[ThisWeek] Something Serious; A Scanner Darkly; and Poltergeist at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

Tue Oct 24 13:35:46 PDT 2006

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-

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

Plot Summary
Chris (played by Peter Beard), a depressed and lonely teenage boy, moves to
Moscow with his mother (played by Pam Palmer) from California. He is
introduced to the life of the small town through a kind, flirtatious female
classmate, (played by Leah Meredith Payton).  The story is broken into three
acts, depicting the beginning, peak, and collapse of their relationship. The
plot centers on Chris, who has built his entire foundation of happiness upon
Leah, and his growing dependence on her as the relationship progresses and
how he copes with the final breakup.  - Kyle Miller helped edit and film
Something Serious.

A Scanner Darkly (R)
Thursday & Friday, October 26 & 27
7:00 PM
Saturday & Sunday, October 28 & 29
4:35 & 7:00 PM
$5/adult
KFS pass good for Sunday movies
(Review below)

Poltergeist
Saturday, October 28
10:00 PM
$3/includes popcorn

Late night.  Dark theater.  Big screen. Free popcorn.
And a crowd of friends of the verge of screaming.

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.
* * *

The Best Little Theatre in Moscow presents
a staged reading of
The Oldest Profession
by Paula Vogel

Directed by Bev Wolff and Terri Schmidt

Friday, November 10
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
7:00 pm Reception and music
8:00 pm Staged reading
Tickets $20
Proceeds benefit Sirius Idaho Theatre and Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

Encore performance
Saturday, November 11
Gladish Little Theatre in Pullman
7:30 pm Staged reading
Tickets $12

Tickets available at BookPeople of Moscow and Neill¹s Flowers and Gifts in
Pullman

The Oldest Profession, a comedy by Paula Vogel, focuses on the lives of five
older prostitutes working in New York and facing the problems of an aging
clientele, competition from younger street walkers, rising rent prices . . .
and all without the safety net of social security or health insurance.  The
play is set in the eighties, just before Reagan is elected, and so is
relevant to today - a backdrop of the upcoming elections, trickle-down
economics, rising gas prices, high rents, social security, etc.  There's
even a reference to strip mining.

Barbara Kirschner, in her eighties, and considered one of the grande dames
of Palouse theatre, plays the part of Mae, the madam.  Bev Hyde plays the
part of Ursula, next in line for management, while Martha Godchaux plays the
part of Lillian, the rose of Mae's stable.  Karen Rogers is Edna,
hardworking and good at her job, while Phyllis Van Horn is Vera, the baby of
the group. Kirschner has been involved with Lewiston Civic Theatre, Pullman
Community and Civic Theatre, and starred in major roles in 'Who's Afraid of
Virginia Wolf', 'Trip to Bountiful' and 'On Golden Pond'.  All of the rest
of the cast, except one, are retired.

Staged readings of the play will be Friday, November 10 at the Kenworthy
Performing Arts Centre in Moscow and Saturday, November 11th at the Gladish
Little Theatre in Pullman. The Moscow performance, a joint fundraising event
with proceeds going to Sirius Idaho Theatre and the Kenworthy Performing
Arts Centre, includes music and a reception prior to curtain time. Tickets
are $20 per person. Tickets for Saturday¹s performance in Pullman are $12.
Tickets are available at BookPeople of Moscow and Neill¹s Flowers and Gifts
in Pullman.

For more information contact Bev Wolff at bevw at adelphia.net, or call
509-336-9664
* * *

November at the Kenworthy-

The Fall of ?55
A Seth Randall Film
November 2
7:00 PM
Panel Discussion following

Factotum (R)
November 3
7:00 PM
November 4
4:40 & 7:00 PM

The Grub-Stake (1922)
Silent Film with intro by Tom Trusky
November 5
4:00 & 7:00 PM

The Best Little Theatre in Moscow presents
A staged reading of
The Oldest Profession
November 10
7:00 PM
Benefit for KPAC and Sirius Idaho Theatre
Tickets $20

Half Nelson (R)
November 11 & 12
4:20 & 7:00 PM

House of Sand (R)
November 16 & 17
7:00 PM
November 18 & 19
4:20 & 7:00 PM

Pirates of the Caribbean (PG-13)
November 24
7:00 PM
November 25
12:30, 3:45 & 7:00 PM
November 26
3:45 & 7:00 PM

