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The 2022 Q1 Culture Vulture schedule is here.

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Fine art is healing and considering the pain of the past two years, some palliative movies are in order. We have finalized the January-March schedule for our Culture Vulture series — featuring films about art and artists, opera, dance, stage, classical music and more . See them on the big screen every Monday at 7:30 PM and Tuesday at 1 PM at our Claremont, Glendale, Newhall, Playhouse and Royal theaters. Without further ado:

January 24-25 SO LATE SO SOON
January 31-February 1 SECRET IMPRESSIONISTS
February 7-8 THE NINTH SYMPHONY BY MAURICE BEJART
February 14-15 MAVERICK MODIGLIANI
February 21-22 no Culture Vulture screenings (Presidents’ Day)
February 28-3/1 ROMEO AND JULIET
March 7-8 NAPOLEON: IN THE NAME OF ART
March 14-15 CONCERTO: A BEETHOVEN JOURNEY
March 21-22 FRIDA KAHLO
March 28-29 IN SEARCH OF HAYDN
April 4-5 TBA
April 11-12 EASTER IN ART

FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES, the first opera by an African American composer to be produced at the Met, screens live at the Claremont & Playhouse October 23.

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Opening Night of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2021–22 season will be a historic occasion—the Met’s first performance of an opera by a Black composer, FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES. Laemmle Theatres will screen the opera live on Saturday, October 23 at our Claremont and Pasadena theaters. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Grammy Award–winning jazz musician and composer Terence Blanchard’s adaptation of Charles M. Blow’s moving memoir, which The New York Times praised after its 2019 world premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis as “bold and affecting” and “subtly powerful.” Featuring a libretto by filmmaker Kasi Lemmons, the opera tells a poignant and profound story about a young man’s journey to overcome a life of trauma and hardship. James Robinson and Camille A. Brown—two of the creators of the Met’s sensational recent production of Porgy and Bess—co-direct this new staging; Brown, who is also the production’s choreographer, becomes the first Black director to create a mainstage Met production. Baritone Will Liverman, one of opera’s most exciting young artists, stars as Charles, alongside sopranos Angel Blue as Destiny/Loneliness/Greta and Latonia Moore as Billie.

From Zachary Woolfe’s New York Times piece September 23 piece A Black Composer Finally Arrives at the Metropolitan Opera: Terence Blanchard, best known for scoring Spike Lee films, reopens the 138-year-old opera company with FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES:

“In 1919, William Grant Still was in his 20s — many years from the eminence he would later enjoy as the widely acknowledged “dean” of Black American composers. But he had already begun to write operas, and he boldly approached the nation’s most important company: the Metropolitan Opera in New York. We have no evidence he got an answer. Two decades later, Still was far more established, with his “Afro-American Symphony” widely performed. In 1935, he sent the Met “Blue Steel,” its music infused with jazz and spirituals. “Not worthy of consideration,” a company official wrote in an internal submissions ledger. Then Still wrote another opera, “Troubled Island,” about the Haitian revolution, with a libretto by the poet Langston Hughes. “The Metropolitan was our first target, logically enough,” he later recalled. That, too, was dismissed. “It would be a mere waste of time,” a 1942 entry in that submissions ledger went, “to go into details about this opera which is an immature product of two dilettantes.” The Met, the country’s largest performing arts institution, opened in 1883, and in its 138 years has put on some 300 titles. Not one has been by a Black composer.

“Until now. Closed for a year and a half by the pandemic and rocked by the nationwide uprising for racial justice, the company will reopen on Monday with “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” by Terence Blanchard, a jazz trumpeter and composer best known for scoring a host of Spike Lee films. “It’s a phenomenal honor, and it’s an overwhelming thing,” Blanchard, 59, said after a recent rehearsal. “But at the same time it’s bittersweet. I was just in St. Louis and heard the William Grant Still piece.” (Still’s one-act “Highway 1, U.S.A.” was done there this summer.) “And I’m like, OK, he was around. I’m honored, but I’m not the first qualified person to be here, that’s for sure.””

Click here to read the rest of the piece.

