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TOP SPIN: Ping Pong Exhibition and Table Giveaway!

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ts-posterAn inside look at the offbeat sport of ping pong, the new documentary TOP SPIN turns one of America’s favorite pastimes on its head and reveals a coming-of-age story where success and failure come down to mere millimeters.

Laemmle Theatres and First Run Features are planning special events for our TOP SPIN screenings, including:
– Raffle to Win an Olympic Quality Ping Pong Table!
– Live Ping Pong Exhibitions by Elite Players
– Lots of Q&A’s

Click here to buy tickets to see TOP SPIN!
 

RAFFLE

Everyone who attends ANY screening of TOP SPIN at Laemmle will be given a FREE RAFFLE TICKET to win a top-of-the-line JOOLA Ping Pong Table! This is a  tournament-tested refurbished Olympic-quality table that has been used by the pros.  JOOLA lists this item at approx. $1400.  We will have a sample table at the Playhouse from August 19 to 23.

Grand prize:
JOOLA 3000SC Table Tennis Table, the Official Table of USATT. The JOOLA 3000SC is an ITTF approved high quality centerfold table. It has four heavy-duty durable wheels serving the undercarriage, which is made of powder-coated metal and contains a 50 mm metal frame under its Olympic-quality 22 mm fast playing surface. The 3000SC also boasts adjustable, solid rubber levelers underneath each corner leg and includes a professional quality WM net.

JOOLA will ship the table directly to the winner anywhere in the continental United States.

Joola_3000SC_new_v2

Runner up prizes:

Joola Hit Set Table Tennis Set: Four JOOLA Hit rackets with eight balls.

Joola Falcon Set: High end recreational racket with a protective racket case.

For official Raffle Rules, click here.
 

PING PONG EXHIBITONS

Elite ping-pong players will be at the Playhouse 7 for Q&A’s and LIVE PING PONG EXHIBITIONS at select Top Spin screenings:

Fri. 8/21: 6:30pm – 7:00pm and 9:15pm to 9:30PM* (at the Paseo next to the box office)
Sat. 8/22: 6:30pm – 7:00pm and 9:15pm to 9:30PM* (at the Paseo next to the box office)
Sun. 8/23 – 6:30pm – 7:00pm and 9:15pm to 9:30PM* (location TBD)

* Before and after the 7:30pm screening of Top Spin

Players include 2012 Teenage Olympian ERICA WU and U.S. National Team member, GRANT LI, as well as professionals KIM GILBERT and ADAM BOBROW.

 

Clockwise, from top-left: Erica Wu, 2012 U.S. Olympian; Grant Li, 2015 U.S. National Team Member; Adam Bobrow, Professional Ping Pong Player and Actor; Kim Gilbert, Professional Ping Pong Player
Clockwise, from top-left: Erica Wu, 2012 U.S. Olympian; Grant Li, 2015 U.S. National Team Member; Adam Bobrow, Professional Ping Pong Player and Actor; Kim Gilbert, Professional Ping Pong Player

 

Q&A’S

Playhouse 7 Q&A’s: 

Wed 8/19: Filmmakers Mina T. Son & Sara Newens + Teenage Olympian Erica Wu in Person

Fri 8/21: Filmmakers Mina T. Son & Sara Newens + Teenage Olympian Erica Wu in Person

Sat 8/22: Filmmaker Mina T. Son & Teenage Olympian Erica Wu in Person

Sun 8/23: Filmmaker Mina T. Son & Teenage Olympian Erica Wu in Person

Weekday Q&A’s: 

Mon 8/24 (NOHO 7) : Filmmaker Mina T. Son in Person

Tues 8/25 (ROYAL): Filmmaker Mina T. Son in Person

Wed 8/26 (CLAREMONT 5): Filmmaker Mina T. Son in Person

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=539TOEBuPqM

STRAY DOG Q&A’s with Oscar Nominee Debra Granik this Weekend at the Music Hall

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Debra Granik
Debra Granik

Harley-Davidson, leather, tattooed biceps: Ron “Stray Dog” Hall looks like an authentic tough guy. A Vietnam veteran, he runs a trailer park in rural Missouri with his wife, Alicia, who recently immigrated from Mexico. Gradually, a layered image comes into focus of a man struggling to come to terms with his combat experience. When Alicia’s teenage sons arrive, the film reveals a tender portrait of an America outside the mainstream. STRAY DOG is a powerful look at the veteran experience, a surprising love story, and a fresh exploration of what it takes to survive in the hardscrabble heartland.

