[ThisWeek] Madagascar at the Kenworthy

[thisweek at kenworthy.org]

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-

Gritman Medical Center presents
Madagascar (PG)
Wednesday, August 17
1:00 PM
$4 adults/$1 children under 13
Thursday - Sunday, August 18 - 21
7:00 PM
$5/adults, $2/children under 13
(see REVIEW below)
* * *

Next week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre . . .

Howl¹s Moving Castle (PG)
Friday, Saturday & Sunday, August 26, 27 & 28
4:15 & 7:00 PM

Regular Movie prices:  $5 adult, $2 child 12 or younger
KFS passes accepted year-round for Sunday movies!
* * *

Is your KFS punch card running low?

Purchase a new KFS pass at the Moscow Farmers¹ Market this Saturday.
Available at the Sirius Idaho Theatre ironing board, where you can also
purchase tickets for the first show of the 2005-06 season.

Sirius Idaho Theatre presents
The Beauty Queen of Leenane
by Martin McDonagh

"The most wickedly, brilliantly abrasive young dramatist on either side of
the Irish Sea..." The New York Times

The Beauty Queen of Leenane received four Tony Awards in 1998.

Directed by Forrest Sears

September 8-10 & 15-17 at 7:30 pm
September 10 & 17 at 2:00 pm

Performances at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
508 S. Main St. Moscow, Idaho

Tickets available at Moscow Farmers¹ Market every Saturday and at BookPeople
of Moscow
$15 adults, $10 seniors, $5 students

Set in the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, in western Ireland, The
Beauty Queen of Leenane tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a
plain and lonely woman in her early forties, and Mag her manipulative ageing
mother whose interference in Maureen's first and potentially last loving
relationship sets in motion a train of events that is as extraordinarily
funny as it is horrific.

For more information about the play or to volunteer with Sirius Idaho
Theatre, 
contact John Dickinson at 208-301-4361 or <johnd at moscow.com>
or visit the web site of Sirius Idaho Theatre
http://www.siriusidahotheatre.com/
* * *

Fall 2005 at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

Batman Begins (PG13)
Sept 2 - 4 at 4:00 & 7:00 PM
Tickets $5/adult, $2/child under 13

Sirius Idaho Theatre presents
The Beauty Queen of Leenane
By Martin McDonagh
Sept 8 - 10, 15 - 17 at 7:30 PM
Sept 10 & 17 at 2:00 PM
Tickets $15/adult, $10/senior, $5/student
Advance tickets at BookPeople of Moscow and the Moscow Farmers¹ Market

American Values:  American Wilderness
A documentary film with Christopher Reeve
Sept 18 at 5:00 & 7:00 PM
Tickets $5/adult, $2/child under 13

Rock School
A documentary film
Sept 23 - 25
Tickets $5/adult, $2/child under 13

m-pact in concert
Sept 30 at 7:30 PM
Tickets $12/adult, $6/student

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Oct 7 - 9
Tickets $5/adult, $2/child under 13

Darol Anger Republic of Strings in concert
October 27 at 7:30 PM
Tickets $16/adult, $12/senior or student

Moscow Community Theatre presents
Noodlehead
November 3 - 5, 10 - 12 at 7:30 PM
November 6 & 12 at 2:00 PM
$11/adult, $9/student or senior

Coming attractions:  My Summer of Love, Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, Mad
Hot Ballroom, March of the Penguins.  Check web site for dates & times.
http://www.kenworthy.org
* * *

This week¹s review-

Madagascar
DreamWorks Animation presents a film directed by Eric Darnell and Tom
McGrath. Written by Mark Burton and Billy Frolick.

Cast:
featuring the voices of:
Alex the Lion: Ben Stiller
Marty the Zebra: Chris Rock
Melman the Giraffe: David Schwimmer
Gloria the Hippo: Jada Pinkett Smith
Julian: Sacha Baron Cohen
Maurice: Cedric the Entertainer
Mort: Andy Richter

Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes.
Rated PG: mildly vulgar language, crude humor, and some serious themes.


As reviewed by Roger Ebert writing for the Chicago Sun-Times

One of the fundamental philosophical questions of our time is why Goofy is a
person and Pluto is a dog.

>From their earliest days when Mickey Mouse was still in black and white,
cartoons have created a divide between animals who are animals and animals
who are human in the sense that they speak, sing, have personalities and are
voiced by actors. 

Now comes "Madagascar," an amusing animated comedy that has something very
tricky going on. What happens if the human side of a cartoon animal is only,
as they say, a veneer of civilization? Consider Alex the Lion. In the
Central Park Zoo, he's a star, singing "New York, New York" and looking
forward to school field trips because he likes to show off for his
audiences. 

Alex (voice by Ben Stiller) lives the good life in the zoo, dining on prime
steaks every day, courtesy of his keepers. His friends include Marty the
Zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the
Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith). If Alex likes it in the zoo, Marty has
wanderlust. He wants to break out and live free. One night he escapes from
the zoo, and his three friends catch up with him just as he's about to board
a train for Connecticut, acting on bad advice from the giraffe, who has
informed him that is where "the wild can be found."

