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25th Anniversary Screenings of BELLE EPOQUE September 18 in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest offering in their monthly Abroad program with 25th anniversary screenings of the American release (and Oscar winner) of the delightful Spanish comedy BELLE EPOQUE. The Academy Award winner for foreign-language film will play at three Laemmle locations: West Los Angeles, Glendale, and Pasadena on September 18.

Starring Penelope Cruz (Oscar winner for Vicky Christina Barcelona) in only her second film, the period pastorale is set in 1931 with the beginning of the disruptive Spanish Civil War, chronicling the amorous adventures of a young Army deserter, Fernando (Jorge Sanz), who seeks refuge in the country house of a reclusive old anarchist painter, Manolo (Fernando Fernan Gomez). After finding employment as the household cook, Sanz also finds his carnal appetites stimulated by Gomez’ four daughters, played by Maribel Verdu, Ariadna Gil, Miriam Diaz-Aroca, and Cruz. As the youngest of the siblings, Cruz impatiently awaits her turn as the amorous partner of Sanz. As the sexual games seemingly reach a climax, the return of the opera singer family matriarch from a world tour with her manager-lover brings the plot to a boil.

Writer-director Fernando Trueba (co-scripting with Rafael Azcona and Jose Luis Garcia Sanchez) concocts the right recipe of food and sex, with a soupçon of political commentary, and the result charmed the Academy, audiences, and critics of the day.

Roger Ebert noted how the film celebrated sensuality and the human body: “Here is a film so inviting you would love to sit in the sun with old Manolo and his friend the priest and talk about the great matters of life.”

Leonard Maltin found the film a “delightfully earthy, cheery comedy.”

The Washington Post enjoyed the “sun-soaked lyricism” and found the performances ingratiating, extolling the film as a “recipe for sensual self-expression.”

Upon receiving the Oscar, Trueba paid tribute to his inspiration in his acceptance speech, “I would like to believe in God in order to thank him, but I just believe in Billy Wilder, so …thank you, Mr. Wilder.”

Our 25th anniversary presentation of BELLE EPOQUE screens on Wednesday, September 18th at 7pm in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

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“Completely, Delightfully Unpredictable” GIVE ME LIBERTY Opens Friday.

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Things being what they are, it’s a pleasure and relief to watch a comedy and we’ve got a dandy opening this Friday, August 30 at the Monica Film Center, Playhouse and Town Center, the Milwaukee(!)-set Give Me Liberty. The brightest critics, people normally quite hesitant with their praise, absolutely sat up in their seats when they watched this movie. Look:

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: “At once breakneck and tolerant, Give Me Liberty manages to be both rousingly Russian and touchingly all-American.”

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: “Completely, delightfully unpredictable from scene to scene, Give Me Libertydraws you in with its moving performances and blasts of broad comedy.”

Andrew Lapin, NPR: “There are precious few victories to be found in Give Me Liberty, and yet the film feels victorious all the same.”Vikram Murthi, AV Club: “Give Me Liberty functions as one of the most resonant portrayals of allyship, achieved through actual deeds instead of empty gestures.”

Nick Allen, RogerEbert.com: “The debut of a fresh vision of the all-American crowd-pleaser.”

Eric Kohn, indieWire: “It’s thrilling to watch a filmmaker work overtime to explore what it means to get lost in the moment, lose track of the bigger picture, and then discover it all over again.”

Peter Debruge, Variety: “This warm, fiercely independent comedy-drama eschews anything resembling formula in favor of a boisterous and freewheeling joyride drawn from Mikhanovsky’s own experience as the driver of a wheelchair-accessible transport vehicle.”

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter: “Made on a micro-budget with lots of invigorating rough edges, this distinctive movie is like an underclass daytime version of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, reaffirming the resilience of the American Dream even amidst spiraling disorder.”
Chris Galust and Lauren ‘Lolo’ Spencer

Give Me Liberty follows medical transport driver Vic, who risks his job to shuttle a group of rowdy seniors and a Russian boxer to a funeral, dragging clients like Tracy, a vibrant young woman with ALS, along for the ride. He’s late, but it’s not his fault. Roads are closed for a protest. The new route uproots his scheduled clients and as the day goes from hectic to off-the-rails, their collective ride becomes a hilarious, compassionate and intersectional portrait of American dreams and disenchantment.

