BOGEY LIGHTS UP THE SCREEN ONCE MORE AT CINEMA 21

Probably the most iconic American actor of all time, Humphrey Bogart was at his hard-boiled best in the early-to-mid 40s, something that the good folks at Cinema 21 seem bent on calling attention to with their latest 35mm revival series, You'll Take It and Like It!: 3 Bogart Classics in 35mm.  Over the course of seven days, the theater will be running a non-stop tour through three of Bogey's best-loved films, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, and Casablanca (directed, respectively, by the none too shabby trio of Howard Hawks, John Huston, and Michael Curtiz).

Humphrey may be the main man across this triptych of silver screen classics, but his supporting cast members, including outstanding, career-defining performances by Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Sydney Greenstreet, and (one of my favorites character actors of the golden age) Peter Lorre (who's in 2 of the 3 films!), shine just as brightly as their leading man.

Is it too greedy to hope that, like their recent Hitchcock fest, Cinema 21 will make the Bogey series an annual (or even quarterly) event?  'Cause I'd sure love to see Key Largo (my personal favorite), The Petrified Forest, To Have and Have Not, In a Lonely Place, High Sierra, They Drive By Night, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre all roll through town in subsequent installments.  But, for now, the three on offer will absolutely do!

Cinema 21's mini-Bogart fest, "You'll Take It and Like It!" begins on Friday, November 30th and runs through Thursday, December 6th.  More info available here.


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THE RAIN FALLS DOWN ON PDX: WEEKEND ROUNDUP FOR 5/4

It's been a long, busy (mostly non-blogging) week.  Here's a short nod to several films playing around PDX this weekend:

First up, the Hollywood Theatre has a zombie flick set during the Cuban revolution.  It's called (what else?) Juan of the Dead.

Cinema 21's is giving everybody another week to catch Terrence Davies' excellent new film, The Deep Blue Sea, starring Rachel Weisz.  My review from last week can be accessed here.

Nanni Moretti's (The Son's Room) latest feature, We Have a Pope opens this week at Living Room Theaters.  Everyone at the PIFF press screening I saw this at laughed a lot.  Me, not so much.

 

NW Film Center begins their Studio Ghibli retrospective tonight with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.  They'll also be screening Castle in the Sky and fan-favorite My Neighbor Totoro (here's my earlier piece on the last film) this weekend.

The Laurelhurst Theater's got a sure thing going with their screening of John Huston's time-tested classic, The Maltese Falcon.  Humphrey Bogart stars as Dashiell Hammett's hardened detective Sam Spade.

Meanwhile, 5th Avenue Cinema is hosting an event dubbed Visuals: A Community Film Festival on Fri. the 4th, featuring works by locals.  Below is a preview from The New Debutantes, directed by Jarratt Taylor:




 



And the Clinton Street Theater's got the documentary The Clean Bin Project lined up this week, along with their usual weekend shenanigans involving late night screenings of Repo! The Genetic Opera and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

And, of course, there's this lil' super hero movie opening all over God's green earth this weekend, too.  Looks like I'll be joining the masses by heading out to the 99W Drive-in to catch it tonight:

Until next time...



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IT'S OUR 100TH POST + NOIRVILLE @ CINEMA 21!!!

As the title of this posting indicates, we've hit a modest milestone here at The Rain Falls Down on Portlandtown.  One hundred posts in just over a year's time and it only feels like the blog is beginning to pick up steam.

What better way to celebrate than with the news that local treasure Cinema 21 is following up their week long birthday party for two classic films with a series they've dubbed Noirville!

Back when I lived in the SF Bay Area, it seemed like there were several film noir fests programmed per year. It's been a good long while since a theater in PDX programmed a series dedicated to the genre (was this the last time?), so this is truly exciting news!

The press release states:
"Cinema 21 proudly presents… NoirVille!

One entire week of Film Noir’s Greatest Hits! 
Twelve films in all. And for you über film geeks, nine of them are on sumptuous 35mm!

The films speak for themselves; they’re classics all. But what should be stressed is that this is a very rare opportunity to see on the big screen, as they were intended, twelve quintessential examples of a style, a feeling, a mood of American films the French aptly named Noir. To borrow a phrase from Raymond Chandler, 'The streets were dark with something more than night.' And now so is Cinema 21!"


Featured at Cinema 21's Noirville:

Orson Welles' 1958 film Touch of Evil:

John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950):

Charles Laughton's 1955 film The Night of the Hunter (tied with Days of Heaven as my favorite film):

Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956):

Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep (1946):

Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past (1947):

Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street (1945):

Alexander Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success (1957):

Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955):

and Edmund Goulding's Nightmare Alley (1947):

Here's the fantastic poster for the event:

Noirville begins at Cinema 21 on Friday, March 23rd.  More info available here.

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