From Charles M. Blow’s September 29 New York Times piece It Wasn’t Just My Life on That Stage. So Was My Purpose:

“I strongly believe in therapy, the idea of talking things out, working them through, as a way of making it over. A therapist once told me that I liked to keep my glass filled to the brim, but in so doing, there was no space for the extra and unexpected in life. When those things came, as they surely would, I would inevitably feel overwhelmed because my cup would always overflow. His analysis was spot on, and it has stayed with me. I have tried at times not to keep my cup so full, but that instinct feels foreign to me. If I am not on the edge of too much, I don’t feel like myself, I don’t feel like I’m living up to my potential and aspirations.

“And so I have adjusted in another way: I have learned not to bask in any adulation too fully or feel any pain too deeply. I have learned to keep my life as even and steady as I can, so that I can better survive it and also better enjoy it. This is one reason the past few days have felt so otherworldly to me. On Monday, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” the opera composed by Terence Blanchard and based on my memoir of the same name, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. It was the first opera on that stage by a Black composer in the institution’s 138-year history.”

Click here to read the rest of the piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEalBSU0UuI

 

Culture Vulture Returns! Tickets Now on Sale.

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Nature is healing and Culture Vulture is back! We will restart the weekly series this month with Monday evening (7:30 PM) and Tuesday matinee (1:00 PM) screenings at our Claremont, Glendale, Newhall, Playhouse and Royal venues. We have something for everyone, including fine art, musical theatre, legitimate theatre, ballet and much more. The schedule, starting with something from London’s West End:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LcGGBrqhS4

09/20 & 09/21 – SKYLIGHT – On a bitterly cold London evening, schoolteacher (Carey Mulligan) receives an unexpected visit from her former lover (Bill Nighy), a successful and charismatic restaurateur whose wife has recently died. David Hare’s highly-anticipated production, directed by Stephen Daldry (The Audience), was recorded live on the West End by National Theatre Live.

https://vimeo.com/580755653/5679f08d86

09/27 & 09/22 – LIVE AT MR. KELLY’S – A look back at the legendary Chicago club Mister Kelly’s, which launched talent like Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, Bette Midler, and Richard Pryor. Its visionary owners George and Oscar Marienthal smashed color and gender barriers to put fresh, irreverent voices in the spotlight and transform entertainment in the 50s, 60s, and ’70s.

https://vimeo.com/583451750

10/04 & 10/11 – ALGREN – A journey through the gritty world, brilliant mind, and noble heart of Nelson Algren, the writer who defined post-war American urban fiction. Featuring John Sayles, William Friedkin, Philip Kaufman, Billy Corgan and more, the film paints an intimate, witty portrait.

https://vimeo.com/thefaithful/trailer

10/11 & 10/12 – THE FAITHFUL – This documentary powerfully explores fandom, memorabilia and the magnetic appeal of three of the most influential cultural icons of our time: Elvis Presley, Princess Diana, and Pope John Paul II.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwnUJmFBhs4

10/18 & 10/19 – RAPHAEL REVEALED – Marking the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death, the greatest exhibition ever held of his works took place in Rome. This film provides beautifully-filmed access to this once-in-a-lifetime show featuring over two hundred masterpieces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st6F5QZWJSY

10/25 & 10/25 – FOLLIES – New York, 1971. There’s a party on the stage of the Weismann Theatre. Tomorrow the iconic building will be demolished. Thirty years after their final performance, the Follies girls gather to have a few drinks, sing a few songs and lie about themselves. After a sold-out run in 2017, the winner of the Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival returned for a strictly limited season in 2019. Stephen Sondheim’s legendary musical includes such classic songs as Broadway Baby, I’m Still Here and Losing My Mind.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/putinswitnes/585517424

11/01 & 11/02 – PUTIN’S WITNESSES serves as a fascinating look at Putin in the earliest days of his presidency, when the seeds of his authoritarianism were already being sown, filmed by a former friend and colleague, now living in exile, who had intimate access.

https://vimeo.com/582143536

11/08 & 11/09 – PRISM – Filmmakers Eléonore Yameogo of Burkina Faso, An van. Dienderen of Belgium, and Rosine Mbakam of Cameroon examine biases and racism in the cinematic technology, deconstructing the camera’s objectivity, exposing its inherent power imbalance. At the same time, they work together collaboratively to construct and reconstruct. Like a chain letter, PRISM brings interviews, monologues, and images on the racism of cinematic technology into emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual dialogue.

https://vimeo.com/545187506

11/15 & 11/16 – DELPHINE’S PRAYERS – A portrait of a Cameroonian immigrant to Belgium. Quick-witted, engaging, passionate, and intense, she shares her incredible survival story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6I-r4oLHIY

11/22 & 11/23 – M.C. ESCHER: JOURNEY TO INFINITY – Equal parts history, psychology, and psychedelia, Robin Lutz’s entertaining, eye-opening portrait gives us the famous Dutch graphic artist through his own words and images: diary musings, excerpts from lectures, correspondence and more are voiced by British actor Stephen Fry, while Escher’s woodcuts, lithographs, and other print works appear in both original and playfully altered form.

