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<TITLE>The Squid & the Whale at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana"><B>This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre...<BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#800000"><H2>The Squid & the Whale (R)<BR>
</H2></FONT><B>Friday, January 27<BR>
7:00 PM<BR>
Saturday & Sunday, January 28 & 29<BR>
4:45 & 7:00 PM<BR>
</B>$5/Adult<BR>
KFS passes accepted for Sunday showings<BR>
<B>(see Review below)<BR>
* * *<BR>
<BR>
Next week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-<BR>
</B><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#800000"><B><I>Sirius Idaho Theatre</I></B></FONT><B><I> </I></B>presents <BR>
<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#000080"><H2><I>Sight Unseen<BR>
</I></H2></FONT>by Donald Margulies<BR>
<BR>
Evening performances:<BR>
<B>Thursday, Friday & Saturday, February 2, 3, & 4 at 7:30 PM<BR>
</B>Thursday, Friday & Saturday, February 9, 10, & 11 at 7:30 PM<BR>
<BR>
Matinee:<BR>
Saturday, February 11 at 2:00 PM<BR>
<BR>
<U>Tickets available at BookPeople of Moscow</U><B> </B>(521 S. Main St.)<BR>
<B>$15 Adults, $10 Seniors, $5 Students<BR>
</B>Tickets also available an hour before each performance at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre box office. <BR>
If you would like to purchase tickets and have them sent to you, email or call John Dickinson (<FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>johnd@moscow.com</U></FONT>, 208-301-4361).<BR>
<BR>
<U>CAST<BR>
</U><BR>
Jonathan - Donal Wilkinson<BR>
Nick - Peter Aylward<BR>
Patricia - Sally Eames-Harlan<BR>
Grete - Anna Cottle<BR>
<BR>
Directed by Pam Palmer<BR>
<BR>
<I>Sight Unseen</I> is the story of an American mega-artist so successful he's had the obligatory profile in Vanity Fair and can claim astronomical prices for his works sight unseen from a waiting list of wealthy patrons. In England for a retrospective of his paintings, the artist goes into the countryside to visit his original muse and lover, the "sacrificial shiksa" whom he abandoned in his quest for the opulent life which now devours him. Donald Margulies won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and <I>Sight Unseen</I> won the Obie Award for best new American Play in 1992.<BR>
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"<I>…you can tell when a play has gripped its audience, for no one seems to breathe, let alone shift in his seat. This phenomenon can be observed…at Sight Unseen....</I>" —NY Times.<BR>
<BR>
<B>Sign up to usher for a performance and see the play for free....</B> <BR>
Call or email Pam Palmer, Managing Artistic Director, at 208-596-2270 <<FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>siriusidahotheatre@gmail.com<BR>
<BR>
</U></FONT><I>Sight Unseen </I>contains language that may offend some audience members.<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
</B><H2><BR>
</H2><FONT COLOR="#800000"><FONT SIZE="5">The Kenworthy needs volunteers to take tickets for movies. </FONT></FONT> <BR>
<BR>
An e-mail message is sent out every Monday morning requesting volunteers for the following weekend. Volunteers are asked to arrive 20 minutes before the show starts, and in exchange for volunteering, get free admission to the show. If you are interested in being added to the volunteer list, please e-mail Alice at <FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>kpac@moscow.com<BR>
</U></FONT><B>* * *<BR>
</B><BR>
Coming in February-<BR>
<BR>
<B>Good Night, and Good Luck (PG)<BR>
</B>February 12 at 4:30 & 7:00 PM<BR>
<BR>
<B>Pride & Prejudice (PG)<BR>
</B>February 17 at 7:00 PM<BR>
February 18 & 19 at 4:00 & 7:00 PM<BR>
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<B>Walk the Line (PG-13)<BR>
</B>February 24 at 7:00 PM<BR>
February 25 & 26 at 4:00 & 7:00 PM<BR>
<BR>
International Jazz Collections<BR>
2006 Lecture Series<BR>
<B>Mark Cantor<BR>
Celluloid Improvisations: <BR>
Black, White, and Technicolor<BR>
</B>February 25 at 12:30 PM<BR>
Free<BR>
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<B>Coming in March: </B>Auditorium Chamber Music Series presents <I>Masters of Persian Music;<B> </B>Capote</I>; <I>U of I Women’s Center Lunafest</I>; U of I American Indian Film Festival; Grangeville Bluegrass Company<BR>
<BR>
Regular movie prices: $5/adult, $2/children 12 and younger<BR>
KFS passes accepted year-round for Sunday movies!<BR>
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For more information, go to www.kenworthy.org or call 208-882-4127.<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
