to dragons. Learn about complementary and contrasting colors and the power of texture in art. $45.

Register by Jan. 28: 360-7559649.

AUDITIONS “1776: A NEW MUSICAL”: Auditions will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday and 6 to 9 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 11-12, at the Whidbey Playhouse Star Studio, 730 SE Midway Blvd, Oak Harbor.

Parts are available for 23 men ages 15 to 70, and two women, one age 30 to 50 and the other 18 to 35. Come prepared to sing 16 bars of music; an accompanist will be provided. Wear comfortable clothing as a light dance will be required. Bring a resume and recent photo.

The play will run April 4-27.

360-679-2237 or whidbey playhouse.com.

PLAY SELECTION COMMITTEE: Whidbey Playhouse, 730 SE Midway Blvd., Oak Harbor, is looking for people who want to help choose plays for its 2014-15 season. Committee members will read and evaluate scripts and help determine the production lineup. For information or to sign up, call 360679-2237 or email office@ whidbeyplayhouse.com.

ART CLASSES

DANCE

ACRYLICS FOR BEGINNERS: With Jennifer Bowman: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Saturday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 18-19, at the Anacortes Center for Happiness, 619 Commercial Ave., Anacortes. $165, plus optional $20 fee to borrow

FOLK DANCING: SkagitAnacortes Folkdancers meet at 7 p.m. most Tuesdays at Bayview Civic Hall, 12615 C St., Mount Vernon. Learn to folkdance to a variety of international music. Instruction begins at 7 p.m. followed by review and request

dances until 9:30. The first session is free, $3 thereafter.

No partners needed. For information, contact Gary or Ginny at 360-766-6866.

BEGINNER SQUARE DANCE LESSONS: 7 p.m.

Tuesdays, beginning Jan. 7, at the Mount Vernon Senior Center, 1401 Cleveland St. Couples and singles welcome. First two weeks are free, then $4 per lesson.

Sponsored by the Mt. Baker Singles and Skagit Squares.

360-424-4608, 360-424-9675 or rosie@valleyint.com.

CLOG DANCING FOR BEGINNERS: Free lesson from 10 to 11 a.m., followed by regular clog dancing from 11 a.m. to noon Thursdays, at the Mount Vernon Senior Center, 1401 Cleveland St., Mount Vernon. No fee, no partner needed. First three lessons are free. Wear comfortable shoes. Information: Rosie, 360-424-4608.

RECREATION WINTERQUEST CAMPS FOR KIDS: Burlington Parks and Recreation is offering a series of day camps for kids at 900 E. Fairhaven Ave., Burlington. Preregistration required: 360-755-9649 or burlingtonwa.gov/recreation.

Next up: Santa’s Workshop: Ages 6 to 12, 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 23. Kids will make gifts, decorations and homemade treats for loved ones. And they’ll all be wrapped and tagged before parents arrive for pickup. $55.

Winter Wonders 2-Day Camp: Ages 6 to 12, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Dec. 26-27. Create snowflakes, snow globes, homemade hot chocolate and other fun wintery crafts.

Includes field trips to Comcast Skate Arena for ice skating and Arne Hanna Aquatic Center for swimming. $75.

Movin’ and Shakin’ 2-Day Camp: Ages 6 to 12, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, Dec. 30-31. Burn up some energy at the gymnastics place and Absolute Airplay. In between will be games and making milkshakes. $70.

Wet and Wild 2-Day Camp: Ages 10 to 14, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Jan. 2-3. Scale the walls for two hours at Vertical World in Everett and down some Fro Yo. Also, tour the SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention, learn about Tesla coils (lightning machines) and go swimming for two hours at the Arne Hanna Aquatic Center. $105.

THEATER DANCE FOR ACTORS: Eight-week workshop from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturdays beginning Jan. 4 at Whidbey Playhouse, 730 SE Midway

Blvd., Oak Harbor. Improve your movement technique for auditions and shows. The workshop will conclude with an informal show on Saturday, March. 1. $75. Preregistration required: 360-6792237 or whidbeyplayhouse. com.

Community Theater.

Feb. 23: Global Rhythm: Discover music and basic music concepts with drummer Mary Ellen Hodges using drums, shakers and other instruments.

YOUTH THEATRE: McIntyre Hall is offering a series of performing arts workshops for ages 6 to 12 at 2501 E. College Way, Mount Vernon. All classes will be held at 1 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are free but required and available by calling 360-4167727, ext. 2, or by visiting mcintyrehall.org.

Jan. 19: I Like to Move it!: Learn about dance and movement from the Northwest Ballet Theatre artists.

Feb. 9: Let’s Play: Explore a variety of theater games and improvisational exercises with Philip Prudhomme from the Anacortes

S-W PHOTO WORKSHOPS: Nationally known scenic photographer Andy Porter will offer photography workshops at the Sedro-Woolley Chamber of Commerce, 714-B Metcalf St., Sedro-Woolley. Bring your camera and instruction book to class.

Point and Shoot Camera: 6 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 22, or Thursday, Jan. 30.

Digital SLR Camera: 6 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23, or Wednesday, Jan. 29. $25 per class, payable by cash or check. RSVP: 360809-0661 or email andyport erphotography@gmail.com.

WORKSHOPS

New Works By:

Mark CONLey

La Conner Seaside Gallery

Open five days a week • Thursday - Monday 11-5 Laconnerseasidegallery.com • 101 N. 1st street, La Conner

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

E8 - Thursday, December 19, 2013

MUSIC Associated Press music writers Mesfin Fekadu and Chris Talbott pick their top 10 albums of the year.

MESFIN FEKADU

1. Ariana Grande, “Yours Truly”: Executed perfectly (or close to it), there are a few elements to creating a perfect pop album: great songwriting, groovy melodies and vocals that capture and reel you in.

With the help of Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, 20-year-old Ariana Grande crafted an album that harks on ’90s R&B and highlights her gorgeous, rich tone that mirrors Mariah Carey and, at times, Toni Braxton. From the hip-hop flavored jam “Right There” to the honeyed ballads “Daydreamin’” and “Tattooed Heart,” Grande’s debut is proof that a true star is on the rise.

2. Dawn Richard, “Goldenheart”: While Danity Kane’s reunion was somewhat exciting, Dawn Richard’s solo project was electrifying. The singer, who was also part of the Diddy-Dirty Money trio, is in perfect form on “Goldenheart,” where she explores various R&B and pop sounds, including beats that are electronic, smooth and down-tempo. The album tells stories of Richard’s struggles in music, the good and bad times in love and more — making for a rousing, breathtaking listen.

Each of the 16 tracks flow magically as Richard’s voice blends in, sounding raspy at times and soft at others.

3. Sara Bareilles, “The Blessed Unrest”: The Grammys got it right — Sara Bareilles’ third release, “The Blessed Unrest,” is one of the year’s best, thanks to its mix of upbeat and classic-sounding piano tunes, all anchored by the performer’s sweet and powerful tone. Bareilles is an exceptional songwriter who puts on a live show that brightens your day — and week.

4. J. Cole, “Born Sinner”: This year featured anticipated albums from Jay Z, Kanye West and Drake, but J. Cole has the rap album of the year. “Born Sinner,” his sophomore release, is full of smart rhymes that forces the listener to think.

5. Beyonce, “Beyonce”: Yes, Beyonce’s new album was just released this month, but it’s still one of the year’s best offerings. The R&B queen gets major props for literally slapping the world in the face with an album full of progressive R&B tunes that feel fresh and appealing. The impressive batch of tracks — from the addictive numbers “Drunk in Love” and “Blow” to the beautiful and soft “Heaven” — showcase the singer’s growth and easily puts her ahead of the competition.

the top 10 albums of

2013

6. Justin Timberlake, “The 20/20 Experience — 1 of 2”: Mr. SexyBack is also Mr. ComeBack. Justin Timberlake returned to music after seven years with a 10-track album that didn’t follow trends in pop, but still became 2013’s most successful album. Along with Timberland, the prince of pop has mastered the falsetto and maintains a smooth, mid-tempo sound throughout the 70-minute adventure. The songs feature the traditional Timberlake transition — how could you not adore “Strawberry Bubblegum” — and these are tunes that only he could sing.

7. Fitz and the Tantrums, “More Than Just a Dream”: Fitz and the Tantrums’ second album, “More Than Just a Dream,” is a wonderful mesh of soul and pop sounds that is upbeat and irresistible — and leaves you wanting more. They have a rock hit with the funky mellow outtake, “More Than Just a Dream,” and other songs follow suit: “Fools Gold” is pleasing, “Break the Walls” is anthemic and the hook on “6am” is oh-so appealing.

8. Janelle Monae, “The Electric Lady”: Janelle Monae’s latest album shows that the already masterful singer has grown in the three years since she released her fulllength debut, “The ArchAndroid.” “The Electric Lady” is almost as great as that work of art and features must-listen songs like “Primetime,” a duet with Miguel that is arguably the year’s best R&B song, and the Prince-assisted “Give Em What They Love,” where Monae holds her own. The title track is just as addictive.

9. Miley Cyrus, “Bangerz”: It’s sad that Miley Cyrus literally acts like a wrecking ball when her album is actually a gem.

Instead of singing expected radio pop tunes, Cyrus takes risks on what’s become her official music breakthrough, and it shows that there’s more than meets the eye for this wild child. “Wrecking Ball” is one of the year’s best pop songs, “FU” and “Do My Thang” are full of swag and the Britney Spears-featured “SMS (Bangerz)” is ridiculously catchy.

10. Tegan & Sara, “Heartthrob”: Canadian sister duo Tegan and Sara have formed a pop album with feel-good songs that sound great. From the rising hit “Closer” to the multilayered groove “I Was a Fool,” the Canadian’s group eighth album is a journey of synth-pop and easy listening. It’s hard not to have a crush on “Heartthrob.”

CHRIS TALBOTT

1. Chance the Rapper, “Acid Rap”: The best music is all about the ability to cut through great geographical, cultural

and musical distances to deliver an emotion or memory that resonates one to one.

I spent 2013 trying to find authentic music that taught me about people, that reaffirmed we’re all the same regardless of how much our T-shirts cost. Take Chance the Rapper. “Acid Rap,” the second mix tape from this 20-year-old Chicago MC who turned down all the major labels to tour the country in a beat-up RV, is a stream-of-consciousness epic. It’s full of delightful romps of juvenile delinquency mixed with a few frightening moments that drip with a sense of dread and paranoia. Check out the second half of “Pusha Man” if you want to see what it feels like to be scared all the time. Or take it in the opposite direction with the righteously unhinged “Smoke Again” or my favorite track, “NaNa,” featuring Action Bronson.

2. Queens of the Stone Age, “…

Like Clockwork”: Josh Homme turned in one of his most nuanced, thoughtful and emotionally powerful albums with this melancholy examination of mortality in what was otherwise a tepid year for rock ‘n’ roll. The music was difficult both thematically — it was written after Homme nearly died during surgery — and technically with upheaval within the band lengthening the recording process.

Dave Grohl, Elton John and other friends joined to help finish off the album. Songs like favorites “My God Is the Sun” and “Smooth Sailing” rank among the best the band has produced, while “The Vampyre of Time and Memory” and “If I Had a Tail” are among the most revealing.

3. Earl Sweatshirt, “Doris”: For a while there Earl Sweatshirt was a myth.

We finally met the real guy behind the persona on the long-awaited “Doris,” and his music was far more interesting than the buzz that accompanied his yearlong disappearance from public life. Earl tells you more about himself on songs like favorites “Burgundy” and “Chum” — his feelings about his parents, his friendship with Tyler, the Creator, the claustrophobic crush of attention — than he’s revealed in hours of interviews. It all rolls out in dense, dazzling verses packed with triple meaning with a world view that’s refreshingly honest and devoid of pop aspirations.

