[ThisWeek] Kinky Boots at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

[thisweek at kenworthy.org]

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre...

Kinky Boots (PG-13)
Thursday, Friday & Saturday, July 6, 7, & 8
7:00 PM
Sunday, July 9
4:30 PM & 7:00 PM
$5/adult, $3/child under 13
KFS pass accepted for Sunday movies
(See movie review below)
* * *

Next week at the Kenworthy-

Hoot (PG)
Sponsored by Wells Fargo
Wednesday, July 12
1:00 PM

X-Men: The Last Stand (PG-13)
Thursday & Friday, July 13 & 14
7:00 PM
Saturday, July 15
7:00 PM & 9:30 PM
Sunday, July 16
4:30 & 7:00 PM 
* * *

Also showing in July:

Nanny McPhee (PG)
Wednesday, July 19
1:00 PM

DaVinci Code (PG-13)
Friday & Saturday, July 21 & 22
7:00 PM
Sunday, July 23
3:45 & 7:00 PM

Sponsored by US Bank
Ice Age: The Meltdown (PG)
Wednesday, July 26
1:00 PM
Also showing-
Thursday - Saturday, July 27 ­ 29
7:00 PM
Sunday, July 30
4:45 & 7:00 PM

Coming in August: Goal!; Water; An Inconvenient Truth; A Prairie Home
Companion

Regular movie prices:  $5/adult, $3/child 12 or younger
Wednesday matinee prices: $4/adult, $1/child 12 or younger
KFS series pass prices:  $30/10 films, $75/30 films.  KFS pass good only for
Sunday movies.

For more information on movies, events, rental rates, and/or to download a
schedule, visit our website at www.kenworthy.org
* * *
This week¹s movie review-

Kinky Boots

Directed by Julian Jarrold
Rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some strong language and a
scene of a mugging.
Running time: 1 hour, 46 minutes.


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

One of the gifts of movies is the way they introduce us to new actors,
turning them this way and that in the light of the screen, allowing us to
see the fullness of their gifts.

Consider Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose first leading role was in "Dirty Pretty
Things" (2002), as a Nigerian doctor reduced in London to working in a
mortuary. Then came a romantic role in "Love Actually" (2003), a South
African activist in "Red Dust" (2004), a space opera villain in "Serenity"
(2005), and a New York detective in Spike Lee's current "Inside Man" (2006).
Along the way he has worked for Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen and John
Singleton (a vicious mobster in "Four Brothers" in 2005) and has done
Shakespeare and The Canterbury Tales for TV. Born in London in 1974, he
works easily with British, American and Nigerian accents.

Now he plays a drag queen in "Kinky Boots." It is a performance all the more
striking because he doesn't play any kind of drag queen I've ever seen in
the movies. He plays the role not as a man pretending to be a woman, and not
as a woman trapped in a man's body, and not as a parody of a woman, and not
as a gay man, but as a drag queen, period:

Lola, a tall, athletic performer in thigh-high red boots who rules the stage
of a drag club as if she were born there, and is a pretty good singer, too.
In preparing for the role, Ejiofor must have decided not to simper, not to
preen, not to mince, but to belt out songs with great good humor that dares
the audience to take exception. If "simper," "preen" and "mince" are
stereotypical words, well, then, most drag queens, including Lola's backup
dancers, are stereotypical performers. Not Lola.

With "Kinky Boots," we find ourselves watching another one of those British
comedies in which unconventional sex is surrounded by a conventional story.
The film's other hero is Charlie Price (Joel Edgerton), whose father dies
and leaves him a Northampton shoe factory that is nearly bankrupt because
men aren't buying traditional dress shoes. Through a coincidence we must
accept, Charlie meets Lola, who complains that women's shoes don't stand up
to the weight of a full-sized man in drag. Charlie thinks maybe his factory
could supply a proper pair of boots with stiletto heels for Lola, and
lovingly crafts the boots himself, only to hear Lola respond: "Pease, God,
tell me I have not inspired something burgundy." What does he prefer? "Red!
Red!"

Lola comes to Northampton to design a line of footwear, receiving a chilly
reception from some of the union men in the factory, especially the
gay-hating Don (Nick Frost). Don is the reigning arm-wrestling champion in a
local pub, and of course, it is only a matter of time until Don and Lola are
elbow to elbow in a showdown. Meanwhile, Charlie's snotty fiancee Nicola
(Jemima Rooper) is a real estate agent, hoping to recycle his factory into
condos, while the plucky shoe worker Lauren (Sarah-Jane Potts) believes in
Charlie, Lola and the factory.

