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Rare art by Milford Zornes is on exhibit in Rancho Cucamonga, and it looks like time is running out to take a look. Reader Bob Constant saw the exhibit last Friday and says it's made up of paintings done by Zornes in World War II while stationed in China, Burma and India in 1943-44.

Says Constant: "The 86 paintings exhibited show scenes and life of the region. The battle scenes painted by Zornes were retained by the government and are not part of the exhibit, but civilian artworks were returned to the artist and are displayed. They comprise a significant historical record of life and times of that period. If you haven't seen the exhibit yet I think you would find it very interesting and informative."

And y'know, I probably would, and maybe you would too. But time's a-wastin': The museum is open Friday through Sunday and the exhibit, which began May 2, ends Sunday. Yikes! Hours are noon to 5 p.m. and admission is free (my kind of price).

The place: The Chaffey Community Art Association Museum of Art -- whew! -- in the north wing of the J. Filippi Winery, 12467 Base Line Road, Rancho Cucamonga. Phone: (909) 463-3733.

So, I saw "Iron Man" on Saturday afternoon. The B-level Marvel character made for a fun little movie, mostly due to Robert Downey Jr.'s droll acting.

Three little problems for me:

1) The allegedly tough-as-nails woman journalist from Vanity Fair asks Downey's character a few skeptical questions, then becomes so charmed she beds him. Then -- apparently regaining her skepticism after her one-night stand -- she's back covering his press conference at the end.

Yeeeeeah, that's how it works. What's a journalistic bimbo, a jimbo? She's a jimbo. One without any ethics or common sense or, apparently, a boss. C'mon, that sort of thing only happens when you work in TV and you cover the mayor of L.A.

The next two slay me:

2) In a series of realistic-looking magazine covers about Downey's character, one for Forbes (I think) has the cover line "Tony Stark Takes Reigns at 21." Uh, no, he took the reins, as in riding a horse. Sheesh.

3) Later a news crawl on a TV has the redundant phrase "$84 million dollar." That's like saying "84 million dollar-dollar."

Pretty amazing that an army of hundreds, or maybe thousands, labored over this movie, whose budget was a reported $180 million, but when it comes to spelling, they guess.

This is more egregious than in "A Scanner Darkly" when the lead character's ID spells his city of residence "Anahiem."

Other than those baffling errors, "Iron Man" isn't bad. Not great, but not bad. Most importantly on that scorching Saturday, the air conditioning at the AMC 30 gets a rave review.

Today's column is about La Verne's first poet laureate, Catherine Henley-Erickson. Her name may be familiar to Claremont readers: She reviews movies for the Claremont Courier.

The Claremont resident, a retired University of La Verne professor, has freelanced reviews for the paper since 1984.

I couldn't resist asking if she'd ever combined her two passions and reviewed a movie in verse.

"One time I reviewed one of Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare movies, I forget which one, and I did do it in blank verse, in sentence form," Henley-Erickson told me. "Nobody picked up on it."

By my troth! And here I thought I was asking a joke question.

"She always tells me if a movie is worth seeing," her husband, Joe, chimed in. "If it is, we go together and she sits through it again."

Today's print column mentions Record Store Day, a promotional event. OK, it's a gimmick, but one I'm fine with supporting. Record stores, bookstores, comic book shops -- these are as much my home as my actual home.

The event is Saturday. You can read about it on the official site, which includes a bunch of quotes from prominent musicians and music lovers (I like the one from writer Nick Hornby) and a list of participating stores, albeit no information at all as to the whys and wherefores. We can imagine why, though: Downloading, Amazon and Best Buy are killing record shops. Thus, they're trying to promote themselves, and good for them.

Rhino Records in Claremont appears to be the only local store participating, not that there's a lot of competition, other than Dr. Strange in Rancho Cucamonga, which is punk-only, and Glass House Records and Needles and Pins, two small shops in downtown Pomona.

Anyhow, Rhino's site gives the details on its plans: live music, exclusive 7-inch and LP-only releases, giveaways and a parking lot sale, plus 10 percent off all merchandise. The store, at 225 Yale Ave., is open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. that day.