11/29 & 11/30 – SPARTACUS – Huge in scale and spectacular in effect, SPARTACUS is a true tour de force of a ballet, set to Aram Khachaturian’s superb score. With an incredible display of might from the four leading dancers to the entire corps de ballet and its passionate pas de deux, it is the ultimate spectacle of virtuosity and lyricism born at the Bolshoi Theatre.

12/06 & 12/07 – THE DANISH COLLECTOR: DELACROIX TO GAUGUIN – Denmark’s Ordrupgaard Collection is a treasure trove featuring some of the finest Impressionist works ever painted. Includes Realist paintings by Corot, Delacroix and Courbet; landscapes of Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne and Sisley; and beautifully observed portraits by Degas, Manet, Morisot, and Gonzalès.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJdet3cdKro&feature=emb_title

12/13 & 12/14 – LOUIS VAN BEETHOVEN – This lavish historical drama illuminates the story of the world-famous composer from different perspectives.

LA Opera Presents a Provocative Adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s PERSONA at REDCAT November 9 – 12

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On November 9, Persona makes its West Coast premiere at the The Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts (REDCAT) Theater, through LA Opera’s Off-Grand series.

Based on Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film of the same name, Persona explores humanity at its most fragile. The piece made its world premiere in Brooklyn, NY, commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and National Sawdust in 2015, opening to great acclaim. Singer-songwriter Björk called Persona “a brilliant new opera.”

The opera’s creators, composer Keeril Makan and director-librettist Jay Scheib, spent ample time creating a piece that would highlight the raw, fervid nature of the film, both musically and dramatically.

Amanda Crider as Alma and Lacey Dorn as Elisabet in a scene from “Persona” (photo: Noah Stern Weber / Beth Morrison Projects)

Scheib studied the film “zealously,” adding: “What I learned about storytelling, physical gesture and conflict remain central to my thinking about film, theater and opera. More than any other work, Persona spoke to me in a very direct visceral language. With this opera, I am adapting both cinematic innovations and dramatic intensity to the operatic form.”

While composing the opera’s music, Makan paid equal attention to the film’s elevated emotional content. This precise awareness to the psyche was a new technique employed by Makan at the time.

“What is new in Persona is a lyricism that is wide-ranging in its emotional content. Sometimes direct, sometimes ambiguous, the emotional subtleties of the opera mirror the sonic subtleties found in my music,” says Makan. “The scope and ambition of the work exceeds anything I have attempted in the past.”

In addition, Scheib and Makan played off of each other’s creative energies to produce a cohesive story.

“I am interested in creating the perfect synthesis of Keeril Makan’s gorgeous composition—his sounds and his silences—with a mise-en-scène that finds its analogue in Bergman’s own remarkable use of film as a physical medium,” Scheib states.

Joshua Jeremiah as “The Man” and Amanda Crider as Alma in a scene from “Persona” (photo: Noah Stern Weber / Beth Morrison Projects)

Makan continues: “The process of composition benefitted from my close collaboration with [Scheib], who also directs the work. As a producer, Beth Morrison excelled at guiding the project to completion, both on the small-scale, because of her vocal expertise, and the large scale, thanks to her producing work.”

As the years draw on, opera and film seem to marry in a myriad of other ways. With recent advances in HD live-streaming, which brings opera from the stage to screen, opera has been more accessible than ever. Additionally, with works such as Persona subsequently labelled as “live cinema,” the cameras play an integral part of the story that is just as important as the music. The combination of these two artistic mediums solidifies the relationship between cinematography and live theater.

Persona runs from November 9th through November 12th at REDCAT. Each performance will be followed by a post-performance talkback with the creative team behind the Opera.

Click here to purchase tickets.

All Friday November 10th ticketholders 21 years and over are free to join us for an after party featuring lite bites, drinks and a live DJ hosted by LA Weekly.

The Met Opera Live in HD in Select Laemmle Theatres!

