[ThisWeek] The Squid & the Whale at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

[thisweek at kenworthy.org]

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre...

The Squid & the Whale (R)
Friday, January 27
7:00 PM
Saturday & Sunday, January 28 & 29
4:45 & 7:00 PM
$5/Adult
KFS passes accepted for Sunday showings
(see Review below)
* * *

Next week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-

Sirius Idaho Theatre presents

Sight Unseen
by Donald Margulies

Evening performances:
Thursday, Friday & Saturday, February 2, 3, & 4 at 7:30 PM
Thursday, Friday & Saturday, February 9, 10, & 11 at 7:30 PM

Matinee:
Saturday, February 11 at 2:00 PM

Tickets available at BookPeople of Moscow (521 S. Main St.)
$15 Adults, $10 Seniors, $5 Students
Tickets also available 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).

CAST

Jonathan - Donal Wilkinson
Nick - Peter Aylward
Patricia - Sally Eames-Harlan
Grete - Anna Cottle

Directed by Pam Palmer

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.

"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.

Sign up to usher for a performance and see the play for free....
Call or email Pam Palmer, Managing Artistic Director, at 208-596-2270
<siriusidahotheatre at gmail.com

Sight Unseen contains language that may offend some audience members.
* * *

The Kenworthy needs volunteers to take tickets for movies.

An e-mail message is sent out every Monday morning requesting volunteers for
the following weekend.  Volunteers are asked to arrive 20 minutes before the
show starts, and in exchange for volunteering, get free admission to the
show.  If you are interested in being added to the volunteer list, please
e-mail Alice at kpac at moscow.com
* * *

Coming in February-

Good Night, and Good Luck (PG)
February 12 at 4:30 & 7:00 PM
 
Pride & Prejudice (PG)
February 17 at 7:00 PM
February 18 & 19 at 4:00 & 7:00 PM

Walk the Line (PG-13)
February 24 at 7:00 PM
February 25 & 26 at 4:00 & 7:00 PM
 
International Jazz Collections
2006 Lecture Series
Mark Cantor
Celluloid Improvisations:
Black, White, and Technicolor
February 25 at 12:30 PM
Free

Coming in March: Auditorium Chamber Music Series presents Masters of Persian
Music; Capote; U of I Women¹s Center Lunafest; U of I American Indian Film
Festival; Grangeville Bluegrass Company

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

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

This week¹s review-

The Squid and the Whale

Comedy-drama
Directed by Noah Baumbach
Starring Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney and Jesse Eisenberg
Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic dialogue and language
Running Time: 1 hour, 28 minutes

As reviewed by Kimberley Jones writing for the Austin (TX) Chronicle

The opening line lays it all out on the table: "It¹s Mom and me versus you
and Dad."

Young Frank (Kline) is merely delineating sides for a family game of tennis,
but when that family ­ the Berkmans of Park Slope, Brooklyn, circa 1986 ­
soon after dissolves in divorce, the opposing camps are pretty neatly
summarized the same. Fifteen-year-old Walt (Eisenberg) sides with their
father, Bernard (Daniels), a once-famous author whose reputation is in
freefall. Frank is less obvious about it, but his heart is with his mother,
Joan (Linney), whose own writing career is just taking off.

There are no heroes here. Bernard is a pompous poseur; Joan, an unapologetic
philanderer. Walt¹s a mini-Bernard in the making, emulating his father¹s
soullessness to the point of playing a Pink Floyd song at a high school
talent show and passing it off as his own (when pressed, Walt explains,
"Well, I felt I could have written it"). And Frank is utterly neglected;
among the movie¹s many stand-out moments is the tragicomic sight of poor
Frank, alone as usual, stripped to his pajama pants and cracking open a
beer. It¹s funny, and it¹s heartbreaking.

The Berkmans are all comical figures, but Baumbach never denies them their
humanity. This is humor served not with a smirk but with a helpless shrug.
It¹s also an expertly acted piece (including William Baldwin in a cameo as a
doofy tennis instructor who romances Joan). Kline¹s Frank is the sentimental
favorite, but it¹s Daniel¹s ego-bruised Bernard that cuts the deepest. He
mostly speaks in that peculiar jargon of a windbag New York intellectual (he
could moonlight in a Woody Allen film), in which he declares A Tale of Two
Cities "minor Dickens" and declaims his shoddy, post-divorce residence an
"elegant house on an elegant block ­ the fillet of the neighborhood."

The Squid and the Whale¹s scope is so tightly fixed, it¹s the sort of film
that¹s bound to be labeled "modest," but it packs a hefty emotional wallop.