Coming in December: This Film is Not Yet Rated; The Science of Sleep
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.
* * *

This week¹s Review-

A Scanner Darkly

Directed and Written by Richard Linklater
Rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian)
Advisory: This film contains lots of profanity, drug use, a fantasy sequence
where a head explodes and nudity, including a momentarily naked Winona Ryder
-- except she's animated, which really doesn't count.
Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

As reviewed by Peter Hartlaub writing for the San Francisco Chronicle

Moviemakers over the past few decades have scavenged Philip K. Dick's
science fiction the way ivory hunters approach an elephant carcass. Films
such as "Total Recall" and even Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report" adopt
the loose themes and action elements of those stories, while discarding most
of the subtleties of his writing.

Richard Linklater's "A Scanner Darkly," based on a Dick book by the same
name, goes in the opposite direction -- even using the rotoscoping animation
techniques featured in Linklater's "Waking Life" to enhance the drug-hazed
themes of the author's novel.

The visual style and lethargic pace can be frustrating -- at least if you're
sober -- but the animated tragedy is still a success. For science fiction
fans who prefer ideas over laser battles, this is the most meticulous and
faithful movie adaptation of Dick's work -- and one of the most thoughtful.
"A Scanner Darkly" has a gloomy "Soylent Green" vibe, while containing less
violence than "Bridget Jones's Diary."

Since Dick died in 1982, just a few months before Ridley Scott's "Blade
Runner" was released, two generations have experienced mostly third-rate
films made out of Dick's first-rate writing.

Keanu Reeves is Bob Arctor, who is addicted to crack-meets-ecstasy superdrug
Substance D, living in a dumpy house in the Orange County suburbs with a
group of losers including Barris (Robert Downey Jr.) and Luckman (Woody
Harrelson). Arctor is also Agent Fred, an undercover narcotics officer who
is spying on himself -- a fact unknown to his superiors because the
identities of drug cops are hidden by "scramble suits," psychedelic-looking
devices that turn the user into sort of a human quilt.

More than his predecessors, Linklater mines the often-tragic humor in Dick's
writing. This is made much easier by the psychedelic properties of
rotoscoping -- which overlaps the actors' features with the amoeba-like
animation, so everyone looks as if they're made out of Jell-O. Rory
Cochrane's performance as a paranoid drug addict would seem like overacting
in a live-action movie, but Linklater adds hallucinations of swarming ticks
to the palette, and the result is creepy dark comedy.

For most of the film, Arctor doesn't really know what's going on with his
life, and Linklater doesn't clue the audience in, either. Themes are
explored -- the artistic advantages of drugs and the fear of human contact
that results -- but the path isn't always clear. "A Scanner Darkly" is
mostly people talking, and they don't always make very much sense.

The book "A Scanner Darkly" was reportedly based on Dick's own confused
experiences, living in Marin County and struggling with drug addiction. The
movie has a few bad side effects, but it's worth the trip just to see what
one of the author's books really looks like on the big screen.

As reviewed by Michael Wilmington writing for the Chicago Tribune

Philip K. Dick was a dark literary visionary, sometimes disguised as a
prolific pulp science fiction writer, whose explosively imaginative tales
could usher his readers into realms of dread, alternative lives and utter
madness. So do some of the many movies of his stories (notably 1982's "Blade
Runner"), though few of them are the pure stuff.

Richard Linklater's film of "A Scanner Darkly" comes close, though. It's one
of the most faithful movie adaptations of any Dick story to date, and it
comes from the scariest of all his books, as well as the truest: a bad dream
that springs less from Dick's wild talent for future extrapolation than from
his own sad, scarred life in the drug world of the '60s. (Dick died of heart
failure at 53, in 1982.)

The movie isn't quite as scary, but it's fascinating: a stylistic experiment
involving animation and rotoscoping (drawing on top of live-action filming),
in the manner of Linklater's 2001 "Waking Life." And though it will bewilder
some, as Dick's books often do, the movie conveys a shattering sense of
wasted lives and mounting nightmare.