4. J. Cole, “Born Sinner”: J. Cole moved the release date of “Born Sinner” to the same day as Kanye West’s “Yeezus.”

On purpose. Thanks to this bold move, June 18 turned out to be the day of the year in music (check out Nos. 5 and 6).

While Ye initially outsold him, Cole’s sunny outlook, smart humor, nimble production and positive energy eventually

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

Thursday, December 19, 2013 - E9

MUSIC won the day. Cole lays out just why he’s different from his rivals on favorite “Let Nas Down” and lays down his own I’mthe-greatest verse with the help of Lamar himself on “Forbidden Fruit.”

5. Kanye West, “Yeezus”: Abrasive, angry, sometimes absurd, but endlessly fascinating, “Yeezus” is a punch in the face to the status quo. Grouse all you want about West’s lyrical content, ridiculous statements and outsized ego, the man’s production work is so far in the future you might as well call it science fiction. He opens the album by declaring “Yeezy season approaching … a monster about to come alive again,” and he’s still in the news raging about this or that six months later. There’s plenty here to identify with. And when West twines his voice with Nina Simone’s in the opening to favorite “Blood on the Leaves,” it’s just plain beautiful. Who cares what he’s saying?

6. Mac Miller, “Watching Movies With the Sound Off”: Few might have predicted Mac Miller would hold his own against Cole and West on June 18, but he turned it into something of a Mexican standoff with an impressive 19-track album that announced him as a producer and lyricist worth hearing. Miller delivered an album with unexpected depth, a masterful sense of mood and an excellent feel for the groove that in many ways rivals “Yeezus” for its constant inventiveness. New friends like Jay Electronica, Earl Sweatshirt, Tyler, the Creator, and Schoolboy Q help maintain the energy. And just when you think he can’t keep it up any longer, 15 or so tracks in, Diplo shows up on favorite “Goosebumpz” and the party goes on all night.

7. Drake, “Nothing Was the Same”: This was my most anticipated album of the year, and while it didn’t satisfy like “Take Care,” Noah “40” Shebib’s production is stunning and I learned more about Drake than I ever expected to. Ignore all the swaggin’ and braggin’. Listen to the personal verses about his relationships with Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj on the sprawling “Tuscan Leather” and “the issues at hand we’re not discussin’” with his mother on “Too Much,” featuring Sampha, and tell me you can’t relate.

Favorite track and leadoff single, “Started From the Bottom,” told us to expect something different, and “Nothing” delivered in some really interesting ways.

8. Parquet Courts, “Light Up Gold”: I miss Pavement. Since it looks like Stephen Malkmus and the guys aren’t going to give us new music, I’ve been looking

AP music writers’ top 5 songs of the year Associated Press music writers Chris est I ain’t talking about later/I’m a Talbott and Mesfin Fekadu pick their drop the album same day as Kanye/just top five songs of the year. to show the boys I’m the man now like Wanya/And I don’t mean no disrespect CHRIS TALBOTT … but this what’s next, the boy sick, 1. Drake, “Started from the Botcan’t disinfect.” Sick, indeed. tom”: Sometimes a song hits you at the 4. Dawes, “From a Window Seat”: right time and place in life, becomes a A coincidence: I sit down in a window part of the soundtrack for your list of seat on a flight and hit play. It’s this moments. “Started from the Bottom” song. I hit repeat. And again. And is one of these songs. I’ll never forget again. Songs like this don’t really exist where I was when I heard it. And I’ll anymore. The craft has changed, the never forget how it crystallized what value of storytelling diminished. MusiI was feeling at the moment. Drake cally and lyrically, “Window Seat” got dinged because he didn’t exactly transports you to other times and placstart at the bottom, but the simple and es, just like the best songs should. hypnotic song is an anthem for anyone 5. Ashley Monroe, “Weed Instead lucky enough to feel like a world-beat- of Roses,” and Brandy Clark, “Get er for a day.

High”: While the men of country were 2. Kanye West, “Blood on the hogging all the radio airplay, leaving Leaves”: On an album packed full of a trail of empties in their wake, these thought-provoking music, “Blood on 20-something women joined with the Leaves” showed just how far ahead Kacey Musgraves to push the genre of everyone else West is. Cobbled from forward. Musically traditional, but lyridisparate elements that surely can’t go cally modern in every way, Monroe and together, the song is the most beautiClark are making music for the legions ful moment of “Yeezus” and stands of fans turned on to country music as among his greatest achievements. The teens by Taylor Swift, and now navigatsong also provides the volcanic heart of ing adult life. The songwriting is mature West’s live show. and of the moment, the music vital.

3. J. Cole featuring Kendrick Lamar, Country radio’s not playing them, but “Forbidden Fruit”: There were a lot we advise you to put in the effort to of great songs on Cole’s “Born Sinfind them on your own. ner,” but he takes it to another level with the game’s top player guesting on this throwback ode to A Tribe Called MESFIN FEKADU Quest. This song serves as Cole’s “Con1. Bruno Mars, “Gorilla”: “Gorilla” trol,” the song Lamar used to announce is an example of Bruno Mars’ musihis greatness. The presence of Lamar cal prowess: It’s vocally impressive, only adds to the legitimacy when Cole sultry and smoky, and beat-laden. It’s boasts: “When I say that I’m the great- the perfect pop song, and the best one

for a suitable replacement. Brooklyn’s Parquet Courts comes the closest to reproducing the elegant anarchy of my ’90s slacker heroes. Songs like “Master of My Craft,” ”Borrowed Time” and favorite “Disney P.T.” remind me of how clever wordplay and minor chords used to make me so happy.

9. The Civil Wars, “The Civil Wars”: We can live with it if this is the last new material we’ll get from the Southern gothic duo that served as a cornerstone of the seemingly short-lived folk rock

movement. The apparent breakup of Joy Williams and John Paul White was the saddest story in music this year and came as they released an album that showed unbound potential by turning up the guitars and the tension. The emotion here is razor sharp, opening with favorite track “The One That Got Away,” a song that stings like a switchblade to the cheek.

10. Danny Brown, “Old”: Danny Brown threw the biggest curveball of 2013, and the result was one of the year’s most harrowing albums. Brown mostly

released this year.

2. Robin Thicke featuring Pharrell and T.I., “Blurred Lines”: Robin Thicke has been making impressive music for more than a decade, but it’s nice to see him achieve his pop success with “Blurred Lines.” The ubiquitous track was the year’s most playful single, and induces your bones to dance.

Everybody get up!

3. Solange, “Lovers In the Parking Lot”: Like Solange’s “Losing You,” released last year, “Lovers In the Parking Lot” proves that she is a multitalent who has a voice worth listening to.

“Lovers,” highlighted by the drums, is an R&B mid-tempo tune that’s hard to resist. Solange’s voice is soft on the track, as she sings about being a foolish lover. You’d be foolish not to love the song.

4. Lady Gaga featuring R. Kelly, “Do What U Want”: Despite Lady Gaga and R. Kelly’s cringe-worthy “Saturday Night Live” performance, their work together is impeccable. “Do What U Want” is a top notch track with a backbeat that is engaging. Gaga and the R&B crooner trade verses that flow nicely, and it is proof that people shouldn’t count out the pop diva just yet.

5. Lana Del Rey, “Summertime Sadness (Cedric Gervais Remix)”: A year after her “SNL” disaster, Lana Del Rey broke into the top 10 with a remix of “Summertime Sadness,” an electronic dance number that makes the original mid-tempo version, already an incredible track, even more likeable — that’s thanks to DJ-producer Cedric Gervais.

put aside the toothless jester persona that drove his breakthrough “XXX,” returning to songs about street life in Detroit or the postparty reality of his newfound success. He relates the horrors of a trip to the store on the menacing “Wonderbread” and ignores messages from his daughter as he crushes pills on a hotel room menu on “Clean Up.” ”Hipster by heart but I can tell you how the streets feel,” Brown raps on the dreamy “Lonely, “Everybody thirsty and they’re looking for a refill.”

E10 Thursday, December 19, 2013

ON STAGE

ADVENTURES IN BARRYWOOD

A wealth of memorable movie villains in 2013

By BARRY KOLTNOW The Orange County Register

Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan in “Star Trek Into Darkness.”

Rex Features via AP Images

I

s there a Hans Gruber in the house?

Can Hannibal Lecter come out and play?

Darth Vader, please report to the principal’s office.

You know where I’m heading with this — it’s our annual list of the most memorable movie villains of the year.

Heroes are only as good as their villains are bad. A worthy adversary is necessary in measuring the worth of our heroes.

Every actor will tell you that it’s more fun to play a villain than a hero. The good guy must stay within a structure and conduct himself by certain rules of behavior, which can be confining for an actor. But a bad guy doesn’t have to play by the rules so it is inherently more freeing than a leading man role.

But not all villains are created equal.

Some villains are dastardly but delightful, like the aforementioned Hans Gruber, played so well by British actor Alan Rickman in “Die Hard.” Likewise, Hannibal Lecter and Darth Vader are villains we love to hate.

The flip side to those lovable villains, of course, are the movie characters we don’t like so much but love to watch on the big screen. Amon Goethe, the sadistic Nazi camp commandant of Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” played with chilling efficiency by Ralph Fiennes, and Nurse Ratched of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (Louise Fletcher) are not the kinds of people you’d like to meet in a dark alley, although you love them in a darkened movie theater.

So, how does this year’s crop of movie villains look? Do any of them have staying power? Will any of them be remembered 10, 20 or 30 years from now? The only test is the test of time.

1. Edwin Epps: Played by Michael Fassbender in “12 Years a Slave,” he is the

Thursday, December 19, 2013 E11

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

sinister slave owner who is so much more complicated than the classic mustache twirler of the Silent Era, who would look into the camera and twirl his mustache as he tied the damsel to the railroad tracks.

The best villains are complex, and Epps is conflicted as he inflicts beatings on the same young female slave that he also covets. It is a performance that not only will be remembered, but might bring Oscar nominations to both Fassbender and his victim, a young actress fresh out of the Yale School of Drama — Lupita Nyong’o.

2. Bilal: The terrorist leader opposite Tom Hanks in the thriller “Captain Phillips” was played by newcomer Barkhad Abdirahman, who responded to an ad in a Minneapolis newspaper. The filmmakers conducted their search for actors to play Somali pirates within the substantial Somali community in Minnesota. Who knew there was a substantial Somali community in Minnesota?

3. Khan: Benedict Cumberbatch (that’s right, another British actor) plays Captain James T. Kirk’s formidable foe in “Star Trek Into Darkness,” and almost makes us forget Ricardo Montalban, who first breathed life into the Khan character in the 1982 film “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan,” which remains to many the best “Star Trek” ever.

And one of the reasons is the film’s awesome villain.

4. General Zod: Like Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon of “Boardwalk Empire” fame had to deal with the ghost of the villain’s originator (Terrence Stamp in the 1978 film “Superman”) when he pulled rank on the “Man of Steel.”

5. Loki: Let’s see, sibling rivalry leads one brother to try to kill the other brother.

Where have we heard that story before?

Tom Hiddleston played Thor’s villainous brother in “Thor” and “The Avengers,” and then reprised the character in the 2013 film

“Thor: The Dark World.”

6. Alien: It may have seemed as if James Franco made an appearance in every movie in 2013, but that’s not exactly true. He appeared in only half of them, and one of them was “Spring Breakers.” Former teen princesses Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez got all the media attention for trying to change their squeaky-clean images, but it was Franco who stood out as a drug and arms dealer who bails the young women out of jail and then mentors them in a life of crime.

7. Butch Cavendish: Not much can be said about “The Lone Ranger,” but William Fichtner’s villain was truly villainous. The bird on Johnny Depp’s head was a close second.

8. The Mandarin: Ben Kingsley’s terrorist leader in “Iron Man 3” is not what he seems. That’s all we can say under penalty of death.

