[ThisWeek] Reading by Natasha Trethewey; Little Miss Sunshine; and Ghostbusters at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

[This Week at the Kenworthy]

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-

University of Idaho Department of English presents
Reading-Natasha Trethewey
Wednesday, October 11
7:30 PM
Free

Little Miss Sunshine (R)
Thursday & Friday, October 12 & 13
7:00 PM
Saturday & Sunday, October 14 & 15
4:30 & 7:00 PM
$5/adult
KFS pass good for Sunday movies
(See movie review below)

Late Night Scary Movie
Ghostbusters (PG)
Saturday, October 14
10 PM
$3/includes popcorn
* * *

Next week at the Kenworthy-

Idaho Public Television presents
Outdoor Idaho Palouse Paradise Premiere
Tuesday, October 17
7:00 PM
Free

Quinceañera (R)
Thursday & Friday, October 19 & 20
7:00 PM
Saturday & Sunday, October 21 & 22
4:45 & 7:00 PM
$5/adult
KFS pass good for Sunday movies
* * *

Coming in October to the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre...

Something Serious (not rated)
A film by Nate Dail
Tuesday, October 24
8:00 PM
$5/general admission

A Scanner Darkly (R)
Thursday & Friday, October 26 & 27
7:00 PM
Saturday & Sunday, October 28 & 29
4:35 & 7:00 PM

October is Scary Movie Month
Late night.  Dark theater.  Big screen. Free popcorn.
And a crowd of friends of the verge of screaming.
The series runs every Saturday at 10:00 PM
Admission is $3 and includes a free bag of popcorn

Upcoming scary movies:

Psycho (the original)
Saturday, October 21
10:00 PM

Poltergeist
Saturday, October 28
10:00 PM

Check out our web-site for more information, ratings, and reviews.  This is
your chance to see some of your favorite flicks on the BIG screen.
* * *

Coming in November: Half Nelson; Factotum; This Film is Not Yet Rated;
Sirius Idaho Theatre presents a staged reading of The Oldest Profession by
Paula Vogel

Regular movie prices:  $5/adult, $3/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 or call 208-882-4127.
* * *

Little Miss Sunshine (R)

Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Written by Michael Arndt
Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes
Rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). The film
has some salty language, but nothing anyone sentient hasn¹t heard before.


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

Three generations of a depressed family making their way in a clapped-out
vehicle across America, hoping to find their share of the American Dream in
California. That sounds like the Joads traveling hopefully in The Grapes of
Wrath. It is also the plot of an amusing comedy, Little Miss Sunshine, the
joint feature film debut of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, a
husband-and-wife team whose background is in documentaries, commercials and
music videos.

The Hoover family from Albuquerque, New Mexico, are presented to us as
classically dysfunctional, struggling together with a Medusa-like raft of
problems. Widowed Grandpa Hoover (Alan Arkin) has been thrown out of an old
folks' home for snorting heroin, swears incessantly and is obsessed with
sex. He believes girls are at their sexual best around 15 and urges his
virginal 16-year-old grandson to take advantage of this while he can get
away with it.

That grandson, Dwayne (Paul Dano), has enough on his mind without this. He's
a nay-saying devotee of Nietzsche, is obsessed with flying and has taken a
vow of silence until he's accepted by the Air Force Academy. Dwayne's
father, Richard (Greg Kinnear), believes his future lies in motivational
teaching. He's convinced that his unpublished book, ³Refuse to Lose,²
explaining the ³Nine Steps to Success,² will make him rich and famous. His
seven-year-old daughter, the plain, bespectacled Olive (Abigail Breslin),
thinks she can become a beauty queen and has entered the national 'Little
Miss Sunshine' contest.

Long-suffering Mom, Sheryl Hoover (Toni Collette), is the family's fount of
common sense, but she has a problem, too. Her destructive devotion to
complete honesty rivals that of the truth-crazed Hickey in O'Neill's The
Iceman Cometh. And she's brought an additional worry into the family. Her
brother Frank (Steve Carell), a depressed gay academic who regards himself
as America's number one Proust scholar, has come to live with the Hoovers
after a failed suicide attempt. He tried to kill himself after losing both
his job and his handsome young lover, who left him for a rival Proustian.
All six actors are excellent, working together impressively and gradually
winning our respect and sympathy.