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Laemmle Theatres has partnered with Fathom Events to bring you the Met Opera’s award winning Live in HD series. The 2017-18 season begins on October 7 with the company’s new production of Bellini’s Norma. Experience ten incomparable performances broadcast live from the stage of the Met, including five new productions, two of which are Met premieres.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCAo2rIf3nc

 

Each event is broadcast live on Saturday mornings at 9:55 am. In addition to the opera presentations, audiences will go behind the scenes with the leading artists that make the Met one of the most renowned opera houses in the world. Backstage access includes special interviews with cast and crew and other features exclusive to the Live in HD series.

Tickets for The Met: Live in HD 2017-18 at Laemmle’s Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills, Town Center 5 in Encino, Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, and Claremont 5 in Claremont can be purchased online now by visiting www.laemmle.com/metoperaHD.


NORMA (Bellini) – New production
Saturday, October 7, 2017 – 9:55 a.m.

This new production of Bellini’s masterpiece stars Sondra Radvanovsky as the Druid priestess and Joyce DiDonato as her rival, Adalgisa—a casting coup for bel canto fans. Tenor Joseph Calleja is Pollione, Norma’s unfaithful lover, and Carlo Rizzi conducts. Sir David McVicar’s evocative production sets the action deep in a Druid forest where nature and ancient ritual rule.

Tickets & Details

 

DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE (Mozart)
Saturday, October 14, 2017 – 9:55 a.m.

Music Director Emeritus James Levine conducts the full-length, German version of Mozart’s magical fable, seen in Julie Taymor’s spectacular production, which captures both the opera’s earthy comedy and its noble mysticism.

Tickets & Details

 

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (Thomas Adès) – Met premiere
Saturday, November 18, 2017 – 9:55 a.m.

The Met presents the American premiere of Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel, inspired by the classic Luis Buñuel film of the same name. Hailed by the New York Times at its 2016 Salzburg Festival premiere as “inventive and audacious … a major event,” The Exterminating Angel is a surreal fantasy about a dinner party from which the guests can’t escape. Tom Cairns, who wrote the libretto, directs the new production, and Adès conducts his own adventurous new opera.

Tickets & Details

 

TOSCA (Puccini) – New production
Saturday, January 27, 2018 – 9:55 a.m.

Rivaling the splendor of Franco Zeffirelli’s Napoleonic-era sets and costumes, Sir David McVicar’s ravishing new production offers a splendid backdrop for extraordinary singing. Sonya Yoncheva will make her role debut as the title prima donna alongside Vittorio Grigolo and Bryn Terfel. Andris Nelsons conducts.

Tickets & Details

 

L’ELISIR D’AMORE (Donizetti)
Saturday, February 10, 2018 – 9:00 a.m.

Pretty Yende debuts a new role at the Met as the feisty Adina, opposite Matthew Polenzani, who enthralled Met audiences as Nemorino in 2013 with his ravishing “Una furtiva lagrima.” Bartlett Sher’s production is charming, with deft comedic timing, but also emotionally revealing. Domingo Hindoyan conducts.

Tickets & Details

 

LA BOHÈME (Puccini)
Saturday, February 24, 2018 – 9:30 a.m.

The world’s most popular opera returns in Franco Zeffirelli’s classic production starring a cast of young stars, including Sonya Yoncheva as the fragile Mimì and Michael Fabiano as the poet Rodolfo. Marco Armiliato conducts.

Tickets & Details

 

SEMIRAMIDE (Rossini) – First time in HD
Saturday, March 10, 2018 – 9:55 a.m.

This masterpiece of dazzling vocal fireworks makes a rare Met appearance—its first in nearly 25 years—with Maurizio Benini on the podium. The all-star bel canto cast features Angela Meade in the title role of the murderous Queen of Babylon, who squares off in breathtaking duets with Arsace, a trouser role sung by Elizabeth DeShong. Javier Camarena, Ildar Abdrazakov, and Ryan Speedo Green complete the stellar cast.

Tickets & Details

 

COSI FAN TUTTE (Mozart) – New production
Saturday, March 31, 2018 – 9:55 a.m.

A winning cast comes together for Phelim McDermott’s clever vision of Mozart’s comedy about the sexes, set in a carnival-esque environment inspired by 1950s Coney Island. Manipulating the action are the Don Alfonso of Christopher Maltman and the Despina of Tony Award–winner Kelli O’Hara, with Amanda Majeski, Serena Malfi, Ben Bliss, and Adam Plachetka as the pairs of young lovers who test each other’s faithfulness. David Robertson conducts.