STRAY DOG director Debra Granik, an Oscar nominee for her Winter’s Bone screenplay, will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:20 PM screenings at the Music Hall on Friday and Saturday, July 24 and 25. Kirsten Schaffer of Women in Film will moderate.

https://vimeo.com/96957663

Courageous Defiance in the Face of Horror and Evil: Christian Petzold’s Masterful PHOENIX Opens July 31 at the Royal, August 7 at the Playhouse and Town Center

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Next week (July 31 at the Royal, August 7 at the Playhouse and Town Center) we’ll begin screening one of the best movies of the year, the German film noir PHOENIX.  It’s set in Berlin just after the second World War and follows Nelly (the great Nina Hoss), a German Jew and concentration camp survivor. Like her country, she is scarred, her face disfigured by a bullet. After undergoing reconstructive surgery, Nelly emerges with a new face, one similar but different enough that her former husband doesn’t recognize her. Rather than reveal herself, Nelly begins a dangerous game of duplicity and disguise as she tries to figure out if the man she loves may have been the one who betrayed her to the Nazis.

Film critics are hailing the movie. In the Village Voice, Stephanie Zacharek declared the film “rapturous…ardent, urgent and smoldering…so beautifully made that it comes close to perfect.”

August .2013 Dreharbeiten zum CHRISTIAN PETOLD Film PHÖNIX mit Nina Hoss , Ronald Zehrfeld und Nina Kunzendorf Verwendung der Fotos nur in Zusammenhang mit dem Film PHÖNIX von Christian Petzold ( Model release No ) © Christian Schulz Mobil 01723917694

Director/co-writer Christian Petzold (Barbara, Yella) said this about his latest film: “The first day of shooting for PHOENIX: a birch forest, a man in Wehrmacht uniform, women in concentration camp garb. Our reference was a photograph supplied by the Shoah Foundation: a coarse-grain color picture of a woodland crossroads in impressionistic morning light. And, only at second glance, death: the corpse in the grass. Even during the shoot, we noticed that something wasn’t right. The light was good, we’d settled on the framing, it seemed like an accurate recreation of the image, but it didn’t work. The reconstruction of the horror, the cinematography in and around Auschwitz – as if we were saying, ‘Now it’s time. Now we’re going to condense the whole thing into a story and impose order on it.’ We threw away all the material from that first day of shooting.

Phoenix_Schrammfilm5062

“Raul Hilsberg wrote that the terror meted out by the Nazis and the obedient public essentially made use of well-known techniques. What was novel were the extermination camps – the industrial extermination of people. For the old techniques, there was literature, stories, songs… None of that exists for the Holocaust.

 

