[ThisWeek] Kamikaze Girls at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

[thisweek at kenworthy.org]

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre...

Kamikaze Girls (not rated)
Friday, January 13
7:00 PM
Saturday & Sunday, January 14 & 15
4:30 & 7:00 PM
$5/Adult; $2 child 12 and younger
KFS passes accepted for Sunday showings
(see Review below)
* * *

Next week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-

Paradise Now (PG-13)
Friday, January 20
7:00 PM
Saturday & Sunday, January 21 & 22
4:30 & 7:00 PM

The Squid & the Whale (R)
January 27 at 7:00 PM
January 28 & 29 at 4:45 & 7:00 PM

Coming in February: Sirius Idaho Theatre presents Sight Unseen (see press
release below); Capote; Pride & Prejudice

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

For more information, go to www.kenworthy.org or call 208-882-4127.
* * *

Sirius Idaho Theatre presents

Sight Unseen, by Donald Margulies, the third play of the 2005-06 season,
with evening performances on February 2 - 4 & 9 -11, 2006 at 7:30 pm, and
with a Saturday matinee on February 11 at 2:00 pm. All performances are at
the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre.

Ticket prices for Sight Unseen are $15 for Adults, $10 for Seniors, and $5
for Students. Tickets can be purchased at BookPeople of Moscow (521 S. Main
St.) beginning January 17, or an hour before each performance at the
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre box office. If you would like to purchase
tickets and have them sent to you, email or call John Dickinson
(johnd at moscow.com, 208-301-4361).

Sight Unseen is the story of an American mega-artist so successful he's had
the obligatory profile in Vanity Fair and can claim astronomical prices for
his works sight unseen from a waiting list of wealthy patrons. In England
for a retrospective of his paintings, the artist goes into the countryside
to visit his original muse and lover, the "sacrificial shiksa" whom he
abandoned in his quest for the opulent life which now devours him. Donald
Margulies won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and Sight Unseen won the Obie Award
for best new American Play in 1992.

This production is directed by Pam Palmer. The cast includes: Donal
Wilkinson, Sally Eames-Harlan, Peter Aylward, and Anna Cottle. Sight Unseen
contains one or two words that may offend some audience members.

"Šyou can tell when a play has gripped its audience, for no one seems to
breathe, let alone shift in his seat. This phenomenon can be observedŠat
Sight Unseen...." ‹NY Times.

For more information about the play or to volunteer with Sirius Idaho
Theatre contact Pam Palmer, Managing Artistic Director, at 208-596-2270
<siriusidahotheatre at gmail.com
* * *

This week¹s review-

Kamikaze Girls

Written (in Japanese, with English subtitles) and directed by Tetsuya
Nakashima
Based on a novel by Novala Takemoto
Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes
This film is not rated.
Advisory: This film contains comic book violence.

As reviewed by Manohla Dargis writing for the New York Times

The yummy Japanese confection "Kamikaze Girls" deserves both a better title
and an audience to go with it. Based on the novel "Shimotsuma Story" by the
cult writer Novala Takemoto, this unassuming charmer has been saddled with a
name that summons up images of fighter pilots self-immolating in the name of
family and country. The girls of the film's title mostly just want to have
fun (as does the director, Tetsuya Nakashima), which doesn't mean their
pretty little heads are empty. It's just that thinking seems more agreeable
when you're wearing a frilly bonnet and peek-a-boo knee socks that make
grown men cry.

Set principally in a small town some 60 miles from Tokyo, the film traces
the slow-to-boil friendship between Momoko (played by Kyoko Fukada), a
devotee of the Lolita look and all things Rococo, and Ichiko (Anna
Tsuchiya), a snarling Goth chick. At first, the story seems little more than
an inventory of the early years and fabulous fashion choices of Momoko (the
name means peach blossom), the only child of a missing mother and a "useless
father." For this isolated 17-year-old, cocooned in baby-doll dresses and
dreams of 18th-century art and design, life is nothing more than a
performance piece in which she serves as artist, model and lone adoring fan.
On Planet Momoko, everything is beautiful and festooned with delicately
embroidered hearts.

Shot on what appears to be lower-grade digital video (it was actually shot
on 35-millimeter film), "Kamikaze Girls" has the cheerful, cheap look of a
bazaar. (It even includes a few gaudy anime sequences.) The fashions will be
familiar to admirers of Shoichi Aoki's photographs of Tokyo street fashion;
the music, meanwhile, sounds neo-Go-Go's, as bouncy as a wad of freshly
chewed bubble gum. That makes the film a nice primer to Japanese pop
culture, but there's more here than eye candy. Ichiko punctures Momoko's
isolation, taking a pin to the bubble the other girl calls self, which may
be a metaphor about Japan (or not). What the film does say, with infectious
exuberance, is that in a world in which shopping is a Cartesian truism - in
the immortal words of Barbara Kruger, "I shop therefore I am" - it's so much
nicer to go with a friend.

As reviewed by G. Allen Johnson writing for the San Francisco Chronicle

Anyone who's seen a glimpse of Japanese television (even if it was only that
hilarious send-up in "Lost in Translation") knows that the frenetic lunacy
that passes for entertainment over there can be tough to describe.

Japanese movies can be like that, too. But Tetsuya Nakashima's "Kamikaze
Girls," while being a silly, freewheeling, candy-colored lollapalooza, is
also a heartfelt tale of friendship.

The novel upon which the film is based, by Novala Takemoto, became a
pop-culture phenomenon in Japan. (The press notes inform us that Takemoto's
"empathy with social outsiders and decadent fashion sense have helped
cultivate a devoted following among young women, particularly those in the
'Lolita' fashion scene.")

Indeed, Momoko (pop idol Kyoko Fukada) is a high school girl who is decked
out in the 'Lolita' look -- doll-like series of outfits, complete with
parasol, that are her version of her favorite fantasy land: 18th century
Versailles. A child of divorce, Momoko moves from the big city to the
painfully rural town of Shimotsuma.

Momoko is content to live in her self-created world, which excludes all
others. That is, until she encounters Ichiko (Anna Tsuchiya), a biker girl
who dresses in the "Yanki" style. Ichiko, whose girl biker gang is called
the Ponytails, buys knock-off designer clothes from Momoko, and also forces
her way into Momoko's life.

The two develop a friendship, the strength of which surprises both of them
-- and us. That such a seemingly frivolous movie, filmed to approximate a
girls' comic book, becomes even slightly touching is a testament to
Nakashima. His shots, even those of short duration, are rigorously composed,
and he draws warmth from his two young leads.

"Kamikaze Girls" is like "Laverne and Shirley" on acid. I think that's a
compliment.

Film reviews researched and edited by Peter Haggart
* * *

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
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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