THE RAIN FALLS DOWN ON PDX: WEEKEND ROUNDUP FOR 5/11

Here we go again...it's the weekend roundup of films opening in and around PDX.

First up, Cinema 21 hosts Portland's theatrical run of the Norwegian crime-thriller Headhunters.  I'm still kicking myself for not being able to make the press screening for this one.  Dan Halsted, programmer for the Hollywood Theatre and the Grindhouse Film Festival personally chose it for one of his single night PIFF After Dark screenings back in February.  By all accounts from those who attended, it was a unique take on the genre.  Cinema 21's Tom Ranieri commented via e-mail that it's "a lot of fun, some of it gruesome fun certainly."

The NW Film Center continues their month-long Studio Ghibli retrospective, Castles in the Sky: Miyazaki, Takahata, and the Masters of Studio Ghibli, with Kiki's Delivery Service (reviewed here), Only Yesterday and Princess Mononoke.  It's a rare chance to see these films on the big screen; Only Yesterday has never had an official North American release!  And I believe that two out of the three features will be 35mm prints!  More info on the Studio Ghibli series available here.

Over at the Hollywood Theatre, the annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival & CthuluCon runs through the weekend.  Highlights include It's in the Blood, starring Lance Henriksen (Aliens, The Terminator),  and The Horror Express with Christopher Lee (The Wicker Man) and Peter Cushing (Star Wars).  All info pertaining to tickets and passes can be found here.

Living Room Theaters begins showing Jesus Henry Christ with Michael Sheen and Toni Collette today.  They're also getting the magnificent The Deep Blue Sea (reviewed here), which just finished a two week run at Cinema 21.

The Laurelhurst Theater & Pub continues its winning series of classic screenings with John Ford's eternally great 1956 anti-western The Searchers, starring John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter and Natalie Wood.

And, finally, PSU's student-run 5th Avenue Cinema has a three-day screening of Michael Haneke's incredible (as well as incredibly disturbing) 1997 home-invasion classic Funny Games.

A lot on the horizon for next week, including a 35mm print of Jaws at the Hollywood Theater, Cinema Project's latest event (reviewed here), the opening of QDoc (Portland Queer Documentary Festival), HD Fest at the Living Room Theaters, etc.  Keep your eyes on the blog as we'll be following all of these and more over the coming days.

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CINEMA PROJECT presents SHOW & TELL: THE WORK OF DANI LEVENTHAL

Early next week, Cinema Project is bringing a 2-day presentation of video works by New York-based artist Dani Leventhal to Portland.  Harnessing an approach to moving images that points to a background in sculpture and illustration, there's a transparency of origin present within her videos that speaks to strategies based in additive and subtractive processes.  Leventhal gathers materials constantly; the piece 54 Days This Winter 36 Days This Spring for 18 Minutes is the product of an extensive period of videotaping, culling from life the raw materials of her art.  It's the manner in which she then collages these elements into resolutely non-narrative and constantly shifting finished works that makes them uniquely her own. 

A still from Draft 9

Can I tell you specifically what any of the three videos of hers I've seen is about?  Not really; again, we're talking about aggressively non-narrative work here.  But the confounding paths traced within each piece achieve a lot more than just holding one's attention.  Draft 9, for example, inspires both recoil and fascination, offering up disquieting images of taxidermy and roadkill stitched together with visions of geese taking flight over snow covered ground, blended with dives into dense fields of hair and skin, etc.

A still from 54 Days This Winter 36 Days This Spring for 18 Minutes

Maybe it's best to just jump in and experience the works for yourself.  Or defer to Leventhal herself for explanations of intent.  Here's a very good interview with Leventhal about her background, process, and the how the connections that she identifies within the images she films help guide the shapes of the finished pieces.

A still from Hearts are Trump Again

And here's the press release from Cinema Project:
Dani Leventhal’s videos are the result of a commitment to constantly recording her immediate world, carrying her camera with her every­where, often mounted on her bicycle. From this process she stitches images together in a loose essayistic or diaristic style—a montage that takes us on a journey, but with a destination that is anything but clear. The individual shots seem mundane, but together become hyperreal, giving fresh insight into a personal contemporary world. In the award-winning Draft 9, Leventhal cuts between skinned animals, well-fed pets, her grandfather’s Holocaust-tattooed arm, and her own romantic liaisons to create, in the words of critic Genevieve Yue, “something that is extraordinarily immediate, both fresh and painful, hard to watch and yet impossible not to watch.” In Show and Tell in the Land of Milk and Honey, Leventhal juxtaposes bucolic shots of farm life with tales of sexual harassment and sick chickens while living and working in Israel while in 9 Minutes of Kaunaus, she captures the fanta­sies of a wide-eyed boy whose older brother serves in the Israeli army. 

