[ThisWeek] The End of Suburbia, Noodlehead! and The Constant Gardener at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

[thisweek at kenworthy.org]

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-

Moscow Civic Association presents
The End of Suburbia (not rated)
Monday, November 7
7:00 PM
$5 donation

The Moscow Civic Association is sponsoring a public showing of the
documentary film ³End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the
American Dream² at 7pm on Monday, November 7. Donations will be accepted at
the door to cover the costs.

The film explores the growing global demand for fossil fuels, the inevitable
decline of that fuel supply, and the impact on the American way of life.
The 78-minute film has been honored at numerous film festivals, and has
sparked discussion groups and citizen activism nationwide.

The MCA sponsored a showing of the film in September, and due to the
enthusiastic response of the audience, agreed to show it again at the
Kenworthy.  In an effort to encourage voter participation in tomorrow¹s
Moscow city election, the film is being shown the evening before election
day.

For more information about the film, see the websites:
http://www.endofsuburbia.com/index.htm
<http://www.endofsuburbia.com/index.htm>  and
http://eos.postcarbon.org/index.php <http://eos.postcarbon.org/index.php> .

The Moscow Civic Association is a non-profit citizen¹s organization that
strives to improve the quality of life for Moscow residents.  The mission of
Moscow Civic Association is to inform community members about important
local issues and encourage civic participation.  More information is
available on the MCA website, www.moscowcivic.org
<http://www.moscowcivic.org/>
* * *

Moscow Community Theatre presents
Noodlehead!
Original musical by Lisa Kliger

Thursday, Friday & Saturday, November 10, 11 & 12
7:30 PM
Saturday, November 12
2:00 PM

$11/adult, $9/senior, $6 student or child
All seating is general admission.

Advance tickets available at TicketsWest outlet (UI Visitor Center) and
online at www.ticketswest.com, and at BookPeople of Moscow.
Tickets also available at the KPAC box office which opens 30 minutes prior
to each performance.

Noodlehead! is an original stage production adapted from a Russian folktale
by Lisa Kliger of Moscow.

Noodlehead, a young Russian peasant, has a grand adventure full of magic
flying ponies, the Moon Maid, the Princess of the Sea, the Czar, courtiers,
peasants and a giant talking trout.

Original lyrics and music were written by Lisa Kliger and orchestrated by
Carla Chandler and Lisa Kliger. Noodlehead! is directed by Valerie McIlroy
and produced by Cathy Brinkerhoff.

Noodlehead! is funded in part by The Idaho Commission on the Arts supported
by the National Endowment on the Arts and generous donations from the
patrons of the Moscow Community Theater in addition to performance
sponsorships by area businesses.

For further information contact Valerie McIlroy, director, 208-882-4119 /
jungbrit at aol.com; Cathy Brinkerhoff, producer, 208-882-5230 /
cbrink at moscow.com; or Ann McElroy, media coordinator, 208-835-5675 /
nahepler at yahoo.com.
* * *
Also this week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-

Kenworthy Film Society presents
The Constant Gardener (R)
Sunday, November 13
4:00 & 7:00 PM
$5/Adults
KFS passes accepted
(see Review below)
* * *

Next week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre . . .

University of Idaho Department of Physics presents
Einstein¹s Miracle Year
Thursday, November 17
7:00 PM
Free

Everything is Illuminated (PG-13)
Friday, November 18
7:00 PM
Saturday & Sunday, November 19 & 20
4:30 & 7:00 PM
$5/Adults, $2/Children under 13
* * *

Also in November at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-

Wallace & Gromit
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (G)
November 25-27
4:45 & 7:00 PM

Coming in December: 2046, Junebug

Check KPAC¹s web site for dates & times. http://www.kenworthy.org

Regular Movie prices:  $5 adult, $2 child under 13
KFS passes accepted year-round for Sunday movies!
* * *

This week¹s review-

THE CONSTANT GARDENER

Directed by Fernando Meirelles. Written by Jeffrey Caine, based on the novel
by John Le Carre. 
Running time: 129 minutes.
Rated R (for language, some violent images and sexual content/nudity).

