Out to Lunch but We'll Be Back Soon

Anyone who might have popped by the blog in the last month and a half could easily have assumed that we've closed up shop permanently.  I wanted to let everybody know that this is not the case.  I've been busy working on a film project with friends that's kept me fairly distracted from writing.  Between it and my day job, it's been the blog and other writing projects that have fallen to the wayside.

The good news is that we should be up and at it again sometime in early June.  So, don't give up on us quite yet.  We still have plenty of film nerd magic to share with the world.

And, just so this post isn't entirely about our temporary hiatus, here's a nod to a couple of films/items I've enjoyed during the break (and would have loved to write about at greater length):

#1: I saw Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Merchant of Four Seasons for the first time.  One of those film experiences that becomes more and more rare as you dive further into the deep end of cinema...it felt like falling in love with movies all over again.

#2: I caught Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3D during its run at Cinema 21.  I'm still not convinced that this current generation of 3D exhibition is anything more than a phase/fad/marketing scam.  But I will admit that Herzog's use of 3D was entirely appropriate and enhancing to the overall experience of his film.  And, y'know, if folks like Herzog, Wim Wenders and Takashi Miike are jumping onto the 3D train, then maybe I am slightly more interested in what the possibilities are for this otherwise gimmicky (and admission-fee inflating) technology.

#3: One of my favorite directors, Terrence Malick, won the Palme D'or at the Cannes Film Festival for his newest (and much anticipated) feature, The Tree of Life.  While another of my favorites, Lars Von Trier, made a complete ass of himself while promoting his newest full-length, Melancholia, getting himself banned from the festival with his juvenile, misguided and just-not-very-successful attempts at improv comedy.

#4: All the excitement of this year's edition of Cannes got me thinking about watching past winners of the Palme D'or, catching up with those films that I've never made time for and revisiting others which I haven't seen in years.  Thus far, I've taken another look at David Lynch's 1990 effort Wild at Heart, an old favorite that, despite taking the top prize at Cannes, was a complete disaster both critically and financially in the U.S. And in a first-time viewing, Luis Buñuel's 1961 film Viridiana flashed across my screen last night.

Who knows, maybe I'll grapple with other winners of Cannes most prestigious prize when the blog heats up again in June.  Only time will tell...

In the meantime, don't forget that you can find us on Facebook here.  While you're at it, you can also check out the Facebook page for the short film that's been keeping me from updating regularly.  It can be found here.

And, lest you think me a tease for posting the cover of Out to Lunch! without explicitly commenting on it, here's a link to the title track from Dolphy's masterpiece:

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LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN: limited 3-day engagement in PDX

Portland is in for a treat this weekend as The Hollywood Theatre begins a 3-day run of a newly-restored, 35mm print of Leave Her to Heaven.  For those not in the know, the 1945 feature is one of the more treasured weapons in a film noir buff's arsenal, often referenced as an example of a rococo-like decadence that crept into the genre as it matured.

For starters, Leon Shamroy's (The King and I, Cleopatra) Oscar-winning cinematography is captured in a full-blown, 3-strip Technicolor sheen that trades vibrant hues for the high-contrast, black and white polarity that had all but become the standard in noir cinema.  Additionally, Leave Her to Heaven doesn't strictly adhere to noir tropes, blending sizable doses of melodrama and courtroom spectacle into its overall mix, emerging as a distinctive mélange that fits well outside the cinematic norms of its day.

And the film is packed to the gills with more than enough memorable sequences to hang your enthusiasm upon, including one of the most harrowing examples of dramatized filicide ever committed to celluloid.  Ostensibly a vehicle for 1940s starlet Gene Tierney (Laura, Night and the City), Leave Her to Heaven also features a performance by Cornel Wilde that might come off as corny to some when placed against more modern sensibilities but, nonetheless, achieves a perfect balance between the chill that eventually blows into Tierney's characterization and the blustering heights that Vincent Price (The Fly, The Pit and the Pendulum) reaches for in the film.