Little Miss Sunshine opens with a brilliantly sustained dinner-table
sequence in which they clash hilariously and give us the impression that the
resolution of their individual problems and the establishment of domestic
tranquility are further away and less reachable than Mars. The movie
eventually and unsentimentally establishes that both are possible. The first
stage in this progress is a journey to California undertaken, with varying
degrees of enthusiasm and reluctance, to accompany Olive to the ³Little Miss
Sunshine Pageant.² She has accidentally got into the finals of the contest
through the withdrawal of a regional winner to whom she was runner-up. The
Hoovers can't afford to fly, Grandpa and the suicidal Frank can't be left
behind, so they go in a decrepit VW minibus which is only a slight
improvement on the Joads' jalopy.

Along the way, they learn a good deal about themselves, some of it extremely
painful - things to do with failure, with a future less promising than
expected and with death. But the directors and their screenwriter, Michael
Arndt, undercut the film's awareness of the tragic sense of life with a
bracing and healing humor.

One running joke, which continues to the final frame, centers on the VW bus.
The clutch is ineffective and to keep going, they have to get the vehicle
rolling at such a speed that only the top gears are necessary. So everyone
gets out to push. Then one by one, as the car accelerates, they run
alongside and jump or are pulled aboard. It's like a crazy, non-vocal
version of the 'Goodbye' song from The Sound of Music and becomes a comic
image of working together in the face of adversity.

All the jokes arise naturally from the situations and are carefully prepared
for. One of the biggest laughs comes when the gentle inquiry of a pageant
official - 'Is there anything else?' - is met by the request: 'Yes, is there
a funeral parlor around here?'

The pageant at Redondo Beach is as amusingly handled as the canine
competition in Christopher Guest's Best in Show. The officials are pompous
and self-regarding. Ogling the little girls and serenading them with an
oleaginous version of ³America the Beautiful,² the master of ceremonies
seems to be providing evidence for the prosecution in a trial for
pedophilia. The child contestants, in their make-up and skimpy adult
clothing, knowingly ape adult ways.

It is in confronting this pageant and their own involvement in it that the
Hoovers are finally drawn together in their rejection of celebrity,
conformity, success-seeking and self-deception and their readiness to
embrace a human reality that is so often dismissed as failure. Without
getting smug or pompous, the movie takes on a moral dimension.


As reviewed by Ruthe Stein writing for the San Francisco Chronicle

In "Little Miss Sunshine," the extended Hoover clan piles into a rickety
yellow Volkswagen van and heads from Albuquerque to a kiddie beauty pageant
in Redondo Beach, so 7-year-old Olive can get a shot at a tiara.

Their sly, near-perfect comedy seems to come from nowhere. It's a first
feature for Dayton and Faris as well as screenwriter Michael Arndt, an
awesomely original voice in a profession that rewards imitation. I like to
think "Little Miss Sunshine" dropped from celluloid heaven as a sign that,
despite continual evidence to the contrary, movie miracles still happen.

The dysfunctional Hoover family is dysfunctional in its own way. It's a
blended household (Mom is on her second marriage) with a lot of lumps. But
as eccentric as everyone is, you'll be able to recognize something of
yourself or your kin in them, and it's this connection that provides the
movie's power.

Truly magical moments evolve from the entire family's love for this precious
little girl. It's the tie that binds them throughout a road trip from hell.

Dayton and Faris, husband-and-wife music video directors, have the good
sense not to muck around with a beguiling script by imposing distracting
visual effects. Showing the van's shadow on a highway barrier is about as
fancy as the pair gets. "Little Miss Sunshine" is the most straightforwardly
told movie since "The Straight Story."

