[ThisWeek] Match Point and Rendezvous Talent Showcase at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

[thisweek at kenworthy.org]

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre...

Match Point (R)
Thursday & Friday, May 18 & 19
7:00 PM
Sunday, May 21
4:10 & 7:00 PM
$5/adult
KFS pass accepted for Sunday movies
(See Review below)

Check out our coupon in Thursday's Evergreen or Daily News.
The coupon is good for $1 off the Thursday night, adult admission.
One coupon per person, please.

2nd annual
Rendezvous Talent Showcase
Saturday, May 20
7:00 PM
$10 at the door

The Second Annual Rendezvous Talent Showcase will be held Saturday May 20,
2006 7:00-10:00 p.m. at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Center in Moscow. This
event is part-fundraiser and all fun! Rendezvous will highlight 6 bands in a
showcase format to be considered as one of the three warm up bands at the
Rendezvous concerts. Bands will be selected by 1) audience vote (vote with
your ticket) 2) audience monetary donations in support of a band (vote with
dollars) and 3) by the Rendezvous Board of Directors.  Admission is $10 at
the door.

Our featured bands are: Eric Anderson, Bare Wires, Full Circle, Beth
Pederson, Shook Twins, and Steptoe.
* * *

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.
* * *

Next week at the Kenworthy-

Inside Man (R)
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, May 25, 26 &27
7:00 PM
Sunday, May 28
4:05 & 7:00 PM
$5/adult
KFS pass accepted for Sunday movies

Coming in June: Boys of Baraka; Children¹s Matinee series: Dreamer; Cheaper
by the Dozen 2; Wallace & Gromit

Regular movie prices:  $5/adult, $2/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 review-

Match Point

Written and directed by Woody Allen
Rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has
some steamy (though not explicit) sex scenes, a few moments of shocking
violence and some profanity.
Running time: 2 hours, 4 minutes.


As reviewed by A. O. Scott writing for the New York Times

In ''Match Point,'' his most satisfying film in more than a decade, the
director once again brings some bad news, delivering it with a light, sure
touch. This is a Champagne cocktail laced with strychnine. You would have to
go back to the heady, amoral heyday of Ernst Lubitsch or Billy Wilder to
find cynicism so deftly turned into superior entertainment.

At the very beginning, Mr. Allen's hero, a young tennis player recently
retired from the professional tour, explains that the role of luck in human
affairs is often underestimated. Later, the harsh implications of this idea
will be evident, but at first it seems as whimsical as what Fred Astaire
said in ''The Gay Divorcée'': that ''chance is the fool's name for fate.''

Mr. Allen's accomplishment here to misdirect us, with a tale whose gilded
surface disguises the darkness beneath. His guile keeps the story moving
with the fleet momentum of a well-made play. If you walked in after the
opening titles, it might take you a while to guess who made this picture.

After a while you would, of course. The usual literary signposts are in
place: surely no other screenwriter could write a line like ''darling, have
you seen my copy of Strindberg?'' or send his protagonist to bed with a
paperback Dostoyevsky. The film's setting is modified Henry James (wealthy
London, with a few social and cultural outsiders buzzing around the hives of
privilege); the conceit owes something to Patricia Highsmith's Ripley books;
and the narrative engine is pure Theodore Dreiser -- hunger, lust, ambition,
greed. 

Not that the tennis player, Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), seems at
first to be consumed by such appetites. An Irishman of modest background, he
takes a job at an exclusive London club, helping its rich members polish
their ground strokes. He seems both easygoing and slightly ill at ease,
ingratiating and diffident. Before long, he befriends Tom Hewett (Matthew
Goode), the amiable, unserious heir to a business fortune, who invites Chris
to the family box at the opera. From there, it is a short trip to an affair
with Tom's sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), a job in the family firm and the
intermittently awkward but materially rewarding position of son-in-law to
parents played by Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton.

What passes between Chris and Nola is not only desire, but also recognition,
which makes their connection especially volatile. As their affair advances,
Ms. Johansson and Mr. Rhys-Meyers manage some of the best acting seen in a
Woody Allen movie in a long time. It is possible to identify with both of
them -- and to feel an empathetic twinge as they are ensnared in the
consequences of their own heedlessness -- without entirely liking either
one. 