9. Harlan DeGroat: Woody Harrelson in “Out of the Furnace” is not channeling Woody Boyd of “Cheers.”

10. President Snow: Donald Sutherland is a politician that everybody can hate in “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” regardless of which side of the aisle you sit.

11. Ed Pegram: Stacy Keach has rarely been more menacing than in his current role in “Nebraska.” He is not a super-villain with dreams of world domination, but he becomes a dominating force in Bruce Dern’s world when he tries to extort money from someone he believes has just won a fortune.

It’s a quiet menacing, and it’s done in black and white, so there is danger in the air.

12. Owen Shaw: If you thought Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) was tough in “Fast & Furious 6,” imagine how tough villain Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) is when he tells Dom: “I can reach out and break you any time I want.”

13. Violet Weston: Meryl Streep could play a can of peas and win an Oscar, so imagine how delightfully sinister she is in “August: Osage County,” based on Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play. As a villain, she doesn’t technically kill anyone, but what she does to her three daughters is pretty close to character assassination.

14. Smaug: Yes, we’re talking about the dragon in Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.” This isn’t Puff the Magic Dragon. This is a nasty, trash-talking monster who likes to play with his food before he eats it.

15. The zombies: Remember when I told you that a hero is only as good as his villain? Well, what villain could match Brad Pitt’s pretty face better than millions of zombies in “World War Z”?

in the Skagit Valley and surrounding area December 19-22

TUNING UP Playing at area venues December 20-29 SATURDAY.21 FAT JAMES AND FATBACK 7:30 p.m., H2O, 314 Commercial Ave., Anacortes. 360-755-3956.

Thursday.19 THEATER

“Mama Won’t Fly”: 7:30 p.m., Anacortes Community Theatre, 918 M Ave., Anacortes. $18. 360-293-6829 or acttheatre.com.

“Christmas Snapshots” – Holiday Musical Revue: 7:30 p.m., Whidbey Playhouse, 730 SE Midway Blvd., Oak Harbor. $14.

360-679-2237 or whidbeyplayhouse.com.

“Grace on Deck!” (musical comedy): 6 p.m., The Lights of Christmas Baylight Theatre at Warm Beach Camp, 20800 Marine Drive, Stanwood. Dinner theater: $39-$48. 800-228-6724 or warmbeachlights. com.

Friday.20 THEATER

“Mama Won’t Fly”: 8 p.m., Anacortes Community Theatre, 918 M Ave., Anacortes. $18. 360-293-6829 or acttheatre.com.

“Christmas Snapshots” – Holiday Musical Revue: 7:30 p.m., Whidbey Playhouse, 730 SE Midway Blvd., Oak Harbor. $14.

360-679-2237 or whidbeyplayhouse.com.

“Grace on Deck!” (musical comedy): 6 p.m., The Lights of Christmas Baylight Theatre at Warm Beach Camp, 20800 Marine Drive, Stanwood. Dinner theater: $39-$48.

800-228-6724 or warmbeachlights.com.

Saturday.21

FRIDAY.20 1967 9 p.m. to midnight, Varsity Inn, 112 N. Cherry St., Burlington. No cover. 360-755-0165.

FRIDAY.20 Ria Peth Vanderpool and Karina Mitchell: 8 p.m., 1st Street Cabaret & Speakeasy, 612 S. First St., Mount Vernon. $5 cover. 360-336-3012.

Goodson: 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., Big Lake Bar & Grill, 18247 Highway 9, Mount Vernon. 360422-6411.

Sunday.22 THEATER

“Mama Won’t Fly”: 2 p.m., Anacortes Community Theatre, 918 M Ave., Anacortes. $18. 360-293-6829 or acttheatre.com.

“Grace on Deck!” (musical comedy): 4 p.m., The Lights of Christmas Baylight Theatre at Warm Beach Camp, 20800 Marine Drive, Stanwood. Dessert matinee: $24-$29. 800-228-6724 or warmbeachlights. com.

Funky Santa Costume Party with the Chris Eger Band: 7:30 p.m., Conway Muse, 18444 Spruce/Main, Conway. Prizes for Best Mr. & Mrs. Santa. $10 cover. 360-445-3000.

Midnight Sun: 7 to 10 p.m., Mount Vernon Elks, 2120 Market St., Mount Vernon. Open to the public. 360-848-8882.

Navigator Communicator, He Whose Ox Is Gored, Thieves of Eden: 10 p.m., The Shakedown, 1212 N. State St., Bellingham. $5. 360-778-1067.

SATURDAY.21 Goodson: 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., Big Lake Bar & Grill, 18247 Highway 9, Mount Vernon. 360-422-6411.

Trevor Hanson: 8 p.m., 1st Street Cabaret & Speakeasy, 612 S. First St., Mount Vernon. $5 cover. 360-3363012.

Lane Fernando (Americana, rock): 8 p.m., Big Rock Café, 14779 Highway 9, Mount Vernon. No cover.

360-424-7872.

THEATER

“Mama Won’t Fly”: 8 p.m., Anacortes Community Theatre, 918 M Ave., Anacortes. $18. 360-293-6829 or acttheatre.com.

“Christmas Snapshots” – Holiday Musical Revue: 2:30 p.m., Whidbey Playhouse, 730 SE Midway Blvd., Oak Harbor. $14.

360-679-2237 or whidbeyplayhouse.com.

“Grace on Deck!” (musical comedy): 6 p.m., The Lights of Christmas Baylight Theatre at Warm Beach Camp, 20800 Marine Drive, Stanwood. Dinner theater: $39-$48.

800-228-6724 or warmbeachlights.com.

Solo Piano Night: 8:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-766-6266.

1967: 9 p.m. to midnight, Varsity Inn, 112 N. Cherry St., Burlington.

No cover. 360-755-0165.

El Colonel and Doubleshot with Mary De La Fuente (blues): 7:30 p.m., Conway Muse, 18444 Spruce/Main, Conway. $7.

360-445-3000.

SUNDAY.22

Fat James and Fatback: 7:30 p.m., H2O, 314 Commercial Ave., Anacortes.

360-755-3956.

WEDNESDAY.25

Rock and blues jam with CC Adams: 5 to 9 p.m., The Station House, 315 Morris St., La Conner. 360466-4488.

Matt Rehfeldt: 6 p.m., Conway Muse, 18444 Spruce/ Main, Conway. $10.

360-445-3000.

Ron W. Bailey: 5:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-7666266.

Fidalgo Swing: 6 to 9 p.m., Rockfish Grill, 320 Commercial Ave., Anacortes. 360588-1720.

Sly Mr. Y (highenergy classic rock): 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., Skagit Valley Casino Resort, Winners Lounge, 5984 N. Darrk Lane, Bow. No cover. 877275-2448.

Smoke Wagon – Surfin’ Christmas Party: 8:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-766-6266.

A Clambake Christmas, with Sanoma: 10 p.m., The Shakedown, 1212 N. State St., Bellingham. $5.

360-778-1067.

FRIDAY.27 The Fenderbenders: 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., Big Lake Bar & Grill, 18247 Highway 9, Mount Vernon.

360-422-6411.

Holiday Jam, with Wayne Hayton, Johnny Bulldog, Holmes Shea Band, Kerry and the Keepers: 7 p.m., Conway Muse, 18444 Spruce/Main, Conway. No cover.

SATURDAY.28 The Fenderbenders: 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., Big Lake Bar & Grill, 18247 Highway 9, Mount Vernon. 360-4226411.

Joe Argo: 9 p.m. to midnight, Longhorn Saloon & Grill, 5754 Cains Court, Edison. No cover. 360-7666330.

Solo Piano Night: 8:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-7666266.

Jim Cull: 7 to 10 p.m., Mount Vernon Elks, 2120 Market St., Mount Vernon. 360848-8882.

SUNDAY.29 Br’er Rabbit: 8 p.m., Big Rock Café, 14779 Highway 9, Mount Vernon. No cover. 360424-7872.

Kim Snyder: 8 p.m., 1st Street Cabaret & Speakeasy, 612 S. First St., Mount Vernon. $5 cover. 360336-3012.

Big Dog Revue: 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., Skagit Valley Casino Resort, Winners Lounge, 5984 N. Darrk Lane, Bow. No cover.

El Colonel and Doubleshot: 7:30 p.m., H2O, 314 Commercial Ave., Anacortes.

360-755-3956.

Ford Giesbrecht: 7:30 p.m., Washington Sips, 608 S. First St., La Conner. 360399-1037.

The Listers: 8:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-7666266.

Eagle Teeth, Animal Inside: 10 p.m., The Shakedown, 1212 N. State St., Bellingham. $5. 360778-1067.

Bow Diddlers: 5:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-7666266.

Ben Starner (piano): 6 p.m., Conway Muse, 18444 Spruce/Main, Conway. No cover. 360445-3000.

Rock and blues jam with CC Adams: 5 to 9 p.m., The Station House, 315 Morris St., La Conner. 360466-4488.

Bow Diddlers: 5:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-7666266.

E10 Thursday, December 19, 2013

ON STAGE

ADVENTURES IN BARRYWOOD

A wealth of memorable movie villains in 2013

By BARRY KOLTNOW The Orange County Register

Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan in “Star Trek Into Darkness.”

Rex Features via AP Images

I

s there a Hans Gruber in the house?

Can Hannibal Lecter come out and play?

Darth Vader, please report to the principal’s office.

You know where I’m heading with this — it’s our annual list of the most memorable movie villains of the year.

Heroes are only as good as their villains are bad. A worthy adversary is necessary in measuring the worth of our heroes.

Every actor will tell you that it’s more fun to play a villain than a hero. The good guy must stay within a structure and conduct himself by certain rules of behavior, which can be confining for an actor. But a bad guy doesn’t have to play by the rules so it is inherently more freeing than a leading man role.

But not all villains are created equal.

Some villains are dastardly but delightful, like the aforementioned Hans Gruber, played so well by British actor Alan Rickman in “Die Hard.” Likewise, Hannibal Lecter and Darth Vader are villains we love to hate.

The flip side to those lovable villains, of course, are the movie characters we don’t like so much but love to watch on the big screen. Amon Goethe, the sadistic Nazi camp commandant of Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” played with chilling efficiency by Ralph Fiennes, and Nurse Ratched of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (Louise Fletcher) are not the kinds of people you’d like to meet in a dark alley, although you love them in a darkened movie theater.

So, how does this year’s crop of movie villains look? Do any of them have staying power? Will any of them be remembered 10, 20 or 30 years from now? The only test is the test of time.

1. Edwin Epps: Played by Michael Fassbender in “12 Years a Slave,” he is the

Thursday, December 19, 2013 E11

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

sinister slave owner who is so much more complicated than the classic mustache twirler of the Silent Era, who would look into the camera and twirl his mustache as he tied the damsel to the railroad tracks.

The best villains are complex, and Epps is conflicted as he inflicts beatings on the same young female slave that he also covets. It is a performance that not only will be remembered, but might bring Oscar nominations to both Fassbender and his victim, a young actress fresh out of the Yale School of Drama — Lupita Nyong’o.

2. Bilal: The terrorist leader opposite Tom Hanks in the thriller “Captain Phillips” was played by newcomer Barkhad Abdirahman, who responded to an ad in a Minneapolis newspaper. The filmmakers conducted their search for actors to play Somali pirates within the substantial Somali community in Minnesota. Who knew there was a substantial Somali community in Minnesota?

3. Khan: Benedict Cumberbatch (that’s right, another British actor) plays Captain James T. Kirk’s formidable foe in “Star Trek Into Darkness,” and almost makes us forget Ricardo Montalban, who first breathed life into the Khan character in the 1982 film “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan,” which remains to many the best “Star Trek” ever.

And one of the reasons is the film’s awesome villain.

4. General Zod: Like Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon of “Boardwalk Empire” fame had to deal with the ghost of the villain’s originator (Terrence Stamp in the 1978 film “Superman”) when he pulled rank on the “Man of Steel.”

5. Loki: Let’s see, sibling rivalry leads one brother to try to kill the other brother.

Where have we heard that story before?