<BR>
This week’s review-<BR>
</B><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#800000"><H2>The Squid and the Whale<BR>
</H2></FONT><BR>
Comedy-drama<BR>
Directed by Noah Baumbach<BR>
Starring Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney and Jesse Eisenberg<BR>
Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic dialogue and language<BR>
Running Time: 1 hour, 28 minutes<BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As reviewed by Kimberley Jones writing for the Austin (TX) Chronicle<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
The opening line lays it all out on the table: "It’s Mom and me versus you and Dad."<BR>
<BR>
Young Frank (Kline) is merely delineating sides for a family game of tennis, but when that family – the Berkmans of Park Slope, Brooklyn, circa 1986 – soon after dissolves in divorce, the opposing camps are pretty neatly summarized the same. Fifteen-year-old Walt (Eisenberg) sides with their father, Bernard (Daniels), a once-famous author whose reputation is in freefall. Frank is less obvious about it, but his heart is with his mother, Joan (Linney), whose own writing career is just taking off. <BR>
<BR>
There are no heroes here. Bernard is a pompous poseur; Joan, an unapologetic philanderer. Walt’s a mini-Bernard in the making, emulating his father’s soullessness to the point of playing a Pink Floyd song at a high school talent show and passing it off as his own (when pressed, Walt explains, "Well, I felt I could have written it"). And Frank is utterly neglected; among the movie’s many stand-out moments is the tragicomic sight of poor Frank, alone as usual, stripped to his pajama pants and cracking open a beer. It’s funny, and it’s heartbreaking.<BR>
<BR>
The Berkmans are all comical figures, but Baumbach never denies them their humanity. This is humor served not with a smirk but with a helpless shrug. It’s also an expertly acted piece (including William Baldwin in a cameo as a doofy tennis instructor who romances Joan). Kline’s Frank is the sentimental favorite, but it’s Daniel’s ego-bruised Bernard that cuts the deepest. He mostly speaks in that peculiar jargon of a windbag New York intellectual (he could moonlight in a Woody Allen film), in which he declares A Tale of Two Cities "minor Dickens" and declaims his shoddy, post-divorce residence an "elegant house on an elegant block – the fillet of the neighborhood." <BR>
<BR>
The Squid and the Whale’s scope is so tightly fixed, it’s the sort of film that’s bound to be labeled "modest," but it packs a hefty emotional wallop. <BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As reviewed by Sam Adams writing for the Philadelphia City Paper<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
Perhaps every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, but the unhappier the Berkmans, the disintegrating foursome at the heart of The Squid and the Whale, become, the more familiar the movie seems. The divorce of two literary intellectuals, washed-up novelist Bernard (Jeff Daniels) and budding writer Joan (Laura Linney), would seem to be the stuff of small-press novels, or that New Yorker story you've been meaning to read for weeks. But if the Berkmans implicitly think themselves better, more enlightened, than the people around them, Squid quickly establishes that their troubles are all too common. <BR>
<BR>
Set in Brooklyn in 1986, the movie bypasses facile nostalgia in favor of minute, flawlessly chosen details: a Burger King glass on the dinner table; a copy of Pink Floyd's The Wall prized, and later plagiarized, by 16-year-old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg). Baumbach understands that period details are important only if they fix character as well as place: <BR>
<BR>
When Walt's dad drags him and a date to see Blue Velvet instead of Short Circuit, it's as if Walt's been yanked out of childhood and into adulthood, with no chance to get his bearings. <BR>
<BR>
As a writer, particularly an unsuccessful and purposefully obscure one, Bernard tends to invest words with more meaning than they can bear. Favorite books are "dense," while actions he dislikes make people (namely, Joan) "difficult." More than his pedantic repetition of words like "coup" and "filet," it's Bernard's attempt to make simple words serve complex, private meanings that marks his failure to communicate. He calls Ivan (William Baldwin), the tennis pro to whom Frank has taken a shine, a "Philistine," he assuming the insult is self-evident. But when Frank asks him what a Philistine is, Bernard briefly stumbles, as if he'd never considered having to explain himself. "It's someone who doesn't like interesting films, or books and things," he ventures, a response less notable for its snobbery than its vagueness. <BR>
