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<TITLE>Reading by Natasha Trethewey; Little Miss Sunshine; and Ghostbusters at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana"><B>This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-<BR>
<BR>
University of Idaho Department of English presents<BR>
</B><FONT COLOR="#800000"><H2>Reading-Natasha Trethewey<BR>
</H2></FONT><B>Wednesday, October 11<BR>
7:30 PM<BR>
</B>Free<BR>
<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#800000"><H2>Little Miss Sunshine (R)<BR>
</H2></FONT><B>Thursday & Friday, October 12 & 13<BR>
7:00 PM<BR>
Saturday & Sunday, October 14 & 15<BR>
4:30 & 7:00 PM<BR>
</B>$5/adult<BR>
KFS pass good for Sunday movies<BR>
<B>(See movie review below)<BR>
</B><BR>
<B>Late Night Scary Movie<BR>
</B><FONT COLOR="#800000"><H2>Ghostbusters (PG)<BR>
</H2></FONT><B>Saturday, October 14<BR>
10 PM<BR>
</B>$3/includes popcorn<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
<BR>
Next week at the Kenworthy-<BR>
</B><BR>
Idaho Public Television presents<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#000080"><H2>Outdoor Idaho Palouse Paradise Premiere<BR>
</H2></FONT><B>Tuesday, October 17<BR>
7:00 PM<BR>
</B>Free<BR>
<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#000080"><H2>Quinceañera (R)<BR>
</H2></FONT><B>Thursday & Friday, October 19 & 20<BR>
7:00 PM<BR>
Saturday & Sunday, October 21 & 22<BR>
4:45 & 7:00 PM<BR>
</B>$5/adult<BR>
KFS pass good for Sunday movies<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
</B><BR>
<B>Coming in October to the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre...<BR>
</B><BR>
<B>Something Serious (not rated)<BR>
</B>A film by Nate Dail<BR>
Tuesday, October 24<BR>
8:00 PM<BR>
$5/general admission<BR>
<BR>
<B>A Scanner Darkly (R)<BR>
</B>Thursday & Friday, October 26 & 27<BR>
7:00 PM<BR>
Saturday & Sunday, October 28 & 29<BR>
4:35 & 7:00 PM<BR>
<BR>
<B>October is Scary Movie Month<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#800000">Late night. Dark theater. Big screen. Free popcorn.<BR>
And a crowd of friends of the verge of screaming.<BR>
</FONT></B>The series runs every Saturday at 10:00 PM<BR>
Admission is $3 and includes a free bag of popcorn<BR>
<BR>
Upcoming scary movies:<BR>
<BR>
<B>Psycho</B> (the original)<BR>
Saturday, October 21<BR>
10:00 PM<BR>
<BR>
<B>Poltergeist<BR>
</B>Saturday, October 28<BR>
10:00 PM<BR>
<BR>
Check out our web-site for more information, ratings, and reviews. This is<BR>
your chance to see some of your favorite flicks on the BIG screen.<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
</B><BR>
<B>Coming in November:</B> Half Nelson; Factotum; This Film is Not Yet Rated; <I>Sirius Idaho Theatre</I> presents a staged reading of <I>The Oldest Profession</I> by Paula Vogel<BR>
<BR>
Regular movie prices: $5/adult, $3/child 12 or younger<BR>
KFS series pass prices: $30/10 films, $75/30 films. KFS pass good only for Sunday movies.<BR>
<BR>
For more information on movies, events, rental rates, and/or to download a schedule, <BR>
visit our website at www.kenworthy.org or call 208-882-4127.<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
</B><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#800000"><H2>Little Miss Sunshine (R)<BR>
</H2></FONT><BR>
Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris<BR>
Written by Michael Arndt<BR>
Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes<BR>
Rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). The film has some salty language, but nothing anyone sentient hasn’t heard before.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As reviewed by Philip French writing for The London (England) Observer<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
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 <U>The Grapes of Wrath</U>. It is also the plot of an amusing comedy, <U>Little Miss Sunshine</U>, 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.<BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
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, “Refuse to Lose,” explaining the “Nine Steps to Success,” 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.<BR>
<BR>
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 <U>The Iceman Cometh</U>. 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.<BR>
<BR>
<U>Little Miss Sunshine</U> 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 “Little Miss Sunshine Pageant.” 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.<BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
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?'<BR>
<BR>
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 “America the Beautiful,” 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.<BR>
<BR>
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. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As reviewed by Ruthe Stein writing for the San Francisco Chronicle<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
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. <BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
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."<BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As reviewed by David Rooney writing for Variety<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
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."<BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
A sharply cut opening sequence of quick character-establishing scenes underlines that this is an especially problematic clan.<BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
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.<BR>
<BR>
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<BR>
<BR>
<I>Film reviews researched and edited by Peter Haggart<BR>
</I><B>* * *<BR>
<BR>
<I>Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre<BR>
</I>508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho<BR>
</B>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>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<BR>
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