PHOENIX ein Film von CHRISTIAN PETZOLD mit NINA HOSS und RONALD ZEHRFELD.Die Geschichte einer Holocaust Ueberlebenden die mit neuer Intentität herausfinden will ob ihr Mann sie verraten hat. Story on a woman who has survived the Holocaust. Presumedly dead, she returns home under a new identity to find out if her husband betrayed her Phoenix. Il racontera l'histoire, après la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, d'une femme qui a survécu à l'Holocauste. Tout le monde la croit morte. Elle revient chez elle sous une nouvelle identité et découvre que son mari l'a trahie... ACHTUNG: Verwendung nur fuer redaktionelle Zwecke im Zusammenhang mit der Berichterstattung ueber diesen Film und mit Urheber-Nennung PHOENIX ein Film von CHRISTIAN PETZOLD mit NINA HOSS und RONALD ZEHRFELD.Die Geschichte einer Holocaust Ueberlebenden die mit neuer Intensität herausfinden will ob ihr Mann sie verraten hat. Story on a woman who has survived the Holocaust. Presumedly dead, she returns home under a new identity to find out if her husband betrayed her Phoenix. Il racontera l'histoire, après la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, d'une femme qui a survécu à l'Holocauste. Tout le monde la croit morte. Elle revient chez elle sous une nouvelle identité et découvre que son mari l'a trahie... ACHTUNG: Verwendung nur fuer redaktionelle Zwecke im Zusammenhang mit der Berichterstattung ueber diesen Film und mit Urheber-Nennung“One text had a major influence on our preparations: Ein Liebesversuch (‘An Experiment in Love’) by Alexander Kluge. The story is set in Auschwitz. The Nazis are looking through peepholes into a sealed room. They’re observing a couple who, according to their records, used to be passionately in love. The Nazi doctors are trying to revive this love: They want the couple to sleep with each other. The goal is to establish whether the woman has been successfully sterilized. They try everything: champagne, red light, spraying them with ice-cold water – thinking that the need for warmth might drive them together again. But nothing happens – the two of them don’t look at each other. In a strange way, the Nazi doctors’ failure is a victory for love: a love lost that can’t be re-kindled by these criminals. I think that was the most significant text for us. Is it possible to leap back over the deep, nihilistic chasm torn by the National Socialists and the Germans, and to reconstruct things: emotions, love, compassion, empathy – life?

 

“Nelly doesn’t accept stories, songs, poems claiming that love is no longer possible. She wants to turn back time. I’m interested in people who don’t accept something and, in doing so, are defiant and stubborn.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjJKLatvKSA

THE OUTRAGEOUS SOPHIE TUCKER Opens July 24th, Exclusively at Laemmle Theatres

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THE OUTRAGEOUS SOPHIE TUCKER is the rags to riches story of one of old time showbiz’s biggest personalities. From 1906 through the beginning of television, Sophie Tucker and her bawdy, brash, and risqué songs paved the way for performers such as Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Midler, Cher, Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Beyoncé.

Diego 18- 1934- Amsterdam, w Ted at piano1After eight years spent reading hundreds of Tucker’s personal scrapbooks, visiting fourteen archives, and interviewing dozens of family, friends, and fellow icons of stage and screen, producers Susan and Lloyd Ecker completed their comprehensive documentary about the Last of the Red Hot Mamas.

“Sophie was like the Forrest Gump of the first half of the 1900s,” says co-producer Susan Ecker. “She was close friends with seven U.S. presidents, King George VI, young Queen Elizabeth, Charlie Chaplin, J. Edgar Hoover, Al Capone, Judy Garland, Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra and every other notable of her era.”

The documentary includes many delicious bits of show business dirt, arrests, romance, murder, gangsters, and more. You’ll learn all about it when THE OUTRAGEOUS SOPHIE TUCKER opens July 24th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA, and on July 25th in Claremont.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyUlZm4O4yE

A LEGO BRICKUMENTARY opens July 31st in West LA! Do you remember your favorite LEGO set?

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Show of hands– How many of you still play with LEGO as adults? Yeah, me too. There’s no shame in being an Adult Fan of Lego. Other AFOLs include NBA star Dwight Howard, South Park co-creator Trey Parker, and musician Ed Sheeran.

The new documentary A LEGO BRICKUMENTARY explores the extraordinary impact of the LEGO® brick, its massive global fan base, the LEGO® master builders who create human scale (and larger) structures, and the innovative uses for LEGO® that have sprung up around the world.

6890A LEGO BRICKUMENTARY opens Friday, July 24th July 31st at our Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles.

If you’re in the mood for a trip down memory lane (or a distraction from writing blog posts), spend a few hours browsing brickset.com‘s LEGO set database. I found my favorite set– 1982’s Cosmic Cruiser! Share your favorite set, new or old, in the comments!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XlsKXif85c

“An exquisite rumination on life, love and art that tickles the heart and mind in equal measure,” LA SAPIENZA Opens June 26 at the Royal.