Tickets & Details

 

LUISA MILLER (Verdi) – First time in HD
Saturday, April 14, 2018 – 9:30 a.m.

James Levine and Plácido Domingo add yet another chapter to their legendary Met collaboration with this rarely performed Verdi gem, a heart-wrenching tragedy of fatherly love. Sonya Yoncheva sings the title role opposite Piotr Beczała in the first Met performances of the opera in more than ten years.

Tickets & Details

 

CENDRILLON (Massenet) – Met premiere
Saturday, April 28, 2018 – 9:55 a.m.

For the first time ever, Massenet’s sumptuous take on the Cinderella story comes to the Met. Joyce DiDonato stars in the title role, with mezzo-soprano Alice Coote in the trouser role of Prince Charming, Kathleen Kim as the Fairy Godmother, and Stephanie Blythe as the imperious Madame de la Haltière. Bertrand de Billy conducts Laurent Pelly’s imaginative storybook production.

Tickets & Details

Our January-March Culture Vulture Schedule is Set!

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Dear opera, ballet, fine art and live theater buffs, we have completed the schedule for our weekly Culture Vulture series, January, February and March 2017 and we have got some wonderful things to show you. As you may or may not know, we screen these every Monday night at 7:30 and Tuesday afternoon at 1 at the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, the Town Center 5 in Encino, the Claremont 5 in Claremont, the Ahyra Fine Arts and the Monica Film Center in Santa Monica. The full schedule is below and at https://www.laemmle.com/culturevulture.

January 9 & 10: THE GOLDEN AGE from the Bolshoi Ballet

A satire of Europe during the Roaring 20s, THE GOLDEN AGE makes for an original, colorful, and dazzling show with its jazzy score and music-hall atmosphere. This ballet that can only be seen at the Bolshoi has everything to it: mad rhythms, vigorous chase scenes, and decadent cabaret numbers. With its passionate love story featuring beautiful duets between Boris and Rita, the Bolshoi dancers plunge into every stylized step and gesture magnificently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzaCJ2Ps0B4

January 16 & 17: NO MAN’S LAND from the National Theatre

Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart star Sean Mathias’ acclaimed production of NO MAN’S LAND, one of the most brilliantly entertaining plays by Harold Pinter. One evening, two aging writers, Hirst and Spooner, meet in a pub and continue their drinking into the night at Hirst’s stately house nearby. As the pair become increasingly inebriated, and their stories more unbelievable, the conversation soon turns into a revealing power game, further complicated by the intrusion of two sinister younger men.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9RA6B9FOKM

January 23 & 24: THE CURIOUS WORLD OF HIERONYMOUS BOSCH from the Noordbrabants Museum

Who was Hieronymus Bosch? Why do his strange and fantastical paintings resonate with art lovers now more than ever? THE CURIOUS WORLD OF HIERONYMOUS BOSCH features the critically acclaimed exhibition ‘Visions of a Genius’ at the Noordbrabants Museum in the southern Netherlands, which brought the majority of Bosch’s paintings and drawings together for the first time to his home town of ‘s-Hertogenbosch and attracted almost half a million art lovers from all over the world.

January 30 & 31: CARVALHO’S JOURNEY

A real life 19th century American western adventure story, CARVALHO’S JOURNEY tells the extraordinary story of Solomon Nunes Carvalho (1815-1897), an observant Sephardic Jew born in Charleston, South Carolina, and his life as a groundbreaking photographer, artist and pioneer in American history.

February 6 & 7: SAMSON ET DALILA from l’Opéra de Paris.

Based on the biblical story, Saint-Saëns’s 1877 opera would not be performed at the Palais Garnier until fifteen years later. This first Parisian performance in 1892 included the hitherto unperformed “Dance Of The Priestesses.” Nevertheless, it became one of the most performed French operas in the world, together with Faust and Carmen. Conducted by Philippe Jordan, this new production brings back a repertoire masterpiece that has not been performed at the Paris Opera for twenty-five years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbKCdblq9YI&feature=youtu.be

February 13 & 14: FEELINGS ARE FACTS: THE LIFE OF YVONNE RAINER

Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer chronicles the defiant, uncompromising, and highly influential ideas of postmodern choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer. Over the course of her career, she revolutionized modern dance, generated what later became known as performance art, and changed the basic tenets of experimental filmmaking – all during a time when women were largely ignored in the art world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMcoLKQpDF4