Tom Hiddleston played Thor’s villainous brother in “Thor” and “The Avengers,” and then reprised the character in the 2013 film

“Thor: The Dark World.”

6. Alien: It may have seemed as if James Franco made an appearance in every movie in 2013, but that’s not exactly true. He appeared in only half of them, and one of them was “Spring Breakers.” Former teen princesses Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez got all the media attention for trying to change their squeaky-clean images, but it was Franco who stood out as a drug and arms dealer who bails the young women out of jail and then mentors them in a life of crime.

7. Butch Cavendish: Not much can be said about “The Lone Ranger,” but William Fichtner’s villain was truly villainous. The bird on Johnny Depp’s head was a close second.

8. The Mandarin: Ben Kingsley’s terrorist leader in “Iron Man 3” is not what he seems. That’s all we can say under penalty of death.

9. Harlan DeGroat: Woody Harrelson in “Out of the Furnace” is not channeling Woody Boyd of “Cheers.”

10. President Snow: Donald Sutherland is a politician that everybody can hate in “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” regardless of which side of the aisle you sit.

11. Ed Pegram: Stacy Keach has rarely been more menacing than in his current role in “Nebraska.” He is not a super-villain with dreams of world domination, but he becomes a dominating force in Bruce Dern’s world when he tries to extort money from someone he believes has just won a fortune.

It’s a quiet menacing, and it’s done in black and white, so there is danger in the air.

12. Owen Shaw: If you thought Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) was tough in “Fast & Furious 6,” imagine how tough villain Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) is when he tells Dom: “I can reach out and break you any time I want.”

13. Violet Weston: Meryl Streep could play a can of peas and win an Oscar, so imagine how delightfully sinister she is in “August: Osage County,” based on Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play. As a villain, she doesn’t technically kill anyone, but what she does to her three daughters is pretty close to character assassination.

14. Smaug: Yes, we’re talking about the dragon in Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.” This isn’t Puff the Magic Dragon. This is a nasty, trash-talking monster who likes to play with his food before he eats it.

15. The zombies: Remember when I told you that a hero is only as good as his villain? Well, what villain could match Brad Pitt’s pretty face better than millions of zombies in “World War Z”?

in the Skagit Valley and surrounding area December 19-22

TUNING UP Playing at area venues December 20-29 SATURDAY.21 FAT JAMES AND FATBACK 7:30 p.m., H2O, 314 Commercial Ave., Anacortes. 360-755-3956.

Thursday.19 THEATER

“Mama Won’t Fly”: 7:30 p.m., Anacortes Community Theatre, 918 M Ave., Anacortes. $18. 360-293-6829 or acttheatre.com.

“Christmas Snapshots” – Holiday Musical Revue: 7:30 p.m., Whidbey Playhouse, 730 SE Midway Blvd., Oak Harbor. $14.

360-679-2237 or whidbeyplayhouse.com.

“Grace on Deck!” (musical comedy): 6 p.m., The Lights of Christmas Baylight Theatre at Warm Beach Camp, 20800 Marine Drive, Stanwood. Dinner theater: $39-$48. 800-228-6724 or warmbeachlights. com.

Friday.20 THEATER

“Mama Won’t Fly”: 8 p.m., Anacortes Community Theatre, 918 M Ave., Anacortes. $18. 360-293-6829 or acttheatre.com.

“Christmas Snapshots” – Holiday Musical Revue: 7:30 p.m., Whidbey Playhouse, 730 SE Midway Blvd., Oak Harbor. $14.

360-679-2237 or whidbeyplayhouse.com.

“Grace on Deck!” (musical comedy): 6 p.m., The Lights of Christmas Baylight Theatre at Warm Beach Camp, 20800 Marine Drive, Stanwood. Dinner theater: $39-$48.

800-228-6724 or warmbeachlights.com.

Saturday.21

FRIDAY.20 1967 9 p.m. to midnight, Varsity Inn, 112 N. Cherry St., Burlington. No cover. 360-755-0165.

FRIDAY.20 Ria Peth Vanderpool and Karina Mitchell: 8 p.m., 1st Street Cabaret & Speakeasy, 612 S. First St., Mount Vernon. $5 cover. 360-336-3012.

Goodson: 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., Big Lake Bar & Grill, 18247 Highway 9, Mount Vernon. 360422-6411.

Sunday.22 THEATER

“Mama Won’t Fly”: 2 p.m., Anacortes Community Theatre, 918 M Ave., Anacortes. $18. 360-293-6829 or acttheatre.com.

“Grace on Deck!” (musical comedy): 4 p.m., The Lights of Christmas Baylight Theatre at Warm Beach Camp, 20800 Marine Drive, Stanwood. Dessert matinee: $24-$29. 800-228-6724 or warmbeachlights. com.

Funky Santa Costume Party with the Chris Eger Band: 7:30 p.m., Conway Muse, 18444 Spruce/Main, Conway. Prizes for Best Mr. & Mrs. Santa. $10 cover. 360-445-3000.

Midnight Sun: 7 to 10 p.m., Mount Vernon Elks, 2120 Market St., Mount Vernon. Open to the public. 360-848-8882.

Navigator Communicator, He Whose Ox Is Gored, Thieves of Eden: 10 p.m., The Shakedown, 1212 N. State St., Bellingham. $5. 360-778-1067.

SATURDAY.21 Goodson: 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., Big Lake Bar & Grill, 18247 Highway 9, Mount Vernon. 360-422-6411.

Trevor Hanson: 8 p.m., 1st Street Cabaret & Speakeasy, 612 S. First St., Mount Vernon. $5 cover. 360-3363012.

Lane Fernando (Americana, rock): 8 p.m., Big Rock Café, 14779 Highway 9, Mount Vernon. No cover.

360-424-7872.

THEATER

“Mama Won’t Fly”: 8 p.m., Anacortes Community Theatre, 918 M Ave., Anacortes. $18. 360-293-6829 or acttheatre.com.

“Christmas Snapshots” – Holiday Musical Revue: 2:30 p.m., Whidbey Playhouse, 730 SE Midway Blvd., Oak Harbor. $14.

360-679-2237 or whidbeyplayhouse.com.

“Grace on Deck!” (musical comedy): 6 p.m., The Lights of Christmas Baylight Theatre at Warm Beach Camp, 20800 Marine Drive, Stanwood. Dinner theater: $39-$48.

800-228-6724 or warmbeachlights.com.

Solo Piano Night: 8:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-766-6266.

1967: 9 p.m. to midnight, Varsity Inn, 112 N. Cherry St., Burlington.

No cover. 360-755-0165.

El Colonel and Doubleshot with Mary De La Fuente (blues): 7:30 p.m., Conway Muse, 18444 Spruce/Main, Conway. $7.

360-445-3000.

SUNDAY.22

Fat James and Fatback: 7:30 p.m., H2O, 314 Commercial Ave., Anacortes.

360-755-3956.

WEDNESDAY.25

Rock and blues jam with CC Adams: 5 to 9 p.m., The Station House, 315 Morris St., La Conner. 360466-4488.

Matt Rehfeldt: 6 p.m., Conway Muse, 18444 Spruce/ Main, Conway. $10.

360-445-3000.

Ron W. Bailey: 5:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-7666266.

Fidalgo Swing: 6 to 9 p.m., Rockfish Grill, 320 Commercial Ave., Anacortes. 360588-1720.

Sly Mr. Y (highenergy classic rock): 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., Skagit Valley Casino Resort, Winners Lounge, 5984 N. Darrk Lane, Bow. No cover. 877275-2448.

Smoke Wagon – Surfin’ Christmas Party: 8:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-766-6266.

A Clambake Christmas, with Sanoma: 10 p.m., The Shakedown, 1212 N. State St., Bellingham. $5.

360-778-1067.

FRIDAY.27 The Fenderbenders: 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., Big Lake Bar & Grill, 18247 Highway 9, Mount Vernon.

360-422-6411.

Holiday Jam, with Wayne Hayton, Johnny Bulldog, Holmes Shea Band, Kerry and the Keepers: 7 p.m., Conway Muse, 18444 Spruce/Main, Conway. No cover.

SATURDAY.28 The Fenderbenders: 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., Big Lake Bar & Grill, 18247 Highway 9, Mount Vernon. 360-4226411.

Joe Argo: 9 p.m. to midnight, Longhorn Saloon & Grill, 5754 Cains Court, Edison. No cover. 360-7666330.

Solo Piano Night: 8:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-7666266.

Jim Cull: 7 to 10 p.m., Mount Vernon Elks, 2120 Market St., Mount Vernon. 360848-8882.

SUNDAY.29 Br’er Rabbit: 8 p.m., Big Rock Café, 14779 Highway 9, Mount Vernon. No cover. 360424-7872.

Kim Snyder: 8 p.m., 1st Street Cabaret & Speakeasy, 612 S. First St., Mount Vernon. $5 cover. 360336-3012.

Big Dog Revue: 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., Skagit Valley Casino Resort, Winners Lounge, 5984 N. Darrk Lane, Bow. No cover.

El Colonel and Doubleshot: 7:30 p.m., H2O, 314 Commercial Ave., Anacortes.

360-755-3956.

Ford Giesbrecht: 7:30 p.m., Washington Sips, 608 S. First St., La Conner. 360399-1037.

The Listers: 8:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-7666266.

Eagle Teeth, Animal Inside: 10 p.m., The Shakedown, 1212 N. State St., Bellingham. $5. 360778-1067.

Bow Diddlers: 5:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-7666266.

Ben Starner (piano): 6 p.m., Conway Muse, 18444 Spruce/Main, Conway. No cover. 360445-3000.

Rock and blues jam with CC Adams: 5 to 9 p.m., The Station House, 315 Morris St., La Conner. 360466-4488.

Bow Diddlers: 5:30 p.m., Edison Inn, 5829 Cains Court, Edison. 360-7666266.

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

E12 - Thursday, December 19, 2013

TRAVEL

N.Y. state parks are appealing to adventure sports

WWU FACULTY-LED

TRAVEL PROGRAMS: Western Washington University will offer three educational travel programs next summer in Italy and Africa. Global Discovery trips are not for university credit or restricted to Western students. People of all ages are invited to travel alongside Western faculty and gain an understanding of other cultures, including their art, ecology, food, history, language and more. Trips include: Mount Kilimanjaro Climb and Serengeti Safari Extension: July 5-19.

Serengeti Safari and Kilimanjaro Culture Tour: July 14-26.

Tuscany, Italy: Aug. 31-Sept. 14.

360- 650-6409, global discovery@wwu.edu or wwu.edu/GlobalDiscovery.

By MICHAEL VIRTANEN Associated Press

GUILDERLAND, N.Y. — Casey Holzworth wedged himself sideways into the narrow stone crevice that angled down from a parking lot, the limestone walls gradually widening slightly and rising higher as the state biologist inched and climbed about 60 feet to reach a narrow hiking trail, the kind of place more people may be allowed to go as New York moves to exploit growing interest in adventure sports.

The trail at Thacher State Park hugs the pale cliffs of the Helderberg Escarpment, above a steep embankment overlooking the forest, leading to a rock arch that towered almost 100 feet above the low horizontal entrance to a cave.

Under Thacher’s new master plan that envisions more outdoor adventuring, the park may allow hikers to descend Helmes Crevice, spelunkers to explore the deep confines of Hailes Cave and climbers to scale some of the cliffs 15 miles southwest of Albany.

“It’s supposed to be a challenge. That’s why we’re doing it,” said parks executive Alane Ball Chinian, who followed Holzworth down and jokingly asked if a rescue team was waiting.

Regional parks capital facilities manager Kurt Kress said there’s high interest in those challenges among young professionals and entrepreneurs, with new adventure sites making New York a more appealing draw.

Outdoor adventures have been gaining ground at many of New York’s 179 state parks, like Harriman and Minnewaska, which issue rock-climbing permits in the Hudson Valley.

