“Brews on Blvd and Other Upcoming Events at Hollywood Blvd. Cinema” by S.M. O’Connor

Hollywood Blvd. Cinema: A Cinema, Bar & Eatery in west suburban Woodridge, Illinois, has a number of special events coming up in the next few months, including screenings in the Classic Film Series in August and September, Movie Trivia Nights from August to December, appearances by John Franklin and Diane Franklin in July, a Murder Mystery Night in August, and “Brews on Blvd” in September. There are four movies left to be screened this year in the Classic Film Series. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) will be screened on Wednesday, August 2, 2017. Jumanji (1995) will be screened Saturday, August 19, 2017. Enter the Dragon (1973) will be screened on Wednesday, September 6, 2017. Twister (1996) will be screened on Wednesday, September 20, 2017.

Hollywood Blvd. Cinema has five remaining Movie Trivia Nights this year, each with its own theme. The first one is “80s Movie Trivia” is on Tuesday, August 8, 2017. The event begins at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $3 and benefit Variety Children’s Charity of Illinois. One can purchase tickets online here.

Carmelo Chimera of Chimera’s Comics will host. Teams answer forty trivia questions. Each team needs to consist of four-to-six people and must have a name. If a film buff comes without a team, Carmelo will assign him (or her) to an existing team. The top three teams win movie swag, movie passes, and other prizes.

The second Trivia Night theme is “All Movies.” It will be held on Tuesday, September 12, 2017. Tickets will become available on Saturday, August 12, 2017 at the box-office and on Sunday, August 13, 2017 online.

The third Trivia Night theme is “Horror Movies.” It will held on Tuesday, October 10, 2017. Tickets will become available on Sunday, September 10, 2017 at the box-office and on Monday, September 11, 2017 online.

The fourth Trivia Night theme is “Star Wars Movies.” It will be held on Monday, November 20, 2017. Tickets will become available on Friday, October 20, 2017 at the box-office and on Saturday, October 21, 2017 online.

The fifth and last Trivia Night theme is “Christmas Movies.” It will be held on Tuesday, December 5, 2017. Tickets will become available on Monday, November 20, 2017 at the box-office and on Tuesday, November 21, 2017 online.

Teams that would like to sign up for all five Trivia Nights can look up rules online here for the Ultimate Trivia Night Battle. Each trivia game night has a total of forty points. For teams that choose to participate in the Ultimate Trivia Night Battle, their scores will be cumulative. After the last game on December 5^th, the top team will win “an extra-special, double-secret prize.”

Professional wrestler, traceur (practitioner of parkour), and actor John Hennigan, known in W.W.E. as John Morrison and Johnny Nitro, will appear at Hollywood Blvd. Cinema to promote his film Boone: The Bounty Hunter (2017) from 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 13, 2017. Hennigan has wrestled for the World Wrestling Federation (W.W.F)/World Wrestling Entertainment (W.W.E.), on the independent circuit, Lucha Underground, and Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide. For the WWE, he was an ECW World Heavyweight Champion, a three-time WWE Intercontinental Champion, and was part of teams who won the WWE World Tag Team Championship and WWE Tag Team Championship. He was also a former Lucha Underground Triple Crown Champion. Currently, he is the AAA Mega Champion, AAA Latin American Champion, and the AAA World Cruiserweight Champion under the name Johnny Mundo. As an actor, he has appeared for Weird Al’s Broadway Style Cabaret Review. He starred as Hercules in Hercules Reborn (2014). Hennigan had supporting roles in Season 7 of the Showtime series Shameless, Season 6 of the Freeform (formerly ABC Family) series Baby Daddy (2012-2017), and the first two episodes of the new Netflix series GLOW. Hennigan co-writer, producer, and star of Boone: The Bounty Hunter. Next year, he will appear in Minutes to Midnight (2018). There will be a live Q&A before the screening of Boone: The Bounty Hunter. Prior to the screening, there will be photograph and autograph opportunities in the lobby, as well. One can purchase tickets online here.

Actress and producer Diane Franklin will appear at Hollywood Blvd. Cinema on Saturday, August 26, 2017, from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Best known as the French exchange student Monique Junot in the hilarious, surreal high school comedy Better Off Dead (1985) and as Princess Joanna in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), she has thirty-seven film and television credits. She is married to screenwriter Ray De Laurentis, with whom she has two children: Olivia and Nicholas. Ms. Franklin (or Mrs. De Laurentis) has written two memoirs: Diane Franklin: The Excellent Adventures of the Last American, French Exchange-Babe of the 80s, published in 2012, and Diane Franklin: The Excellent Curls of the Last American, French Exchange Babe of the 80s (Volume 2), published in 2017. She will be available for photographs, autographs, and a live Q&A for a screening of Better Off Dead. One can purchase tickets online here.

Before watching the new all-star adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express (2017), directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also stars as Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, one can attend a Murder Mystery Dinner at Hollywood Blvd. Cinema on Thursday, August 31, 2017. This is an opportunity to watch an earlier all-star adaptation and experience a live “Murder on the Orient Express Themed Murder Mystery.” The event begins at 6:00 p.m. Tickets are $35 and do not include dinner but do cover the “Murder on the Orient Express Themed Murder Mystery” and a screening of Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Directed by Sidney Lumet (1924-2011), the film had an all-star cast included Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, Lauren Bacall (1924-2014), Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982), Sean Connery (now Sir Sean Connery), Sir John Gielgud (1904-2000), Vanessa Redgrave, Michael York, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Perkins (1932-1992), and Wendy Hiller (1912-2003) (later Dame Wendy Hiller). It was the first theatrical film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s mystery novel Murder on the Orient Express, published in 1934, which was one of her finest mysteries.[1] One can purchase tickets online here. The previous two murder mystery events have sold out.

Over fifteen brewers will be presenting their beers and ciders at the BREWS ON BLVD event is on September 16, 2017 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Beer, cinder, and appetizers will be available along the length of Hollywood Blvd. Cinema’s “boulevard,” the long hallway off of which the auditorium theaters, washrooms, and kitchen branch. Beer-themed entertainment will be on the screens in the auditorium theaters throughout the event. The event will culminate at 2:00 p.m. with the screening of Beerfest (2006). One must be a legal adult (age twenty-one or over) to attend. Early bird tickets were $40 until yesterday, Thursday, July 20, 2017 and are now $50. The event sold out last year. A ticket covers “beer themed entertainment” being screened on four or more screens; beer and cider tastings from over fifteen brewers; a commemorative glass and brew guide; appetizers; and a voucher for the screening of Beerfest. This is Hollywood Blvd. Cinema’s 3^rd Annual Craft Beer Festival.

The address of Hollywood Blvd. Cinema is 1001 75^th Street, Woodridge, Illinois 60517. It is located in the Woodgrove Festival shopping mall at the southwest corner of the intersection of 75^th Street and Lemont Road. The phone number is (630) 427-1880.

[1] Of course, every fan of Agatha Christie’s first and greatest detective, Hercule Poirot, must watch Agatha Christie’s Poirot (1989-2013), which starred David Suchet. The series producers saved the adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express for the twelfth (second-to-last) season, which aired in 2010.

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.