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

They meet as strangers who plunge at once into sudden sex. They catch their
breath, marry, and begin to learn about each other. Justin is an official in
the British government. Tessa is an activist. She goes to Africa with
Justin, her motives unclear in his mind, and witnesses what she thinks is
murder in an African hospital. Then she is murdered at a crossroads, along
with her African driver. And a doctor named Arnold, who she works with, is
found dead, too.

But why, Justin needs to know, did Tessa receive an e-mail asking her, "What
were you and Arnold doing in the Nairobi Hilton Friday night? Does Justin
know?"

The murder of Tessa takes place right at the start of "The Constant
Gardener," so it is not revealing too much to mention it. The movie is a
progress back into her life, and a journey of discovery for Justin, who
discovers a woman he never really knew. The flashback structure, told in
remembered moments, passages of dialogue, scenes that are interrupted and
completed later, is typical of John Le Carre, whose novels resemble chess
problems in which one solution is elegant and all of the others take too
many moves. It is a style suited to the gifts of the Brazilian director
Fernando Meirelles, whose great "City of God" (2002) told a story that was
composed of countless tributaries that all flowed together into a mighty
narrative stream.

The fragmented style is the best way to tell this story, both for the novel
and the movie. "The Constant Gardener" is not a logical exercise beginning
with mystery and ending at truth, but a circling around an elusive
conspiracy. Understand who the players are and how they are willing to
compromise themselves, and you can glimpse cruel outlines beneath the public
relations facade. As the drug companies pour AIDS drugs into Africa, are
they using their programs to mask the testing of other drugs? "No drug
company does something for nothing," Le Carre has a character observe.

"The Constant Gardener" may be the angriest story Le Carre has ever told.
Certainly his elegant prose and the oblique shorthand of the dialogue shows
the writer forcing himself to turn fury into style. His novel involves drug
companies who test their products on the poor of the Third World and are
willing to accept the deaths that may occur because, after all, those people
don't count. Why not? Because no one is there to count them.

Do drug companies really do this? The recent verdict against the makers of
Vioxx indicates that a jury thought Merck sold a drug it knew was dangerous.
Facts are the bones beneath the skin of a Le Carre novel. Either he knows
what he's talking about, or he is uncommonly persuasive in seeming to. "The
Constant Gardener" plays at times like a movie that will result in
indictments. What makes the film extraordinary is that it also plays as a
love story, and as an examination of the mysteries of the heart.

The performances need to be very good to carry us through sequences in which
nobody, good or evil, seems very sure of the total picture. Ralph Fiennes
plays Justin as a bureaucrat who seems detached from issues; he's the
opposite of Tessa. As he tries to get to the bottom of her death, he sifts
through his discoveries like an accountant unwilling to go home for the day
until the books are balanced.

One way of looking at Tessa's death is that she was a hothead who had an
affair with a handsome African man, went where she shouldn't have and got
caught in one of those African border killings where toll-collecting
soldiers with AK-47s enforce whatever they think is the law. Another way to
look at it is to give her the benefit of the doubt. To wonder what was
behind the embarrassing questions she asked at a press conference. To ask
why statistics seem to be missing, if a drug study is designed to generate
them.

As he probes through the wreckage of his wife's life, Justin encounters an
array of characters who could have been airlifted in from Graham Greene --
or from other Le Carre novels, of course. Hubert Kounde plays Arnold Bluhm,
the African who is not, in fact, Tessa's driver, but a doctor who is her
colleague. Danny Huston, tall and courtly like his father, John, and like
John often smiling at a private joke, plays Sandy Woodrow, the British high
commissioner on the scene. Bill Nighy, that actor who often seems to be
frowning through a migraine, is Sir Bernard Pellegrin, head of the Foreign
Office, and thus Justin and Sandy's boss. And Pete Postlethwaite, looking as
if he has been left out too long in the weather, is Lorbeer, a drug company
man who works in the field -- at what, it is dangerous to say.

"The Constant Gardener" begins with a strong, angry story, and peoples it
with actors who let it happen to them, instead of rushing ahead to check off
the surprises. It seems solidly grounded in its Kenyan locations; like "City
of God," it feels organically rooted. Like many Le Carre stories, it begins
with grief and proceeds with sadness toward horror. Its closing scenes are
as cynical about international politics and commerce as I can imagine. I
would like to believe they are an exaggeration, but I fear they are not.
This is one of the year's best films.