But it is the film's brisk, chilly precision that makes it so bracingly
pleasurable. The gloom of random, meaningless existence has rarely been so
much fun, and Mr. Allen's bite has never been so sharp, or so deep. A movie
this good is no laughing matter.


As reviewed by Mick LaSalle writing for the San Francisco Chronicle

"Match Point" is plot driven, not character driven, and generous in the
sheer amount of story presented and is a film that deserves a second
viewing. Allen covers a lot of story very quickly, and at first glance
there's a tendency to look upon Chris as a fellow to whom things simply
happen. In fact, as played by Meyers, Chris always is aware of his
opportunities and always is playing a kind of mental tennis with people. He
may not have a grand design, but he always knows where he is placing the
ball and what he hopes to achieve. This quality, though subtle, is there
from the beginning, and so it should not come as a jolt when Chris, visiting
his rich new friends in their home, suddenly makes a bold play for a young
woman within seconds of meeting her.

The electric encounter between Chris and Nola (Scarlett Johansson) over a
ping-pong table is Allen's answer to "A Place in the Sun," in which
Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor did their mating dance over a pool
table. In this case, both parties are poor and off-limits: Nola, a
struggling American actress, turns out to be Tom's fiancee, and Chris is
about to embark on a relationship with Tom's sister. But the attraction is
there. 

Nola and Chris recognize the climber in each other, as well as a certain
desperate life force that their partners, raised in comfort, lack. They're
also the most kissable people in the movie, with the best mouths.

There's no out-guessing "Match Point," the movie goes its own way, always
fascinating, often skipping months and even a year at a time without making
a fuss, as if maintaining an intense yet detached scrutiny of the
characters. "Match Point" is the conveyor of an ultimately simple
philosophical proposition about the all-important role of random luck in
life and thus the implicit absence, according to Allen, of any overarching
moral order. 


As reviewed by Steve Persall writing for the St. Petersburg Times

Something dreadful will happen in Woody Allen's ³Match Point.² What, how and
to whom and for what reason isn't clear until it's committed, but we sense
it's coming from the start. We've known these omens before, in writings by
Theodore Dreiser, James M. Cain and Fyodor Dostoyevski, and too many film
noirs to mention.

Where we've never seen them is in Allen's films, making ³Match Point² both a
radical departure for the 70-year-old filmmaker and a refinement of the
classic cinema adoration that got him into trouble with fans before. Allen
wanted to be Ingmar Bergman, then Federico Fellini, and then Fritz Lang. Now
its Allen wandering into Alfred Hitchcock's London territory and feeling
triumphantly comfortable. Not the macabre Hitch of ³Psycho,² but the
casually escalating suspense of ³Strangers on a Train² and ³Dial M for
Murder.² Allen has explored criminal guilt before, in comedy set-ups and
philosophically in Crimes and Misdemeanors. This time he's seduced by the
motivation and opportunity for committing a perfect crime, and how the most
unreliable factor is luck.

Revealing much about the film would spoil the masterful way Allen springs
tiny surprises and incriminations along the way. Suffice to say that lust
and selfishness can be lethal, and not always in the expected fashion.
³Match Point² steers viewers toward conclusions that are averted at the last
moment and replaced with turns coming logically from left field. When the
police get involved the drama tightens like a noose, loosened only by an
ingenious stroke of - you guessed it - luck.

The beauty of Allen's film, what keeps things plausible, is his
understatement of dread. Like Hitchcock preached, he keeps us more aware of
things than the characters. We know the details that make a deceitful
telephone conversation another step toward something bad. We flinch when an
innocent remark cuts too close to the guilty bone. Foreshadowing is
everywhere, in museum paintings, the opera house and on a skeet shooting
range. Putting it all together makes us feel almost as ruthless as the
perpetrator.

Placing viewers into that darkening place is what Allen does best in ³Match
Point,² a startling development so late in his career, in a place so foreign
to his beloved Manhattan. Part of the film's pleasure is realizing that this
taut, sophisticated eventual thriller is crafted by a filmmaker we thought
we knew and, honestly, had considered washed up. Luck is when preparation
meets opportunity. Allen has both ingredients, inventing a perfect crime in
a near-perfect movie.


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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