It's billed as the "first annual" Record Store Day and one can only hope record stores exist long enough to have a few sequels.

Feel free to post comments about record stores of the present and past.

Sunday's column is about David Grossberg, an Ontario man who sent letters off to a bunch of older famous names to get their opinions on the decline of handwritten correspondence in favor of e-mail.

Snippets from their replies are in the column. Here are a few others I liked:

* Rex Reed: "What significance in a sophisticated society does a 'smiley face' have, and what in tarnation does LOL mean?"

* P.J. O'Rourke: "Rudeness and sloth in the guise of 'informality' exert their perennial appeal ... When words had to be carved in stone, we got the Ten Commandments. With the quill came William Shakespeare. The fountain pen produced Henry James. The typewriter, Jack Kerouac. And all we have to show for the computer is the blog."

Hey!

* Lee Iacocca: "Writing a personal letter to someone has always been important to me. I have the original handwritten letter I wrote to my father the day I was made president of Ford Motor Company."

* Hugh Downs: "Etiquette is after all, kindness, and it can be manifest in the terse realm of e-messages."

* Jack Kemp: "While I do email and messaging on my Blackberry, there's nothing like a written letter to convey sincerity, honesty and the integrity of meaning."

* Andy Rooney, who wrote a column about Grossberg's letter, also sent him a typed reply. Referring to Grossberg's insurance office address in downtown Ontario, the letter's last line grouses: "'211 West 'B' St' is one of the most characterless addresses I ever wrote and if I lived there I'd move."

Until the downtown redevelopment project forced him to move his office, Grossberg had an address on Euclid Avenue, a name Rooney would probably like. Grossberg got a kick out of Rooney's column and letter and plans to frame them and hang them prominently in his office.

Look for my column in the paper or online on Sunday.

A line wrapped around Rhino Records on Sunday of people waiting to see singer-songwriter Kimya Dawson, whose songs were featured in the movie “Juno.”

At the head of the line was a high school sophomore named Melanie, who brought a stuffed panda as a gift for Dawson’s daughter, Panda. Melanie told me she discovered Dawson from “Juno” and instantly felt simpatico: “It’s like she pulled these songs from my brain. It’s kind of creepy.”

The store was cleared of customers before some 400 fans, many of them under 30, were allowed inside for the free show. It was said to be the best-attended in-store performance in Rhino's 34-year history. Most of the audience hung on Dawson’s every utterance and seemed thrilled to be there.

In a rarity for an in-store show, Dawson was onstage for a full 90 minutes, performing 18 tunes in her sing-song, stream-of-consciousness style.

And that’s even though she said she was suffering from a cold and got only an hour’s sleep the previous night because of attending the indie-film Spirit Awards ceremony. Her band members took over in the middle of the Rhino show, performing eight more songs, to give her a rest break.

Strumming a guitar, Dawson sang songs from previous albums, the soundtrack and a just-recorded children's album.

“Sorry if you just came today out of curiosity, and then there’s all this,” Dawson remarked toward the end. “But all my shows are like this.”

On my way out I ran into an unexpected fan: developer Randall Lewis. He said he’d enjoyed himself. Who knew he had such out-there taste?

I don’t think he’s going to give Dawson a free house, though.

Today's print column is about watching the Top 100 U.S. movies as chosen by the American Film Institute in 1998. The list was revised in mid-2007, but by that point I just stuck to the original list. I'll get to the "new" movies on the revised list sometime.

As promised, here are links to see the two Top 100 lists. From there you can get to the AFI's plethora of other lists. You can visit the AFI and see the lists there, although you have to register.

For the sake of comparison, here are two other best-American-movie lists: a Chicago critic's Alternative Top 100 and GreatestFilms.Org's Top 100.

And, to broaden the base beyond American movies, here are the National Film Critics Essential 100 and the British Film Institute's Top 100.

Happy reading, and happy viewing.

I was stunned this morning to learn that singer-songwriter John Stewart, whom I interviewed in November for a column, had died unexpectedly of a massive stroke.

