SMALL TOWN MURDER SONGS Begins June 3...

SMALL TOWN MURDER SONGS is a modern gothic tale of crime and redemption

When a young, unidentified woman is found dead by the lake – the victim of a brutal and violent crime – Walter, an aging small town police officer (Peter Stormare), is called to the scene of the town’s first murder investigation in decades.

Haunted by his past, and hampered by the mistrust of the community and a state police officer overseeing the investigation, he sets out to solve the murder, complicated by his ex-lover (Jill Hennessy) and his suspicion of her current boyfriend. As he delves deeper into the crime, his newly-reformed life begins to unravel threatening his relationship with Sam (Martha Plimpton) and intertwining itself within the investigation and possibly the murder itself.

L’AMOUR FOU Begins June 3....

The public life of Yves Saint Laurent was as extravagant as it was decadent, as a design prodigy and then the grand coutourier of an fashion empire he influenced fifty years of style — but few are familiar with the private life of the legend. In Pierre Thoretton’s L’AMOUR FOU, Pierre Bergé, the man with which YSL shared four decades of his life and love, reflects on the equally extravagant history of their personal relationship. Framed around the 2009 auction of the priceless, elaborate art collection amassed by Yves and Pierre personally over several decades, this extraordinary documentary provides an unprecedented look at the life of a mythic personality, whose personal life matched his public for elegance, extravagance and passion.

WHITE IRISH DRINKERS Q&A with Producer Paul Be...

Producer Paul Bernard will be joining us for a Q&A following the 7:15pm screening of “White Irish Drinkers” tonight (Friday the 13th of May).  Don’t miss this great opportunity to hear about the making of this 70′s period movie and how they managed to squeeze so much production value out of so little of a budget.

Paul Bernard is a seasoned producer, director and assistant director in film and television. Along with his producing partner, James Scura, Bernard specializes in producing studio quality movies on independent budgets. As a Los Angeles native, he is no stranger to Portland, having produced locally Seasons 2, 3 and 4 of the TNT hit series, Leverage, as well as the 2009 independent film, Follow the Profit, here in The City of Roses.

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS in 3D!...

The Werner Herzog documentary about the Chauvet cave in France, CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, begins May 20 at Living Room. This feature marks the first release of a film in 3D that isn’t a blockbuster or a mainstream studio production. The use of the technology here is stunning making viewers feel like they are actually in the cave! Critics have already heaped much praise upon the film. From the Washington Post: “To call “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” a great movie isn’t just an understatement, it’s a wildly inaccurate way to describe an experience that, in its immersive sensory pleasures and climactic journey of discovery, more closely resembles an ecstatic trance.”

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, a breathtaking new 3D documentary from the incomparable Werner Herzog (ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, GRIZZLY MAN) follows an exclusive expedition into the nearly inaccessible Chauvet Cave in France, home to the most ancient visual art known to have been created by man. A hit at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS is an unforgettable cinematic experience that provides a unique glimpse of pristine artwork dating back to human hands over 30,000 years ago — almost twice as old as any previous discovery.

FREE advanced screening of WHITE IRISH DRINKERS...

White Irish Drinkers Poster

The little indie drama WHITE IRISH DRINKERS opens at Living Room Theaters on May 13th, and we’re giving you the opportunity to see it for free on Wednesday, May 11th at 7:00pm. The movie premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, and has garnered strong reviews. One of the producers, Paul Bernard, has ties to Portland through his involvement with TNT’s television series, “Leverage”.

White Irish Drinkers is set in 1975 in the Bay Ridge area in Brooklyn, an enclave of working-class, hardscrabble families with a societal code that discourages any aspirations to leave the neighbourhood. In the thick of it are two brothers, Danny (Geoff Wigdor) and Brian (Nick Thurston), who dare to dream of life elsewhere. But their reasons for leaving, and their means of doing so, are so opposed that they threaten to destroy their entire family and, potentially, each other.

Elder brother Danny has suffered years of physical and verbal abuse from his flinty, alcoholic father (Stephen Lang) and is relying on his criminal ambitions to get the two brothers as far from Bay Ridge as possible. Brian doesn’t share Danny’s enthusiasm for crime and keeps his hopes and heart locked away in the basement of their apartment building, where he spends all of his free time drawing and painting. When Whitey (Peter Riegert), the owner of a failing local cinema where Brian works, announces a concert by The Rolling Stones that will share profits with the young man, Brian guardedly hopes that his secret ambition to attend art school might finally be realized. But soon Danny’s reckless crimes, his father’s alcohol-soaked temper and Brian’s flailing attempts to avoid both collide and the resulting turmoil ends in an upheaval that affects the entire community.

White Irish Drinkers is a gritty, moving story about finding the courage to make a better choice, rather than accepting the easier options that lie directly in front of you. The quiet, tenuous glue that somehow holds the family together is the boys’ mother, Margaret, played with earthy stoicism by Karen Allen. Despite years of a soul-destroying marriage to a profoundly difficult man, Margaret’s staunch Catholicism demands that she stand by him, even though she is afraid to face the inevitable realities of her sons’ futures. When she discovers Brian’s secret studio, she shares a spark of hope, fulfillment and amazement that she has a child with a gift, something that may lift him into a better future than any she could provide.

Stephen Lang in "White Irish Drinkers"

To attend the free screening on Wednesday, print this blog post, and bring it with you to the theater. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.