And since we mentioned Mr. Price, it's worth noting just how much he does with what is essentially a supporting role in this movie.  The Vincent Price who appears in Leave Her to Heaven is an altogether different beast than the one that most contemporary audiences have come to expect.  This is Price before he became typecast as the voice of horror in a thousand and one b-grade productions, resulting in countless cultural references over the past half century that have unfairly painted him a one-trick pony.

Because of the dissimilarity to the most well-known aspects of his on-screen persona, Price's performance here, playing a spurned lover turned prosecuting attorney, is probably the most pleasurable to engage with on a first-time viewing.  To watch his final interrogation of Wilde's character is to witness the less than lawyer-ly techniques of television's "Perry Mason" (if you'll pardon the Spinal Tap reference) turned up to eleven.




Leave Her to Heaven screens at the Hollywood Theatre on Friday, April 8th at 7:15pm and Saturday, April 9th and Sunday April 10th at 2:30pm and 7:15pm.



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DE DESTIERROS (UPROOTED): U.S. Premiere tomorrow (3/24) night in PDX

Even though I already posted about this topic last week on the blog's official Facebook page, it's worth mentioning that tomorrow night Portland is playing host to the U.S. premiere of De Destierros (Uprooted).  Directed by NW Film Center student Alvaro Torres, the 30+ minute long film won the documentary award at the 2010 Costa Rican Film Festival, airing on state television since having received that honor.

Thursday's screening will happen in the boardroom of the Multnomah Building at 7:30p.m.  Admission is free.  The Multnomah Building is located at 501 SE Hawthorne Blvd.

More details can be found here.


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MEEK'S CUTOFF: THE PROBLEMS OF TODAY, DRESSED UP IN YESTERDAY'S CLOTHES

A cocksure false prophet leads a band of unfortunates through a dry and desolate wasteland.  A child reads aloud from the Old Testament.  And the one person with the potential to serve as a messianic figure is hogtied and treated to the constant suspicions of his captors.  Welcome to the western as reconceived by Kelly Reichardt, whose previous efforts earned her a seat at the head of A.O. Scott's "neo-neo realists" of American cinema table.

In her latest film, Meek's Cutoff, the director brings her now familiar strategies to bear upon the Oregon trail and the historic failure that was Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), a trail guide whose bad advice leaves those travelers foolish enough to follow him stranded without water as they move across the desert landscape of eastern Oregon.  Whereas the objectively pitched camerawork in Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy and Old Joy often lent those films a sense that we were intimately accessing the singular consciousness of each film's protagonist, here we're placed at a distance from each member of the group, helplessly watching as the terrible yet oddly muted events transpire.

If there's any one character to hang our sympathies upon, it's Emily (Michelle Williams) who, despite being equally as miserable as her fellow travelers, at least defines herself through a selfless act of humanity, performed at the lowest point in their journey.  Beyond that moment, we're denied insight into these characters, asked instead as an audience to observe and consider our own responses to such circumstances while dwelling upon what behaviors have changed over time and which of those have remained doggedly present in the culture of today.

Whether it's the insanity of groupthink, the tendency to devalue natural resources until they reach the point of scarcity or the assumptions caught up in patriarchal dominance, the problems facing these characters are not unlike the ones we face during our day to day lives.  Which makes total sense, since period pieces are more often than not positioned to speak to contemporary issues, rather than poised purely as a means of reflecting upon the past.  Reichardt has proven herself over the course of just a few films to be a director deeply interested in the undercurrents of her stories, favoring the cultivation of subtext rather than a routine focus on plot points.  Old Joy, for instance, is just as much about the rise of partisanship during the post-9-11 Bush era as it is, on a surface level, about a friendship strained by differing ideologies.

As the characters in Meek's Cutoff move aimlessly through the Oregon wilderness, it's difficult not to view the landscape as a metaphorical space in which a perennial struggle is being reenacted.  And, yes, sometimes a wagon train is just a wagon train.  But, in the case of Meek's Cutoff, I'll hazard a guess that there's something deeper lurking right below the surface of this tale.

Meek's Cutoff opens in mid-April in select cities.  Given it's home-grown heritage, expect it to play locally at that time in PDX.