<BR>
The Squid and the Whale is the kind of movie that can as easily be killed by praise as inattention; its strength is in its understatement, although Baumbach isn't afraid of the occasional big moment (at least as big as you can manage on a shoestring budget). Daniels' performance is the movie's showiest, a monster in a career filled with mushballs, but it's Eisenberg's shell-shocked stare that makes Squid work; he lets you see the beginning of feelings that won't materialize for years to come. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As reviewed by Roger Ebert writing for the Chicago Sun-Times<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
I don't know what I'm supposed to feel during "The Squid and the Whale." Sympathy, I suppose, for two bright boys whose parents are getting a messy divorce. Both parents are writers and use words as weapons; the boys choose sides and join the war. In theory I observe their errors and sadness and think, there but for the grace of God go I. In practice, I feel envy.<BR>
<BR>
I would have loved to have two writers as parents, and grow up in a bohemian family in Brooklyn, and hear dinner-table conversation about Dickens. These kids have it great. Their traumas will inspire them someday. Hell, the movie was written and directed by Noah Baumbach, whose parents were writers (the novelist Jonathan Baumbach, the film critic Georgia Brown), and look how he turned out. By the time he was 26 he had already directed "Kicking and Screaming" (1995), about sardonic and literate college graduates whose only ambition was to remain on campus. I felt the same way. Left to my own devices, I would still be a student of English literature, entering my 44th year as an undergraduate.<BR>
<BR>
In the movie the parents, Bernard and Joan Berkman, are played by Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney, and if that's who it takes to play your parents, what are you complaining about? The movie centers on their troubled sons. Joan has been having an affair for four years, their father is moving out, and in theory their divorcing parents will share custody (there is even a plan for time shares of the cat). In practice, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), who is 16, moves in with his father, and Frank (Owen Kline), who is about 10, stays in the family home with his mother.<BR>
<BR>
"The Squid and the Whale" is essentially about how we grow up by absorbing what is useful in our parents and forgiving what is not. Joan may cheat on her husband, but he deserves to be cheated on, and she demonstrates a faith in romance that is, after all, a lesson in optimism. Bernard may be a gold mine of shorthand literary opinions, but in his case he has actually read the books, and sooner or later his son Walt will probably feel compelled to read minor Dickens for himself -- and major Dickens, which is so good all you can do is just helplessly stare at the book and turn the pages.<BR>
<BR>
These kids will be okay. Someday Bernard and Joan will be old and will delight in their grandchildren, who will no doubt be miserable about the flaws and transgressions of Walt and Frank, and then create great achievements and angry children of their own. All I know is, it is better to be the whale than the squid. Whales inspire major novels. <BR>
<BR>
<I>Film reviews researched and edited by Peter Haggart<BR>
</I><B>* * *<BR>
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<B><I>Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre<BR>
</I>508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho<BR>
</B>208-882-4127<BR>
Sign up for this weekly email on events and movies at the Kenworthy by logging onto our website <BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>http://www.kenworthy.org<BR>
<BR>
</U></FONT>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<BR>
PAMELA PALMER, <B>Volunteer<BR>
</B>Mailto:ppalmer@moscow.com<BR>
Film and Events Committee <BR>
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre<BR>
<BR>
http://www.kenworthy.org<BR>
To speak with a KPAC staff member, <BR>
call (208) 882-4127<BR>
Mailto:kpac@moscow.com<BR>
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