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Named for the famous seventeenth-century Roman church Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, which was designed by the legendary architect (and Bernini rival) Francesco Borromini, LA SAPIENZA echoes Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia in its tale of Alexandre Schmid (Fabrizio Rongione), a brilliant architect who, plagued by doubts and loss of inspiration, embarks on a quest of artistic and spiritual renewal guided by his study of Borromini. His wife Aliénor (Christelle Prot), similarly troubled by the crassness of contemporary society – as well as the couple’s listless marriage – decides to accompany him. In Stresa, a chance encounter with adolescent siblings Goffredo (who is about to begin his own architectural studies) and his fragile sister Lavinia upends the couple’s plans. As Borromini’s spirit and the vertiginous splendour of his structures spin a mysterious web among them, within the course of a few days the foursome experiences a series of life-altering revelations.

“Green’s richly textured, painterly images fuse with the story to evoke the essence of humane urbanity and the relationships that it fosters, whether educational, familial, or erotic.” (Richard Brody, New Yorker)

“An exquisite rumination on life, love and art that tickles the heart and mind in equal measure.” (Scott Foundas, Variety)

sapienza
From left to right: Christelle Prot Landman, Arianna Nastro, Ludovico Succio, Fabrizio Rongione in LA SAPIENZA.

 

About his film, LA SAPIENZA writer-director Eugène Green has said:

“This film has two sources of inspiration. On the one hand the desire to illustrate through film the works and life of the Baroque architect Francesco Borromini. On the other the interest for contemporary architecture and urban planning. The first inspiration would suggest a biography, while both would be very suited to a documentary style narrative. I don’t however believe that one may reconstruct a life through film, nor any other element of a distant past and, despite having all due respect for the documentary as a form of expression, I have always had the instinctive belief – that tends to be sidelined in today’s Europe – that the greater truth can be found in fiction. Thus it is through an action that is a product of my imagination, that I have attempted to approach these two themes. This story involving two couples, a man and a woman, a brother and sister, sheds light on human relations, which are further investigated by introducing a separation, a concept developed out of a long-standing western tradition whereby knowledge is acquired through emptiness, and presence is established through absence. One way or another, the characters of this screenplay face the challenge of letting the past feed the present in a harmonious fashion, and each of them achieves a new understanding of the nature of love. At the heart of the story we also encounter the problem of how tradition may be passed on, one of man’s eternal preoccupations, an issue that is of great moment for contemporary European society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STgmzlVGKaE

THE FAREWELL PARTY Filmmakers: “When the body fails and the mind remains lucid, self-irony and humor remain the best way to cope with the prospect of death.”

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THE FAREWELL PARTY is an acclaimed Israeli comedy about the residents of a retirement home who build a machine for self-euthanasia in order to help their terminally ill friend, though they are faced with a series of dilemmas when rumors of the machine begin to spread. (Yes, it’s a comedy.) Well into their ’70s, Yehezkel and his wife Levana are living a comfortable life inside a Jerusalem retirement home. When it comes to retirement, there are some people who find this adjustment an easy one. Even though before this, there is a lot to understand like understanding what Key Equity Release is, for example, and managing finances, but when the time does come to give up working life, hopefully, a lot of people will find it worthwhile, just like Yehezkel and his wife have done. It’s also useful looking into financial benefits that retirees may be eligible to. Things like social security benefits are definitely worthwhile with the ability to cover your spouse and close family members as well as yourself. If you want to learn more, you can look how Social Security spousal benefits are calculated here.

But their contented lives are soon dealt a deep shock when their dear friend Max falls prey to an irreversible illness. Looking for a way out, Max asks Yehezkel for help to end his suffering. Whilst many in real life in these situations end up ignored, and need help from a nursing home neglect lawyer to get the support needed, it is different here. Yehezkel, a longtime amateur inventor, rises to the challenge by constructing a machine that will allow Max to self-administer a dose of tranquilizers. Levana, however, believes that such a device is immoral, and expresses her passionate disapproval. But when Levana herself begins to face a serious health issue, Yehezkel finds that his feelings about his new contraption become increasingly complicated. In THE FAREWELL PARTY, co-directors Sharon Maymon and Tal Granit have tackled an extremely sensitive issue in a vibrant and unique way. You will cry while watching this movie, but whether from laughter or compassion will be difficult to separate.