February 20 & 21: AMADEUS from the National Theatre

Lucian Msamati (Luther, Game of Thrones, NT Live: The Comedy of Errors) plays Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s iconic play, captured live at the National Theatre, and with live orchestral accompaniment by Southbank Sinfonia. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a rowdy young prodigy, arrives in Vienna, the music capital of the world – and he’s determined to make a splash. Awestruck by his genius, court composer Antonio Salieri has the power to promote his talent or destroy his name. Seized by obsessive jealousy he begins a war with Mozart, with music, and ultimately, with God.

February 27 & 28: I, CLAUDE MONET

From award-winning director Phil Grabsky comes this fresh new look at arguably the world’s favorite artist – through his own words. Using letters and other private writings I, CLAUDE MONET reveals new insight into the man who not only painted the picture that gave birth to impressionism but who was perhaps the most influential and successful painter of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

March 6 & 7: UN BALLO IN MASCHERA from the Bayerische Staatsoper

The Bavarian State Opera’s former music director Zubin Mehta returned to the fabled house, where his image in bronze adorns one of the foyers, to celebrate his 80th birthday by conducting Verdi’s middle-period masterpiece for the first time in a staged production. His remarkable cast includes soprano Anja Harteros singing Amelia for the first time and “filling every note with Verdian intensity;” tenor Piotr Beczala as a “visually and vocally dashing Riccardo;” and George Petean as an “exemplary” Renato (Neue Musikzeitung).

March 13 & 14: WOOLF WORKS from the Royal Opera House Ballet

The first revival of Wayne McGregor’s critically acclaimed ballet triptych to music by Max Richter, inspired by the works of Virginia Woolf and starring Alessandra Ferri and Mara Galeazzi.

March 20 & 21: SAINT JOAN from the National Theatre

Joan: daughter, farm girl, visionary, patriot, king-whisperer, soldier, leader, victor, icon, radical, witch, heretic, saint, martyr, woman. From the torment of the Hundred Years’ War, the charismatic Joan of Arc carved a victory that defined France. Bernard Shaw’s classic play depicts a woman with all the instinct, zeal and transforming power of a revolutionary. Josie Rourke (Coriolanus, Les Liaisons Dangereuses) directs Gemma Arterton (Gemma Bovery, Nell Gwynn, Made in Dagenham) as Joan of Arc in this electrifying masterpiece.

March 27 & 28: THE ARTIST’S GARDEN: AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISM from the Florence Griswold Museum

American impressionism took its lead from French artists like Renoir and Monet but followed its own path that over a thirty-year period reveals as much about America as a nation as it does about a much-loved artistic movement. The story of American impressionism is closely tied to a love of gardens and a desire to preserve nature in a rapidly urbanizing nation. Traveling to studios, gardens and treasured locations throughout the Eastern United States, UK and France, this mesmerizing film is a feast for the eyes.

Behold! Our new Culture Vulture trailer.

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Have you partaken in one of our weekly screenings of opera, ballet, theater and fine art exhibitions or would you like to know more? For a taste, check out this new trailer we’ll be running on all Laemmle screens starting Friday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWn3qxF2XFM

You can enjoy one of these screenings every Monday evening at 7:30 and every Tuesday afternoon in far-flung corners of Los Angeles County: from the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills, the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, the Town Center 5 in Encino, to the Claremont 5 in, uh, Claremont and early next year we’ll likely add the long-awaited, hotly-anticipated Monica Film Center to that list. We’ll announce the early 2016 program soon but for now here’s where you can always find our Culture Vulture slate and what we’ve got coming up as 2015 draws to a close: www.laemmle.com/culturevulture. (Hot tip: those December 21 and 22 screenings of HAMLET star one of the most exciting actors of his generation, Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch. Get your tickets while they last.)

The Royal Opera’s Production of LA BOHEME Screening July 6 and 7

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Swoon-inducing opera, coming your way: LA BOHEME. The Royal Opera recently posted some fantastic interviews and making-of videos to YouTube. We’ll be screening the production in all six Laemmle venues on Monday, July 6 and 7:30 PM and Tuesday, July 7 at 1 PM.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFEuShFvJzBy-1RQBQYz_VFVYAs1NzqCk