Director/co-writer Kirill Mikhanovsky spoke about the making of Give Me Liberty:
Q: Which came first, the story or the characters?
A: “First was the job I had driving a medical transport van back in the ‘90s, which was one of the first jobs that I had in this country. I thought about making a movie back in 2006, but was discouraged a little bit by the fact that what I was actually interested in was gone, and I was not interested in making a period piece. Then in 2013, I believe, at that time I was working with Alice [Austen, writer/producer] on another script. The city of Milwaukee was very inspiring and so I thought of making a smaller film in Milwaukee. I proposed it to Alice. That [medical transport driver] job had a lot of hilarious, touching, wonderful, moving stories. And that was the starting point. From there, a fictitious script was born, taking place over the course of I believe seven to eight days, with a wild slew of hilarious characters, combining comedy and investigation—almost like a detective story and love story and road movie with the main character driving the van, etc.—but some revisions later it became a day-in-the-life of this character Vic.
Co-writer-director Kirill Mikhanovsky

Q: Even though you do have some professional actors in the mix, you also cast many non-professionals. Where and how did you find all of this incredible talent?

A: “What’s very important, in the very beginning of this process—I don’t remember how it came about exactly—we knew we wanted very much to work with non-actors. On my first feature film [Sonhos de Peixe], I worked with non-actors in a small Brazilian fisherman’s village, and I knew from the very beginning that I would be writing that film for the people from that place. For me, it was a very successful experience. I really enjoyed working with them.

“With the kind of story we wanted to tell [with Give Me Liberty], we knew that we would benefit from having non-actors. Because the central character was a driver in Milwaukee who would be driving around a number of people with disabilities or people from just different walks of life, we just didn’t imagine at the time how we would gather the right professional talent from all over the nation, given our resources and given our task. So that was decided from the outset. It’s probably easier to write characters than to find them sometimes, so we were very excited at the end of the writing process. But when we looked at the characters, we understood that we had quite a task before us, because we needed to find extremely gifted people to portray these characters. Where we were going to look for them? We really didn’t know where to begin! In Milwaukee, we had obviously limited resources. Really, it was quite a daunting task.”

Alice is a successful playwright affiliated with the Goodman Theatre and Steppenwolf. She got in touch with someone in Chicago who referred us to an agency in Los Angeles, and almost instantly we found Lauren “Lolo” Spencer, who ended up portraying Tracy. We were absolutely blessed with her. That’s how that came about. Lolo portrays a character with a disability, and she does have a disability. We wanted to work with people who were not playing people with disabilities. We wanted to work with people who actually have disabilities, because we wanted to honor that side of life in this project in a way that was authentic. We felt very strongly about that.

For Victor, the main character, we had an eight month long odyssey. A couple of years ago, we had a
number of partners that were not a good fit for the project at the time, and someone proposed we try this one actor who almost looks like a real guy, like a non-actor walking in from the street, but he couldn’t do it, and then one thing led to another and before we knew it we were interviewing every living English-speaking actor on the planet between the ages of 18 and 30. I mean, we went through the whole cast of Dunkirk, it was insane! Then we looked around and thought to ourselves, “How did we get here? Didn’t we plan to work with a non-actor?” And luckily, luckily—we went so far as to propose the role to a couple of people, actors with faces and names—but luckily, thank God, for some reason things were turned down. They didn’t happen because, I don’t know, they were changing agencies or on the verge of “breaking out” and their agents advised them against doing a small movie in Milwaukee, etc. We just got lucky, my God, it’s just like the hand of God.

6. Lauren ‘Lolo’ Spencer, Steve Wolski, and Chris Galust in GIVE ME LIBERTY.

And so, eight months into the search, that’s when we had the chance of turning to Jen Venditti for help, who did a five-week search in the streets of New York. Jen ran into a young man in this baker’s shop in Brooklyn, who turned out to be quite interesting, and we met with him. He’d never had any training, but he ended up doing this role [Chris Galust]. We planned originally to give him two months to break in and drive the van and just live with some grandpa in Milwaukee and become this person. We ended up having only ten days [of prep] with him. The experience was quite brutal for him, because not only did we throw this little kid in the water, we expected him to swim faster than anyone else.

Each role is more complex than the other. But the role of Dima? He’s basically a fighter with a one-million-dollar smile, who walks into the room and just charms everyone. He has the physique of a boxer, boxer charisma, all the qualities of a person who would charm every member of the audience within five minutes. And being from a Russian, or Soviet, background. We just didn’t know where to turn.