You can read about John on his website or in this obituary. I just wrote an obituary for us.

Too bad. I enjoyed speaking with him about "Daydream Believer," the purpose of our phone chat. I told him I'd like to talk to him again at county fair time about his song "Back in Pomona," as it's about his experiences helping his dad, a horse trainer. He said that would be fine. He also said that next time he was in the area, he'd call me to get together for coffee.

Oh well. My condolences to his family and to his fans.

By no means do I see every good movie out there, but when most American adults average something like five movies a year in theaters, clearly my 41 movies seen in 2007 puts me far above the norm.

So here's my top 10 list for '07. One or two of these were actually released around Christmas 2006, and are thus considered 2006 movies. But since probably 95 percent of their eventual audience saw them after Dec. 31 of '06, I'm calling them '07 movies. Look, it's my blog so I make the rules, not the members of the Academy.

In roughly descending order:

Children of Men, Juno, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Letters From Iwo Jima, The Darjeeling Limited, The Namesake, The Lives of Others, My Best Friend, In the Shadow of the Moon, No End in Sight.

Give me another 10 and you'd get Dan in Real Life, The Savages, After the Wedding, Charlie Wilson's War, 1408, Music and Lyrics, The Bourne Ultimatum, Once, Venus and Ratatouille.

The fake trailers and ads between features in Grindhouse would make my top 20 (the two features themselves, however, were awful, aside from the turbodriven chase sequence in Tarantino's segment) and if Blade Runner: The Final Cut counts as an '07 release, it would be No. 1.

Back in October, a photographer set up a portable photo booth outside the Claremont Library and took photos of anyone willing to step inside.

The result is 214 photos, blown up and displayed in an unlikely place: outside a parking garage.

The 72-foot long installation faces a plaza leading into the Claremont Packinghouse. The B&W images show people against a white backdrop. Every person who stepped into the booth is represented.

Some smile, some look serious. Some clown. One covers his face with his hands. There are individuals, couples, whole families. One woman holds a bakery bag. A man, apparently a parking enforcement officer, clutches a ticket book.

I happened upon the exhibit as it was being installed and returned Monday for a look at the whole thing.

One element that struck me is how diverse the people are. Diverse in ages, from infants to seniors, and diverse in ethnicity, moreso than one might expect in Claremont.

Spend a few minutes taking in the photos and you can’t help but be fascinated, and moved, by the humanity on display. I'm not sure I can explain why, but I get misty-eyed when I saw the portraits, and whenever I think of them too. There's just a vulnerability, a playfulness, a serenity to the people in these candid photos, and seeing so many of them in one place has a powerful, humbling impact.

I think the photos are worthwhile even if you don't live in Claremont, but living there does add a new element. These are our friends and neighbors, and you’re bound to see someone you know represented, even if it’s just someone you’ve seen around the Village but can’t place.

One familiar face is the white-bearded Ray Collins, a founding member of the Mothers of Invention, who can often be seen wandering the Village. (Collins has declined my interview requests, by the way, but we’ve had many friendly chats on various streetcorners.)

The photographer was Christopher Irion and his installation was commissioned by the Claremont Museum of Art, which is inside the Packinghouse.

“We want to bring the museum out of these four walls. We want to put art where the people are,” William Moreno, the executive director, told me.

The display will be up at least until Jan. 1. Highly recommended.

Not really apropos of anything 909, but over the weekend I watched "Giant," the enormously long 1956 movie that's one of only three with James Dean. He plays a Texas ranch hand who ends up a rich oilman and, by contrast to his "you're tearing me apart" angst in "Rebel Without a Cause," gives what I would call a comic performance.

He wears a cowboy hat tilted forward at a 90-degree angle, walks funny, mumbles, plays with a length of rope, drops a waterbag for no particular reason while hanging it on a nail and crosses his legs with deliberation. Making tea for Elizabeth Taylor, he puts down her saucer, then his, then her cup, then his, then adjusts the placement of her cup, pauses, almost adjusts it again, then withdraws.

It's a mannered, attention-getting performance, but it's hysterical. Dean reminded me of Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, who steals every scene he's in. Depp's mannerisms defied you not to watch his every move, and so did Dean's in "Giant."

