CAPERNAUM Q&A with director Nadine Labaki following the 7 pm show on Tuesday, 2/5.
Valentine’s Day Double Feature: SOME LIKE IT HOT and PILLOW TALK
Instead of the Valentine’s Day massacre depicted in SOME LIKE IT HOT, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present comedy and romance to mark the holiday. Two award-winning comedies from 1959 share the bill and you can enjoy both SOME LIKE IT HOT and PILLOW TALK for one admission price!
When the American Film Institute conducted a poll of critics and filmmakers to rank the greatest American comedies, Billy Wilder’s SOME LIKE IT HOT came in at #1. The hilarious film melds violence, cross-dressing, and music, and benefits from a superb cast headed by Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon (Oscar-nominated for his performance), Tony Curtis, Joe E. Brown, and George Raft. Wilder was nominated for his direction and for the screenplay he wrote with frequent collaborator I.A.L. Diamond. Orry-Kelly won the Oscar for best black-and-white costume design, especially for the stunning costumes he created for Monroe, including an almost see-through dress that she wears while performing.
The story follows two down-on-their-luck musicians who inadvertently witness the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago and are forced to go on the run. Their only option to escape the gangsters is to disguise themselves as women and join an all-girl band on a tour of Florida.
Reviews for the film were ecstatic. The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann wrote, “This new Marilyn Monroe-Jack Lemmon-Tony Curtis film is a lulu… With easy mastery, [Wilder] has captured much of the scuttling, broad, vaguely surrealist feeling of the best silent comedies.” Roger Ebert declared, “Wilder’s 1959 comedy is one of the enduring treasures of the movies.” When the Library of Congress established its National Film Registry to preserve important films, SOME LIKE IT HOT was one of the first 25 movies inducted. Joe E. Brown mused in the movie’s famous final line, “Nobody’s perfect.” Maybe not, but this film comes close.
PILLOW TALK marked the first teaming of superstars Doris Day and Rock Hudson and turned out to be a box office bonanza. Although she was not always appreciated at the time, Day was one of the few actresses to regularly play career women in the conservative 1950s. In PILLOW TALK she was cast as a successful interior decorator who shares a party line with a composer and womanizer played by Hudson. Forced to listen to his unending stream of sexual conquests, Day protests vociferously, and Hudson resolves to make her change her tune by seducing her. Both antagonists score a few pointed jabs before the inevitable final clinch.
The film won the Academy Award for best original screenplay, written by Russell Rouse, Clarence Greene, Stanley Shapiro, and Maurice Richlin. It received four other nominations, including Day’s only nod for best actress. Tony Randall and Thelma Ritter head the delectable supporting cast. Ross Hunter produced, and Michael Gordon directed.
Among the film’s many favorable reviews, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it “one of the most lively and up-to-date comedy romances of the year.” Leonard Maltin hailed an “imaginative sex comedy… fast-moving; plush sets, gorgeous fashions.” The film’s enormous success led to two other Day-Hudson comedies, Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers. The picture was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2009.
Our Valentine’s Day Double Feature screens on Thursday, February 14th in Pasadena, NoHo, and West LA! Click here for tickets to the 5:10pm show of PILLOW TALK with the 7:20pm show of SOME LIKE IT HOT included. Click here for tickets to the 7:20pm SOME LIKE IT HOT, with the 9:45pm PILLOW TALK included.
A Joyful Noise: All Black Musicals in Honor of African American History Month.
Next month, in honor of African American History Month, our Throwback Thursday theme is A Joyful Noise: Every Thursday at the NoHo 7 we’ll screen a classic Black musical. We’ll do it in chronological order: Stormy Weather (1943) on February 7, The Wiz (1978) on February 14, School Daze (1988) on February 21 and Dreamgirls (2006) on February 28.
Stormy Weather, February 7: The relationship between an aspiring dancer and a popular songstress provides a showcase for some of the most brilliant African American entertainers of the time. Come for Lena Horne’s performance of the iconic title song; stay for the “Jumpin’ Jive” dance sequence, which Fred Astaire called “the greatest dance number [he had] ever seen.” Directed by Andrew L. Stone and starring Horne, Bill Robinson, Cab Calloway and His Cotton Club Orchestra, Katherine Dunham and Her Troupe, Fats Waller and the Nicholas Brothers.
