In the 1980s and 1990s, when Japan posed a serious challenge to the United States' global economic primacy, films such as "Rising Sun," starring Sean Connery, and "Black Rain," starring Michael Douglas, portrayed Tokyo in classic film noir terms -- shadowy, menacing and peopled by grotesque composites of corporate titans and Yakuza gangsters.
Under the rain of atrocity it portrays, this novel's generally optimistic tone can sometimes seem downright bizarre.
And, like rain forests, they are portrayed as existentially threatened — but salvageable.
Most of Heavy Rain, by contrast, is portrayed from virtual cameras at ground level, at the same height as the characters or even below them.
BETRAYAL The married couple Daniel Craig ("A Steady Rain") and Rachel Weisz will portray another married couple in this revival of Harold Pinter's bleak 1978 drama about infidelity, one of two Pinter plays on Broadway this fall (see "No Man's Land," below).
It is a grimly realistic piece set during the Hundred Years War in which the doomed lovers Jehane and Robert have a last parting in a convincingly portrayed rain-swept countryside.
This is basically the story that is now portrayed in "Purple Rain". Cavallo was taken aback.
Yet by the first professional studio recordings a couple of years later, the seeds of genius are apparent, while five 1963 concert recordings - including jaw-dropping versions of 'Blowin' in the Wind', 'Masters of War' and 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall' - portray a self-possessed young man with a command over both his material and his audience that is spellbinding.
Rituals designed to ensure rain increased in importance and elaboration and are portrayed in wall paintings and pottery.
The aim of the artist is to portray some essence of nature mountains, the wind, rain and the struggle between natural forces.
