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<FONT FACE="Verdana"><B>This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-<BR>
</B><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#800000"><H2>The Yes Men (R)<BR>
</H2></FONT><B>Friday, February 11<BR>
7:00PM<BR>
Saturday & Sunday, February 12 & 13<BR>
5:00 and 7:00PM<BR>
</B>$5 adults <BR>
KFS passes accepted for the Sunday showings<BR>
<B>(See Review below)<BR>
* * *<BR>
</B><BR>
In conjunction with the <I>Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival</I> <BR>
and the <I>UI International Jazz Collections</I>, <BR>
the Kenworthy will present a FREE showing of<BR>
the 1995 Academy Award nominated documentary film,<BR>
"<B>A Great Day in Harlem</B>," by filmmaker Jean Bach.<BR>
Wednesday & Thursday, February 23 & 24 at 7:00 PM.<BR>
The film will be shown FREE and open to the public.<BR>
<BR>
<B>Mark your calendars now for April 6 – 9, 2005 at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre<BR>
</B><I>Sirius Idaho Theatre</I> <www.siriusidahotheatre.com>, in conjunction with <I>new fangled stages,<BR>
</I>presents the United States premiere of<BR>
<B><I>Random Acts of Love</I></B>, by Bruce Gooch<BR>
(Tickets go on sale February 22, through TicketsWest)<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
</B><BR>
<B>February at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre . . .<BR>
</B><BR>
<B>House of Flying Daggers (R)<BR>
</B>Feb 18 at 7PM<BR>
Feb 19 – 20 at 4:15 and 7:00 PM<BR>
<BR>
<B>A Great Day in Harlem<BR>
</B>February 23 & 24 at 7:00 PM<BR>
FREE<BR>
<BR>
UI Architecture Dept presents<BR>
<B>Will Bruder lecture<BR>
</B>February 25 at 5:00 PM<BR>
FREE<BR>
<BR>
<B>Dig (NR)<BR>
</B>Feb 26 at 7:00 PM<BR>
Feb 27 at 4:15 and 7:00 PM<BR>
<BR>
<B>Regular Movie prices</B>: $5 adults, $2 children 12 and younger. <BR>
KFS passes accepted for Sunday movies<BR>
<BR>
508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho<BR>
For more information, call 208-882-4127 or visit www.kenworthy.org<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
This week’s review-<BR>
<BR>
</B><FONT COLOR="#800000"><H2>The Yes Men<BR>
</H2></FONT><BR>
Directed by Chris Smith, Dan Ollman and Sarah Price<BR>
Running time: 1 hour, 23 minutes. <BR>
Rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Contains some adult language and raucous humor.<BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As Reviewed by Roger Ebert writing for the Chicago Sun-Times<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
>From an economic point of view, the Civil War was the least profitable of all our wars, because the destruction of lives and property involved Americans on both sides. In our other wars, most of the lives and property belonged to foreigners. The war was fought to abolish slavery, but slavery would soon have faded away on its own, because it made no economic sense. Think how much it costs to support a slave.<BR>
<BR>
The involuntary servitude of imported labor, which is what slavery amounts to, has been replaced in our times by the much more efficient system of exporting jobs to countries that are poor to begin with, and thus have lower maintenance costs for labor. This "remote labor" is the natural alternative to slavery, and, as a bonus, there is no reason for the worker not to be free. Thus he is responsible for his own housing, feeding and medical care -- which can be at a cost level much lower than a slave owner could safely provide.<BR>
<BR>
The new "remote labor system," enforced by the World Trade Organization through its system of loans and regulations for poor countries, is much more efficient for First World capitalism. It exports manufacturing and assembly jobs to Third World countries where athletic shoes, clothing, home appliances, tools, computers and toys are assembled by labor forces paid only pennies an hour. The use of child labor further reduces the cost, and removing the children from school diminishes the threat of educated opposition to the system.<BR>
<BR>
On the statements above we can all agree, right? Or was there a point at which you realized I was making an outrageous and immoral argument, and you were offended? I ask because when a fake "spokesman" for the World Trade Organization made the same argument before a WTO trade forum in Finland, the audience listened politely, applauded, and had no questions.<BR>
<BR>
"The Yes Men" is a disturbing documentary in which a couple of tricksters named Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum create a fictional WTO spokesman named Hank Hardy Unruh, and a fake WTO Web site where he can be contacted. Real-world groups contact Hank Hardy, and he flies out to their meetings to deliver a speech at which he summarizes the anti-WTO argument in terms the audience, incredibly, absorbs and passively accepts. Apparently (a) no one is really listening, (b) no one is thinking, or (c) the immorality of the WTO's exploitation of cheap foreign labor becomes invisible when it is described in purely economic terms. Answer: All three, which is why the United States and the other nations controlling the WTO can live with the inhuman cost of its policies, and why so many people simply don't understand what the demonstrators at world trade forums are so mad about.<BR>
<BR>
What is incredible in the film is the lengths to which a trade audience can be pushed without realizing it is the butt of a joke. At the meeting in Finland, which is about "Textiles of the Future," Hank Hardy Unruh concludes his speech, has an assistant rip off his "business suit," and reveals beneath it a gold lame body suit. It has an inflatable appendage that pops up to allow him to view a computer screen at eye level. This appendage looks uncannily like a large phallus. Do the audience members laugh uproariously or walk out in anger? No, they just sit there. They have lost all ability to apply reality to the ideological construction they inhabit.<BR>
<BR>