All of a sudden, we were receiving headshots of metrosexuals from New York who just wanted to look tough with a three-day stubble but nothing else to show for themselves other than clearly going to the gym every day and mixing it with yoga. We realized we were never going to find this person. It was just impossible!

Until one day, a friend of ours, a casting director from Moscow, showed us this guy [Max Stoianov]. We saw his photo, we saw this smile, and before we even saw his videos we knew he was the guy. Incredible. His story is absolutely unbelievable. He is perfect. He possesses this animal charisma that translates into any culture, at least known to me. He is formidable physically. He is capable of working non-stop. I mean, it was a gift. It was basically love at first sight. I don’t want to just say we were lucky, but, yes, we were, because I don’t treat luck lightly. I think luck is a very particular energy that accompanies one. And in that sense, yes, of course, we were blessed, and that was another sign that the project was on the right track. And we really treasure it. We respect it. We understand that it’s a blessing and we’re trying to honor it with hard work.

Q: It’s so refreshing to see a movie set in an American city that isn’t Atlanta or Louisiana, or whichever state is currently offering the best tax incentives. In your four-year journey to get the movie made, was there ever a point in which forces were trying to talk you out of shooting in Milwaukee?

A: We stuck to our guns. We stuck to Milwaukee to a fault. Basically, it was inspired by Milwaukee—the
original stories and the place—so we really believed in making it in Milwaukee and only there.
Sometime later, about two-and-a-half years later, after many attempts to make it happen there, we
began to feel rather foolish [KM laughs] because Milwaukee wasn’t that keen on supporting us either
—that is to say there was no funding really available, there were no philanthropists, no funds supporting
cinema, no tax incentives. It was not easy. And people outside of Milwaukee couldn’t wrap their heads round Milwaukee either. Not a lot of people were excited at the thought of Milwaukee. But it is an interesting city in many respects. It’s the backbone of America. It’s a historical American city. It’s a segregated city with a lot of ethnic history that retains its authenticity in 2018, which can’t be said for a lot of cities in America. It has its own character, its own mood. Its seasonal changes. Everything is inspiring!

I believe Alice’s ancestor was the third white man in Milwaukee. I have my grandfather buried there, and one of my family members was born there, so it became an important town in my life. There’s a quiet beauty to it, which is not as obvious as, say, New York, for instance. Also, it just so happened that my family settled there at some point in the ‘90s. My first short film was made there—the one that took me on the road all over the world to make other films.

Would it be possible to make this film somewhere else? Yeah, absolutely. It would be another film. We really believed that by taking this particular film— inspired by my experiences in the city and written for Milwaukee by us together— anywhere else would have betrayed the spirit of the material. But what we have today is nothing short of destiny. We need to be practical, but we also cannot negate the spiritual side of this profession. We respect it a lot. We understand that things like inspiration, the metaphysical tissue of the matter, they’re important! In my opinion, based on my experience in this profession, to deny it, to not acknowledge that, would be foolish.

EASY RIDER 50th Anniversary Screening and Tribute to Peter Fonda

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a tribute to the late Peter Fonda with a screening of his landmark movie, EASY RIDER on Saturday, September 7th at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills.

When the movie opened to huge grosses in the summer of 1969, it changed the course of Hollywood, setting the entire industry on a quest for films that would appeal to the same younger generation that had embraced the ultimate motorcycle movie made by Fonda and director Dennis Hopper. It is a film that many have cited as their inspiration for getting their own motorbike, some going as far as to get it transported to them across the country with CarsArrive Auto Relocation and similar services. That’s the sway that the movie has. Easy Rider, produced and co-written by Fonda, was made for less than $400,000 and grossed $60 million, a feat that no other youth movie was ever able to match. It also earned two Academy Award nominations, for the original screenplay by Fonda, Hopper, and Terry Southern, and a best supporting actor nod for Jack Nicholson, an actor in B-movies who was propelled to the A-list as a result of Easy Rider.

Fonda, Hopper, and Nicholson knew each other from the low-budget movies made by Roger Corman and American International Pictures in the late 1960s. Hopper co-starred with Fonda in Corman’s The Trip, a movie about an LSD trip which was written by Nicholson. Peter had the idea of taking the character of the motorcycle-driving outlaw that he had played in Corman’s The Wild Angels and inserting him into a major studio film. Nevertheless, Columbia Pictures was nervous about financing Easy Rider and only got fully behind the film after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and began to generate box office heat.