Montauk Point, Jones

Local travel

Mike Groll / AP

Ice forms on a cliff face along the Indian Ladder trail at John Boyd Thacher State Park in Guilderland, N.Y. The park plans to let the rock climbers and spelunkers come, the latest outdoor adventures in a park system that already hosts everything from 100-kilometer runs to windsurfing in the Atlantic.

Beach, Robert Moses, Hither Hills and Shadmoor on Long Island have surfing and wind surfing, parks spokesman Dan Keefe said.

Long-distance hiking trails pass through several parks, including Thacher, and many others host triathlons.

The Green Lakes Endurance Races span 50 and 100 kilometers along park trails in Fayetteville outside Syracuse. Letchworth State Park, in Genesee Falls southwest of Rochester, has whitewater rafting and kayaking on the Genesee River.

Many allow cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and snowmobiling in winter.

At 2,155-acre Thacher, the park lost part of its identity when its swimming pool

closed in 2006. Soliciting the public’s ideas over the past year for a new master plan, they heard from climbers, cavers and mountain bikers among others. Groups representing each will advise on precisely where and how to proceed.

“Safety is really paramount,” Chinian said.

Ice climbing may follow rock climbing, which is expected on some of the stable vertical cliffs, away from the popular Indian Ladder hiking trail. With the horizontal cracks and small holds, Holzworth said, the limestone should draw many skilled climbers.

Now, those in the Albany area usually must travel to the Adirondacks, Shawan-

gunks or Little Falls to find a crag. However, there was a leftover piece of climbing gear stuck in a high crack near Haile’s Cave, a carabiner dangling from a short strap, evidence of climbing that has been off-limits since 1976.

“A lot of that illegal climbing fizzled out,” said Michael Whelan, vice president of the Thacher Climbing Coalition. Having local crags, like Boulder, Colo., does, permits a lifestyle change where climbers can go for a couple of hours instead of having to commit an entire day with long drives both ways.

Hailes Cave is a hibernation site for endangered Indiana bats. A gate has

been recently installed to keep out random spelunkers, and the site will remain off-limits in the winter, Holzworth said. In warmer months, the bats tend to stay in the forest.

Park officials also plan to solicit a contractor to establish an adventure course of climbing ropes, Chinian said.

They’re considering a visitors’ center where adventurers would get the permits expected to include liability waivers.

Park manager Chris Fallon said they intend to establish a 4.6-mile bike trail from Thacher, which closes at sunset, to 350-acre Thompson’s Lake State Park, with its campsites and sand beach.

EXTENDED TRIPS: The Oak Harbor Senior Center is organizing several small-group trips for 2014: Trains of Colorado in July and Islands of New England in September.

Trips will depart from Oak Harbor/Mount Vernon.

Contact Pat Gardner at 360-279-4582 or email pgardner@oakharbor.org.

SENIOR CENTER TRIPS: Skagit County Senior Centers offer short escorted trips departing from and returning to local senior centers. For information, call the Anacortes Senior Center at 360-293-7473 or sign up at your local senior center.

PASSPORT APPLICATIONS: The Anacortes Public Library accepts passport applications from noon to 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays and 1 to 4 p.m. Saturdays at 1220 10th St., Anacortes.

Passport forms and information on fees and how to apply are available at travel.state.gov, or pick up an application and passport guide at the library.

The Oak Harbor Senior Center accepts passport applications, by appointment, from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday at 51 SE Jerome St., Oak Harbor. 360-279-4580.

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

Thursday, December 19, 2013 - E13

MOVIES

Ferrell and McKay: A partnership forged on jokes Adam McKay (left) and Will Ferrell talk on the set of “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.”

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer

To reach the level of absurdity that Will Ferrell and Adam McKay regularly attain, they have to be particularly open-minded. They need to be willing to throw a joke about a female whale’s anatomy against the wall, and see if it sticks.

It’s a process of casual brainstorming, constant rewriting, endless improvisation and audience testing that leads them to ridiculous places. Their “Step Brothers,” which McKay calls the most “free-form” film they’ve made, culminated at, of all places, something called the Catalina Wine Mixer, with Ferrell singing Andrea Bocelli’s “Por Ti Volare.”

“Sometimes I’ll say to Ferrell: Can you believe we ended that movie in an opera song?” says McKay. “We backed ourselves into such a corner,” says Ferrell. “It was the only way.”

“Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” the first movie they made together coming out of “Saturday Night Live,” famously arrived at Burgundy’s inane translation of San Diego as meaning “a whale’s vagina.”

Actually speaking the line caused Ferrell to uncharacteristically unravel.

“A professional crew. It’s a night shoot,” says Ferrell.

“And it all came crashing down on me: We’ve convinced a bonded company to put these lines on film.”

The sequel, “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” comes nine years after the original, a movie that helped launch a decade of comedies and boosted the careers of Judd Apatow (a producer on “Anchorman”), Paul Rudd and Steve Carell. Since then,

Paramount Pictures via AP

Ferrell has starred in every movie McKay has directed, including the NASCAR comedy “Talladega Nights” and the white-collar crime satire “The Other Guys.”

Their collaboration, begun in the writing rooms of “SNL,” has developed into one of the most rocksolid, long-running partnerships in comedy. Together they created the production company Gary Sanchez, choosing the funniest way they could think of for an intern to answer the phone.

They even developed a backstory of Sanchez as a former NFL placekicker from Paraguay who was getting into the movie business.

“They have something that’s very special that’s almost unprecedented in comedy films,” says Apatow, also a producer on the sequel. “It reminds me of Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. When you’re around it, you feel how rare it is.

They’ve made five movies and they’ve all classics.

“I like working with them

because they remind me I’m supposed to have fun.”

In a recent interview over lunch, McKay and Ferrell reflected on their process of constant trial and continual refinement. It usually begins with tossing around ideas at Ferrell’s California guesthouse or their Gary Sanchez offices.

“We’re big believers in sitting for two, three, four hours,” says McKay. “We’ll write down 50 ideas, and two will be useable.”

The two first found themselves in sync at “SNL,” where McKay rose to head writer after just one year as a writer. The first sketch they wrote together was about the deterioration of a morning news show when the teleprompters go down, leading to tribalism.

“Anchorman 2” takes their chauvinist, sexist newsman into the 1980s and the dawn of 24/7 cable news. But it could have taken many different forms.

At first, they planned to tour a musical version in

theaters before shooting the film. They considered setting a sequel in space (“We never figured out how or why,” says Ferrell), or having Ron become friends with Manuel Noriega in Panama.

They flirted with the Iranian hostage crisis (“How do we make THAT funny?” says Ferrell), as well as having Burgundy accidently start a war.

Just as “Talladega Nights” hid a commentary on Bushera red states, the premise of “Anchorman 2” includes a parody of today’s media.

Burgundy has the epiphany that TV news can tell people not what they need to hear, but what they want to hear — history as shaped by an idiot.

The extensive promotion of the film has included Ferrell, in character, anchoring local news in North Dakota and appearing on ESPN. Ferrell is surprised that some may be missing the satire: “The news itself is kind of blissfully endorsing all the things that we’re

doing.”

More mixing and matching followed in the improvisation-heavy shoot.

There were so many jokes that McKay at one point considered making the film in two parts, a la “Kill Bill,” and even tested part one with an audience. Each joke has at least one alternative, so McKay plans to release a DVD version with the some 400 jokes each swapped out for another.

A tug of war with the Motion Picture Association of American led to some snips, like in the scene when Burgundy smokes crack on the air. They wince a little at losing a big musical scene (it included a song “Gay for a Day”), but say if test audiences don’t respond to a scene, they’re ruthless in editing.

That’s not to say what’s in the film isn’t plenty outlandish. It includes a section where Burgundy goes blind, a shark named Doby (“Nothing heightens chaos more than a berserk wild

animal right in the middle,” says McKay), and exclamations like “By the bedpan of Gene Rayburn!”

More than anything, they revel in these unpredictable, nonsensical left-hand turns that break the movie’s already high degree of absurdity.

“Nothing is more enjoyable for me than when I’m watching a movie or a TV show and there’s that sense that anything can happen,” says McKay. “It is the funniest feeling in the world.”

Ferrell and McKay, who also run the comedy website Funny Or Die, have both done projects separate of the other, of course. They’re currently finalizing plans for a prison comedy, “Get Hard,” starring Ferrell and Kevin Hart that McKay will produce.

McKay clearly has some interest in expanding his directing work in other directions, but he also, in the course of the interview, suggests to Ferrell that they do another big character like Burgundy, “like 8 on the volume scale.”

“I selfishly want to only work with Adam and have him only work with me,” says Ferrell. “Yet at the same time, I want other actors, other people to see. I don’t know if people really, truly know how good Adam McKay is.”

Says McKay: “People always say, ‘Are you going to do other movies?’ Yeah, eventually. But there’s just never been a moment where us doing movies together hasn’t been fun as hell and totally satisfying.”

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

E14 - Thursday, December 19, 2013

HOT TICKETS IVAN & ALYOSHA: Dec. 21, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-7453000 or showboxonline.com.

SIZZLA: Dec. 22, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

ROCKY HORROR SHOW: Dec. 28, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

BINGO PLAYERS: Dec. 28, Showbox SoDo, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

SUPER DIAMOND: THE NEIL DIAMOND TRIBUTE: Dec. 31, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-7453000 or showboxonline.com.

IN THIS MOMENT: Jan. 3, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-7453000 or showboxonline.com.

REVEREND HORTON HEAT: Jan. 9, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

REEL BIG FISH: Jan. 11, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-7453000 or showboxonline.com.

PANIC! AT THE DISCO: Jan. 14, Showbox SoDo, Seattle. 800-7453000 or showboxonline.com.

INTERNATIONAL CAT VIDEO FILM FESTIVAL: Jan. 15, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE: Jan. 17, KeyArena, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or livenation.com.

DISNEY JUNIOR LIVE ON TOUR! PIRATE & PRINCESS ADVENTURE: Jan. 19, Comcast Arena at Everett.

866-332-8499 or comcastarena everett.com.

JAKE BUGG: Jan. 20, Paramount Theatre, Seattle. 877-784-4849 or livenation.com.

ROBERT DELONG: Jan. 23, The Barboza, Seattle. 206-709-9442 or thebarboza.com.

NORTH MISSISSIPPI ALLSTARS: Jan. 23, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showbox online.com.

EXCISION: Jan. 24, Paramount Theatre, Seattle. 877-784-4849 or livenation.com.

WHITE LIES: Feb. 7, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

TOAD THE WET SPROCKET: Feb. 8, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

BIFFY CLYRO: Feb. 9, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

IMAGINE DRAGONS: Feb. 11, KeyArena, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or INTERNATIONAL GUITAR NIGHT: livenation.com.

KYARY PAMYU PAMYU: Feb. 13, with Brian Gore (pictured), Pino Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800Forastiere, Mike Dawes and 745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

Quique Sinesi: Feb. 1, Lincoln KARMIN: Feb. 14, Neumos, SeatTheatre, Mount Vernon. 360tle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.

336-8955 or lincolntheatre.org. com.

IGN photo THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Feb. 15, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

LORD HURON: Jan. 24, Showbox MILEY CYRUS: Feb. 16, Tacoma at the Market, Seattle. 800-745Dome, Tacoma. 800-745-3000 or 3000 or showboxonline.com. livenation.com.

COLIN HAY (of Men At Work): HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS: Feb. Jan. 24-25, Skagit Valley Casino 16, Comcast Arena at Everett. 866Resort, Bow. 877-275-2448 or the 332-8499 or comcastarenaeverett. skagit.com. com.

HOPSIN’S KNOCK MADNESS BAND OF HORSES: Feb. 16, TOUR: Jan. 25, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or show- Moore Theatre, Seattle. 877-7844849 or livenation.com. boxonline.com.