"Kinky Boots" has few surprises, unless you seriously expect the factory to
go bankrupt. The climax comes at the annual shoe show in Milan, where
last-minute developments unfold right on schedule; having provided us with
Lola, the movie is conventional in all other departments. But Ejiofor's
performance as Lola shows an actor doing what not every actor can do: Taking
a character bundled with stereotypes, clearing them out of the way, and
finding a direct line to who the character really is. Just in the way she
walks in those kinky red boots, Lola makes an argument that no words could
possibly improve upon.

"Kinky Boots" is based on a true story.
 

As reviewed by Philip French writing for The (London) Observer

Kinky Boots is Priscilla, Queen of the Desert meets The Full Monty. A
long-established shoe firm in Northampton making traditional, high-class
men's footwear is going broke and redundancy notices are going out. But the
day is saved by the arrival of the most exotic creature to visit Northampton
since Errol Flynn joined the local rep company 70 years ago.

The factory's anxious new boss (Joel Edgerton) meets Lola a black drag queen
working in a Soho club. He comes to the Midlands to be fashion adviser as
the firm switches to manufacturing sexy women's boots strong enough for
cross-dressing males to wear.

But will the new product be ready for the Milan Shoe Fair? Do cats walk?
Based on a true story, written by experienced TV hands and the cinematic
debut of Julian Jarrold who directed White Teeth on TV, Kinky Boots is
amusing, predictable in its politically correct sexual politics and has a
disarming performance from Ejiofor. Perhaps the most attractive aspect is to
see people proudly practicing their craft rather than finding some
substitute for work such as stripping, swimming the Channel or crime.


As reviewed by Stephen Holden writing for the New York Times

Lola (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the strapping hero/heroine of the silly,
quasi-inspirational British comedy "Kinky Boots," is the very model of a
modern movie drag queen. Flamboyantly confrontational but tenderhearted
under her brass, Lola, a k a Simon, embodies a cross-dressing archetype that
is sashaying ever closer to the center stage of pop mythology. She arrives
just in time to be the 21st-century replacement for that poignant outcast
from an earlier era, the whore with a heart of gold.

You may remember that good/bad girl from the days of Belle Watling in "Gone
With the Wind." Cast out of respectable society, often redheaded, she was
the designated truth teller and reality check in countless sudsy dramas.
Living honestly if sinfully among the shamefaced hypocrites who made her a
pariah, she forgave them all with a rueful, ironic smile, but still was
often forced to pay for her sins by dying.

The drag queen, by contrast, usually triumphs. And in the flouting of
taboos, the preening cross-dresser goes her forerunner one better. Her
battle cry, "I'm more man than you'll ever be, and more woman than you'll
ever get," is meant to strike fear into the hearts of her male persecutors.
But having been the lifelong target of contempt and rejection, she has also
developed compassion for those frightened, benighted fools.

In "Kinky Boots," the tale of a failing men's shoe factory in the dreary
Midlands that saves itself from ruin with the drag queen's help, Lola's
being black lends her an extra layer of alienation and insight into
oppression, which automatically translates into an extra layer of nobility.

A drag entertainer and star of a cheesy London nightclub, Lola rattles on
about sexiness and how her thigh-high red stiletto boots are "tubular sex."
But aside from her street-corner strut, she never behaves seductively, nor
is there even a hint of sex in her life. Because her flouting of convention
doesn't extend beyond sartorial display, her brand of gender-bending
subversion is almost reassuring. Isn't it all just an act?

"Kinky Boots" is the newest in a profitable line of British films, inspired
by the success of "The Full Monty," that portray the awakening of
working-class Britons from hidebound customs and prejudices into the brave
new world of exhibitionism and narcissism.


Film reviews researched and edited by Peter Haggart
* * *

Take a seat!  We mean that literally.  The Kenworthy is offering you the
opportunity to purchase one of a limited number of theater chairs in the
main auditorium.  Your gift will entitle you to an engraved, brass name
plate mounted on the back of the seat of your choice (based upon
availability).  One individual or business name per seat, please.

This naming opportunity, back by popular demand, is available for a donation
of $500 per chair.  You may purchase a chair in two installments of $250
over two years, or in three installments of $200 over three years.

Your gift will assist with the ongoing operation and renovation of the
Kenworthy Theater and fulfillment of our mission to be Moscow's premiere,
historic, downtown, community performing arts venue and cinematic art house.

For information about the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre, call Julie
Ketchum, Executive Director, at 208-882-4127.
* * *

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/20060706/7495ed70/attachment.htm