Soon, Chautauqua Institution programming will begin, and our focus will be temporarily shifted to the daily artistic product of our local contact with the big leagues.

Before we focus the Critical Eye in that direction, I want to share with you as much as possible of the non-Chautauqua material which I have received recently because I have often been told by readers that they like to have distant warning of upcoming arts events for planning purposes.

So, we’ll devote much of the column to Winks. But before we do that, let’s take a look at a locally written novel which I’ve greatly enjoyed reading, plus two films which I have recently watched on DVD. Summer, winter or in between, you can read or watch these at your leisure.

HEALING OF REV. JAMES

”The Healing of Reverend James” is a novel written by a local author using the name Thomas John. The book bears the subtitle ”A Journey Back to Belief.”

After a brief prologue set in 1885, the novel takes place in the Jamestown, New York, of 2015.

The central character is the Reverend James Matthews, the pastor of a Baptist church and the fourth consecutive generation of preachers in his family. The Rev. James is African-American and 50 years old.

In the prologue, which takes place in Florida, we learn that the first pastor in the family moved to Jamestown in despair after grief received from encounters with the Ku Klux Klan.

The original man has almost no possessions so soon after the Civil War. He owns only an old well-worn family Bible and a large beautifully wrought wooden cross which he has built with his own hands. He has traveled to Jamestown bearing his two treasures, where he has installed them in a small chapel of his own making. Gradually, a large church has grown up attached to the chapel and his great-grandson is now pastor of that church.

Two horrible events, one an auto accident caused by a drunk driver, the other an illness, have robbed James of his only family. In return, these events have robbed him of his faith in God. In a burst of anger, the man demands how God could allow the innocent to suffer and what he could have done which was bad enough to have these events take place.

The power of his anger causes him to misjudge his footing and to fall striking his head against the stone altar of his family’s chapel. As he loses consciousness, he imagines his ancestor returned from beyond to announce that he would be gifted with the power to heal anyone to whom he chose to give the gift, but there would be three conditions of his gift and he would have to learn the conditions for himself.

Among the conditions of his gift is that he can only heal one person per day. This puts him into a daily bind, forced to turn away until later dates and sometimes forever people he would eagerly help now. Is a person in horrible pain less important than a person who might die before the day of his healing might arrive? Is a child more or less important than a person of middle years or of advanced years? People blame him and become angry. Some become threatening.

Another condition is that his gift only works in the presence of a man the pastor dislikes and considers one of the worst people in the world, and that person is determined to make himself wealthy with the preacher’s gift. Let the preacher heal for nothing if he’s crazy enough to do so. His helper doesn’t mind charging a fee.

The pastor is a strong and kind man and his struggles are well-expressed and reasonable. The title refers both to the protagonist’s need to be healed and to the healing which he is able to accomplish. The language of the book is clear and the vocabulary holds our interest straight through to the end.

The book has 282 pages in paperbound edition. It was published in 2015. It is available for purchase through the Amazon.com website for $12.99 or by emailing the author directly at Thomas@authorthomasjohn.com. The ISBN number is 9780996392402.

If you read the book straight through, you can probably complete it in about three hours. I promise it will give you new insight into the place each of us bears in the world. I enjoyed reading it very much. I encourage you to give it a try.

LIKE SUNDAY,

LIKE RAIN

Since I work at a position in which I have to attend close to 200 live performances per year, I don’t go to a lot of movies. Since movie theaters stopped advertising in newspapers, I rarely ever see them in theaters in part because I don’t know what is showing in whatever town I find myself in. I know how to look them up on the computer, but it’s a pain and I don’t get around to doing it very often.

From time to time, I go to a movie store and look around for something unique to draw my attention, and if I find one, then I rent or buy it and watch it at home. By doing that, I recently found one of my favorite films of all time. It’s called ”Like Sunday, Like Rain” and if you’re unable to enjoy any film in which nothing blows up, you won’t like it. I loved it.

The film brings together in a believable way two dissimilar yet believable people and it gently demonstrates how they influence each other.

One of these two people is a young woman named Eleanor. She grew up neglected in a horrible family in central New York. Her father is a bit lazy and lacks original ideas or ambition, so her mother has nagged him until he runs off and then moves in with his brother.