The picture is essentially a road trip movie, in which Hopper’s Billy and Fonda’s Wyatt (also known as Captain America) ride their motorcycles from California to New Orleans, where they hope to celebrate Mardi Gras. They finance the trip by selling cocaine, a detail that suggests the film was far from an idealized portrayal of rebellious American youth. On their travels they spend time on a Southwestern farm as well as a hippie commune. They meet a young lawyer played by Nicholson when they are all jailed in a Southern town. He agrees to join them on their motorcycle journey, which takes a darker turn as they encounter Southern bigots who disapprove of the young heroes’ freewheeling style.

The supporting cast includes Karen Black, Toni Basil, Luke Askew, and Robert Walker Jr. Up-and-coming cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs helped to create the vivid images of rural Americana, and the groundbreaking rock score incorporated songs by The Band, the Byrds, Steppenwolf, and Jimi Hendrix. Editor Donn Cambern had put together the rough cut of the film to many of those songs, and the filmmakers retained many of them in the final cut.

Although the film enshrines the young heroes, it is not uncritical. Their use of marijuana and LSD is honestly depicted, and when Fonda’s Wyatt sums up their journey near the end of the film, he offers a memorably hard-edged judgment: “We blew it.” Nevertheless, the darkest forces in the film are the rednecks who resent the freedom of these easy riders. Writing at the time, John Mahoney of The Hollywood Reporter said, “Easy Rider is very likely the clearest and most disturbing presentation of the angry estrangement of American youth to be brought to the screen.” Writing several decades later, Chuck Bowen of Slant drew a connection to the present: “This legendary tale of a motorcycle odyssey gone wrong remains timeless for its diagnosis of the early stages of a social ennui that has now fully bloomed.”

Most reviews in 1969 were enthusiastic. Life magazine’s Richard Schickel called the film “a loose, lovely-to-look-at, often laughing, often lyric epic.” Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times added, “Fonda and Hopper give immense performances.” The film was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1998.

Join us for our 50th anniversary screening and tribute to Peter Fonda at 7:30pm on Saturday, September 7th at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Special guests to be announced. Tickets are available here.

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Return Engagements of TONI MORRISON: THE PIECES I AM

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On August 5 we lost one of our most brilliant writers and thinkers, Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison. As it happens, an acclaimed biographical documentary, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, came out this summer and in light of her passing Laemmle Theatres will return the film to theaters starting Friday at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills and Saturday at the Playhouse and Claremont. If you haven’t yet seen it, please consider doing so. Writing in the New York Times, A.O. Scott said “The Pieces I Am offers something else, as a dividend yielded by [Morrison’s] achievements and her years on the earth: the profound pleasure of her company.” Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal wrote that the film “reminds us how long she had to wait for the recognition she so richly deserved, and what a distinctive, generous, funny, astute, self-doubting, unstoppable and formidable figure she was along the way.”

L.A. Times entertainment reporter Christie D’Zurilla published this interview with the director of Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, Morrison’s longtime photographer-turned-friend, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. The headline: “Filmmaker says Toni Morrison was wickedly funny and made a mean carrot cake.”

“Novelist and book editor Toni Morrison was a private person who never wrote a memoir and turned away biographers, according to her friend Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. But she did allow the photographer-director to interview her extensively for the documentary “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am,” which explored her life as well as elements of black history.

“After Morrison died late Monday at 88, Greenfield-Sanders — who was also the writer’s “photographer of choice” for her book jackets and publicity shots — opened up to The Times exclusively via email about his memories of her. He remembers her as a woman who saw the big picture and, even in dark times, “managed to be philosophical.”

“For those who missed the Oscar-buzzy documentary the first time around, encore screenings of “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am” are being held for a week beginning Aug. 16 at the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills and Aug. 17 and 18 at Laemmle’s Claremont 5 in Claremont and Playhouse 7 in Pasadena.

“Here are some of Greenfield-Sanders’ memories from his decades-long friendship with the Nobel Prize winner.”

Q: Describe the type of friendship you had with Toni Morrison. What was it like?

A: I first met Toni Morrison 38 years ago, in the winter of 1981, when she came to my East Village studio for a Soho Weekly News cover portrait. She wore a dark suit with a white blouse and smoked a pipe. (Many years later she told me that Angela Davis had gotten her “into pipes.”) I was a young photographer and Toni had just finished her fourth novel, “Tar Baby.” I was impressed by her confidence on the set. Toni liked my work and we became friends … and I eventually became her photographer of choice, for book jackets, publicity photos and the like. Her trust in me began way back then.

