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LAEMMLE LIVE PASADENA presents Caesura Youth Orchestra May 5

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Laemmle Theatres proudly presents LAEMMLE LIVE PASADENA, inspired by Laemmle’s popular concert series in Santa Monica. Laemmle Live showcases emerging musicians and professional performers from local schools and organizations, celebrating our diverse community with live performance. Laemmle Live Pasadena’s free Sunday morning concerts take place in the courtyard between Laemmle’s Playhouse 7 and Vroman’s Bookstore from 11am to 12pm. A light reception will follow the concert.

This Sunday morning concert features the Caesura Youth Orchestra. Based in Glendale, California, the program provides music education, group lessons and free instruments to under-served elementary students.  After completing an initial basic music course, the students are able to choose from the following instruments: violin, viola, cello, flute, clarinet and trumpet.

The Caesura Youth Orchestra follows the El Sistema model for providing music to under-served students.  The program is now in it’s fifth year as an after-school program. Elementary students begin the program with a basic music education class, learn to play the recorder and the importance of caring for an instrument.  Students may then select an instrument.  Each of the ensembles meets for 1 1/2 to 2 hours three times each week.  Students perform regularly at events in the Glendale area.  Class room teachers at the end of each year evaluate the effect the program has on students in their class rooms.  They indicate that these students have become team players, student leaders and display increased academic skills.

For more information visit: www.mycyo.org

This is a Free Event!
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Sunday, May 5, 2019
Playhouse 7 Courtyard
673 East Colorado
Pasadena, CA 91101
11am – 12pm

Brilliant French Filmmaker and Honorary L.A. Woman Agnès Varda, 1928-2019.

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French film pioneer Agnès Varda, who died last week in Paris, was a kind, funny and brilliant person beloved by cinephiles around the world and by the patrons and workers of Laemmle Theatres. Over her decades-long career we screened many of her films, including 2000’s The Gleaners and I and 2017’s Oscar-nominated Faces Places. She loved and had many connections to Los Angeles — her funeral yesterday in Montparnasse ended with a performance of the Doors’ L.A. Woman — making several films here, including Uncle Yanco (1967), Black Panthers (1968), Lions Love (… and Lies) (1969), Murs Murs (1980) and Documenteur (1980). She moved here in the spring of 1968 with her equally-legendary husband Jacques Demy, who was filming Model Shop, and then again with her son Mathieu in 1981. Fellow Los Angeles cultural institutions LACMA, the American Cinematheque, and the Academy also exhibited, screened and honored her and her oeuvre over the years and she has many close friends here.

In the L.A. Times, film critic Justin Chang wrote beautifully of Varda as “a pioneering woman of cinema, a pillar of the French New Wave, an experimenter, a master, a spiritual mentor, a bestower of joy: The miracle of Agnès Varda lay not merely in all that she accomplished, which was enormous, but also all that she succeeded in meaning to those who knew her.” Variety published a terrific appreciation by Peter Debruge about her career and vast influence which began: “Until today, if you had asked me to name the greatest living filmmaker, I would have answered Agnès Varda. What a loss that the 90-year-old director — who died Friday, leaving behind such intimate masterpieces as “Cléo from 5 to 7,” “Vagabond,” and “The Gleaners and I” — will create no more.’

“Her passing is a chance for the world of cinema to come together and recognize the achievements of an outsider artist who lived long enough to appreciate the impact her work has had on both audiences and multiple generations of younger directors. Before the French New Wave took form in the late 1950s, it was Varda who paddled out from shore and shouted, “Hey boys, come on in! The water’s fine!” And in recent years, with a series of increasingly personal documentaries — including two, “The Beaches of Agnès” and “Faces Places,” that the Los Angeles Film Critics awarded along the way — Varda reiterated the liberating message of her 65-year career: Cinema is about sharing one’s point of view.”

Agnès around the time of ‘The Gleaners and I.’

In Indiewire, Judy Dry posted a piece headlined “Miranda July, Greta Gerwig, and 15 Women Filmmakers on What Agnès Varda Meant to Them,” with July describing her as “the filmmaker of my life” and Ava DuVernay writing “Merci, Agnès. For your films. For your passion. For your light. It shines on.”