Eleanor is a gifted musician, so gifted that she has been accepted at the Juilliard School, but the fees for going there are many times what she can even begin to pay. She has moved into New York City to escape her family and to seek opportunities to perform her music, but she finds herself a waitress in a dumpy coffee shop and living with a failing rock singer putting up with his cheating and his dishonesty.

Eleanor is played by television actor Leighton Meester. Her boyfriend is played by Green Day singer Billy Joe Armstrong. One day, she breaks up with the boyfriend but he comes down to the coffee shop to continue the quarrel and she ends up both fired and homeless. A friend recommends that she seek a position as a live-in nanny to a rich kid, which would solve both her problems, so she fakes a resume and goes to an agency. They send her to interview with a wealthy woman named Barbara whose nanny has just walked out on her and returned to Central America only days before she is scheduled to leave for China. So she holds an impromptu interview with Eleanor and soon is off leaving the young woman together with Barbara’s son, a precocious preteen named Reggie.

Reggie and the young actor who portrays him, Julian Shatkin, is the secret magic of the film. People make films about child prodigies all the time. Movies are filled with unusually brilliant young people who are neglected by their wealthy parents, so they respond by becoming negative, cruel and intellectually bullying their peers and the less talented adults by whom they live surrounded. Reggie is actually a nice kid.

On the other hand, he isn’t a porcelain prince the other side of a badly written characterization of a child. He finds it easy to feel contempt for the people around him, but he recognizes that quality as something unworthy of him, and once he does, he quickly apologizes. Reggie knows how to get around in the world, which Eleanor doesn’t, while Eleanor understands people and feels deeply about things Reggie has never known love.

The two spend a happy period of time together and each changes for the better. But then Eleanor’s temporary job as a nanny is over and the two must move on to their own lives, even though they wish they could stay where they are.

Eleanor isn’t Mary Poppins. Some of the things she does are unwise. Reggie doesn’t have the answers to all of Eleanor’s problems, nor to all of his own. But each of them makes the other better.

I loved the film. It was released by director Frank Whaley in March of this year and is already on disc. Perhaps if Eleanor had been able to manipulate minds with her thumbs, or Reggie had been an international terrorist, people would have sought the film out.

I don’t know if it will play in our area commercially, but it’s available for rental at area video stores and for download or purchase from a variety of sites. Download costs are between $4 and $13. Purchase at the site I checked cost $14.03.

The title of the film comes from the title of a work of music composed by Reggie and performed by him and by Eleanor, with the music representing how well their lives have interacted with one another. If you’re feeling down on the world, this film can raise your spirits. I recommend it.

50 SHADES OF GREY

There are films which I would pay not to have to review. I expected this to be one of them.

Actually, it’s not nearly as good as the previously described film, but much better than I’d expected.

I found this film during the same visit to the movie store and walked calmly past it when my conscience began to trouble me. I feel a responsibility in this job to comment on the arts, not only on the elements of the arts which I like.

A word in passing, however. A surprising lot of the dialog in the film takes place in the form of text messages. We have a fairly large television, though not as wide as a room, and I couldn’t read any of the messages, leaving me uncertain what the couple was saying.

Surely, you know that the film is based upon the wildly best-selling series of novels written by E.L. James. They all deal with a young captain of industry named Christian Grey who has made himself a multibillionaire by his late 20s. One day, he is scheduled to be interviewed by a reporter for a university student newspaper but the reporter is ill so she sends her roommate to do the interview, a naive young woman named Anastasia Steele.

Christian falls for Anastasia, but there is a problem. Standard romance doesn’t appeal to him. He enjoys whips and chains and things of that nature. What seems to appeal to the book’s many female buyers is the fact that by alternately accepting and rejecting his peculiarities, Anastasia finds herself largely in control of this rich and powerful specimen. He’s attracted to her, but he also cares about her, so that gives her power. Other women will do what he wants her to do, but now that he knows her, he doesn’t want other women.

The film will not build your intellect. It is beautifully photographed. It is erotic, especially if you find the kind of eroticism in which it specializes to be appealing, although there is only oblique nudity. We see quite a bit of her breasts and his bottom, but it doesn’t go any further.

Anastasia is played by Dakota Johnson, the daughter of Don Johnson of ”Miami Vice” fame, and Melanie Griffith, probably best known from the film ”9 to 5.” Melanie’s mother was Tippie Hedron, the beautiful blonde who was beset by flocks of birds in the Alfred Hitchcock film ”The Birds.” Dakota is beautiful, but in an unconventional way. She looks like someone you’d pass on the street and think, ”pretty girl,” but not like someone you’d dream about for the next decade.