"Giant" could have used Jim Backus in an apron, though.

On Friday I conducted a phone interview with singer/songwriter John Stewart for an upcoming column. Stewart attended Pomona Catholic High School in the 1950s, joined the Kingston Trio and for the past 40 years has had a moderately successful career as a folk singer.

I'll share one bit from the interview that may not make it into print. I brought up "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart. John Stewart mock-groused: "I've got people coming to shows thinking I'm him. They leave after four songs, disappointed. His real name isn't even Jon Stewart. I had the name first!" (It's true, Jon Stewart was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz.) Stewart added: "I think he's hysterical."

The column may run this week, or possibly the next.

I wrote in my column Friday about a young Frank Zappa's appearance in 1963 on "The Steve Allen Show," in which Zappa, who then lived on Ontario's G Street, and Allen play a pair of bicycles as if they were musical instruments. A real pop-culture treasure. I noted that I'd seen the video clip on YouTube but that it had been removed before I could get the column into print.

This prompted notes from two readers who offer links to other sites where you can watch the video. First, here's Dawayne Bailey:

"I used to live in Alta Loma, CA in 1987 when I first joined the band Chicago as their new guitarist at the time. I lived near Carnelian Street. I'm also a huge Zappa fan/collector and have written songs with Jimmy Carl Black from The Mothers.

"Enjoy!!"

That link takes you to the full video. And I also got a note from Dominick, who sent me a link to the first half of the video, which you can view below:

"As a Zappa fan, I love it whenever you write about him in your column -- it makes my day.

"One little piece of Zappa/Ontario history I found interesting is in the book Zappa by Barry Miles. In one chapter he explains a time where he stole a Christmas tree from 'The Sav-ons around the corner.' This is when he lived in Ontario on G street, so I'm guessing it's referring to what is now the Rite-Aid near Euclid. I also wonder if he had to do anything with Ontario Music as I'm pretty sure it was around in the mid '60s. Just some random thoughts."

Dom, I've heard tales he used to buy guitar strings at Ontario Music, but that may just be local lore.

Thanks for the links, guys. The video has to be seen to be believed.

I like Wes Anderson's movies ("Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums") but haven't really been entranced by them, and the last one, "The Life Aquatic," was a mess. Happily, his new one, "The Darjeeling Limited," now playing at the Claremont Laemmle, is pretty good stuff and one of the better movies I've seen in 2007.

To get in the spirit of the movie, which is set in India, my friends and I first ate at the nearby Delhi Palace Expresss. The buffet fare was only so-so, but with mango lassi and chicken tikka masala still perfuming our breath, we were primed for "Darjeeling."

It's probably Anderson's funniest movie to date, and his most colorful, literally. The inclusion of three melancholy songs by the Kinks, my favorite band, certainly didn't hurt its standing with me. Watching Adrien Brody run for the train in the beginning in slow motion will make you want to run in slow motion too.

Sunday evening I ventured to the Claremont Laemmle to see the new Ang Lee movie, "Lust, Caution." This is the first NC-17 movie to play Claremont and the first such movie produced in several years. It got the rating for its sexual content.

Slightly furtively, a friend and I bought tickets, gave them to the ticket-tearer and took our seats. The theater was two-thirds full with people of all ages. I think I saw a former councilwoman but under the circumstances decided not to make direct eye contact.

The story is set in China in the 1940s when Japan controlled the country. A Chinese collaborator with the Japanese regime is targeted by a group of amateur patriots from a drama troupe. A woman from their group manages to get close to him. Very close. NC-17 close.

Honestly, this was a classy movie and the two or three sex scenes were uncomfortable to watch (on purpose) but not especially long -- at least not relative to a movie that lasts 2:48. I doubt it was as shocking as the torture-porn of the "Saw" and "Hostel" movies that somehow get R ratings.

While I liked "Lust, Caution," it moves at, shall we say, a stately pace, and I don't see myself watching it again. It's very well made, and worth watching, but perhaps more to be admired than loved. In its final week, it's playing just one show a day, at 5 p.m., and ends Thursday. So if you're motivated to see it, this is no time for caution.

