I've
just added a bunch of social networking "share" buttons to the upper
right hand corner of the blog's sidebar. If you've been enjoying what's
on offer here, please pass it along to others: friends, family, pets
and other worthy adversaries (come to think of it, go ahead and rope in
unworthy ones, too) who might like reading the blog, too.
And remember, you can always subscribe to the Facebook page here. If you'd like to get the blog's feed, you can sign up for that here in a reader format or get it via e-mail.
Cheers,
Nick
p.s.--here's what those oh, so attractive buttons look like:
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.
--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...
I'm still fairly new to this blogging stuff, so the site is still somewhat under construction. Just wanted to point out a few new additions to the page:
#1 I've added the ability for readers to subscribe to a feed for the blog. If you find what's going on here interesting, go ahead and take advantage of that feature (found in the upper right hand corner of the page). It's the easiest way to get new posts as soon as they're published.
#2 There's a short list of links for other blogs that I enjoy reading, including local blogger Anne Richardson's great Tall True Tales: Oregon Film A to Z site. One of her more exciting recent posts? An announcement that the Oregon Film Commission will be hosting a pre-release screening of Kelly Reichardt's (Wendy & Lucy, Old Joy) Meek's Cutoff (starring Michelle Williams) at the Elsinore Theater in Salem, Oregon. Check out Anne's site for more info!
#3 I've added the ability to share via Facebook & Twitter, as well as the ability to perform a Google search through the posts. Now you can share and search to your heart's content, people!
Hope these changes make it easier to enjoy the blog. Keep an eye out for future posts...or subscribe to the feed and you won't even have to pay that close of attention!
Alien Boy: The Death & Life of James Chasse is the new film by Portland documentary filmmaker Brian Lindstrom. Brian's been at the doc game for quite some time now and maybe you've heard of or seen his last full-length project, Finding Normal:
According to the official website for the film, Alien Boy examines how:
In September 2006 James Chasse was tackled by three law officers on a downtown street corner before a dozen eyewitnesses. James was not suspected of a crime, he had not committed a crime.
The officers beat him, kicked him, broke 17 ribs and his shoulder. They used a Taser on him repeatedly. He screamed for mercy.
The officers thought James was a drug dealer, a homeless person, a non-person, a ghost. They were wrong. James was a poet, a musician, he had a family which loved him, friends, neighbors, dreams and hopes. He was an artist; a small, shy, gentle person. And he was a person with schizophrenia.
James was sent by paramedics to jail. Jail nurses refused to admit him. He died en route to a hospital in a police car driven by the same officers who had earlier beaten him.
A grand jury refused to indict those officers. The City and County refused to terminate or discipline them.
Alien Boy is a feature length documentary film about the life and death of James Chasse.
A massive amount of local PDX media coverage of the story and its continued fallout can be found here.
BUT...on to the main point of this post: Alien Boy is in the post-production stage of its existence at this moment. In order for the filmmakers to be able to present this important story to an audience, they need to raise additional funding for post. Lindstrom and company have decided to take their need directly to the people via Kickstarter, the popular fundraising website that's being used for the crowd financing of so many creative projects lately.
At the moment of this posting, Alien Boy has received pledges for almost a third of it's post-production funding via this Kickstarter campaign. More info about the film and how you can join the 70+ backers of the project via a financial donation of anywhere between $1 and $5000 (or more) can be found on the Alien Boy Kickstarter page.
