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Bronx Bomber Yogi Berra bio-documentary IT AIN’T OVER opens May 11 with 2-for-1 discounts.

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Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra is one of baseball’s greatest. He amassed ten World Series rings, three MVP awards and 18 All Star Game appearances. He caught the only perfect game in World Series history. Yet for many his deserved stature was overshadowed by his simply being himself and being recognized more for his unique personality, TV commercial appearances and unforgettable “Yogi-isms,” initially head-scratching philosophical nuggets that make a lot more sense the more you think about them. In telling the whole story, It Ain’t Over gives Berra his due in following the life of a savvy, commanding, bad ball-hitting catcher with a squat frame but also a D-Day veteran, loving husband and father and, yes, product endorser and originator (mostly) of his own brand of proverbs now ingrained into everyday life. Granddaughter Lindsay Berra tells his story along with his sons, former Yankee teammates, players he managed, writers, broadcasters, and admirers (such as Billy Crystal), plus photos and footage on and off the diamond. Berra famously said, “I’d be pretty dumb if I started being something I’m not,” and It Ain’t Over lovingly makes clear he stayed who he was for the benefit of baseball and everyone else.

We open the film on Thursday, May 11 at the Royal and Friday, May 19 at the Town Center, Newhall, Glendale and Claremont.

On Thursday, May 11 and Sunday, May 14, we’re running a two-for-one promotion: buy one ticket for any screening of It Ain’t Over at the Royal on either day and get a second one for free. The only restriction is you have to buy your tickets at the Royal box office, not online.

“Yogi Berra lived the kind of life we wish our heroes to have: filled with love, respect, and integrity. This is a film fans can embrace and younger generations can learn from. I loved it.” ~ Leonard Maltin, leonardmaltin.com

“More emotional than you’d expect from a doc about a hard-hitting catcher.” ~ Dan Fienberg, Hollywood Reporter

THE TAKING Q&As in Santa Monica & Glendale May 10 & 11.

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The Taking filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe will participate in Q&As following the May 10 screening at the Monica Film Center and the May 11 screening at the Laemmle Glendale. Historian Will Linn will join him for the May 10 screening. John Bucher will moderate.

Bios: Alexandre holds a Masters Degree in Dramatic Writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He has written and directed numerous award-winning films and documentaries, many of which take on the role of unpacking the most influential works of master filmmakers. Most recently, Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on the Exorcist (Venice ’19, Sundance ‘20) and MEMORY: The Origins of Alien (Sundance ’19), 78/52 (Sundance ’17).

John Bucher is a mythologist, storyteller, and writer based out of Hollywood, California. He serves as Executive Director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and is an author, podcaster, and speaker. He has worked with government and cultural leaders around the world as well as organizations such as HBO, DC Comics, The History Channel, A24 Films, Atlas Obscura, and The John Maxwell Leadership Foundation. He has served as a producer, consultant, and writer for numerous film, television, and Virtual Reality projects. He is the author of six books including the best-selling Storytelling for Virtual Reality, named by BookAuthority as one of the best storytelling books of all time. He holds a PhD in Mythology and Depth Psychology and has spoken on 6 continents about using the power of story and myth to reframe how individuals, organizations, cultures, and nations believe and behave.

Will Linn is a co-host of Myths: The Greatest Mysteries of Humanity, which airs on ZDF, Sky and History Channel. He is the founder of mythouse.org, an online community and resource center for mythologists and storytellers, and the founding chair of general education at Hussian College, where he teaches myth and story to filmmakers and performing artists. Will served in various leadership positions for the Joseph Campbell Foundation between 2011-2021, and he holds a PhD in mythological studies.

 

“We made this movie for ‘the kids’…with style and color, wit and heart, music and dance.” Parker Posey on PARTY GIRL, opening Friday.

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We’re pleased to open the restoration of Party Girl, the 1995 classic directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer, this Friday at our Glendale theater. The film launched the career of star Parker Posey, in the now-iconic role of Mary, the titular Soho party girl-turned-librarian, and marked an important turning point in the world of NYC indies. The director will participate in a Q&A after the 7:30 pm screening on Saturday, April 29. Filmmaker Miguel Arteta will moderate.

“We made this movie for ‘the kids’ – as we called them – young people from small towns, who had big dreams, and who weren’t, for whatever reason, conforming to the status quo,” says Parker. “Our intention was to nurture them — with style and color, wit and heart, music and dance. I’m happy the film’s out with a re-release, to inspire again – the unconventional path many of us live today. A special shout-out to the librarians, who also enjoy being silly on a dance floor — and while I’m at it, to the art of DJ’ing and other arts that keep us moving and free.”