The Wiz, February 14: Loosely adapted from the 1974 Broadway musical of the same name, The Wiz is a musical adventure fantasy that reimagines L. Frank Baum’s classic 1900 children’s novel. It follows the adventures of Dorothy (Diana Ross), a shy Harlem schoolteacher who finds herself magically transported to the urban fantasy Land of Oz. Befriended by a Scarecrow (Michael Jackson), a Tin Man (Nipsey Russell) and a Cowardly Lion (Ted Ross), she travels through the city to seek an audience with the mysterious Wiz (Richard Pryor), who they say is the only one powerful enough to send her home. Directed by Sidney Lumet.
School Daze, February 21: Spike Lee’s second film is a musical comedy-drama based on his experiences while a student at historically black colleges like Morehouse and Spelman. Laurence Fishburne plays Dap, a politically conscious student enduring the school’s inept administration and the colorism and hair-texture bias of the fraternity-sorority system. Lee plays Half-Pint, a freshman who endures hazing in hopes of admission to a fraternity. Giancarlo Esposito and Tisha Campbell-Martin co-star.
Dreamgirls, February 28: The much-loved musical about a Supremes-like 1960’s girl group, as filmed by Bill Condon (Gods & Monsters, Kinsey) stars Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé Knowles, Eddie Murphy and Danny Glover. “Fulfills the ecstatic promise inherent in all musicals — that life can be dissolved into song and dance — but it does so without relinquishing the toughest estimate of how money and power work in the real world that song and dance leave behind.” (New Yorker) Dreamgirls was an Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actor (Murphy) and Supporting Actress (Hudson) and a winner of Golden Globes for Best Picture (Comedy or Musical) and Best Supporting Actress and Actor (Hudson and Murphy).
Looking Forward to Looking Back: Repertory Cinema at Laemmle Theatres with Bergman, Truffaut and more.
We are beginning the fifth year of our Anniversary Classics and Anniversary Classics Abroad series — our first three films back in 2015 were Exodus, Getting Straight and Where’s Poppa? — and got 2019 off to a strong start this week with Fellini’s Amarcord. Here’s what we have planning for the coming months:
We’ll screen Black Orpheus on February 20 at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center. Winner of both the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and the Palme d’Or at Canne, Marcel Camus’ film brings the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the twentieth-century madness of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. With its eye-popping photography and ravishing, epochal soundtrack, Black Orpheus was an international cultural event, and it kicked off the bossa nova craze that set hi-fis across America spinning.
On February 26 at the Playhouse only we’ll screen The Wild Bunch. Sam Peckinpah’s controversial revisionist Western takes place in Texas and Mexico in 1913. The titular outlaws, headed by ethical-in-his-fashion Pike (William Holden), stages violent bank robberies in their old, time-honored tradition. After a particularly brutal holdup in the town of San Rafael, the gang — or what’s left of it — heads for the hills of Mexico, pursued by a posse led by Thornton (Robert Ryan). Our Pasadena neighbor Vroman’s Bookstore will present a Q&A and book signing with THE WILD BUNCH: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film author W.K. Stratton in conversation with Stephen Farber after the screening.
François Truffaut’s 1959 The 400 Blows is the kind of film we at Laemmle Theatres cut our teeth on, so to speak, back in a very different time for film exhibition. With Jean-Pierre Léaud playing his stand-in for the film time, Truffaut brilliantly re-creates the trials of his own difficult childhood in the film that marked his emergence as one of Europe’s most brilliant auteurs and signaled the beginning of the French New Wave. We’re bringing it back for one night, March 20, at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center.
This year is the 45th anniversary of the U.S. release of the French slapstick masterpiece The Mad Adventures of “Rabbi” Jacob. In this riot of frantic disguises and mistaken identities, Victor Pivert, a blustering, bigoted French factory owner, finds himself taken hostage by Slimane, an Arab rebel leader. The two dress up as rabbis as they try to elude not only assassins from Slimane’s country, but also the police, who think Pivert is a murderer. Pivert ends up posing as Rabbi Jacob, a beloved figure who’s returned to France for his first visit after 30 years in the United States. We’ll show it April 17 at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center.
On May 15 we’ll screen Wild Strawberries at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center. Ingmar Bergman’s elegiac story of elderly Professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström) facing his past is the film that catapulted the Swedish auteur to the forefront of world cinema. Released in 1957, this is the 60th anniversary of its release in the States.
On June 19 we’ll enjoy some laughs to celebrate the 40th anniversary of La Cage Aux Folles, the French comedy about a gay couple living in St. Tropez who have their lives turned upside down when the son of one of the men announces his impending marriage. Screening at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center.
