[ThisWeek] Racing Stripes and Sahara at the Kenworthy

[thisweek at kenworthy.org]

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-

Racing Stripes (PG)
Wednesday, July 6
1 & 3:30 PM
$1/ages 12 and under, $4/ages 13 and over

Thanks to the following Wednesday matinee sponsors:
Insty Prints & North Idaho Athletic Club, Tom & JoAnn Trail, U.S. Bank,
Wells Fargo Bank, Gritman Medical Center

Sahara (PG13)
Friday, Saturday & Sunday, July 8, 9 & 10
7:00 PM
(see REVIEW below)
* * *

Next week at the Kenworthy-

Millions (PG)
Presented by US Bank
July 13, 1:00 PM
July 14, 16 & 17, 7:00 PM

Ala Zingara in concert
July 15, 7:30 PM
(See press release below)
* * *

Also in July at the Kenworthy-

Napoleon Dynamite (PG)
July 20, 1:00 & 7:00 PM

Sin City (R)
July 22 ­ 24, 7:00 PM

Two Brothers (PG)
Presented by Insty Prints & NIAC
July 27, 1:00 PM

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (PG)
July 29 ­ 31, 7:00 PM

Coming in August:  Because of Winn Dixie, Robots, Madagascar, Mad Hot
Ballroom, Howl¹s Moving Castle

Regular Movie prices:  $5 adult, $2 child 12 or younger.
Wednesday matinee prices:  $4/adult, $1/child 12 or younger
KFS passes accepted year-round for Sunday movies!
* * *
Ala Zingara in concert

Ala Zingara, that quirky gypsy roots rock band born at the Lionel Hampton
School of Music where they met in the late 90Œs, is coming home and will be
playing at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre in Moscow on Friday, July
15th. Tickets are $8 in advance (at Bookpeople in Moscow) and $10 at the
door. Doors open at 7pm and the show begins at 7:30. This is an all ages
show. 

Bring your dancing shoes as these guys span a great variety of grooves,
rhythms, and music genres with a wide generational appeal. From seriously
hard hitting riff oriented grooves to gypsy boom bamm, alt-country, bossa
nova, and celtic stompsŠ these guys present a kaleidoscopically fresh sound.

Acoustic Wave Machine, also from Moscow, will start off the show with their
cool blues-folk acoustic groove. Beverages will be served by The Red Door.

For more information, contact:
Robert Parks
923  NW 51st Street
Seattle, WA  98107

206-297-1377
robert at alazingara.com <mailto:robert at alazingara.com>

www.alazingara.com <http://www.alazingara.com/>   (band website)
* * *

This week¹s review-

Sahara

Directed by Breck Eisner
Running time: 2 hours, 7 minutes
''Sahara'' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some
violence, disturbing scenes of illness and strong language.

As reviewed by Colette Bancroft writing for the St. Petersburg Times

Author Clive Cussler has written oodles of books about adventure hero Dirk
Pitt, and all of them have sold a zillion copies and seemed made for the
movies, what with their literary themes of undersea exploration and
explosions. But the single one filmed, Raise the Titanic (1980), reportedly
was such a disappointment to Cussler that he turned down other movie deals.

Until now. Sahara dries Dirk off for a trip to the desert of the title, but
it doesn't slow him down. As played by Matthew McConaughey, he's a dashing
mix of Indiana Jones, James Bond and Angus MacGyver, with a little Willie
Nelson thrown in.

Dirk and his best friend, Al Giordino (Steve Zahn), work for the National
Underwater and Marine Agency, a real-life nonprofit marine salvage
organization founded by Cussler. Their jobs involve ripping around in big,
fast boats with rocking sound systems and pulling various lost treasures
from the watery depths.

Hard to beat that, but there's one legendary prize Dirk longs to track down.
It seems a Confederate ironclad slipped past a Union blockade at the end of
the Civil War and made it all the way to Africa.