Dick based the 1977 novel "Scanner" partly on his own experiences in the
California drug subculture. At the end of the book, there's a list of his
friends who suffered or died from drug problems; Dick includes himself in
that roster of casualties. In the film, though, we see only a little
"family" of addicts drifting around in Anaheim, Calif., (seven years in our
future).

Linklater is great with actors, and that includes the ensemble here.
Everybody is good, especially Downey and Harrelson. Downey does Barris as a
treacherous, egotistical creep rattling off long deadpan raps, most of which
seem designed to show he's smarter than everyone else. Luckman is primo
Harrelson; he's funny, pseudo-dumb and boisterous, a perfect foil for
everybody.

"A Scanner Darkly" is a movie that tries, in a way, to mess up our minds.
And it does. But the story was also meant by Dick as a healing experience,
and Linklater gets that too. He even includes, at the end, that devastating
list of Dick's drug-wounded friends. While the animation is more
conventional, less startling or magical than in "Waking Life" (there were
troubles during production this time), the movie plunges us into nightmare.
Watching "A Scanner Darkly," we can feel Dick's world close in on us. And we
can be glad we're only visitors.

As reviewed by Manohla Dargis writing for the New York Times

Identities shift and melt like shadows in Richard Linklater's animated
adaptation of "A Scanner Darkly," a look at a future that looks an awful lot
like today. Based on a 1977 novel by the science fiction visionary Philip K.
Dick, the semi-speculative story involves a cop (call him Officer Fred) who,
by assuming an undercover identity (call him Bob Arctor), is inching his way
up toward a big drug bust, score by score. But there's a little problem:
Fred is starting to forget he's Bob, or maybe vice versa.

Given that Fred/Bob has been regularly dropping Substance D, as in Death,
tab by tab, it's no wonder he's feeling a bit off; no wonder, too, given
that this is the world Philip K. Dick made. Like the writer's other worlds,
that of "A Scanner Darkly" is one in which drugs predominate and reality
tends to be a big question mark, hovering like an electro-colored thought
bubble above characters who are more everyday normal than super-this or
-that. Ordinary guys who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances like
Fred/Bob, who in Mr. Linklater's film has been given seductive voice and
corporeal outline by Keanu Reeves, an actor whose penchant for otherworldly
types and excellent adventures make him well suited for vision quests like
this one.

Mr. Dick wrote "A Scanner Darkly" after several years of firsthand
experience with what he called the street scene in the early 1970's. By 1971
he was ingesting a whopping 1,000 hits of speed a week, along with plentiful
daily doses of tranquilizers. "The happiness pills," he admitted around that
time, "are turning out to be nightmare pills."

On its most basic level, the novel serves as a cautionary tale about the
perils of drug abuse and indeed closes with a poignant roll call of Philip
K. Dick's friends who had been lost, "punished" ‹ as he wrote ‹ "entirely
too much for what they did." That said, to reduce the novel to a "just say
no" diatribe would be to greatly miss one of its and its author's sustaining
points. Drugs are generally a bad idea in "A Scanner Darkly," in the book
and film both, though in the novel it's the real world or what we perceive
the real world to be that makes for the more obviously bad trip, not scary
little pills. "So-called 'reality,' " as Mr. Dick once said, "is a mass
delusion that we've all been required to believe for reasons totally
obscure."

As he did in an earlier film, "Waking Life," Mr. Linklater uses the
animation technique called rotoscoping to translate Mr. Dick's worldview,
mostly to fine expressive effect. With this technique, a version of which
was used by early giants like Max Fleischer and even in the old Disney
factory, animators directly trace over live-action images of performers.
(What was once achieved through ink and paint is now accomplished through
software.) The results tend to look fluid, almost as if the bodies were
floating above the background visuals ‹ an effect that appears to have been
pushed in "A Scanner Darkly," where the bodies can appear almost liquid, as
if the characters had been recently poured and had yet to harden into final
shape.

³A Scanner Darkly" has a kind of hypnotic visual appeal, and there's
something very appropriate in how a chair in Bob Arctor's kitchen appears to
hover above the floor, replicating the kind of time-space visual
dislocations that can be produced through the consumption of hallucinogens.
Even so, considering that the animation is not transcendently beautiful and
that Mr. Downey has been pretty much out of commission lately, in part
because of his own drug troubles, it would have been nice to see real
shadows crossing his face.

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