The Royal Theater will host PICK OF THE LITTER Q&A’s after the Friday, August 31, 5:30PM and 7:40PM screenings and after the Saturday, September 1, 3:20PM, 5:30PM and 7:40PM screenings. Director Don Hardy and Poppet the Guide Puppy in attendance!
Keanu Reeves & Winona Ryder’s DESTINATION WEDDING Opens at the Monica Film Center August 31.
Director’s Statement, Destination Wedding:
I have always loved grumpy people — the less self-edited the better. They seem fearless; they make you laugh and they make you think. And if you ask enough questions, you find that sometimes there are excellent reasons for their grumpiness. Life, after all, does hand out its injuries.
None of which is to say that grumpiness makes for a good long-term plan. Without at least a little hope and optimism, life gets pointless in a hurry. And so grumpy people present a question, in real life and, sometimes, in stories: can they heal? Do they still care to try? The struggle of hope versus experience is high-risk and valiant. It can be funny and even joyful. I root for these people. Sometimes, I’m sure I’m one of them.
Take two really grumpy strangers, then — smart ones with very painful pasts, whose idealism has been beaten into a thin paste. Throw them together in such a situation that their grumpiness makes them instant pariahs, as for instance a destination wedding — a weekend-long, unrelenting proclamation of other people’s happiness. They cannot participate in this joy-fest anymore than they can participate in life itself, which is always going on over there somewhere, just out of reach. They hate each other and they hate themselves. They hate the bride, they hate the groom, and they have horrible histories with both. And with others in the wedding party. They have come only because they had to; they were invited only because they had to be. Nobody wants them there, least of all them, and as a result they are seated together at every event in what is, for them, 72-hour marathon of pain. Make them tresspassers in paradise, fish who have been taken out of water and plunged into some other awful, toxic liquid. Stretch their tolerance beyond its limits, watch them thrash about, let them air all their grievances.
And then, see them recognize a spark in each other, and feel one within themselves.What will they do with it, if anything? Embrace it or turn away? Are they just too far gone to try? Is it wiser, and safer, and calmer, and better, to stay hopeless?
Maybe we’re all battlers at our core. Maybe we know that capitulation equals a kind of death. Maybe the struggle is worth it. Maybe not. There are no easy answers. But, as always, it’s the question that matters.
I’m deeply indebted to Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, who mastered a mountain of material, threw their big hearts and big talents into it, and shot a feature film in nine and a half summer days. And I’m so grateful to Gail Lyon, Elizabeth Dell, Giorgio Scali, Callie Andreadis, William Ross, Matt Maddox and so many other wonderful artists working behind the cameras and behind the scenes. Independent films defy the odds by virtue of their very existence, and no one gets to the theater without wonderful creative partners like them.
Thank you for coming to see Destination Wedding. I hope you enjoy it.
–Victor Levin, Writer-Director, August 2018
A WHALE OF A TALE Filmmaker in Person for Q&A’s.
A WHALE OF A TALE director Megumi Sasaki will participate in Q&A’s at the Music Hall following the 7:40 PM screening on Friday, August 24 and the 5:10 PM screening on Saturday, August 25.
CIELO Q&A’s with Astrophysicists at the Fine Arts.
Astrophysicists Marja Seidel and Johanna Teske will participate in Q&A’s at the Ahrya Fine Arts after the Friday 7:20 CIELO screening (Dr. Seidel) and the Saturday 7:20 show (Dr. Teske). Both have spent time at the Chilean observatory that is featured in the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3962T4ZZyUI
Bond Villain Robert Davi in Person with LICENCE TO KILL.
LICENCE TO KILL actor Robert Davi will participate in a Q&A after the screening at the NoHo on Thursday, August 23.
65th Anniversary Screening of SHANE with David Ladd In Person on Sunday, August 26 at the Ahrya Fine Arts
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 65th anniversary screening of one of the most beloved Westerns of all time, George Stevens’ production of SHANE.
The 1950s happened to be a golden age for cowboy sagas, and as the Hollywood Reporter observed, “George Stevens’ SHANE earns a place along with ‘High Noon’ and ‘The Gunfighter’ as one of the great tumbleweed sagas of the decade.” Or as Leonard Maltin declared decades later, “Classic Western is splendid in every way.”
Alan Ladd, Paramount’s biggest star of the era, plays a mysterious gunfighter who arrives in a small Western town and finds a turf war between the farmers and cattle ranchers who want to drive them off the land.