AMOS LEE: Feb. 17, Paramount MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT: Theatre, Seattle. 877-784-4849 or Jan. 30-March 2, 5th Avenue Thelivenation.com. atre, Seattle. 206-625-1900 or PAUL SIMON, STING: Feb. 19, 5thavenue.org.

KeyArena, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or MYON & SHANE 54: Jan. 31, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800- livenation.com.

PENTATONIX: Feb. 20, Paramount 745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

Theatre, Seattle. 877-784-4849 or INTERNATIONAL GUITAR NIGHT: livenation.com. with Brian Gore, Pino Forastiere, THE ENGLISH BEAT: Feb. 21, Mike Dawes and Quique Sinesi: Feb. Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 8001, Lincoln Theatre, Mount Vernon.

360-336-8955 or lincolntheatre.org. 745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

DOC SEVERINSEN, THE SAN THE DEVIL MAKES THREE: Feb. 1, Showbox SoDo, Seattle. 800-745- MIGUEL FIVE: Feb. 21-22, Skagit Valley Casino Resort, Bow. 877-2753000 or showboxonline.com.

MARY LAMBERT: Feb. 1, Showbox 2448 or theskagit.com.

WALK OFF THE EARTH: Feb. 26, at the Market, Seattle. 800-745Showbox SoDo, Seattle. 800-7453000 or showboxonline.com.

3000 or showboxonline.com.

2 CHAINZ: Feb. 13, Showbox JIM JEFFERIES: Feb. 27, Moore SoDo, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or Theatre, Seattle. 877-784-4849 or showboxonline.com.

W inners LO U N G E

I-5 Exit 236 • theskagit.com • 877-275-2448 SVH

Must be 21 or older with valid photo ID.

Seattle. 866-833-4747 or livenation. com.

YONDER MOUNTAIN STRING BAND: April 10, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

THE WAILIN’ JENNYS: April 12, Lincoln Theatre, Mount Vernon. 360336-8955 or lincolntheatre.org.

DIANA KRALL: April 16, Paramount Theatre, Seattle. 877-7844849 or livenation.com.

DARK STAR ORCHESTRA: April 20, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

ELLIE GOULDING: April 23, Paramount Theatre, Seattle. 877-7844849 or livenation.com.

THE 1975: April 24, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

FRANZ FERDINAND: April 24, Showbox SoDo, Seattle. 800-7453000 or showboxonline.com.

THE WANTED: April 26, Showbox SoDo, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

SUDDEN VALLEY JAZZ SERIES: April 26/Nov. 15, Sudden Valley Dance Barn, Bellingham. 360-6711709 or suddenvalleylibrary.org.

STEPHEN “RAGGA” MARLEY: May 6, Showbox at the Market, Seattle.

206-224-5481 or aeglive.com.

SASQUATCH! MUSIC FESTIVAL: May 23-25 and July 4-6, Gorge Amphitheatre, George. sasquatch festival.com.

LADY GAGA’S artRAVE — The ARTPOP Ball: May 28, KeyArena, Seattle.

800-745-3000 or livenation.com.

PARADISO FESTIVAL: June 27-28, Gorge Amphitheatre, George. 800745-3000 or livenation.com.

CHER: June 28, KeyArena, Seattle.

800-745-3000 or livenation.com.

NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS: July 2, Paramount Theatre, Seattle.

877-784-4849 or tickets.com.

JOURNEY, STEVE MILLER BAND: July 19, White River Amphitheatre, Auburn. 800-745-3000 or livenation. com.

Watch the games on the BIg screen!

Football EntErtainmEnt sunday 12/22

Seahawks vs. Cardinals

1:05 pm

monday 12/23 Owned by Upper Skagit Indian Tribe

livenation.com.

MARCHFOURTH MARCHING BAND: Feb. 28, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

GLASVEGAS: Feb. 28, Columbia City Theater, Seattle. 800-838-3006 or columbiacitytheater.com.

SKINNY PUPPY: March 1, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-7453000 or showboxonline.com.

GALACTIC: March 13, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

HERMAN’S HERMITS, starring Peter Noone: March 14-15, Skagit Valley Casino Resort, Bow. 877-2752448 or theskagit.com.

BRING ME THE HORIZON: March 24, Showbox at the Market, Seattle.

800-745-3000 or showboxonline. com.

LORDE: March 24, WaMu Theater, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.

ROBIN THICKE: March 26, WaMu Theater, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or ticketmaster.com.

GUNGOR: March 26, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

BIG HEAD TODD & THE MONSTERS: March 28, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

KINGS OF LEON: March 28, KeyArena, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or livenation.com.

THE DECIBEL MAGAZINE TOUR: featuring CARCASS: March 29, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

SHARON JONES & THE DAP KINGS: April 2-3, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

YOUNG THE GIANT: April 4-5, Showbox at the Market, Seattle. 800745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

BASTILLE: April 8, Showbox SoDo, Seattle. 800-745-3000 or showboxonline.com.

IL DIVO: April 9, Benaroya Hall,

Falcons vs. 49ers

5:40 pm

GamE timE SpEcialS Food and drink specials available in the lounge and at the bar top from Kick-off ‘til end of the Game!

FrIday 12/20

DJ Westwood

Classic & Contemporary Dance 9 pm – 1 am

saturday 12/21

Sly Mister Y

High Energy Classic Rock Party Band 9 pm – 1 am

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

Thursday, December 19, 2013 - E15

AT THE LINCOLN 712 S. First St., Mount Vernon www.lincolntheatre.org

‘All Is Lost’

7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 20-21 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 22 7:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 23

2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 22

National Theatre Live’s 2010 broadcast of Alan Bennett’s acclaimed play “The Habit of Art,” with Richard Griffiths, Alex Jennings and Frances de la Tour, returns as part of the NT’s 50th anniversary celebration.

Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, “Death in Venice,” seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W.H. Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for 25 years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. $15 general; $13 seniors; $11 students with $2 off for Lincoln Theatre members.

OPEN CHRISTMAS DAY 8am-7pm

CHRISTMAS BUFFET: Noon-5:00 p.m.

Assorted Cheeses, Salmon Mousse, Antipasto Tray, Turkey, Ham, Corned Beef, Swedish Meatballs, Mashed Potatoes, Salads, Whiskey Bread Pudding, Pumpkin Pie & Other Desserts.

Adults $21.99 • Seniors $18.99 • Kids $9.99

ROCKFISH GRILL Local Food, Local Beer, Made Here

NEW YEAR’S EVE SPECIAL Prime Rib (1/2 lb) Dinner with glass of Champagne 5-9pm • $18.99

320 Commercial Ave 360.588.1720

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PLEASE CALL EARLY FOR RESERVATIONS

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Live Blues, Jazz and Roots Every Wednesday

KARAOKE Fri/Sat HAvE yOuR pARtiES HERE!!

‘The Habit of Art’

VOTED BEST OF ANACORTES 13 YEARS RUNNING

S. Burlington Blvd.

Deep into a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean, an unnamed man (Robert Redford) wakes to find his 39-foot yacht taking on water after a collision with a shipping container left floating on the high seas. With his navigation equipment and radio disabled, the man sails unknowingly into the path of a violent storm. Despite his success in patching the breached hull, his mariner’s intuition and a strength that belies his age, the man barely survives the tempest. But with the sun unrelenting, sharks circling and his meager supplies dwindling, the sailor soon finds himself staring his mortality in the face.

PG-13. $10 general; $9 seniors, students and active military; $8 members; $7 ages 12 and under. Matinee prices (all shows before 6 p.m.): $8 general, $6 members, $5 ages 12 and under.

OPEN CHRISTMAS Christmas Buffet OR Limited Menu 8:00AM-7:00PM 360.466.4411

LaConner Whitney Rd. & Hwy. 20

BURGER/FRIES $5.99 11:30-4PM MON-FRI

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Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

E16 - Thursday, December 19, 2013

MOVIES

Dishing the dirt, heartbreak behind ‘Mary Poppins’

By ROGER MOORE McClatchy-Tribune News Service

It’s a Hollywood legend that Walt Disney felt some sort of malevolent glee in killing Bambi’s mom, and what that animated death would do to the children who saw it. But that’s only a legend.

P.L. Travers, the woman who wrote the glorious “Mary Poppins,” was a brittle, snobbish martinet and a humorless control freak. And that’s a fact. Stay through the credits of “Saving Mr. Banks” and hear for yourself.

‘SAVING MR. BANKS’ HHH1⁄2

Cast: Emma Thompson,

Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell, Paul Giamatti, Rachel Griffiths, Jason Schwartzman Running time: 2:05 MPAA rating: PG-13 for thematic elements including some unsettling images

Emma Thompson brings Travers to prickly life in “Saving Mr. Banks,” Disney’s amusingly testy and emotionally rich telling of Walt Disney’s courtly struggles with the dismissive writer as he and his dream factory turned her “Mary Poppins” into one of the most beloved children’s musicals ever.

The courtship — Tom Hanks plays patient, long-suffering Disney — is not an easy one. She is in the habit of barging into the movie/TV/theme park mogul’s office. He is all charm and informality. He calls her “Pam.” We meet Travers in London, her agent telling her she needs the money and must finally sell the screen rights to her most famous book.

Travers flies to Los Angeles and disapproves — of everything.

The flight, the scent in the air, the hotel.

“Let’s make something wonderful,” Walt purrs.

“I won’t have her turned into

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures via MCT

Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson star in “Saving Mr. Banks.” one of your silly cartoons!”

Director John Lee Hancock (“The Blind Side”) keeps this courtship center stage, and tells the story of Walt figuring out why Travers (real name, Helen Lyndon Goff) is the way she is and what he can do to make this unpleasant and miserable woman happy. That discovery is in the film’s many flashbacks, to young Helen Goff’s childhood in rural Australia, where her overwhelmed, worried mother (Ruth Wilson) was dependent on Helen’s father (Colin Farrell, very good), a drinking banker who would rather play with his kids than show up for work.

The flashbacks give the story

its pathos. The battles in the early ’60s in Burbank, Calif., deliver the laughs, and lots of them. Travers came to “supervise” the planned film, basically threatening to back out of the deal over the casting of Dick Van Dyke, over the inclusion of an animated sequence, over the silly, made-up-word songs of the beloved Disney house composers, the Sherman Brothers (Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novack, a hoot), and other irritants.

Hanks wears Walt’s moustache and comfortingly plays Walt’s Midwestern drawl (and smoker’s cough). And this always-reliable leading man ably suggests the gentle but firm never-take-no-for-an-

answer movie mogul as he lays on the folksy charm to a woman who is, in every way, immune to it.

“I could just eat you up!” he says, and she recoils. “You have got to share ‘her’ with me,” he pleads.

Travers will not have this story — forged in a dark childhood that desperately needed a magical nanny to rescue her and her family — “careening towards a (Disney) happy ending, like a kamikaze.”

Thompson plays Travers as a fairy godmother who has given up the sweet act to show her Cruella De Vil side. She is hilariously unpleasant, downright rude. But we, like Walt and her Disney-provided driver (Paul Giamatti), can

sense that it’s all an act, and that this pose has deep-rooted, painful underpinnings. It’s a great performance and an exclamation point on Thompson’s career.

The film’s a trifle long, especially for a story whose ending, we know, was a happy one. But with “Saving Mr. Banks,” Hancock, Thompson and Hanks find that holiday film sweet spot, blending the poignant with the unpleasant, the grim with the giddy.

It was never going to be “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

Reserve that honor for the film that inspired it. But “Saving Mr. Banks” is still one of the best pictures of the year.

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

Thursday, December 19, 2013 - E17

MOVIES MINI-REVIEWS Compiled from news services.

Ratings are one to four stars.