As reviewed by James Berardinelli writing for REELVIEWS

For his follow-up to City of God, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles has
elected to adapt John Le Carré's The Constant Gardener into movie form. A
slow-burn thriller simmering with international intrigue, the book would at
first seem too long and complex to be crammed into a two-hour motion
picture. But Jeffrey Caine's screenplay does a solid job of distilling the
essence of the novel into something manageable, and Meirelles' kinetic,
in-your-face style lends energy and immediacy to the proceedings.

This is not a thriller designed for the crowd that prefers shoot-outs,
chases, and other action-packed incidents.  The Constant Gardener is talky
and intelligent, and never takes the cheap way out. It's also something of a
downer, both it terms of how the main characters are handled and in its
cynical attitude toward the pharmaceutical industry. There's no mistaking
The Constant Gardener for anything other than a "message movie." Yes,
there's also a love story here, but the most powerful aspect of the movie is
what it has to say about the way medicines are tested in third world nations
without the consideration of negative side effects, and how bad things that
happen during these trials are covered up.  The Constant Gardener is
fiction, but the incidents it portrays are based on real-world events from
Africa and Asia.

The first character we meet is Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), a soft-spoken
British diplomat in Kenya. Within a few minutes, we learn that his young
wife, Tessa (Rachel Weisz), has been killed while traveling in a jeep along
a lonely stretch of highway. The official cause of death is a bandit raid,
but Tessa was a known activist, and Justin suspects a cover-up. There are
other loose ends. Was Tessa having an affair with Arnold Bluhm (Hubert
Koundé), the black doctor who accompanied her on many of her trips? And why
was she obsessed with a new drug being used to cure TB? His superiors (Danny
Huston, Bill Nighy) are tight-lipped and urge him to drop the matter, as
well as to return a letter that Tessa allegedly stole - if he should happen
to find it, that is. At the root of his investigation lies Justin's need to
determine whether Tessa loved and was faithful to him. The more he probes
into her life and the nature of her activism, the more galvanized he is to
act. Through Justin's mission, we learn as much about Tessa after her death
as we do during the 30 minutes of flashbacks that occur early in the film.

Meirelles makes the movie as much about Justin and Tessa's relationship as
about the political situation, although his docu-drama style (with lots of
hand-held camera shots) works against strong character identification.
Justin never comes vividly to life, and his romance with Tessa engages us on
an intellectual, but not emotional, level. Perhaps this is because Justin is
a reticent man, and the story is told from his point-of-view. Regardless, we
understand how each revelation changes Justin's comprehension of his
relationship with his late wife, but feeling for him is another matter.

Meirelles has chosen his cast for acting ability rather than name
recognition. Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz are perfect for the roles. He
brings a cool reserve to his part. Justin is a gentle individual, a tender
of flowers who would rather talk than act. Fiennes captures the essence of
such a man, and how he reacts when pushed. Weisz, despite being in less than
half the movie, is a firecracker, and Tessa's shadow looms large even when
she's not around. She brings passion and energy to the part; The Constant
Gardener crackles when she's on-screen. In secondary roles, Pete
Postlethwaite (as a field doctor in the Sudan) and Bill Nighy are
exceptional. Gerard McSorley is memorable as a knighted thug. The only one
to strike a slightly "off" note is Danny Huston, who is miscast as Justin's
slimy boss.

Like Hotel Rwanda, another film about atrocities in modern-day Africa, The
Constant Gardener's biggest challenge may be finding an audience. Despite
being based on a Le Carré book, the final product is more reminiscent of
City of God than it is something from the pen of the world's foremost spy
novelist. Yet, despite the lack of surprises and cheap theatrics, there is
plenty of tension and drama, and the acting by Fiennes and Weisz is top
notch.  The Constant Gardener is a movie with something to say, and it
speaks its message loudly and with eloquence. The only question is: how many
people will hear it?
* * *
  
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho
208-882-4127
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
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/thisweek/attachments/20051107/45c34538/attachment.htm