Party Girl follows Mary (Posey), a NYC nightclub scenester and social butterfly who rules the underground party scene. By day, however, she lacks purpose and enough funds to make rent. When her aunt gets her a job at the local library, Mary initially waffles under the constraints of the system, but then unexpectedly flourishes as a librarian (and does a lot of growing up along the way). The film features a laundry list of notable actors, including Liev Schreiber, Guillermo Diaz (Scandal), and John Ventimiglia (The Sopranos), and is brilliantly shot on location in pre-gentrification Lower Manhattan.

IMAGINING THE INDIAN filmmakers Aviva Kempner and Ben West in person for Q&As at the Royal and Monica Film Center.

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Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting is an award-winning documentary that examines the movement that is ending the use of Native American names, logos, and mascots in the world of sports and beyond. The film details the current uprising against the misappropriation of Native culture in a national reckoning about racial injustice that has succeeded in the removal of Confederate imagery, toppling statues of Christopher Columbus and forcing corporate sponsors of Washington’s NFL team to demand it change its most-offensive name. Imagining the Indian co-director/producer Ben West and W. Richard West Jr., founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian, will participate in a Q&A moderated by film critic Stephen Farber following the April 10 Reel Talk screening at the Royal. Subject Amy West will participate in a Q&A at the Monica Film Center following the 7:20 PM screening at the Monica Film Center on Friday, April 14. Co-directors Aviva Kempner (The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg) and Ben West will participate in Q&As following the Saturday, April 15, 7:20 PM screening and the Sunday, April 16, 1:30 PM screening. Ms. West (Cheyenne) is a Professor of Psychology at USC, specializing in Native Youth Psychology.

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING 35th anniversary screening with guest Lena Olin April 12.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present our first movie of 2023: a 35th anniversary screening of Philip Kaufman’s erotic masterpiece, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, adapted from the acclaimed novel by Czech author Milan Kundera. Kaufman wrote the screenplay with veteran French writer Jean-Claude Carriere (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Tin Drum, The Return of Martin Guerre), and they earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay of 1988. The film earned a second Oscar nod for the stunning cinematography by Sven Nykvist. The screening is Wednesday, April 12, at 7 PM at our Royal Theatre in West L.A. Film critic Stephen Farber will attend to moderate a Q&A with co-star Lena Olin, who will join via Zoom.

Set in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring of 1968 and the brutal Soviet invasion that followed, the film follows the romantic and political adventures of a lusty surgeon named Tomas. Three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis had his first starring role in the picture, after earning attention for his strong supporting performances in A Room With a View and My Beautiful Laundrette two years earlier. One year after Unbearable, Day-Lewis earned his first Oscar for his performance in My Left Foot. The two important women in Tomas’s life are portrayed by Lena Olin as an artist and Juliette Binoche as an aspiring photographer. Eventually Tomas marries Binoche’s Tereza, but she remains troubled by his constant philandering.

Olin had first made her mark in several plays and films directed by Ingmar Bergman, and after Unbearable, she appeared in many important films all over the world. Binoche was a newer face in 1988, but she too went on to become a major international star. A decade later she won an Oscar in another acclaimed adaptation, The English Patient. The international supporting cast of Unbearable includes Derek de Lint, Erland Josephson, Stellan Skarsgård, and Donald Moffat. Award-winning editor Walter Murch cut the film and Saul Zaentz and Paul Zaentz produced.

The story begins as an erotic comedy but takes a darker turn during the Russian invasion. Kaufman took a unique approach in dramatizing this traumatic event, blending newsreel footage of the invasion with staged scenes that were actually filmed in Paris (since Czechoslovakia remained under Soviet rule when filming commenced in 1986). When Tomas refuses to denounce his own anti-Russian writing from before the invasion, he loses his job, and he and Tereza must struggle to survive.

Critical response to the film was overwhelmingly positive. Variety called Unbearable “a richly satisfying adaptation.” The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley agreed that Kaufman’s film was an “eloquent adaptation of Milan Kundera’s erotic novel” and added that the film “stirs the heart, the hormones and the head.” Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert declared, “What is remarkable… is not the sexual content itself, but the way Kaufman has been able to use it as an avenue for a complex story, one of nostalgia, loss, idealism and romance.”

Lena Olin will participate in a Q&A before the screening on April 12. To recall some of Olin’s many other credits, she earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in Paul Mazursky’s Enemies: A Love Story and also co-starred in such films as Romeo is Bleeding, Havana, Night Falls on Manhattan, the Oscar-winning The Reader, and Chocolat and Casanova, both directed by her husband, Lasse Hallstrom. During our conversation Olin will also discuss her newest film with Hallstrom, the biographical drama Hilma, opening at the Royal and Town Center on April 14.

New York Times on WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS? ~ “How Cold War Politics Destroyed One of the Most Popular Bands in America.”