Q: Can you share something that most people don’t know about her?

A: Did you know Toni makes the world’s greatest carrot cake? Ask anyone who has tasted one of her carrot cakes and they will tell you. In the film, author Paula Giddings shares that during her early days working in the secretarial pool at Random House, Toni asked her to do some typing for her first novel, “The Bluest Eye.” As a thank you, Toni baked her a carrot cake.

Q: What is the most profound or useful thing you learned from her over the course of your friendship?

A: Toni had a way of looking at the big picture. Even in dark times she managed to be philosophical.

Q: Talk a little about the things you filmed during your documentary interview that didn’t make the cut.

A: In creating “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am,” the most difficult challenge was cutting it down to a two-hour film. We had to edit out a riveting section about Morrison on Shakespeare and her play “Desdemona,” wonderful insights into her father and his influence on her, and an emotional piece about the death of writer Toni Cade Bambara. When Bambara died with an unfinished book, Toni [Morrison] devoted a year to finishing it so it could be published posthumously for her dear friend.

Q: What did you learn about her legacy in researching the film?

A: At the beginning of the film, Toni remarks that she learned early on in life that “words have power.” As we’ve taken the film out, I’ve been able to see the depth of gratitude for her words. Her writing has empowered and nourished so many around the world … to heal, to imagine, to develop their own voices. Toni was a pioneer — taking her hard-earned place alongside the white men who had dominated the publishing establishment. Her ascent to the literary canon was a significant breakthrough that allowed other women and African Americans to be seen and heard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8sUwXTWb4M

 

Q: Some people don’t like to have their picture taken. What was it like to photograph her? How was it the same as or different from filming her?

A: Toni’s strength and confidence were part of her DNA, and both were particularly evident when she was in front of the camera. I think she had a profound understanding of portraiture and her image in the world. Our photo sessions were not only quite fun over the years but also resulted in big ideas for my own career. It was during a lunch break in 2005 that Toni proposed a book on “Black Divas”… we were shooting portraits for her opera, “Margaret Garner.” That idea morphed into my film series on identity, starting with “The Black List: Volume 1,” focusing on the African American community. Toni was the first to sit for that film.

Q: Did she make you laugh?

A: Toni had a world-class sense of humor. Being with Toni was a lot of fun. Many people who only know her through her books and interviews don’t realize how much Toni loved to laugh. She was wickedly funny in addition to being such a profound, philosophical and visionary thinker.

This 1995 image is Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ favorite picture of writer Toni Morrison.(Timothy Greenfield-Sanders / Random House)

Philippe de Broca’s THAT MAN FROM RIO 55th Anniversary Screenings in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present this month’s installment in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program: one of the most popular and entertaining foreign films of the 1960s, Philippe de Broca’s action romp, THAT MAN FROM RIO.

De Broca, the director of intimate, character-driven films like The Five-Day Lover, shifted gears with this bigger-budget comic thriller. Two top stars of French cinema, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Francoise Dorleac (the sister of Catherine Deneuve who died tragically in an auto accident just three years later), added to the film’s allure.

The action begins when Dorleac is kidnapped as part of a museum heist of a valuable statuette, and Belmondo follows her kidnappers to Brazil to save her life and find the treasure. There he battles international criminals, assassination attempts, and even a hungry crocodile on the Amazon.

The film was designed in part as a spoof of the James Bond movies that were catching fire all around the world. De Broca’s tongue-in-cheek approach to the genre, along with a series of spectacular action set-pieces, led to box office success wherever the film was shown. The film was also nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. De Broca wrote the script with Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Ariane Mnouchkine, and Daniel Boulanger. Veteran actors Jean Servais and Adolfo Celi co-star.

Along with the wit of the script and the skill of the performers, the film benefited from lush cinematography (by Edmond Sechan) of Paris, Rio, Brasilia, and other South American locations. The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther acknowledged the film’s homage to silent comedy: “Jean-Paul Belmondo is dandy as a fast, fearless modern-day Harold Lloyd.” He added that de Broca “uses the actual locations so vividly and artistically that they generate a kind of excitement that blends superbly with the dazzle of the plot.”