Shane decides to become a protector of these homesteaders and strikes up a friendship with one family; Van Heflin plays the father, Jean Arthur (in her final screen performance) plays the mother, and young actor Brandon De Wilde plays their son, Joey.
Jack Palance was cast as the villain of the piece, a black-clad gunslinger hired by the cattle ranchers to eliminate Shane, along with the rest of the farmers.
The supporting cast includes gifted character actors Ben Johnson, Edgar Buchanan, Emile Meyer, and Elisha Cook Jr. Ladd received the best reviews of his career for the picture. The Saturday Review wrote, “As Shane, Alan Ladd has one of his best roles and gives what is surely his most rewarding performance.”
Stevens had won the Academy Award for best director of 1951 for ‘A Place in the Sun.’ SHANE gave him his third nomination in the directing category (he would win a second Oscar for ‘Giant’ in 1956).
SHANE earned six nominations in all, including Best Picture and two nods in the supporting actor category, for both Palance and De Wilde. The Oscar-nominated screenplay was written by A.B. Guthrie Jr., who adapted the novel by Jack Schaefer. The picture won the Oscar for the magnificent color cinematography of Loyal Griggs.
In tune with the fashions of the era, Stevens chose to shoot on location in the magnificent Grand Tetons outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Because of the care he took with the production, the film went over budget, and the studio was nervous. But the film turned out to be a box office smash and proved enticing to adult and family audiences alike. Kids who saw the move in 1953 are not likely to forget the emotional ending and young De Wilde’s cry, “Come back, Shane!”
Joining us for a Q&A will be David Ladd, the son of Alan Ladd. David went on to be a popular child actor in the 1950s. He appeared with his father in two films, ‘The Big Land’ and ‘The Proud Rebel;’ he then starred on his own in two family hits, ‘Misty’ and ‘A Dog of Flanders.’ He went on to act in a few films as an adult but then segued into a career as producer and studio executive.
SHANE screens on Sunday, August 26, at 3pm at Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre. Click here for tickets.
Format: DCP
Q&A’s for RESTORING TOMORROW, Inspiring Documentary About the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.
This just in…
RESTORING TOMORROW filmmaker Aaron Wolf will participate in Q&A’s at select screenings with a variety of special guests. Join the conversation. Join the movement. This is a special moment for all cultures to come together and join the discussion, leaving with hope and a drive to take action.
Confirmed Q&A’s at Encino Town Center after the 7:30PM screenings on August 24th, 25th and the 3PM screening on August 26th.
August 27th at 7:30PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts.
August 28th at 7:30PM at the Laemmle Glendale.
August 29th at 7:30PM at NoHo 7.
August 30th at 7:30PM at Pasadena Playhouse 7.
Rabbi Steve Leder will join Aaron for the August 26th and 27th screenings. Other special guests TBA.
You can also see the filmmaker interviewed on Good Day L.A. here.
35th Anniversary Screenings of THE MAKIOKA SISTERS on Wednesday, August 22 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest offering in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program, Kon Ichikawa’s poignant family drama, THE MAKIOKA SISTERS.
One of the great Japanese masters, Ichikawa is perhaps less widely celebrated than his countrymen Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu. He began directing features in the 1940s, and his films The Burmese Harp, Fires on the Plain, Tokyo Olympiad, and others found passionate critical defenders.
One of his later films, THE MAKIOKA SISTERS, is adapted from a popular Japanese novel by Junichiro Tanizaki and follows the fortunes of four sisters from a wealthy family in Osaka. Set in the 1930s on the eve of World War II, the film stars Keiko Kishi, Yoshiko Sakuma, Sayuri Yoshinaga, and Yuko Kotegawa as the orphaned sisters, heirs in a wealthy manufacturing family. Their marriages and romantic relationships are a source of tension and jealousy.
The sumptuous art direction and costume design help to create the lush atmosphere of the film. Reviewing the film at the time of its American release, the Los Angeles Times’s Kevin Thomas called it “exquisitely, subtly sensual.”
John Powers of the L.A. Weekly agreed that “this is an uncommonly vibrant and beautiful film.”
And the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael called it “the most pleasurable movie I’ve seen in several months…the rich colors, the darkness, the low-key lighting—they’re intoxicating.”
THE MAKIOKA SISTERS (1983) screens on Wednesday, August 22, at 7pm in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.
Format: Blu-ray
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