At her funeral yesterday, her daughter Rosalie delivered a powerful eulogy, sharing with the gathered mourners that she use to call her mum “ma douce” and “ma petite patate” (my little potato). If you’ve seen Gleaners, you’ll know why. Her son Mathieu’s speech made the mourners laugh and several of her grandsons spoke as well and did an art installation on a street next to the cemetery by painting the tops of the street posts as an homage to Agnes’ distinctive hairstyle. (Le Monde included a photo of the posts in their coverage.) At the French Cinematheque tribute afterward, Sandrine Bonnaire spoke, saying that she was a flower when she and Agnès began filming Vagabond (1980) and became a tree thanks to Agnès. Jane Birkin sang a song a capella and Catherine Deneuve read this beautiful poem from 1870 by Arthur Rimbaud as an homage to Agnès:

Sensation
Par les soirs bleus d’été, j’irai dans les sentiers,
Picoté par les blés, fouler l’herbe menue :
Rêveur, j’en sentirai la fraîcheur à mes pieds.
Je laisserai le vent baigner ma tête nue.

Je ne parlerai pas, je ne penserai rien :
Mais l’amour infini me montera dans l’âme,
Et j’irai loin, bien loin, comme un bohémien,
Par la Nature, – heureux comme avec une femme.

Translated:

On the blue summer evenings, I shall go down the paths,
Getting pricked by the corn, crushing the short grass:
In a dream I shall feel its coolness on my feet.
I shall let the wind bathe my bare head.

I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing:
But endless love will mount in my soul;
And I shall travel far, very far, like a gypsy,
Through the countryside – as happy as if I were with a woman.

Agnès finished one more film after Faces Places. It’s called Varda by Agnès and it screened at this year’s Berlin Film Festival and will probably make its way to the U.S., hopefully on Laemmle screens. Merci pour tout, Agnès.

From ‘Varda by Agnès.’

LAEMMLE LIVE presents Cellist Armen Ksajikian with Host Rich Capparela in Santa Monica

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This is a Free Event!
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LAEMMLE LIVE presents cellist Armen Ksajikian in a solo recital with music by composer/friends. Rich Capparela returns to host this robust program which includes pieces by Sulkhan Tsintsadzè, J.S. Bach, Alan Hovhaness, James Horner, Haim Shtrum, Gabrielle Rosse Owens, Leslie La Barre, Peter Schickele and more.

Admired as much for his artistry and his sense of humor, Armen Ksajikian joined Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra as Associate Principal cello in the 2001-02 season. He is also Associate Principal cello of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. He started out his professional career at age 12 with the Abkhazian State Philharmonic in the former Soviet Union. Since 1976, Armen has been very active in LA’s musical life, working with such notables as Heifetz, Rostropovich, Van Cliburn, Pavarotti, Rosza, Giulini, Baryshnikov, Cage, Mancini, Corea, Dudamel, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Randy Newman, Zubin Mehta and James Cameron, and with groups such as the Eagles, Incubus, System Of Down, and with the Duke Ellington, Dancing with the Stars and Academy Awards orchestras.

Armen has appeared as a soloist with the Nacional Orchestre du Brazil, Pacific Symphony, and Hollywood Bowl and Los Angeles Chamber orchestras, and regularly subs with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is a member of several ensembles including The Catgut Trio, The Rio Trio, California String Quartet and the award-winning Armadillo String Quartet, with whom he performed Haydn’s complete string quartets in a 34 ½ hour marathon. He made his Carnegie Hall debut premiering a quartet by PDQ Bach in 1999 and has appeared in the Cabrillo, Colorado, Banff, Sitka Summer, Oregon Bach, High Desert, Park City and Venice Film festivals; the Rio International Cello Encounter and Jasper Festival of Music and Wine.

In 1993, Armen made his ‘limousine-driving” debut in James Cameron’s True Lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis and played his own death scene in the movie. Also a busy recording musician – he has over 1,100 movies to his credit. Armen’s performances in less conventional venues include 16-day whitewater tours down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, “concerts for grizzlies” inside a clarifier tank of an old pulp mill in Sitka, Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro and at Neverland Ranch. He is particularly proud to have soloed with the Hiland Mountain Women’s String Orchestra at the Hiland Mountain Correctional Center.