“American Hustle” — Christian Bale gives a transcendent performance as a con man who falls hard for hard-time gal Amy Adams. Director David O. Russell and his “Silver Linings Playbook” stars Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence went right back to work together on this wild tale about con artists helping the FBI on a sting. Comedy, R, 138 minutes. HHHH “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” — It’s a marvel the way Will Ferrell flings himself into playing the loathsome idiot for the ages Ron Burgundy, hired in this sequel to anchor on a cable news network in the early 1980s.

The gang all returns -- Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, Christina Applegate -- and they’re great. Funnier than the original, “Anchorman 2” is also, in its own loony way, a sobering look at the television business then -- and now. (Comedy, PG-13, 119 minutes). HHH1⁄2 “Captain Phillips” — Director Paul Greengrass (“The Bourne Supremacy”) delivers another intense, emotionally exhausting thriller with amazing verite camerawork and gutwrenching realism. Smack in the middle is Tom Hanks in a career-crowning performance as a worldly sea captain taken hostage by Somali pirates.

Even as Greengrass’ signature kinetic style renders us nearly seasick and emotionally spent from the action, it’s the work of Hanks that makes this film unforgettable. Thriller, PG-13, 134 minutes. HHHH “Dallas Buyers Club” — Matthew McConaughey plays Ron Woodroof, a grimy, shady, homophobic, substanceabusing horndog in 1985 Texas who learns he’s HIVpositive and procures unapproved means of treatment.

McConaughey’s masterful job of portraying one of the more deeply flawed anti-heroes in recent screen history reminds us why he became a movie star in the first place. We start out loathing this guy and learn to love him. Jared Leto disappears into the role of a transgender drug addict and Jennifer Garner is Ron’s empathetic doctor. Drama, R,

“Hours” — In one of his last roles, Paul Walker does some pretty solid work as a new dad desperately trying to save his OAK HARBOR CINEMAS ANACORTES CINEMAS newborn daughter in a New Dec. 20-26 Dec. 20-26 Orleans hospital abandoned Walking With Dinosaurs (PG): Friday Saving Mr. Banks (PG-13): Friday-Monduring Hurricane Katrina. One Monday: 12:55, 3:45, 6:30, 9:10; Tuesday: 12:40, 3:30, 6:35, 9:10; Tuesday: only wishes Walker had stronday: 12:55, 3:45, 6:30; Wednesday: 12:40, 3:30, 6:35; Wednesday: 3:30, ger, better-developed mate6:35, 9:10; Thursday: 12:40, 3:30, 6:35, 3:45, 6:30, 9:10; Thursday: 12:55, 3:45, rial to work with instead of a 6:30, 9:10 9:10 promising drama that eventu Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues Walking With Dinosaurs (PG): Fridayally unravels. Drama, PG-13, (PG-13): Friday-Monday: 12:45, 3:30, Monday: 12:50, 3:20, 6:55, 9:00; Tues96 minutes. HH 6:40, 9:20; Tuesday: 12:45, 3:30, 6:40; day: 12:50, 3:20, 6:55; Wednesday: “Inside Llewyn Davis” — 3:20, 6:55, 9:00; Thursday: 12:50, 3:20, Wednesday: 3:30, 6:40, 9:20; Thursday: With this dry comedy about 12:45, 3:30, 6:40, 9:20 6:55, 9:00 the American folk music The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug scene of the early 1960s, (PG-13): Friday-Monday: 12:35, 3:00, (PG-13): Friday-Monday: 12:30, 3:40, Ethan and Joel Coen have 6:20, 9:00; Tuesday: 12:35, 3:00, 6:20; 6:45, 9:45; Tuesday: 12:30, 3:40, 6:45; crafted another unique period Wednesday: 3:00, 6:20, 9:00; Thursday: Wednesday: 3:40, 6:45, 9:45; Thursday: piece. Oscar Isaac gives a 12:35, 3:00, 6:20, 9:00 12:30, 3:40, 6:45, 9:45 memorable performance as 360-279-2226 360-293-6620 the title character, a thoroughly unlikable, selfish, socially STANWOOD CINEMAS CONCRETE THEATRE poisonous miscreant. The Dec. 20-26 Dec. 20-25 music is terrific. With Justin 47 Ronin (PG-13): Wednesday: 3:40, 6:30, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Timberlake, Carey Mulligan 9:00; Thursday: 1:20, 3:40, 6:30, 9:00 (PG-13): Friday: 7:30 p.m. (3D); Saturday and John Goodman. Comedy, Grudge Match (PG-13): Wednesday: 4 p.m. (2D) and 7:30 p.m. (3D); Sunday: R, 105 minutes. HHH1⁄2 4 p.m. (2D) and 7:30 p.m. (3D); Tuesday: 4:00, 6:50, 9:10; Thursday: 1:40, 4:00, “Nebraska” — What a joy it 6:50, 9:10 4 p.m. (2D); Wednesday: 6 p.m. (3D) is to watch Bruce Dern playing Walking With Dinosaurs (PG): Friday 360-941-0403 such a miserable SOB in the Monday: 1:30, 3:25, 7:00, 9:00; Tuesday: best role of his long career.

1:30, 3:25, 7:00; Wednesday: 4:10, 6:40, CASCADE MALL THEATRES Woody Grant is a crabby, 9:10; Thursday: 1:30, 4:10, 6:40, 9:10 Burlington boozy, sometimes delusional Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues For listings: 888-AMC-4FUN (888-262old guy on a road trip with his (PG-13): Friday-Monday: 1:00, 4:00, 4386). son (Will Forte) to collect a 6:50, 9:40; Tuesday: 1:00, 4:00, 6:50; sweepstakes prize. Alexander Wednesday: 3:50, 6:20, 8:50; BLUE FOX DRIVE-IN Payne’s latest film is a modThursday: 1:10, 3:50, 6:20, 8:50 Oak Harbor ern American classic about The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Dec. 18-22 the dynamic between a father (PG-13): Friday-Monday: 12:50, 1:45, Anchorman: The Legend Continues (PGfrom the generation that 3:35, 5:00, 6:30, 8:10, 9:15; Tuesday: 13) and The Hobbit: The Desolation of didn’t speak about its feel12:50, 1:45, 3:35, 5:00, 6:30; WednesSmaug (PG-13): 7:00 ings and a grown son who’s day: 3:30, 6:10, 8:40; Thursday: 1:00, 360-675-5667 still trying to get his father to 3:30, 6:10, 8:40 explain himself. Stark, beauti Frozen (PG): Friday-Monday: 1:10, 3:40, ful and memorable. Drama, R, 6:40, 8:50; Tuesday: 1:10, 3:40, 6:40 115 minutes. HHHH 360-629-0514 “Out of the Furnace” — One of the best movies I’ve seen 117 minutes. HHH1⁄2 the beloved sci-fi novel while visual treat and an unforthis year is a stark, bleak, “Delivery Man” — In his keeping the adults engrossed gettable thrill ride, director intense drama set in a dying comfort zone, Vince Vaughn as well. The simulated battles Alfonso Cuaron’s amazing corner of the Rust Belt. As a plays a fast-talking, underagainst scary aliens are beau- space adventure evokes solid guy recently released achieving, irresponsible lout tifully shot and expertly cho“Alien” and “2001: A Space from prison and looking out for who learns he’s the biological reographed. Sci-fi adventure, Odyssey.” During some harhis tinderbox brother, Christian father of some 533 children.

PG-13, 114 minutes. HHH rowing sequences, you’ll have Bale strikes many different Weird concept. Weird movie.

“Frozen” — When a queen to remind yourself to breathe. notes and hits each with the Writer/director Ken Scott with icy powers (voice of Idina Thriller, PG-13, 91 minutes. same precision. Drama, R, gives us an uneven mishmash Menzel) accidentally freezes HHH1⁄2 116 minutes. HHHH that alternates between easy her kingdom, she runs away “Homefront” — A widowed “Runner Runner” — After an gags, shameless sentimental- and her intrepid sister (Kristen ex-DEA agent (Jason Statham) intriguing setup about a young ity and some just plain bizarre Bell) goes to find her. Sure to and his adorable daughter get poker whiz (Justin Timberlake) choices. The story gets more delight children and captivate a hostile reception upon mov- entering the inner circle of an ludicrous with each passing adults, Disney’s musical “Fro- ing to a small Louisiana town. online gambling mogul (Ben development. Comedy, PG-13, zen” is the instant favorite for Director Gary Fleder knows Affleck) in Costa Rica, “Run105 minutes. HH the animated feature Oscar, his way around this kind of ner Runner” devolves into a “Ender’s Game” — A firstand deservedly so. Animated material, and the screenplay by-the-book thriller. Thriller, R, rate cast of wily veterans musical, PG, 102 minutes.

by Sylvester Stallone has 91 minutes. HH 1 (Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley) HHH ⁄2 some salt in it, but ultimately, “The Book Thief” — A and fresh-faced youngsters “Gravity” — An accident “Homefront” flies off the rails. wondrous, richly textured, (Asa Butterfield of “Hugo”) sets two astronauts, a vetJames Franco’s not right as sometimes heartbreakingly deliver a rousing, challengeran (George Clooney) and a the villain, and the movie trav- effective movie about good ing adventure that should rookie (Sandra Bullock), adrift els awfully familiar turf. Action, Germans in World War II, satisfy most young fans of in space. Both a stunning R, 100 minutes. HH including a remarkable little

AT AREA THEATERS

girl and the couple who took her in while sheltering a teenage Jewish boy in their basement. Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson deserve Oscar consideration for their lovely, layered performances. One of the year’s best movies.

Drama, PG-13, 131 minutes.

HHHH “Thor: The Dark World” — Fires on all cylinders at times, with fine work from returning stars Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman, a handful of hilarious sight gags and some cool action sequences.

But it’s also more than a little bit silly and quite ponderous and overly reliant on special effects that are more confusing than exhilarating. Let’s face it, Thor’s kind of a bore and not nearly as intriguing as his deeply conflicted adopted bro, Loki (Tom Hiddleston).

Fantasy action, PG-13, 112 minutes. HH1⁄2 “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” — There’s far less fussing about in this movie than in its precursor “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” and although “Smaug” moves at a faster pace, it still feels overlong. At least this leg of the quest features giant spiders and a hot elf.

Can’t miss with that. Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen and Richard Armitage return to star, and Peter Jackson’s 3-D visuals are as breathtaking as ever. Fantasy adventure, PG-13, 161 minutes. HHH “12 Years a Slave” — is a film about great bravery, featuring some of the bravest performances you’ll ever have the privilege to witness. Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as a free man in New York state in the 1840s, who is kidnapped and shipped to the South, where he is beaten, given a new name and forced into slavery.

Unflinchingly directed by Steve McQueen, “12 Years a Slave” is what we talk about when we talk about greatness in film. With Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch and Paul Giamatti. Drama, R, 134 minutes. HHHH “Twice Born” — At times almost unbearably melodramatic, this war film is nevertheless worth the effort, thanks in large part to a magnificent performance from Penelope Cruz and some fine work from the international supporting cast. Drama, R, 127 minutes. HHH

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

E18 - Thursday, December 19, 2013

OUT & ABOUT ART

art show through Jan. 31.

Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Monday. 360-202-2956 or laconnerseasidegallery.com.

LOCAL WATERCOLORS: Local artist Daryl Deitz displays his paintings through Dec. 31 at the Skagit Valley Food Co-Op, 202 S. 1st St., Mount Vernon.

HOLIDAY ART: “Home for the Holidays” continues through Jan. 1 at the Rob Schouten Gallery, 765 Wonn Road, Greenbank.

The show features original artwork by 26 artists including glass, jewelry, paintings, sculpture, encaustics, ceramics, fiber arts, woodwork, cards, prints, books and more. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends (closed Tuesdays except by appointment). 360-222-3070 or rob schoutengallery.com.

IN THE ART BAR: Original artworks by Linda White are on display through Dec. 31 in the Lincoln Theatre Art Bar, 712 S. First St., Mount Vernon.

White has worked in various media over the years – drawing, colored pencil, watercolor, pottery, Sumi-e and, most recently, collage.