For our regular Anniversary Classics series we typically stick to domestic fare. To mark Valentine’s Day we’re planning a Twofer Tuesday double feature at the NoHo, Playhouse and Royal of two 1959 romantic comedy classics: Doris Day and Rock Hudson’s Pillow Talk and Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. With these two films, no chance of ending up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop!
45th Anniversary Screenings of Federico Fellini’s AMARCORD January 16th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series launch our Anniversary Classics Abroad program for 2019 with one of the most acclaimed foreign-language films of the 1970s, Federico Fellini’s boyhood-memory masterpiece, AMARCORD. Actor Michael Forest, who worked on the film, will share some memories of working with Fellini in a Q&A before the screening at the Royal Theater.
Fellini collected his fourth and final directing Oscar nomination for the film, which won the Academy Award as the year’s best foreign language film. It was also named the best film of the year by the New York Film Critics, and Fellini was their choice for Best Director.
AMARCORD (the vernacular for “I remember” in Romagna) is an evocation of a year in the life of an Italian coastal town in the 1930s. It is not a literal recreation but more of a dreamlike memoir of a time filtered through sentimental, political, and erotic reminiscences of a bygone era.
There is no central character, but an assortment of townspeople played by an ensemble cast. Among them are Titta (Bruno Zanin), a teenager who possibly could be the young Fellini; Titta’s father (Armando Brancia), a socialist construction foreman openly at odds with the fascist government; Gradisca (Magali Noel), the town hairdresser and femme fatale; Titta’s foul-mouthed grandfather (Guiseppe Lanigro); Titta’s crazy uncle (Ciccio Ingrassia); and The Lawyer (Luigi Rossi), the narrator and master-of-ceremonies.
Fellini co-wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay with Tonino Guerra (‘La Notte,’ ‘Blow-Up’) and employed frequent collaborator Nino Rota to compose the score, with color cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno.
Critics of the day received the film rapturously. Time Out New York called the film “A funhouse tour through Fellini’s mind…he has mined his youth before but never with such jocularity and emotional force… [with] some of the most lyrical imagery the maestro has ever concocted.”
Vincent Canby of the New York Times was equally impressed, writing, “it’s a film of exhilarating beauty…may possibly be Fellini’s most marvelous film.”
Roger Ebert called it Fellini’s “last great film,” raving, “if ever there was a movie made entirely out of nostalgia and joy, by a filmmaker at the heedless height of his powers, that movie is Federico Fellini’s AMARCORD.”
AMARCORD screens Wednesday, January 16 at 7pm in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.
ASHES IN THE SNOW Q&A with Cast and Crew Opening Day at the Music Hall.
ASHES IN THE SNOW Q&A with actor Martin Wallstrom (Mr. Robot), director Marius Markevicius, screenwriter Ben York Jones and editor Jonathan Dillon following the 5:30 pm show on Friday, 1/11.
Happy New Year! See the Shortlisted Foreign Films at Laemmle Theatres!
And then there were nine. Eighty-seven nations submitted one film each to compete for the 2019 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and last month the Academy announced its shortlist. Cinephiles can now or very soon see all but one of these extraordinary movies, which tell stories of Europe, the Middle East, North and South America, and Asia, on a Laemmle screen:
| Birds of Passage (Colombia), dirs.: Cristina Gallego/Ciro Guerra |
| The Guilty (Denmark), dir: Gustav Moller |
| Never Look Away (Germany), dir: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck |
| Shoplifters (Japan), dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda |
| Ayka (Kazakhstan), dir: Sergei Dvortsevoy (this one is still looking for a U.S. distributor) |
| Capernaum (Lebanon), dir: Nadine Labaki |
| Roma (Mexico), dir: Alfonso Cuaron |
| Cold War (Poland), dir: Pawel Pawlikowski |
| Burning (Korea), dir: Lee Chang-dong |
The Academy will announce the final five nominees on January 22. Read Nancy Tartaglione’s Deadline Hollywood post about the shortlist, including a couple surprising omissions, here.
Are there any 2018 films you think should have made the cut? Or do you think AMPAS did well?
Q&A’s with Anna Zamecka, Oscar Shortlisted Filmmaker of COMMUNION.
COMMUNION filmmaker Anna Zamecka will participate in Q&A’s at the Fine Arts on January 3 (after the 7:30 PM show); at the Laemmle Glendale on January 4 (following 3:00 PM and 7:30 PM shows); and at the Monica Film Center on January 5 (following 11:00 AM show).
Sean Penn and the International Documentary Association’s Claire Aguilar will co-host the January 3rd screening at the Fine Arts.
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