This is a Free Event!
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Sunday, April 14, 2019
Monica Film Center
1332 2nd Street
Santa Monica
11am – 12 pm

 

 

LAEMMLE LIVE PASADENA presents Pascale Music Institute April 7

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LAEMMLE LIVE PASADENA, inspired by Laemmle’s popular concert series in Santa Monica presents nationally acclaimed Pascale Music Institute on April 7. Laemmle Live showcases emerging musicians and professional performers from local schools and organizations, celebrating our diverse community with live performance. Laemmle Live Pasadena’s free Sunday morning concerts take place in the courtyard between Laemmle’s Playhouse 7 and Vroman’s Bookstore from 11am to 12pm. A light reception will follow the concert

Award-winning Pascale Music Institute, founded by Susan Pascale, teaches aspiring musicians as young as three and half years old to play the violin, viola, cello, bass, and piano. The Sunday concert will feature the Los Angeles Children’s Chamber Orchestra conducted by Los Angeles Philharmonic violinist, Mitchell Newman. Students of the Pascale Music Institute, or PMI, are taught using the innovative The Pascale Method®, a systematic approach that sets young children up for success from the beginning. Detailed directions, fun exercises, rapid progress, coupled with a delightful reward system motivate students to master skills quickly and correctly. From the beginning, the Pascale Method and Institute stress the importance of music reading, and within 12 weeks, the student is ready to perform for friends and family, and advance to the next level of instruction. For more information visit pascalemusic.com

This is a Free Event!
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Sunday, April 7, 2019
Playhouse 7 Courtyard
673 East Colorado
Pasadena, CA 91101
11am – 12pm

Robert Forster In Person for our 50th Anniversary Screening of MEDIUM COOL, March 27th in West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of one of the most provocative and explosive films of the late 60s, Haskell Wexler’s MEDIUM COOL followed by a Q&A with Robert Forster.

Wexler was already an Oscar-winning cinematographer of such films as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, In the Heat of the Night, and The Thomas Crown Affair when he made his directorial debut with this picture. He also had a background in documentaries, which he put to use in this feature set in Chicago in the summer of 1968, with a climax that takes place during the Democratic convention and the bloody police riot that accompanied it.

The film mixes fact and fiction, documentary footage and staged scenes, as it tells the story of a TV news cameraman, played by Robert Forster, who comes to recognize the moral obligations of a journalist during turbulent times. The film’s co-stars include Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill, and the late Verna Bloom, who gave an especially poignant performance as an Appalachian woman who becomes involved with Forster. Newcomer Harold Blankenship plays her son, who is befriended by Forster. Wexler wrote the screenplay and acted as his own cinematographer. Oscar winner Verna Fields edited the picture, and Mike Bloomfield composed the score.

The film was controversial but enormously successful. It was rated X by the Classification and Ratings Administration of the MPAA, ostensibly for nudity and language, but Wexler commented that “it was a political X.” It was later re-rated R without cuts.

The New York Times’ Vincent Canby wrote, “The result is a film of tremendous visual impact, a kind of cinematic Guernica, a picture of America in the process of exploding into fragmented bits of hostility, suspicion, fear and violence.” The Los Angeles Times’ Charles Champlin agreed that “Medium Cool provides an astonishingly wide but economical documentation of this particular moment in our history.” And Newsweek’s Joe Morgenstern called it “an exciting piece of work that must be seen by anyone who cares about the development of modern movies.”

The film’s reputation continued to grow in later years, with Siskel and Ebert hailing it as “a well-crafted masterpiece.” In 2003 it was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

Robert Forster made his film debut as the object of Marlon Brando’s obsession in John Huston’s controversial 1967 film, Reflections in a Golden Eye, which also starred Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Harris, and Brian Keith. Forster continued to work with top directors of the era, co-starring in Robert Mulligan’s The Stalking Moon and George Cukor’s Justine. Later he earned an Oscar nomination for his vivid portrayal in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, and he delivered striking performances in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and Alexander Payne’s The Descendants. He has continued to make a strong impression in TV series Last Man Standing and the reboot of Twin Peaks, and just last year he bolstered the family drama, What They Had, in which he co-starred with Blythe Danner, Hilary Swank, and Michael Shannon.

Our 50th anniversary presentation of MEDIUM COOL with Robert Forster in person screens Wednesday, March 27, at 7pm at the Royal in West LA. Click here for tickets.