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A day in support of arts funding + MEEK'S CUTOFF

Just a quick run-down of a couple events happening today:

There's a local film community pow-wow going down this afternoon in Salem on the steps of the capitol building.  The Oregon Media Production Association (OMPA) has organized the 4pm event  in support of HB 2167, which, if ratified, would increase film incentives to production companies seeking to make films in Oregon.

Following the afternoon's activities, there's a special pre-release screening of Kelly Reichardt's (Old Joy) newest feature, Meek's Cutoff.  Shot entirely in Oregon, the film reunites Reichardt with Wendy & Lucy star Michelle Williams.  As was the case with Reichardt's last two films, the film was written by Portland author Jon Raymond ("Livability").  The latter event takes place at the Elsinore Theatre in Salem at 7pm and benefit the Oregon Cultural Trust's efforts in statewide arts funding.

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ILLEGAL: Doing Time in Belgium

Having my recent experiences with Belgian films mostly confined to bittersweet comedies like Eldorado, I was somewhat unprepared for the unyielding bleakness of Olivier Masset-Depasse's Illégal, a film more in line with the emotional terrain of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's oeuvre than with the absurd humor of a work like Gustave de Kervern and Benoît Delépine's Aaltra.

Winner of the Prix SACD at the 2010 Director's Fortnight at Cannes, Illégal highlights the plight of Tania (Anne Coesens), a woman who has fled Russia with her adolescent son in tow, seeking a better life in Belgium.  Their actual experience in this newly adopted homeland is far from ideal, as an overwhelming paranoia about discovery and deportation by the authorities becomes a part of their daily lives.  Early on, when the plot takes the expected turn and Tania is caught, she's separated from her son and thrown into a detainment center that resembles nothing less than a prison.

Massat-Depasse makes use of the fictional scenario as an opportunity to frankly discuss the real life treatment of illegal immigrants in contemporary Belgian society.  Tania and her fellow inmates undergo extreme physical and mental abuse both within the walls of the holding station and, especially, when forced to participate in repeated "deportation rituals" designed to shake loose a confession from those inmates withholding the basic information required by the government to enact a legal deportation process.

The film's grim story is well supported by the omnipresent gray tones mixed into the color palette of its cinematography.  The overall look of the film is a bit washed out but that, along with the use of hand held cameras throughout, helps forward the notion that we're peering into a reality lived by the dispossessed around the world, since the narrative is easily transposed to multiple nations whose actions surrounding illegal immigration are dubious at best.

As much as this sounds like an intellectual exercise on the part of the filmmakers, Coesens' powerfully nuanced performance as Tania is what keeps the movie from flying off the tracks and devolving into a formulaic message piece.  Watching as Tania agonizingly yearns for a reunion with her son, despite full knowledge of all the obstacles conspiring to keep that from occurring, is to witness a performance so grounded in character and realistic motivation that it actually inspires a belief in the viewer that, if sheer will were enough, Tania just might overcome her circumstances.


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The Rain Falls Down on Portlandtown: Now More Facebook-y Than Ever

Hey folks, we here at The Rain Falls Down on Portlandtown just figured out that a lot of people are excited about this thing called Facebook.  We're not positive but we think it might be a bar located deep in cyberspace.  At any rate, the blog now has its own Facebook page, located here.  Drop on by anytime for updates on postings, ridiculous conversations, etc.


Here's a quick rundown of some film related events going down this weekend in PDX:
 
--day four of POWFest is happening right now at the Hollywood Theatre.  Our brief coverage of the Portland Oregon Women's Film Festival can be accessed right here.

 --the NW Film Center continues with its The Films of Charlie Chaplin and Classic French Crime Films series.  This evening's features at the Whitsell Auditorium include Chaplin's City Lights (1931) at 7pm and The Sicilian Clan (1969) with Jean Gabin and Alain Delon.

--PSU's student run 5th Avenue Cinema is featuring the Czech New Wave classic Daisies (1966) for another two days.

--The Clinton Street Theater is hosting Orgasm Inc., a new documentary about the pharmaceutical companies' push to create a female-centric version of Viagra.

Those are but a few of the options available for adventurous cinema geeks in Portland this weekend.  Remember to find us on Facebook and to keep a lookout for future updates.  Bye for now...

 
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