The cast is so perfect that it's impossible to imagine anyone else in the
roles. Arkin's spontaneity gives the impression that he's improvising.
Kinnear embodies the hyped-up energy of a gambler sure his next card will
beat the house. He and Collette effectively use body language to convey the
frustrations of a couple trying to hold it together for the kids. The two
have almost no physical contact. A scene where they verbally lash out at
each other is particularly well acted.

There's no more fitting final destination than California, the land of
promise for generations of families seeking to improve their lot. But
"Little Miss Sunshine" is really more about getting there. You'll be
delighted, if a bit breathless from laughing, to be along for the ride.


As reviewed by David Rooney writing for Variety

Veteran husband-and-wife musicvideo and commercials team Jonathan Dayton and
Valerie Faris make a disarming segue into features with "Little Miss
Sunshine," a quietly antic dysfunctional family road trip comedy that shoots
down the all-American culture of the winner and offers sweet redemption for
losers -- or at least the ordinary folks often branded as such. Pic's
distinguished by a flawless cast, a gentle spirit of rebellion and a smart
script by first-time screenwriter Michael Arndt that knows never to push its
character quirks too hard. Its humanity and heart make it a natural to
transcend the indie niche to a broader audience.

Within hours of its premiere at Sundance, Fox Searchlight swooped in to
close a worldwide distribution deal on the film, snagging the specialty
division a release that stands a chance of being molded into another
crossover hit on the order of its Park City pickups "Garden State" and
"Napoleon Dynamite."

Like the broken-down VW bus that transports the Hoovers from their home in
Albuquerque, N.M., on a foolhardy but determined mission to Redondo Beach,
Calif., the filmmakers have an astute understanding that a family is a
wildly imperfect machine, made up of ill-fitting components and prone to
malfunctions minor and major.

A sharply cut opening sequence of quick character-establishing scenes
underlines that this is an especially problematic clan.

Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a motivational speaker on a career downslide yet
stubbornly committed to his "Refuse to lose" philosophy. His wife Sheryl
(Toni Collette) barely disguises her impatience with his canned claptrap,
hinting at deeper marital disharmony. Their teenage son Dwayne (Paul Dano)
is a Nietzsche devotee maintaining a vow of silence until he's old enough to
become a fighter pilot, while Grandpa (Alan Arkin) is a profane old horndog
with a heroin habit. Newest addition to the household is Sheryl's suicidal
brother Frank (Steve Carell), a renowned Proust scholar who lost both the
male grad student he loved and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant to a
rival academic.

The family's sole oasis of serenity and self-possession is Olive (Abigail
Breslin), a slightly chubby, bespectacled 7-year-old with a questioning
nature and a fixation on beauty pageants. Having been taught to pursue her
dreams, Olive has been privately rehearsing her talent routine with Grandpa;
her shot at the Little Miss Sunshine crown is the engine that drives the
comedy.

There are probably few more obvious emblems of soulless success than a
children's beauty contest. And the notion that Olive would somehow get
onstage without her parents having any knowledge of the act she was
preparing -- or any misgivings until the last minute about the potential
humiliation she's being subjected to -- seems implausible. But as a chaotic,
cathartic bonding experience, it works, in part because the family members
are so caught up in their individual frustrations and insecurities.

During the interstate trip, punctuated by hilarious setbacks and disasters,
the directors nurture the melancholy strain in Arndt's script while subtly
coaxing small signs of love and support within the Hoover family. The
eccentric comic tone is deftly channeled by a cast with no weak element. As
a guy who seemingly buys into the most trite prefab pop-psych blather but
gradually reveals his deeper sensitivity, Kinnear has never been better,
while Collette does lovely, understated work as an emotionally burdened,
abraded woman whose caring nature is never in doubt.

The directors' light, uncalculated touch with the material is echoed in the
modest production's fresh, appealingly unslick feel. Tim Suhrstedt's
widescreen lensing is notable for its agitated movement and quirky but
unforced visual compositions, while the score by Mychael Danna and
performers DeVotchka supplies warm, animated rhythms

Film reviews researched and edited by Peter Haggart
* * *

Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho
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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