360-336-8955 or lincoln theatre.org.

“BASKETS, BOWLS, BOXES AND BAUBLES”: The show continues through December at the Anne Martin McCool Gallery, 711 Commercial Ave., Anacortes. In addition to new paintings by Martin McCool, the show features a variety of artwork by George Way, Art Learmonth, Martha Tottenham, Carole Cunningham, Debbie Aldrich, Tracy Powell, Bob Metke, Vicki Hampel, Patsy Chamberlain, Barbara Hathaway, Jane Hyde, Cathy Schoenberg and others. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday or by appointment. 360-293-3577 or mccoolart.com.

JENNIFER BOWMAN ACRYLICS

A show of new acrylic paintings by Anacortes artist Jennifer Bowman continues through Jan. 28 at the Scott Milo Gallery, 420 Commercial Ave., Anacortes. Bowman’s whimsical canvases feature colorful landscapes, florals and seascapes. Bowman will also exhibit her newest addition, silk scarves. The gallery will also showcase photo encaustics by Kathy Hastings, photographs by Randy Dana and Lewis Jones, oils and pastels by Amanda Houston, jewelry by Enid Oates and Kate Grinzell and custom tables and chairs by Gary Leake. Gallery hours are 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday or by appointment. 360-293-6938 or scott milo.com. Pictured: “Reflections” by Jennifer Bowman.

SKAGIT-INSPIRED ART: Skagit Valley artists Janie Ackerman and Gene Jaress are showing recent work through Dec. 31 at the Majestic Inn, 419 Commercial Ave., Anacortes.

Included are paintings, prints and drawings, many inspired by the light and terrain of Skagit Valley.

360-299-1400 or majestic innandspa.com.

Season of Thanks, Love & Joy,” continuing through Dec. 31, at Raven Rocks Gallery, 765 Wonn Road, Greenbank. The show features a varied selection of handmade arts and crafts created by gallery artists.

For information, including gallery hours and directions, call 360-222-0102 or visit ravenrocksgallery. com.

HOLIDAY ART SHOW: Check out “The Peaceful

ART INVITATIONAL: “objectification 6,” the

sixth annual 3-dimensional art invitational show, continues through Dec. 30 at the Smith & Vallee Gallery, 5742 Gilkey Ave., Edison. The show features art objects in a variety of media from more than 20 local and regional artists.

Purchases can be removed from the gallery immediately and will be replaced by new works during the run of the show. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Tuesday through Sunday.

360-766-6230 or smithand vallee.com.

PRINTS & SCULPTURE: Jean Behnke’s one-woman show runs through Dec. 22 at Gallery Cygnus, 109 Commercial St., La Conner. Behnke combines materials in nontraditional ways, using relief printing, casting and assemblage.

Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Friday through Sunday. 360-708-4787 or gallerycygnus.com.

NEW ARTISTS, ANNIVERSARY SHOW: Artists Alfred Currier and Anne Schreivogl have joined La Conner Seaside Gallery in partnership and representation, and will exhibit their work along with the three other artist-partners: photographer Mark Conley and painters Mark Bistranin and Dave Nichols. La Conner Seaside Gallery, 101 N. First St., La Conner, is featuring its anniversary

WOMEN’S WORK STORE: As part of the Storefronts Mount Vernon program, the Women’s Work Store is open at The President Hotel, 604 S. First St., Mount Vernon.

The Store features Oaxacan handwoven wool rugs, Guatemalan scarves, Peruvian jewelry, masks and tribal art from Africa, jewelry and clothing made by Nepali trafficking survivors, silk sari scarves, Mexican silver jewelry, handmade piñatas, fair trade food and coffee and more. Store hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Thursday through Saturday, continuing through the holiday season. 360-424-5854.

SMALL ARTWORKS: The 23rd annual “Honey, I Shrunk The Art” show continues through Jan. 19 at the Matzke Fine Art Gallery and Sculpture Park, 2345 Blanche Way, Camano Island. The show features small-format paintings, glass art and sculptures by 40 artists. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday or by appointment. 360-387-2759 or matzkefineart.com.

Skagit Valley Herald / goskagit.com

Thursday, December 19, 2013 - E19

OUT & ABOUT ISLAND ARTISTS: The multimedia exhibition “Echoes of the Tides” continues through Dec. 22 at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, 540 Spring St., Friday Harbor. Check out a unique selection of original artworks created in a variety of mediums by San Juan Island artists. Gallery hours are 4 to 8 p.m.

Fridays and Saturdays and 2 to 5 p.m. Sundays. 360370-5050 or sjima.org.

ARTS & CRAFTS SALE: Anchor Art Space will feature a Holiday Arts & Crafts Sale through Dec. 22 at 216 Commercial Ave., Anacortes. Choose from a variety of handcrafted items including ornaments, pottery, wearables, jewelry and more. Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. 360755-3140 or anchor artspace.org.

EAGLE INTERPRETIVE CENTER The Skagit River Bald Eagle Interpretive Center will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, through Jan. 26, at the Howard Miller Steelhead Park, 52809 Rockport Park Road, Rockport. The center will present speakers, birding information and guided walks along the Skagit River through the park. 360-853-7626 or skagiteagle.org.

multidisciplinary exhibit pairs science and art with the Northwest’s geological findings and the collection’s palette. The works MoNA ART EXHIBITS: offer an abstract interpreThe Museum of Northwest tation of our otherwise Art is hosting two exhibits familiar environment. through Jan. 5 at 121 S. The show includes works First St., La Conner:

by Guy Anderson, Kenneth n “Ric Gendron: Rattle- Callahan, Francis Celenbone” features paintings tano, Doris Chase, William and related works of SpoCurrent, John C. Ebner, kane artist Ric Gendron, a Ray Hill, John-Franklin dual-enrolled member of Koenig, Alden Mason, Peter the Arrow Lakes Band of Millet, Allen Moe, Keith the Confederated Tribes Monaghan, Carl Morris, of the Colville and the Spencer Moseley, Geoffrey Confederated Tribes of Pagen, Camille Patha, Richthe Umatilla. Gendron is a ard M. Proctor, Kait Rhoads, little-known but important Paul Soldner, Mark Tobey late-career Native artist, and Gerard Tsutakawa. and the exhibition feaMuseum hours are noon tures more than 30 years to 5 p.m. Sunday and Monof his expressionistic and day, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. lyrical paintings and prints. Tuesday through Saturday.

Curated by Ben Mitchell, $8 adults, $5 seniors, $3 “Rattlebone” originated at students, free for members Missoula Art Museum in and ages 11 and younger.

November 2012, and will 360-466-4446 or museum next travel to the Museum ofnwart.org. of Contemporary Indian Two new exhibits will Arts at the Institute of open with a reception from American Indian Arts in 3 to 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. Santa Fe, N.M. 11, and continue through n “Geology”: from the March 12: Permanent Collection: This n “North American”:

Film installation by Robinson Devor and Charles Mudede. Working outside the traditional narrative structure, the film installation follows a mentally exhausted airline pilot wandering through a massive public park.

Visitors will experience the pilot’s journey on multiple screens. The project was filmed entirely in Seattle’s Olmstead-designed park system. Devor and Mudede will introduce their film installation before the opening reception at 1 p.m.

Saturday, Jan. 11. n “Shoreline from the Permanent Collection”: The exhibit offers a kaleidoscope experience of color, media and composition, including artworks

by Guy Anderson, Bill Brennen, Kenneth Callahan, Richard Gilkey, Paul Havas, Charles Miller, Allen Moe, Mary Randlett, Jack Stangle, Mark Tobey and Hiroshi Yamano.

Curated by Lisa Young.

QUILTS, FIBER ARTS: Two shows are on display at the La Conner Quilt &

Textile Museum, 703 S. Second St., La Conner: n “Abstracted”: Through Dec. 29. The exhibition by the Fiber Art Network from Western Canada explores the concept of realistic and abstract art.

Pairs of artists illustrate their subject – one in a representative fiber art piece and one in an abstract/nonrepresentative piece. n “Inspired to Design: Art Quilts by Elizabeth Barton”: Through Dec. 29.

Barton paints or dyes all of the fabric she uses in her nontraditional quilts, which she describes as “contemporary,” “art quilts” or “fiber collages.” Her work is focused on a few particular themes: buildings and cityscapes, industrial landscapes, black and white curves and landscapes.

Museum hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. $7, $5 students and military, free for members and ages 11 and younger. 360-466-4288 or laconnerquilts.com.

BLUEGRASS JAM: The Skagit Bluegrass & Country Music Association’s Monthly Jam will take place from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 5, at Evergreen Elementary School, 1007 McGarigle Road, SedroWoolley. Come and play along, dance or just enjoy listening. Free. 360-8561058.

PLAYS THEATER TICKETS: Anacortes Community Theatre is offering a limited number of season tickets ($90) for its 50th anniversary season. Enjoy performances of six productions for the price of five, including “Gramercy Ghost,” “Les Misérables,” “You Can’t Take It With You,” “Lend Me A Tenor,” “Anything Goes” and “Bob’s Your Elf.” 360-2936829 or acttheatre.com.

MORE FUN

MUSEUM EXHIBIT: “We’re’ Still Here: The Survival of Washington OUTDOOR SCULPTURE Indians” continues through EXHIBIT: The La Conner April 2014 in the Anacortes Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit Museum’s Carnegie Galis on display through March lery, 1305 Eighth St., Ana1, 2014, at public locations cortes. The main exhibit, around La Conner. The created by the Washington annual juried exhibition State Heritage Center, folfeatures work by some lows Washington’s original of the Northwest’s most inhabitants through a war accomplished artists. For over land, a clash over culinformation, including a ture and a revival of Native map of the sculptures and tradition today. Anacortes works available for sale, Museum staff worked call 360-466-3125 or visit with representatives of the townoflaconner.org.

Samish and Swinomish tribes to develop exhibit MUSIC panels and artifact displays NATIVE FLUTIST: Native interpreting the experiences of Fidalgo and Guemes flute player Peter Ali will perform at 1 p.m. Saturday, islands’ first people.

Dec. 28, at the Skagit River Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Bald Eagle Interpretive Saturday and 1 to 4 p.m.

Center at Howard Miller Steelhead Park, 52809 Sunday. Free admission.

Rockport Park Road, Rock- 360-293-1915 or museum. port. Donations will be cityofanacortes.org. accepted at the door. 360853-7626 or skagiteagle.org.

HATCHERY TOURS:

Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group is offering tours of the Marblemount Fish Hatchery facility by trained volunteer tour guides from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. every Saturdays and Sundays, through Jan. 26, at 8319 Fish Hatchery Road, Marblemount. Learn about the operations of the hatchery and SFEG, salmon and their life cycle, the habitat needs of salmon and other local wildlife, and the bald eagle. Visitors may see part, if not all, of the salmon life cycle at the hatchery, along with other wildlife. Selfguided tours are available daily and start in the visitors center. Free. 360-3360172, ext. 304.

WINTER SOLSTICE ECSTATIC DANCE: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 20, Anacortes Center for Happiness, 619 Commercial Ave., Anacortes. Kids welcome with parents. $10-$15 suggested donation, free for kids. 360-464-2229 or anacortescenterfor happiness.org.

MUSEUM CLOSED FOR REMODEL: The Skagit County Historical Museum, 501 S. Fourth St., La Conner, will be closed for remodeling Jan. 1-17. The museum will reopen with the annual Gathering of Native Artists and dedication of new South Wing exhibits at 11 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 18. 360-466-3365 or skagitcounty.net/museum.

CRAB FEST: The Camano Center’s annual Crab Fest will be held from 3:30 to 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 11, at 606 Arrowhead Road, Camano Island. Only 350 tickets are available. $25, includes one whole Dungeness crab, baked potato, salad, roll, dessert and live bluegrass music by Blueberry Hill. A cash bar will be available. 360-387-0222.

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