"While Dani is often tagged as a diary filmmaker, the works as a whole complicate that term so much that it becomes ultimately rather unhelpful for understanding her project. At times, her videos can recall the way that Nathaniel Dorsky’s films spin the majestic from the mundane. Like Dorsky, Leventhal seeks out images with singularity and weight, alive to the imme­diacy of the moment—a moment that will never return."
 —Chris Stults 

Cinema Project presents Show & Tell: The Work of Dani Leventhal at the Hollywood Theatre on Tues., May 15th and Wed., May 16th at 7pm.  With the exception of Draft 9, which plays both nights, Tuesday and Wednesday night's programs are made up of entirely different material.   More info on the program available here.


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THE FILMS OF STUDIO GHIBLI: KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE

Early on in Kiki's Delivery Service, Kiki's mother bemoans the loss of her traditions, wondering who will carry on making medicinal potions after she's gone.  An elderly neighbor reminds her that "things change, little by little," setting the stage for Hayao Miyazaki's 1989 animated film; the story of a young woman striking out on her own, seeking to distinguish her life from the ones lived by her parents.  The fact that our young heroine, Kiki, also happens to be a witch, matters to the story but mostly as a textural device, considering that, with or without the magical dressing, the film's basic thrust involves the chronicling of one young woman's exploration of the world and her identity within it.

The film opens right as Kiki has decided that today will be the day she cuts the apron strings and leaves her parent's home.  She's thirteen years old, traditionally the age when young witches go searching for a town to call their own.  Heading off with her familiar, a black cat named Jiji, she flies unsteadily into the future, unaware of the adventures that await her.

Miyazaki keeps the tone light and the pacing unhurried throughout Kiki's Delivery Service.  There are moments when Kiki must rise to the occasion, necessitating the orchestration of a grand action sequence.  But there's also quite a lot of room made in the film for her to simply wander, explore, and contemplate both her surroundings and her prospects.  Surprisingly enough, the story shrugs off the standard girl or boy with powers conventions; no one she encounters seems all that surprised that she can fly on a broomstick, so there's no time wasted on Kiki denying her base self.  This is a film that looks to empower, not shame, its protagonist (and by extension, it's young viewers).

Funny but not without its share of character-building lessons, the film is fashioned out of the same enchanted materials that power most of Studio Ghibli's output.  Exquisite hand-drawn animation blends with imaginative storytelling that's applicable to real life situations, all without pandering to its target audience or relying on the sort of cheap laughs that routinely appear in lesser works by Dreamworks or Disney (fart jokes, anyone?).  Like its youthful central character, Kiki's Delivery Service is a magical creature with a personality all its own.

Kiki's Delivery Service screens as a part of the retrospective series, Castles in the Sky: Miyazaki, Takahata, and the Masters of Studio Ghibli.  More info about the Studio Ghibli series here.
It plays at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art Museum) on Friday, May 11th at 7pm, Saturday, May 12th at 1pm, and Sunday, May 13th at 1pm.
The film will be presented in the original Japanese w/ English subtitles.  


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KUNG FU THEATER presents INVINCIBLE SHAOLIN

Kung Fu Theater hits the Hollywood Theatre once again with a screening of Chang Cheh's (The One-Armed Swordsman) 1978 film Invincible Shaolin.  Hollywood Theatre programming maestro Dan Halsted claims it's "one of the greatest films in the Shaw Brothers canon."   He's got the only existing 35mm print of the film and will be sharing it with the faithful Kung Fu congregants for one-night-only.

Halsted's got a couple of things planned before running the film, too.  Here's what he's got in store for ya:

I'll be showing a slideshow from my adventure unearthing the largest collection of 35mm kung fu films in the Western Hemisphere (including this film). 
I'll also talk about my experience being a victim of excessive force by the Portland Police, my recent lawsuit, and how the city attorney tried to use my kung fu collection against me in the case. The issue with the Portland Police using excessive force has been tolerated for far too long. See the KATU story about my case here.

And here's the Kung Fu Theater synopsis of Invincible Shaolin from their press release:

Kung Fu Theater presents the only known 35mm print of INVINCIBLE SHAOLIN. One of the greatest kung fu films of all time! INVINCIBLE SHAOLIN (1978) The Venom Mob is back! 
The stars of FIVE ELEMENT NINJAS return as a group of fighters who are pitted against each other in a North Shaolin vs. South Shaolin kung fu showdown! Three South Shaolin students start intensive (and extremely strange) training to master various fighting styles and martial arts weaponry. Funky style and huge sideburns reign supreme, colliding with director Chang Cheh's trademark violence and homo-eroticism. Get ready for non-stop kung fu mayhem, and some of the best training sequences in martial arts movie history. A true classic.

