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arts•meme: SPARTACUS Meets Its Maker, Dalton Trumbo

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spartacus3The terrific fine arts blog arts•meme, published by longtime dance critic Debra Levine, gave our Anniversary Classics screening of SPARTACUS a nice plug last week. We’re showing it this Friday night November 6th at 7:30 in the Royal’s big auditorium on the same day that Trumbo opens in theaters. (We open it a bit later.) The new film celebrates the life of Dalton Trumbo, and with this 55th anniversary screening of their Oscar-winning film we pay our own tribute to the blacklisted screenwriter, as well as actor-producer Kirk Douglas and director Stanley Kubrick. The picture, adapted from Howard Fast’s novel about a slave revolt in ancient Rome, is generally regarded as “the best-paced and most slyly entertaining of all the decadent-ancient-Rome spectacular films,” as critic Pauline Kael wrote. Douglas bravely decided to break the blacklist by allowing Trumbo to use his own name on the screenplay for the first time in more than a decade.

dalton-trumboThe all-star cast includes Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Jean Simmons, Tony Curtis, Woody Strode, and Peter Ustinov, who won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his droll performance as a sycophantic slave dealer. (The film also won Oscars for cinematography, art direction, and costume design.) See this grand, thrilling sand-and-sandals epic—a precursor of Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning Gladiator—on the big screen, in a brand new restoration.

Anniversary Classics: Actress Blythe Danner In-Person After THE GREAT SANTINI on 10/27 at the Royal! Plus, a Pre-Halloween Double Feature 10/30 at the Fine Arts.

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After celebrating the 65th anniversary of ALL ABOUT EVE this past Tuesday, we look ahead to the two remaining Anniversary Classics events on the October calendar! Next up is the 35th anniversary of the Oscar-nominated drama THE GREAT SANTINI (1980), with special guest Blythe Danner, who played the long-suffering wife of domineering Marine pilot and Oscar nominee Robert Duvall. Danner received some of the best notices of her career this past summer for I’LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS, a performance which is being touted for year-end awards consideration. Join us for THE GREAT SANTINI and a conversation with Blythe Danner on Tuesday, October 27th at the Royal in West LA at 7:00 pm.

santini

Then don’t forget our special Halloween program on Friday, October 30th – a retro double feature of the 80th anniversary of THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935), one of the great horror classics, paired with bonus feature ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948), a scary and very funny vintage horror-comedy. Both features are from the vaults of Universal studios and to complete our trip into yesteryear are being presented at the beautifully restored and newly re-opened Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. The classic double bill (yes, two for the price of one!) begins at 7:30 on the 30th.

Tickets are now on sale for both events and can be purchased online at www.laemmle.com/ac. See you soon at the Anniversary Classics series!

A Special Message to Laemmle Moviegoers from Michael York

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz-nl5uXO7Y

Michael York and Richard Chamberlain will participate in a Q&A moderated by LA Film Critics Association President Stephen Farber following the 40th anniversary screening of THE FOUR MUSKETEERS on Tuesday, 9/29 at the Laemmle Royal in West LA.

Purchase your tickets in advance here. For more information about our Anniversary Classics series, visit http://www.laemmle.com/ac.

Guests for September’s ANNIVERSARY CLASSICS screenings include Bruce Dern, Cloris Leachman, Michael York, and Richard Chamberlain

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As we move into the Fall season, there are several new Anniversary Classics screenings scheduled for September, all at the Royal Theatre in West L.A.

First up on September 17th is the 55th anniversary of Director Elia Kazan’s WILD RIVER, an underappreciated gem from 1960 starring Montgomery Clift, Lee Remick, Jo Van Fleet, and featuring the film debut of our guest star, two-time Oscar nominee Bruce Dern, who will appear for a Q&A following the screening on Thursday the 17th at 7:30PM at the Royal.

Cloris Leachman will participate in a Q&A following the September 24th screening of CRAZY MAMA (1975). CRAZY MAMA was one of the early movies directed by Oscar winner Jonathan Demme.

On September 29th, we feature the 40th anniversary of Director Richard Lester’s THE FOUR MUSKETEERS (1975), with a special reunion of two of its co-stars, Michael York and Richard Chamberlain, who will appear for a Q&A at the screening at 7 PM.