Format: Blu-ray

April Fools’ Double Feature of THE PINK PANTHER and A SHOT IN THE DARK

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series invite you to celebrate April Fools’ Day with a double feature starring writer-director Blake Edwards’ inspired creation of accidental mayhem, Inspector Clouseau. Peter Sellers plays the inept French detective to comic perfection in the 55th anniversary screenings of THE PINK PANTHER and A SHOT IN THE DARK on April 1 in Pasadena, North Hollywood, and West LA. Showtime information.

THE PINK PANTHER, the first of a series of films with the blundering sleuth, opened in the United States in April 1964 and was an immediate hit.

Audiences thoroughly enjoyed the jewel heist caper, especially the antics of Sellers, who effectively stole the film from an ensemble cast including David Niven as the suave thief Sir Charles Lytton, Robert Wagner as his playboy nephew, Capucine as Clouseau’s philandering wife, and Claudia Cardinale as the exiled Princess Dala, the owner of the fabulous diamond known as “the Pink Panther.”

Variety found the original screenplay by Edwards and Maurice Richlin (Pillow Talk) “intensely funny,” with kudos to the cast and especially Sellers’ “razor-sharp timing.” Location shooting in the Italian Alps by cinematographer Philip Lathrop in lush Technicolor enhanced the comedy.

Of course, the memorable theme music by Henry Mancini is the film’s greatest legacy. Mancini’s original score was Oscar-nominated and won three Grammy awards, as well as inclusion in the Grammy Hall of Fame. The score is ranked #20 in the AFI’s all-time top 100. In addition, the feline character that cavorted across the screen in the merry main title sequence by the DePatie-Freleng animation studio became an Oscar-winning cartoon star. The film was added to the National Film Registry in 2010.

Edwards, Sellers, and Mancini reunited for A SHOT IN THE DARK, the second of their several collaborations that continued into the 1970s.

Director Edwards enlisted William Peter Blatty to co-write a screen version of the French play by Marcel Archard (adapted by Harry Kurnitz for Broadway). Edwards brought along Inspector Clouseau, who was not a character in the original play, and turned Sellers loose in the murder mystery plot.

Commissioner Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), driven to comic psychosis by Clouseau’s ineptitude, and Clouseau’s servant Cato (Burt Kwuok), characters who would become mainstays in the ensuing movie series with Sellers, appear for the first time. Also starring Elke Sommer as the main murder suspect and veteran actor George Sanders as the owner of the chateau where the bodies keep piling up.

The comedy was released in the summer of 1964 and became an even bigger hit than The Pink Panther. The New Yorker praised Edwards and Blatty for “the good sense to toss the foundation stock out the window and let Mr. Sellers run amok…All in all, extremely jolly.” Mancini created a whole new jazzy theme for Clouseau and the main title’s animation sequence was once again crafted by DePatie and Freleng.

So avoid pranks and hoaxes this April Fools’ and see the real comic deal – the Inspector Clouseau Twofer at three Laemmle locations: Royal, NoHo and Pasadena Playhouse. Two delightful comedies for the price-of-one on Monday, April 1.

Buy tickets to the 5pm A SHOT IN THE DARK with admission to the 7:10pm THE PINK PANTHER included here. Or, buy tickets to the 7:10pm THE PINK PANTHER with admission to the 9:30pm A SHOT IN THE DARK included here.

Format: DVD

Francois Truffaut’s THE 400 BLOWS 60th Anniversary Screenings March 20th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present this month’s installment of our Anniversary Classics Abroad program. In keeping with the start of spring, we commemorate Francois Truffaut’s evergreen feature film debut, THE 400 BLOWS, which earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Original Screenplay of 1959.

Truffaut’s autobiographical picture, drawn from events in his own childhood, helped to introduce American audiences to the French New Wave. Truffaut had started as a critic for Cahiers du Cinema along with fellow aspiring directors Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol. When he unveiled his first feature, he dedicated it to pioneering French critic Andre Bazin.

Critics around the world hailed the arrival of a major new talent. The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther declared, “Not since the 1952 arrival of Rene Clement’s Forbidden Games…have we had from France a cinema that so brilliantly and strikingly reveals the explosion of a fresh creative talent in the directorial field.” Indeed Truffaut won the award for Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959.