Unwittingly I participated in Lights Out LA, in which many county residents were encouraged to turn off at least one bulb between 8 and 9 p.m. Saturday, by going to the Claremont Forum from 8 to 10:30 p.m. for its first concert in its new home in the Packinghouse.

John York and Patrick Brayer, two Claremont fixtures, have performed together off and on for a decade. The duo shut down the Forum's longtime home on College Avenue a few months ago with a concert. (Because it was lightly attended, they did a second one.) Now they opened the new Forum musically.

Some 60 of us in folding chairs packed the place. York and Brayer performed in a portion of the room decorated with two floor lamps and a rug for a homey feel, York playing acoustic guitar, Brayer alternating between acoustic guitar, mandolin, violin and pedal steel.

They traded off lead vocal duties. Brayer did originals like "Freedumb" and "She's Pretty as Alcohol"; York covered "Walk Away, Renee" and "Highway 61 Revisited" and sang a few originals, including "The Earth is Getting Warmer," which he co-wrote with rock oddball Kim Fowley. He quipped that Fowley has a reputation as "the Darth Vader of rock."

The patter was friendly and warm, the musicianship sharp.

"We know there's other things you could be doing, so it's really cool that you're here," York said shortly before the final encore, a cover of "Go Now" (pertinent lyric: "We've already said goodbye...").

All in all, a fun evening, and one of those small-scale community events that makes you feel plugged in. Even when the lights are supposed to be off.

Claremont painter Karl Benjamin is suddenly ubiquitous (look it up), and that's a good thing. The New York Times had a piece on him Sunday (read it here), with an online slideshow to boot (view it here).

And the L.A. Times today notes he has work in a midcentury show at the Orange County Museum of Art (read that here). The LAT says the work of Benjamin and other "hard edge" painters "is about egalitarian perceptual liberation." I have no idea what this means. But I do know that I really dug Benjamin's show at the Claremont Museum of Art this summer.

As it happens, I got a very nice letter -- not an e-mail, a letter -- from Karl the other day. Among other topics, he touted the brand-new dba 256 wine bar/art gallery in Pomona, at 256 S. Main at Third Street (read about them here). I visited there on Wednesday and will have an item in Friday's column.

Saw "In the Shadow of the Moon" on Sunday, a documentary on the moon landings that interviews all the surviving astronauts except Neil Armstrong. Terrific stuff; the men, all or most in their 70s, are candid, funny and humble about their experience. I watched the moon landings on TV as a youngster, read space books and played with Major Matt Mason astronaut toys, so this documentary was right up my alley. It does a good job of recreating the period and the sense of wonder.

I saw the movie at the Claremont Laemmle, where it's playing through Thursday. Recommended.

Oh, and the Laemmle now has a marquee, on Indian Hill Boulevard, a feature that seems to have sprung up on Friday or Saturday as more green construction fencing came down. A welcome touch.

I dropped in Sunday at Scripps College's Ruth Williamson Gallery to see the Millard Sheets art exhibit.

Sheets was a titan in the Inland Valley's art scene, a watercolorist and muralist who taught art at Scripps from 1932 to 1955 and assembled exhibitions at the Fine Arts Building at the L.A. County Fair, giving the masses sometimes their first exposure to art. He also designed more than 40 mosaics for Home Savings bank branches.

The Williamson Gallery has some nice paintings of his on display through Oct. 14, from rural scenes -- including 1930s Claremont, Chino, Carbon Canyon and the Chino Hills -- to the California coast, urban L.A., Mexico, New Mexico and Hawaii. There's a second Sheets exhibit, at the county fair, that I hope to catch this week.

The Williamson Gallery show is at my kinda price -- free -- and you can find it at 11th Street and Columbia Avenue, open from 1 to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.

As I left the gallery, two middle-aged men passed me on the sidewalk, walking together and chatting. One was walking a small dog. The other was pushing a baby stroller. It carried two small dogs. In Claremont, the free entertainment never stops!