The animals are captured, crated up and shipped off aboard a cargo ship to a
wild animal refuge in Africa. On the way, a mutiny by rebellious penguins
leads to them being swept off the deck, and washed ashore in Madagascar.

They're back in the wild, all right, but without survival training. The
local population, primarily a colony of lemurs, is ruled by King Julien
(Sacha Baron Cohen) and his right-paw-man Maurice (Cedric the Entertainer).
Some of the locals think maybe the New Yorkers are obnoxious tourists, even
though Alex stages his zoo act, much in the same sense captured prisoners of
war entertain the commandant. Then the intriguing problem of the
human/animal divide comes into play. Alex misses his daily stacks of sirloin
and porterhouse. He is a meat-eater. He eats steak. "Which is you," Marty
the Zebra is warned. At one point, driven wild by hunger, Alex even tries to
take a bite out of Marty's butt.

This is the kind of anarchy that always lingers under the surface of animal
cartoons. How would Goofy feel if Pluto wanted to marry one of his
daughters? However, the movie is much too safe to follow its paradoxes to
their logical conclusion, and that's probably just as well.

"Madagascar" is funny, especially at the beginning, and good-looking in a
retro cartoon way, but in a world where the stakes have been raised by
"Finding Nemo," "Shrek" and "The Incredibles," it's a throwback to a more
conventional kind of animated entertainment. It'll be fun for the smaller
kids, but there's not the needed crossover appeal for their parents.
 

As reviewed by Mich LaSalle writing for the San Francisco Chronicle

"Madagascar" is an animated film that's the usual modern mix of high spirits
and irreverence, with a fast-moving story and lots of half-funny cultural
references designed to go over the kiddies' heads and amuse the adults.
Those things make it tolerable.

What makes it good is that the story is a kind of parable that suggests some
seriousness beneath the surface, even sadness. Within the limits of a film
meant for kids, "Madagascar" is an honest movie. It sets up a premise, about
animals escaping from a zoo, and follows through on it, presenting
uncomfortable little moments of truth along the way. The humor is not just
zaniness. It follows, naturally, from the depiction of creatures under
stress -- in this case, a zebra, a lion, a giraffe and a hippopotamus.

"Madagascar" invites the audience to look at a zoo as a kind of jail.

The filmmakers waste no time. The zebra breaks out; his friends follow, and
next thing they know, they are each in a packing crate and, thanks to some
animal rights activists, on their way back to the wild. Again, behind the
sight gag of the animals in their respective crates is a touch of
seriousness. When the zebra wakes up and finds himself crated, it's a little
like the buried-alive scene from "The Vanishing."

In another animated film, making it to the wild might have been the place to
end it, with the sound track cranked and the fade out coming as the animals
troop off into the sunset.

Not here. In "Madagascar," things are just getting started. The wild is all
about survival, and although "Madagascar" makes the struggle for survival
funny, it doesn't make it any less bleak. The four animals, having been
raised in captivity, are confronted by a world in which everybody seems to
be eating each other, and it's appalling.

"Madagascar" isn't deep and would have no business being deep. But that it
keeps one foot in reality is enough to keep us guessing.


As reviewed by Sean Axmaker writing for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Showbiz lion Alex, the merchandised-to-the-mane king of the Central Park
Zoo, loves living in the Big Apple: the feel of cement, the sounds of cars
and sirens, the black night sky where helicopter spotlights are the closest
you get to starlight. His best friend, Marty the zebra, longs for the
legendary open plains.

When Marty escapes to sample the wild (of Connecticut, via Grand Central
Station, of course), the ensuing city adventure of Alex and his buddies,
Melman the hypochondriac giraffe and Gloria the hippo, is misinterpreted as
a cry for escape, the furthest thing from their minds. Shipped off to an
animal preserve in Kenya, they wind up (due to the "Great Escape"
shenanigans of a hilarious platoon of penguins) washing ashore in
Madagascar.

Alex is no predator, he's a ham who lives for the spotlight, but he succumbs
to his primal instincts in the wild (the marvelously animated sequences
suggest a giant housecat in the feral fever of play) and his best friends
start to look an awful lot like dinner on the hoof. It's the film's basic
conflict -- instinct versus individual choice -- and it comes through with
what I like to call the "Iron Giant" moral: "You are who you choose to be."

Slim on plot but fat with furiously paced gags, "Madagascar" is a routine
story enlivened by location, color, exotic landscapes and a cascade of comic
flourishes. 

For the adults in the audience, there is a non-stop barrage of cultural
references, from "American Beauty" and "Silence of the Lambs" to "The
Twilight Zone" and "National Geographic" TV specials.


Film reviews researched and edited by Peter A. Haggart
* * *

Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho
For more information, call 208-882-4127 or visit http://www.kenworthy.org
* * *

Sign up for this weekly email on events and movies at the Kenworthy by
logging onto our website
http://www.kenworthy.org

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PAMELA PALMER, Volunteer
Mailto:ppalmer at moscow.com
Film and Events Committee
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

http://www.kenworthy.org
To speak with a KPAC staff member,
call (208) 882-4127
Mailto:kpac at moscow.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                

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