The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann also praised de Broca: “he has wit, tenderness, dexterity, a superb eye for composition and color, a prodigious sense of rhythm and movement, a perfect command of the medium.” Time magazine noted that the film was “shrewdly calculated to make the customer laugh out loud at all the lousy movies he has ever seen and at the same time have a wild and wonderful time watching them again.”

Join us for a perfect piece of lighthearted summertime entertainment with two of the most engaging international stars ever to grace the screen. Belmondo remained at the center of French film culture for decades, and de Broca went on to direct one of the most popular of all arthouse movies, King of Hearts.

Our 55th anniversary presentation of THAT MAN FROM RIO screens on Wednesday, August 21st at 7pm in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

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Pop Culture Humorist Charles Phoenix Presents the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Comedy Classic THE LONG, LONG TRAILER.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series, partnered with retro pop culture humorist Charles Phoenix, present a 65th anniversary screening of the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz comedy classic THE LONG, LONG TRAILER, directed by Vincente Minnelli.

The Special Event evening features Phoenix with his retro slide show tribute to the film, its iconic stars, and the colorful history of travel trailers.

THE LONG, LONG TRAILER (1954) is a comedy showcasing the talents of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz at the height of their popularity. MGM studio executives questioned the box office viability of a movie with the married couple since they could be seen every week in the highest-rated show on television, I Love Lucy.

Veteran producer Pandro S. Berman enlisted director Minnelli (Meet Me in St. Louis, Father of the Bride, An American in Paris, Gigi) and screenwriters Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich (The Thin Man, It’s a Wonderful Life, Father of the Bride, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) to concoct a movie from the best-selling memoir-novel of Clinton Twiss about his trailer travels with his wife.

The filmmakers lightly satirized the mid-century American ethos, marriage, and conspicuous consumption, offering American audiences what they couldn’t get at home on their black-and-white TV sets – Lucy and Desi in glorious Technicolor in essentially a travelogue of California.

The film about newlyweds Nicky (Arnaz) and Tracy (Ball) on their honeymoon trip trailer-adventures utilizes reliable character actors Marjorie Main, Keenan Wynn, and Moroni Olsen along the way, and saturated color cinematography by multiple Oscar winner Robert Surtees. The film was a box office smash in its day, vindicating the commercial instincts of the filmmakers. Leonard Maltin calls it “an enduringly popular slapstick comedy…almost an I Love Lucy episode on wheels.”

Charles Phoenix, the “Ambassador of Americana,” is known for his live comedy retro slide show performances, JOYRIDE videos, field trip tours, “test kitchen” concoctions and colorful coffee table books (Addicted to Americana, Southern Californialand, Americana the Beautiful), all celebrating America’s classic and kitschy pop culture past and present.

This Special Event of the Anniversary Classics Series is presented on Saturday, August 17 at the vintage jewel box theater, the Ahrya Fine Arts, a perfect showcase for retro humorist Phoenix. Come join the celebration of this mid-twentieth century comedy, its iconic stars, and the history of travel trailers in Kodachrome. Festive attire is encouraged!

Click here for tickets.

Sixtieth Anniversary Screening of THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS with Actress Barbara Rush In Person

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a rediscovery of a juicy melodrama from 1959: THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS, which boasted a vibrant cast headed by Paul Newman and our special guest, Barbara Rush. As Leonard Maltin wrote in his review, “Newman and Rush have memorable roles as poor lawyer who schemes to the top and society girl he hopes to win.”

Newman was rising to major stardom at the time he made this film. He was coming off acclaimed performances in Somebody Up There Likes Me and The Long Hot Summer and had just earned his first Oscar nomination for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. As the Motion Picture Herald observed in its review of The Young Philadelphians, “Newman demonstrates once again that he stands in the forefront of the crop of young players who have come to the screen in recent years.”

The film was adapted by James Gunn from the best-selling novel by Richard Powell that many compared to the enormously successful Peyton Place in exposing the sexual shenanigans and professional rivalries among a tight-knit community surrounding Philadelphia’s Main Line. Newman plays an ambitious young man with a shady past who is determined to rise to the top ranks of society. He becomes a lawyer who learns how to inveigle a number of wealthy clients but rediscovers his principles when he defends an old friend on a murder charge.