Tickets for all three screenings are on sale now. Do not wait to buy tickets; these shows will sell out. For tickets and info on upcoming screenings, bookmark http://www.laemmle.com/ac.

Also, check out the Laemmle’s Anniversary Classics Facebook group: https://facebook.com/groups/laemmlesanniversaryclassics/

Anniversary Classics + Tribute Screening: DOCTOR ZHIVAGO in Honor of Omar Sharif

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As a tribute to Omar Sharif, who passed away last month, we present a 50th anniversary screening of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO at 7:30 PM on Wednesday, August 19th at the Royal. Los Angeles Film Critics Association President Stephen Farber will introduce the film.

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This lush romance directed by David Lean (a two-time Oscar winner) was nominated for 10 Academy Awards in 1965 and won five — best adapted screenplay (by Robert Bolt), cinematography, art direction, costume design, and music (by Maurice Jarre). Nobel Prize-winning author Boris Pasternak wrote the international best-selling novel and, when receipts are adjusted for inflation, the film version is one of the top grossing films of all time. In addition, when the American Film Institute named the 100 greatest romantic films in history, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO finished in the top ten.

Set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution, Sharif plays the title character, a physician and poet who, although married to someone else, falls in love with another man’s wife and experiences hardship during the First World War and then the October Revolution. The film features an all-star cast headed by Julie Christie, Rod Steiger, Geraldine Chaplin, Alec Guinness, Ralph Richardson, Tom Courtenay, and Rita Tushingham, in addition to Sharif, who had been introduced to Western audiences in Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia three years earlier.

Sharif went on to star in Funny Girl, The Tamarind Seed, Juggernaut, Monsieur Ibrahim, and many other films. Take advantage of a rare opportunity to see this sweeping romantic epic on the big screen!

Click here to purchase tickets.

Anniversary Classics Goes Subtitled, Comes to the Valley: 50th Anniversary Screening of THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET June 9 at the Town Center 5

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Jozef Kroner and Ida Kaminska

We’ve been having a lot of fun hosting our Anniversary Classics screening along with Los Angeles Film Critics Association President Stephen Farber. Following EXODUS (Eva Marie Saint in person!), WHERE’S POPPA? (George Segal in person!) and LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS (Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna in person and tickets still available!), our fourth screening is our first subtitled film in the series and our first in the Valley: THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET (1965) was the first film from Eastern Europe ever to win an Academy Award.  Fifty years ago this powerful Czech drama won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, it was one of the key films in the Czech New Wave that flourished in the 1960s, before the Soviet invasion of 1968 stamped out this vital movement. Josef Kroner and Yiddish theater legend Ida Kaminska (nominated for an Oscar for her performance) star in this poignant tale of an Aryan functionary who takes over the button shop of an elderly Jewish woman in a Slovakian town in 1942. They develop a tentative friendship that is threatened when the Nazis begin rounding up all the Jews in the area.

Ida Kaminska

Esteemed critic Kenneth Tynan said this was “the most moving film about anti-Semitism ever made.”  Oscar-nominated screenwriter Eleanor Perry (David and Lisa, Diary of a Mad Housewife) reviewed the film for Life magazine and called it “a masterpiece, a flawless examination of the toll of indecision and the penalty of passive decency.”  Perry went on to write, “The film’s lasting power is that it poses a couple of additional questions to every spectator:  ‘If it had been you, what would you have done?’ If it ever is you, what will you do?'”

Joining Stephen Farber for a post-screening discussion, special guests director Ivan Passer and Michal Sedlacek, Consul General of Czech Republic in Los Angeles. Mr. Passer was one of the directors of the Czech New Wave of the 1960s. His acclaimed film, Intimate Lighting, was also made in 1965. He was the co-writer of Milos Forman’s films Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen’s Ball. Like Forman, he emigrated to America after the Russian invasion. In this country he directed such films as Born to Win with George Segal, Law and Disorder with Carroll O’Connor, Cutter’s Way with Jeff Bridges, and the Emmy-winning HBO movie, Stalin, starring Robert Duvall.

Purchase tickets here.