No one with a feeling for literature and poetry can read the typical best-selling business or self-help book with a straight face, because their six rules or nine plans or 12 formulas are so manifestly idiotic, and couched in prose of such insulting simplicity. If I were a boss, I would fire any employer reading such a book, on the grounds that he was not smart enough to be working for me. If I were the employee of a company that hired one of those motivational gurus, I would quit on the grounds that management had been taken over by pod people.<BR>
<BR>
But I am a film critic, and must report that "The Yes Men" is amazing in what it shows, but underwhelming in what it does with it. The film seems a little hasty and disorganized, as if available footage is being stretched further than it wants to go. The filmmakers are Dan Ollman, Sarah Price and Chris Smith; Price and Smith made "American Movie" (2000), without a doubt the funniest documentary I have ever seen, and one of the best.<BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As reviewed by Jonathan Curiel writing for the San Francisco Chronicle<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
Liberals and conservatives have opposing views of Michael Moore, but they can probably agree on one thing: Moore has radically changed the field of documentary filmmaking, opening up the genre for directors who use humor to make bigger points about the society we live in. "The Yes Men" has Moore's imprimatur all over it. In fact, Moore even appears in this documentary, but unlike "Fahrenheit 9/11" or "Bowling for Columbine," "The Yes Men" uses traditional filmmaking techniques to spotlight its subject: two activists who oppose the World Trade Organization. <BR>
<BR>
These aren't ordinary activists. These are people who impersonate the very officials they oppose, attending conferences as WTO representatives -- only to deliver talks that are critical of WTO policies. Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum have a history of pulling off successful stunts, and in "The Yes Men, " they live out the fantasies of many left-leaning activists by "subverting the dominant paradigm" on a global scale. <BR>
<BR>
The film's humor stems from Bonanno and Bichlbaum, who find funny ways to attack organizations and people they oppose. "Funny" is a relative term, of course, so it may only be liberals who laugh at what happened during the 2000 presidential campaign: Bonanno and Bichlbaum created a Web site that parodied then-candidate George W. Bush; the site was an exact duplicate of Bush's official site, except that it ripped his environmental policies and suggested Bush had a past drug problem. When a reporter asked Bush about the site, he said then, "There's a lot of garbage in politics, and obviously this is a garbage man." When the reporter suggested the site had gone too far, Bush said, "There ought to be limits ... to freedom." <BR>
<BR>
"The Yes Men" is filled with cinematic tension, primarily around Bichlbaum's attempt to pose as a WTO official at a conference in Finland. There, he wants to show off a "Management Leisure Suit" that features a phallus-like monitoring device. What Bichlbaum experiences shocks him -- though not in the way he had imagined. "The Yes Men" troika of directors (Chris Smith, Dan Ollman and Sarah Price) follow Bichlbaum, Bonanno and their supporters without judgment. There's no narration here. There's no Michael Moore-like bombast. The filmmakers let the audience decide whether Bichlbaum and Bonanno are really making a difference with their pranks. There are some obvious shortcomings in the film (why, for example, didn't Smith, Ollman and Price try to get an on-camera response from the WTO?). But "The Yes Men" achieves what any good documentary tries to: It's thought-provoking, insightful and entertaining at the same time. <BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As Reviewed by Sam Adams writing for the Philadelphia City Paper<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
Call it impersonation or "identity correction," but there's genius in the activist pranks of The Yes Men, the subject of this documentary by Chris Smith (<I>American Movie</I>), Dan Ollman and Sarah Price. When a fake Web site they'd created for the World Trade Organization led to a bona fide invitation, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum became The Yes Men, posing as WTO members at conferences and on CNBC, taking the free-trade gospel to absurd, but logically consistent, lengths. In Finland, they argue that slavery was not immoral so much as inefficient, which seems to go down all right with the textile conference they're addressing until Bichlbaum rips off his business attire to reveal a gold lamé "Management Leisure Suit," complete with a phallic projection for keeping track of workers. Even then, the Finns seem more beguiled than upset, as if the reflex to treat well-dressed people with respect no matter what they say is too inbred to overcome. (Or maybe they're just bored.) The David-and-Goliath thrill of watching Bonanno and Bichlbaum's shoestring cleverness subvert one of the most powerful organizations in the world is hard to overstate, surpassed only by the heady speculation of the stunts the movie's viewers might be inspired to pull.<BR>
<BR>
<I>Film reviews are researched and edited by Peter Haggart<BR>
</I>* * *<BR>
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</B></FONT>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<BR>
PAMELA PALMER, <B>Volunteer<BR>
</B><FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>Mailto:ppalmer@moscow.com<BR>
</U></FONT>Film and Events Committee <BR>
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre<BR>
<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>http://www.kenworthy.org<BR>
</U></FONT>To speak with a KPAC staff member, <BR>
call (208) 882-4127<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>Mailto:kpac@moscow.com<BR>
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