Robert Vaughn, in a breakthrough performance of his own, plays the murder suspect, and he earned an Oscar nomination for his compelling performance in the film. But the entire cast was strong. As Film Daily observed, “The story is given life and fire through an imposing array of performances.” Rush plays Newman’s love interest, though he also has a dalliance with a married socialite played by Alexis Smith. The supporting cast includes established actors Billie Burke, Otto Kruger, and John Williams, along with newer faces Brian Keith, Diane Brewster, and Adam West (later to play TV’s Batman) in his film debut.

Vincent Sherman (All Through the Night, Old Acquaintance, Mr. Skeffington, The Damned Don’t Cry) directed, and The Hollywood Reporter declared, “The direction by Vincent Sherman is the best in his long and able career.” The film received two additional Oscar nominations, for black-and-white cinematography by veteran Harry Stradling and black-and-white costume design by Howard Shoup.

Barbara Rush also co-starred with Newman in Hombre, and her many other film credits include Magnificent Obsession with Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman, Bigger Than Life with James Mason, Strangers When We Meet with Kirk Douglas, Come Blow Your Horn and Robin and the 7 Hoods with Frank Sinatra, along with two early sci-fi classics, When Worlds Collide and It Came From Outer Space. Rush had a co-starring role on the Peyton Place TV series of the 60s, and she later starred in the series Flamingo Road and 7th Heaven. Just in the last year, she was discovered by a whole new audience portraying a wealthy widow in a series of witty commercials for Wilshire Coin.

Our 60th anniversary presentation of THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS plus Q&A with Barbara Rush screens on Wednesday, August 7th at 7 PM at the Royal in West LA. Click here for tickets.

Format: DVD

Masters of El Prado: A Collection of Documentaries about the Most Renowned Artists from Museo del Prado.

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Take a trip to Spain this summer and see Bosch, Sorolla and Murillo on the big screen as part of our Culture Vulture series at the Claremont, Playhouse, Royal, and Town Center.

MURILLO: THE LAST JOURNEY is more than a documentary about one of the greatest geniuses of fine art. It provides a view at the history of the Spanish empire at its height from the perspective of one of Murillo’s most iconic paintings: The Young Peddler. The painting travels from Seville to Paris as world-renowned specialists flesh out the exquisite aesthetics of the painter’s most sublime masterpieces. We’ll screen this August 5 and 6.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V-q9mv6jig

 

BOSCH: THE GARDEN OF DREAMS, screening August 12 and 13, was produced by LópezLiFilms and the Prado Museum, which this year commemorates the fifth centenary of the painter’s death with a major exhibition entitled “Bosch. The Centenary Exhibition.”

Under the direction of Jose Luis Lopez Linares, the film focuses on the most important work of the painter and one of the most iconic in the world: ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights.’ The feature presents a conversation among artists, writers, philosophers, musicians and scientists, regarding the personal, historical and artistic significance of the picture, bringing back a conversation that was started 500 years ago in the court of the Dukes of Nassau (Brussels), when it is believed that the painting was commissioned to Bosch.

We have very little information about the artist’s identity and biography, something that helps feed the enigma of the hidden meaning in his works. As Falkenburg, narrator of the documentary and debate moderator with all participants says, “At the end of the novel, the writer reveals the mystery. In this case, the author does not want you to solve the mystery. He wants you to stay in it.”

BOSCH: THE GARDEN OF DREAMS is the only film about the author’s most important masterpiece: “The garden of earthly delights” and the only one with full access to the mysteries hidden in it.

https://vimeo.com/161909645

 

SOROLLA: THE NATURAL EMOTION is the result of the documentary record of the first great anthological exhibition that the Prado Museum dedicated to the great master of the 19th century and the most important held inside and outside of Spain: Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923); it’s a culmination of the itinerancy in Spain of the fourteen panels of the Vision of Spain, commissioned by the Hispanic Society of America, which the Bancaja Foundation brought to Spain in 2007. This spectacular set constitutes the most magnificent decorative project of Sorolla’s fecund career, in addition of the true epilogue and synthesis of all its production.

The representation of the light, the beauty of his pastel brushstrokes, the love of his native land as well as the relationship with his family and many other issues, are explored by experts in the field, creating a production where the figure of of Sorolla is exalted and revealed.

Producer López Linares comments that “it was a great discovery that there were so many photos of Sorolla, suddenly we had an incredible photographic archive, with magnificent photos of him painting, when he was older, on the beach, family photos … It was all very well documented. It’s a pleasant surprise for the documentary to find you with this photographic richness, it’s wonderful.”

 

https://vimeo.com/346822352