Events Calendar

The Petoskey Film Theater will be showing the film "The Hurt Locker" on Wednesday and Friday, January 13 & 15, 7:30 pm at the Petoskey District Library, Carnegie Building. Donations are appreciated. "The Hurt Locker" has won dozens of awards and been nominated for 3 Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay.

A well-acted, intensely shot, action filled war epic, Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" is thus far the best of the recent dramatizations of the Iraq War. The movie focuses on an Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team, the guys whose more or less daily job is to disarm the homemade bombs that have accounted for most US casualties in Iraq. But even more, the film's extraordinary tension derives from the precision and intelligence of Bigelow's direction. She gets every sweaty detail and tactical nuance in the close-up confrontation of man and bomb, while keeping us alert to the volatile wraparound reality of an ineluctably foreign environment -- hot streets and blank-walled buildings full of onlookers, some merely curious and some hostile, perhaps thumbing a cellphone that could become a trigger. This is exemplary moviemaking.

The setting my be Iraq in 2004, but it could just as well be Thermopylae; "The Hurt Locker" is no "Iraq War Movie." Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal -- who did time as a journalist embedded with an EOD unit -- align themselves with neither supporters nor opponents of the US involvement. There's no politics here. War is just the job the characters in the movie do. One in particular, the supremely resourceful staff sergeant played by Jeremy Renner, is addicted to the almost nonstop adrenaline rush and the opportunity to express his esoteric, life-on-the-edge genius. The hurt locker of the title is a box he keeps under his bunk, filled with bomb parts and other signatory memorabilia of "things that could have killed me." That none of it has killed him so far is a no real consolation. In this move, you never know who's going to go and when; even high-profile talent is no guarentee. But one thing can be guaranteed, and that is that almost every sequence in the movie becomes a riveting, often fiercely enigmatic set piece. This could well be the best film of 2009.

Blue Moose and the Unbuttoned Zippers is one of the dynamic new fiddle bands arising out of the bubbling Boston neo-traditional scene. Weaving influences from Appalachian old-time to Celtic to Scandinavian mixing tunes and songs from varied traditions with their own sparkling originals, BMUZ bring chops, inventiveness and camaraderie to their music - and know how to rock the house to boot. Instruments including the nyckelharpa, a cross between an autoharp and a viola and Hardanger fiddle brings the uniqueness of this group to life. All Berklee College of Music students, their sound is clearly in the tradion-busting tradition of eclectic improvisatory fiddle music pioneered by the likes of Darol Anger and Matt Glaser. The band was a hit at the 29th annual Blissfest last summer and are back for a rare appearance in Michigan.

Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 at the door, $15 reserved, Student 1/2 off, Members & Seniors are $1 off. Advanced tickets available at Crooked Tree, Grain Train, and Blissfest Offices.

Adults are $6, kids 6-12 are $5 and children 5 & under are free

Take-out available

All proceeds will go to the purchase of equipment for the Petoskey Ski Team