Co-directors Sharon Maymon and Tal Granit had this to say about their acclaimed — THE FAREWELL PARTY won four Israeli Academy Awards, including in Best Actor for Israeli star Ze’ev Revach, and received a total of 14 nominations, including Best Film, Director, Screenplay, and Actress — film:

“‘For against your will you are formed, against your will you are born, against your will you live.’ ~ Ethics of the Fathers, Chapter 4). Can you at least determine when to die? THE FAREWELL PARTY deals with separation. Separation from someone you love, separation from yourself – when the mind begins to fail, and the separation from life and the right to choose how it all ends. The main characters are senior citizens, in a retirement community in Jerusalem, people who have retired from their life’s work – these type of people are not usually heroes of movies. But out of that very place of retirement and inactivity, they decide to gain control over their fate. As in any tragedy where the protagonist tries to change his destiny and of those surrounding him, there isan unbearable price to pay. THE FAREWELL PARTY is also a film about love and friendship. Our five main characters find comfort, strength and hope in each other in the difficult and funniest moments of life. The plot is not autobiographical, but is based on personal experiences accumulated while caring for a ‘Helga;’ someone close to us, towards the end of their life. In our process of saying goodbye to a loved one, we discovered that when the body fails and the mind remains lucid, self-irony and humor remain the best way to cope with the prospect of death. In our films we try to deal with contemporary social issues, which are often controversial. We try to break the emotional drama with absurd and comic elements. We do so also by casting comedians, and in the case of this film some of the icons of Israeli comedy, in dramatic roles. We feel this makes this difficult and important issue more accessible to our audience, and hopefully, as in life, they will laugh as they wipe away their tears.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwdRGUqTTLU

Girl Talk HQ on MARIE’S STORY: “Incredible True Story of Marie Huertin: A Deaf & Blind Girl Whose Life was Transformed by a Nun”

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The new French drama MARIE’S STORY is set in a nineteenth-century convent, where the idealistic Sister Marguerite sees in a deaf and blind girl a unique potential, and despite her Mother Superior’s skepticism, vows to bring the wild young thing out of the darkness into which she was born. Based on true events, MARIE’S STORY recounts the courageous journey of a young nun and the lives she would change forever, confronting failures and discouragement with joyous faith and love. We are pleased to open the film at the Royal on Friday, May 29 as well as the next day at the Playhouse 7.

This week Girl Talk HQ, “a daily news blog dedicated to female empowerment and inspiration for millennial women,” posted a great piece about MARIE’S STORY that begins:

marie2 all about supporting films that feature female stories and lead characters, which is why we fell in love with French film MARIE’S STORY, directed by Jean-Pierre Ameris. The film stars Ariana Rivoire as the difficult yet extraordinary Marie Heurtin, and Isabelle Carre as the Catholic Nun Sister Margeurite who saw the beauty and depth in a girl who society shunned.

At the turn of the 19th century, a humble artisan and his wife have a daughter, Marie, who is born deaf and blind and unable to communicate with the world around her. Desperate to find a connection to their daughter and avoid sending her to an asylum, the Heurtins send fourteen-year-old Marie to the Larnay Institute in central France, where an order of Catholic nuns manage a school for deaf girls. There, the idealistic Sister Marguerite sees in Marie a unique potential, and despite her Mother Superior’s skepticism, vows to bring the wild young thing out of the darkness into which she was born.

It is a true story depicting a stunning visual sequence of a life transformed despite the odds. Sister Marguerite’s persistence is the most heart-warming part of this film. We were glued to the screen watching how on earth she was going to transform the life of this teen girl who everyone else had pretty much given up on.

Read the rest of the piece at girltalkhq.com.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HG-bDNEumw