Christian is played by Irish-born actor and model Jamie Dornan. I suppose he’s more conventionally pretty.

Men tend to be uncomfortable with films in which men with power allow themselves to be manipulated through their feelings. That’s why the audiences for the film have largely been made up of women.

The film was directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, a woman who first came to the public’s attention by making a film about the young John Lennon, then falling in love with and marrying the teenaged actor who played Lennon: Aaron Johnson.

I don’t really recommend the film, but I wouldn’t warn you against seeing it. If it interests you, have a look at it. If it sounds like something you wouldn’t enjoy, pass it by.

WINKS

The Jamestown Concert Association is offering a special deal to anyone who buys a season membership for their 2015-16 concert series. Pay before June 30 and you get admission to six concerts in Jamestown, plus a free guest pass so you can invite a friend to come to one of those concerts with you. The same ticket admits you to all the concerts in the 2015-16 series of performance of the Warren Concert Association.

For additional information, phone JCA at 487-1522.

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Next Saturday at 8 p.m., enjoy a silent film from the 1920s with the accompaniment of a live orchestra at the Reg Lenna Center for the Arts.

Tickets range in price from $10-20. Children age 12 and younger are admitted for half price. The film is ”The Kid,” which was written by directed by and starred Charlie Chaplin.

Tickets may be purchased at the door or reserve them by phoning 484-7070.

* * *

Monday and Tuesday at 7 p.m., the Winged Ox Players will hold auditions for their next production: the play ”The Death and Life of Everyman.” This is the company’s sixth production.

The company is a function of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, although anyone may audition for their plays whether they attend St. Luke’s or not. Auditions will be held at St. Luke’s in the basement or undercroft.

The play is co-directed by Deacon Pierce and Marge Fiore. They are seeking actors for 14 speaking parts and 11 non-speaking parts who will perform much funny business. They are also seeking a full crew, including a sound person a spotlight operator, stage grips, etc.

Anyone with questions may call the director at 969-7412 or email him at dpackfan@gmail.com.

* * *

The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford is offering a number of summer arts-related courses:

July 11, they will teach a course in painting for young artists ages 9-14. The cost is $25, which includes materials. To register or to ask questions about any of these courses phone 814-362-5078.

July 15-16, they will offer a course in television production for students ages 10-16. Students will learn about roles both in front of and behind the camera. Cost is $59 for the first student and $49 for each additional student in the same family.

July 21 and 23, beginning and hobbyist photographers may take a course in taking outdoor portraits.

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Audiences who enjoy theater in which the audience becomes part of the action and interacts with the actors will want to attend ”Betsy Carmichael’s Late Night Bingo,” as performed by O’Connell and Company on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., plus tomorrow at 7 p.m. and next Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

The company performs at the Park School at 4625 Harlem Road in the Buffalo suburb of Snyder. Tickets are $25 with discounts offered to senior citizens, students and members of the military. For information or to reserve tickets, phone 848-0800 or go to the company’s web site at www.oconnellandcompany.com.

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Between July 6 and Aug. 21, between the hours of 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester invites young visitors to play at the institution, which makes play their reason for being.

Arts, crafts, games, books and imaginative play will be offered with skilled supervision, along with all the museum’s equipment and facilities.

For directions to the museum, fees and other information, visit their website at www.museumofplay.org or phone 585-263-2700.

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Since Chautauqua will only be offering three performances of two operas all summer, frustrated opera lovers may want to visit the Glimmerglass Festival, which will be operating a rolling repertory of four operas between July 10 and Aug. 23.

The festival traditionally offers one warhorse, one experimental or rarely-done opera, one Baroque work and one light comedy or Broadway-style production.

This season’s offerings will be Mozart’s ”The Magic Flute,” Verdi’s ”Macbeth,” Vivaldi’s ”Cato in Utica,” and Leonard Bernstein’s ”Candide.”

The company performs in Cooperstown on the shores of Lake Otsego in a uniquely designed theater, the walls of which can be opened in good weather or closed when it is inclement.

For additional information about Glimmerglass, phone 607-547-1257 or visit their website at www.glimmerglass.org.

The festival also provides a number of public lectures by well-known opera stars, non-singing opera buffs such as Justice Ruth and Bader Ginsberg and other programs and projects.