Jean-Pierre Leaud starred as the director’s alter ego, Antoine Doinel, and the character re-appeared in four more films over the course of Truffaut’s career. Albert Remy and Claire Maurier co-star. Another of Truffaut’s frequent collaborators, Henri Decae, provided the lustrous black-and-white cinematography.

The screenplay by Truffaut and Marcel Moussy follows the exploits of Antoine as he battles with his parents, teachers, police, and administrators of the reformatory where he is sent. The director employed an arsenal of fresh cinematic techniques to capture the hero’s irreverent spirit and journey toward liberation. The final freeze frame became one of the most imitated shots in cinema history.

Almost all critics endorsed the film. As Roger Ebert wrote, “The 400 Blows, with all its simplicity and feeling, is in a class by itself.” Directors around the world, including Akira Kurosawa, Luis Bunuel, and Jean Cocteau, also praised Truffaut’s audacious vision. Writing many years later, The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane said, “time has fortified this sharp, slender account of a misbegotten boyhood into one of the unassailable monuments of French cinema.”

THE 400 BLOWS (1959) screens Wednesday, March 20 at 7PM at the Royal, Town Center, and Playhouse. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

KRAMER VS. KRAMER 40th Anniversary Screening with Co-stars Justin Henry and JoBeth Williams In Person

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 40th anniversary screening of the Academy Award-winning best picture of 1979, KRAMER VS. KRAMER. The film, produced by Stanley R. Jaffe, won four other major Oscars — Best Actor Dustin Hoffman, Best Supporting Actress Meryl Streep, Best Director Robert Benton, and Best Adapted Screenplay by Benton, working from the poignant, timely novel by Avery Corman. The film was also named Best Picture of the Year by both the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle.

The picture touched a nerve for audiences because it was one of the first films to dramatize changing gender roles and the bitter aftermath of divorce. In the opening scene Joanna Kramer (Streep) leaves her self-centered, workaholic husband Ted (Hoffman), forcing him to take over the primary parenting role with their six-year-old son, Billy (Justin Henry). Although Ted bungles the job at first, he eventually establishes a deep bond with his son that is threatened several months later when Joanna returns and sues for custody of Billy. The tense courtroom scenes build to a riveting dramatic climax with an unexpected denouement. Award-winning cinematographer Nestor Almendros made the most of interior and exterior Manhattan locations.

Benton’s achievement is in finding sharp, telling details that illuminate character and heighten the drama inherent in everyday life. As Frank Rich wrote in TIME magazine, “Benton gives his film its depth and complexity by challenging the audience’s preconceptions and snap opinions at every turn.” David Denby of New York magazine concurred: “The Robert Benton movie is a major dramatic work—startling and emotionally involving.” Leonard Maltin called it an “intelligent, beautifully crafted, intensely moving film…acted to perfection by entire cast.”

That ensemble included Jane Alexander, Oscar-nominated for her performance as a caring neighbor; veteran actors Howard Duff and George Coe; and two actors making their film debuts, JoBeth Williams and Justin Henry. Williams, who has a couple of vivid scenes as an advertising colleague of Hoffman’s, went on to star in two of the most memorable films of the early 1980s—Steven Spielberg’s production of ‘Poltergeist’ and Lawrence Kasdan’s ‘The Big Chill.’ She also co-starred in ‘American Dreamer,’ ‘Teachers’ with Nick Nolte, and ‘Memories of Me’ with Billy Crystal. She has had a long career in the theater, in several powerful television movies, and has also worked behind the camera as director and producer.

Justin Henry became the youngest actor ever to be nominated for an Oscar for his piercing performance as Billy. The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann declared that Henry “goes through as wide a range of scenes as he could possibly be asked for, and he is true, absolutely true, every moment. He’s enchanting.” Gene Shalit added, “I have never seen such realistic acting from a child so young.” When he grew older, Henry appeared in such films as John Hughes’ ‘Sixteen Candles,’ ‘Sweet Hearts Dance,’ and in John Frankenheimer’s award-winning TV drama, ‘Andersonville.’ Today he works as an entrepreneur in digital media.

KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979) plus Q&A with co-stars Justin Henry and JoBeth Williams screens Thursday, March 14 at 7pm at the Laemmle Royal in West LA. Click here for tickets.