As reviewed by Sam Adams writing for the Philadelphia City Paper

Perhaps every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, but the unhappier
the Berkmans, the disintegrating foursome at the heart of The Squid and the
Whale, become, the more familiar the movie seems. The divorce of two
literary intellectuals, washed-up novelist Bernard (Jeff Daniels) and
budding writer Joan (Laura Linney), would seem to be the stuff of
small-press novels, or that New Yorker story you've been meaning to read for
weeks. But if the Berkmans implicitly think themselves better, more
enlightened, than the people around them, Squid quickly establishes that
their troubles are all too common.

Set in Brooklyn in 1986, the movie bypasses facile nostalgia in favor of
minute, flawlessly chosen details: a Burger King glass on the dinner table;
a copy of Pink Floyd's The Wall prized, and later plagiarized, by
16-year-old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg). Baumbach understands that period details
are important only if they fix character as well as place:

When Walt's dad drags him and a date to see Blue Velvet instead of Short
Circuit, it's as if Walt's been yanked out of childhood and into adulthood,
with no chance to get his bearings.

As a writer, particularly an unsuccessful and purposefully obscure one,
Bernard tends to invest words with more meaning than they can bear. Favorite
books are "dense," while actions he dislikes make people (namely, Joan)
"difficult." More than his pedantic repetition of words like "coup" and
"filet," it's Bernard's attempt to make simple words serve complex, private
meanings that marks his failure to communicate. He calls Ivan (William
Baldwin), the tennis pro to whom Frank has taken a shine, a "Philistine," he
assuming the insult is self-evident. But when Frank asks him what a
Philistine is, Bernard briefly stumbles, as if he'd never considered having
to explain himself. "It's someone who doesn't like interesting films, or
books and things," he ventures, a response less notable for its snobbery
than its vagueness.

The Squid and the Whale is the kind of movie that can as easily be killed by
praise as inattention; its strength is in its understatement, although
Baumbach isn't afraid of the occasional big moment (at least as big as you
can manage on a shoestring budget). Daniels' performance is the movie's
showiest, a monster in a career filled with mushballs, but it's Eisenberg's
shell-shocked stare that makes Squid work; he lets you see the beginning of
feelings that won't materialize for years to come.


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

I don't know what I'm supposed to feel during "The Squid and the Whale."
Sympathy, I suppose, for two bright boys whose parents are getting a messy
divorce. Both parents are writers and use words as weapons; the boys choose
sides and join the war. In theory I observe their errors and sadness and
think, there but for the grace of God go I. In practice, I feel envy.

I would have loved to have two writers as parents, and grow up in a bohemian
family in Brooklyn, and hear dinner-table conversation about Dickens. These
kids have it great. Their traumas will inspire them someday. Hell, the movie
was written and directed by Noah Baumbach, whose parents were writers (the
novelist Jonathan Baumbach, the film critic Georgia Brown), and look how he
turned out. By the time he was 26 he had already directed "Kicking and
Screaming" (1995), about sardonic and literate college graduates whose only
ambition was to remain on campus. I felt the same way. Left to my own
devices, I would still be a student of English literature, entering my 44th
year as an undergraduate.

In the movie the parents, Bernard and Joan Berkman, are played by Jeff
Daniels and Laura Linney, and if that's who it takes to play your parents,
what are you complaining about? The movie centers on their troubled sons.
Joan has been having an affair for four years, their father is moving out,
and in theory their divorcing parents will share custody (there is even a
plan for time shares of the cat). In practice, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), who
is 16, moves in with his father, and Frank (Owen Kline), who is about 10,
stays in the family home with his mother.

"The Squid and the Whale" is essentially about how we grow up by absorbing
what is useful in our parents and forgiving what is not. Joan may cheat on
her husband, but he deserves to be cheated on, and she demonstrates a faith
in romance that is, after all, a lesson in optimism. Bernard may be a gold
mine of shorthand literary opinions, but in his case he has actually read
the books, and sooner or later his son Walt will probably feel compelled to
read minor Dickens for himself -- and major Dickens, which is so good all
you can do is just helplessly stare at the book and turn the pages.

These kids will be okay. Someday Bernard and Joan will be old and will
delight in their grandchildren, who will no doubt be miserable about the
flaws and transgressions of Walt and Frank, and then create great
achievements and angry children of their own. All I know is, it is better to
be the whale than the squid. Whales inspire major novels.

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

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/thisweek/attachments/20060125/0a272994/attachment.htm