Invincible Shaolin plays one-night-only at the Hollywood Theatre on Tuesday, May 8th.  More info available here.


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PSU FILM presents MANHUNTER

A last minute heads-up:  the Portland State film department is presenting a one-night-only screening of Michael Mann's Manhunter tonight (5/7) at the Hollywood Theatre.  Professor Dustin Morrow will introduce the film, no doubt offering up some context or lens through which to read the film.


Here's what the Hollywood's press release has to say about the presentation:
Michael Mann writes, produces, directs and edits his own films. He has a hand in the costuming, the art direction, and the cinematography. Mann’s films demonstrate a cinema of control – he obsesses over every single frame. No contemporary filmmaker over the last two decades has more delicately straddled the line between mainstream big-budget blockbusters and personal, art-house films. Mann’s psyche is always front-and-center in his films, questioning masculinity, professionalism, bureaucracies, authority, corruption, and the roles that modern man is expected to play in society. His films are simultaneously authentic and dreamlike, deliberate, surreal and stylized. Mann is a filmmaker of fierce vision, an original and influential voice in contemporary cinema. 

On May 7th, the Hollywood Theater, in partnership with the Portland State University Film Program, will present a screening of the film many consider to be Mann’s masterpiece, Manhunter. An adaptation of Thomas Harris’s bestseller Red Dragon, and the first film to introduce the character of Hannibal Lector, Manhunter follows FBI profiler William Petersen as he attempts to track down a vicious serial killer known as the Tooth Fairy.

Manhunter plays one-night-only at the Hollywood Theatre on Monday, May 7th.  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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THE FILMS OF STUDIO GHIBLI: MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO

Okay, I'll admit it: I'd never seen My Neighbor Totoro or the majority of the output from the geniuses at Studio Ghibli until very recently.  That's part of the pleasure of writing for the newsroom site (as well as covering NWFC content on the blog); since a good chunk of what's programmed at the NW Film Center is repertory-based, I get the chance to wax philosophical about old favorites as well as other works of note that may have passed me by somewhere down the line.

So, yeah, many of you have probably seen the film more than a few times with your kids, grandchildren or friends.  But, since it's new to me, I'm going to willfully ignore everyone else's superior knowledge of all things Totoro and just let this play out as if we're all looking at a new, unbelievably great anime.  (The author takes a deep calming breath).  Okay, here we go...

Two young girls, Satsuki and Mei, move into a large, dusty house with their father, preparing the home for when their convalescing mother is well enough to rejoin the family.  The girls waste no time, rushing to explore their new surroundings and, what do you know, they happens upon otherworldly creatures, unlocking a world teeming with magical possibilities.

I know what you're thinking; these are fairly standard tropes within both children's stories and coming of age flicks.  My Neighbor Totoro, however, is no common children's entertainment.  It's a wondrous work of beauty that takes familiar elements and blends them into a highly accessible, ageless masterpiece that transcends cultural and generational barriers.

The animated feature hails from 1988, long before Disney turned Hayao Miyazaki into a household name in the West.  With Totoro, Miyazaki draws more than a little from the atmospherics (and some of the imagery) of Lewis Carroll's most famous story.  It's impossible to watch Mei travel through the arched thicket without being reminded of Alice's trip through the rabbit hole.

Miyazaki would later dip again into Carroll's iconic tale when making Spirited Away (2001), but, between the Cheshire cat-like bus and the white "rabbit" (or whatever it is) spirit that Mei bounds after through a field of tall grass, Totoro's borrowing of these recognizable features feels more in line with the sense of discovery forwarded in Carroll's writing than it does in that later film.

Discovery is what drives this film.  And Mei and her older sister findings aren't limited to just Totoro and his spirit companions.  As the story progresses, the girls deal with some fairly advanced emotional material: worries about the future, their mother, each other.  It brings to mind what Slavoj Žižek says in Sophie Fiennes' The Pervert's Guide to the Cinema about how to read the films of Alfred Hitchcock.  Žižek observes that if one peels away the supernatural or fantastical event, it's far easier to see what is really happening in the story.

Read this way, Totoro reveals itself as a film about the anxiety felt when first entering into the knowledge of harsh universal truths, such as coming to terms with the vulnerability of loved ones and, by extension, one's own mortality.  It's pretty heavy content for a kids film but, in Miyazaki's masterful hands, it's deftly balanced with a boundless sense of wonder that lifts the work into the stratosphere, where hope can fly in the face of despair. 

My Neighbor Totoro screens as a part of the retrospective series, Castles in the Sky: Miyazaki, Takahata, and the Masters of Studio Ghibli.  More info about the Studio Ghibli series here.
It plays at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art Museum) on Saturday, May 5th at 4pm and Sunday, May 6th at 7pm.  
The film will be presented in the original Japanese w/ English subtitles. 


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