Don't look for logic in Sahara. Just relax and give in; Dirk will always
show up just as Eva needs rescuing, even if it means he has to rustle up a
couple of camels after his boat explodes. Dirk and Al will be dumped in the
middle of the desert, sled down a giant dune in a pickup truck bed and find
the wreckage of an old airplane, which they will rig to windsurf to the
nearest telephone. And when Dirk wraps his head in a turban, it will be just
the shade of blue to set off his eyes.

Directing his first feature, Breck Eisner (son of Disney's Michael) keeps
the pace brisk and has the sense to honor his inspirations. Sahara is filled
with visual and musical nods and winks to the Bond and Jones films, as well
as a plot twist from Three Kings toward the end.


As reviewed by Stephen Holden writing for the New York Times

It may not be ''Raiders of the Lost Ark,'' but ''Sahara,'' the screen
adaptation of Clive Cussler's sprawling African adventure yarn, is a movie
that keeps half a brain in its head while adopting the amused, cocky smirk
of the Indiana Jones romps. A fusion of old and new, it both is and isn't a
delirious escape into adventure-serial heaven. Amid its madcap derring-do,
the movie inserts clear, simple alarms about environmental protection,
African despotism, global interdependence and bureaucratic cowardice.

The movie's dressing up of an old-fashioned adventure fantasy in
contemporary threads is an experiment in juxtaposition that gains in
assurance as the film bounds along. Given the grim news these days of
African nations ground to dust under the boots of ruthless, feuding
warlords, the film's caricatured vision of greed, oppression and misery in
parts of Africa doesn't feel entirely like a caricature. Ultimate real-life
horror, after all, is a grotesque cartoon.

''Sahara'' is the sure-handed directorial debut of Breck Eisner (son of
Michael), who maintains strict control of an oversize story (the novel runs
to 700 pages) whose multiple plots could easily have splintered into an
incomprehensible tangle. The screenplay, credited to four writers, allows
you to follow the multinational crew of treasure hunters, warlords, tribal
chiefs and officials from various global agencies as they gallivant across
Western Africa (the movie was filmed mostly in Morocco) without losing your
way. 

What starts out as a treasure hunt turns into a desperate attempt to
forestall an environmental catastrophe one character calls ''the Chernobyl
of the Atlantic.''


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

I treasure the movie's preposterous plot. It's so completely over the top,
it can see reality only in its rear-view mirror. What can you say about a
movie based on the premise that a Confederate ironclad ship from the Civil
War is buried beneath the sands of the Sahara, having ventured there 150
years ago when the region was, obviously, damper than it is now?

The movie directed by Breck Eisner, son of Michael, is essentially a laundry
line for absurd but entertaining action sequences. Dirk, Eva and Al have an
amazing series of close calls in the desert, while Admiral Sandecker (ret.)
(William H. Macy) keeps in touch with them by radio and remains steadfast in
his course, whatever it is. There are chases involving planes, trains,
automobiles, helicopters, dune buggies, wind-propelled airplane carcasses,
and camels. The heroes somewhat improbably conceal themselves inside a tank
car on a train going toward a secret desert plant (improbably, since the car
going in that direction should have been full), and then find themselves one
of those James Bondian vantage points inside the plant, from where they can
observe uniformed clones carrying out obscure tasks.

There is a race against time before everything explodes, of course, and some
bizarre science involving directing the sun's rays, and then what do you
suppose turns up? If you slapped yourself up alongside the head and shouted
out, "The long-lost Civil War ironclad?," you could not be more correct.
Gee, I wonder if its cannons will still fire after this length of time?

I enjoyed this movie on its own dumb level, which must mean (I am forced to
conclude) in my own dumb way. I perceive that I have supplied mostly a
description of what happens in the film, filtered through my own skewed
amusement. Does that make this a real review?

Funny you should ask. As it happens, I happened to be glancing at Gore
Vidal's article about the critic Edmund Wilson in a 1993 issue of the New
York Review of Books. There Vidal writes: "Great critics do not explicate a
text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the
description itself is not the criticism." In this case, I think the
description itself is the criticism. Yes, I'm almost sure of it.

Film reviews are researched and edited by Peter Haggart
* * *

Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho
For more information, call 208-882-4127 or visit 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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