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The Times just published a fascinating feature by rock critic Alan Light about the documentary we’re opening today at the Monica Film Center, with one-night screenings next week at the Laemmle NoHo, Claremont, Town Center and Glendale. (The filmmaker and a member of the band will participate in several Q&As; full schedule here.) The sub head: “A new documentary chronicles the strange, intrigue-filled saga of Blood, Sweat & Tears and its disastrous Eastern Bloc tour in 1970.”

The full piece is worth reading but it begins: “Last year, Rolling Stone compiled a list of “The 50 Worst Decisions in Music History.” Near the top, alongside very high-profile errors in judgment like Decca Records’ rejection of the Beatles, there was a much less familiar episode: the time Blood, Sweat & Tears embarked on an Eastern European concert tour, underwritten by the State Department while the Vietnam War was raging. The reputation of the U.S. government was in tatters for young people, meaning the band looked, as the magazine put it, like “propaganda pawns — which is, more or less, what they were.”

“Now the band members are telling their side of this bizarre story in the new documentary What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? While everyone involved agrees with Rolling Stone’s conclusion — that the band’s career never recovered from that 1970 tour — the saga turns out to be more complicated than was previously known.

““This isn’t a music doc, it’s a political thriller,” the director John Scheinfeld said in a telephone interview. “It’s about a group of guys who unknowingly walked into this rat’s nest, and how political forces impacted a group of individuals.””

Read the full piece here.

Upcoming Reel Talk with Stephen Farber screenings: ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET; IT AIN’T OVER; BOOK CLUB: THE NEXT CHAPTER; YOU HURT MY FEELINGS..

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Veteran film critic Stephen Farber’s popular Reel Talk screening series is now based at our Royal Theatre, where you can see a variety of outstanding films from the U.S. and around the world, including many top awards contenders, and then meet the filmmakers for provocative and revealing discussions led by Stephen. Recent guests and titles have included Paul Weitz and Andrew Miano, writer-director and producer of Moving On; John Scheinfeld and Bobby Colomby, director and lead band member from What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?; Sarah Haskins and Emily Halpern, screenwriters of 80 for Brady; and Jerzy Skolimowski and Ewa Piaskowska, director/co-writer and co-writer/producer of the Oscar-nominated film EO. Next up:

April 24: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; May 1: It Ain’t Over; May 3: Book Club: The Next Chapter; May 15: You Hurt My Feelings.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS? opens March 31.

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A fascinating documentary/political thriller with a classic rock band at the heart of the action, What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? involves the U.S. State Department, the Nixon White House, the governments of Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland and documentary footage that has been suppressed for over 50 years by one or all of the above. We open the film March 31 at the Monica Film Center with special one-night screenings and Q&As April 3 at the NoHo, April 4 at the Claremont and April 5 at the Glendale. The full Q&A schedule is here.

Director’s statement:

In early 2020, just prior to the worldwide explosion of COVID 19, Bobby Colomby, an acquaintance and  founding member of Blood, Sweat & Tears, called me for a friendly check in. As a fan of the band in its  heyday, I innocently asked him, “What the hell happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?” 

Bobby proceeded to tell me the story of the events surrounding the Iron Curtain Tour. He mentioned that a documentary film crew had accompanied the band to shoot material for what was intended to be a theatrical documentary. That film was never released and Bobby had no idea what became of it. 

  

I loved the mystery and intrigue behind this story, but would we be able to find that documentary footage or enough audio/visual material to tell the story effectively? I also love a good treasure hunt. So, as the  pandemic was shutting the country down, my team and I began a search. Soon enough, we found references to National General Television Productions as having been the company behind the  documentary and that their crew had shot 65 hours of footage during the Iron Curtain Tour. 

We cast a wide net around the world to locate this footage, contacting anyone and everyone who had a connection to National General or the film crew, as well as private archives, independent storage facilities and film labs. It was one dead end after another. It appeared that the footage and related elements had completely vanished.  

And then, finally, success. While searching for the raw footage, we stumbled upon a pristine print of a  53-minute version of the documentary that had been edited for television syndication. This was an  unexpected find as no such version was ever broadcast. A new high-definition transfer was made from this print and watching it provided a fascinating time capsule of our nation, the world, and this group of nine young men on an unprecedented adventure from 50 years earlier. I knew then we had the makings of  a fantastic documentary and, indeed, 40 minutes of the “lost” Blood, Sweat & Tears documentary is the  backbone of our film. 

Some additional heavy digging led us to the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where we ultimately uncovered five raw audio tapes that were recorded live during concerts on the Iron Curtain Tour. The band had a mobile 8-track machine on the tour and we later determined that their engineer had recorded a total of 18 tapes, but only these five were found. 

Our search into the private collections of band members and others who were on the Iron Curtain Tour yielded hundreds of never-before-seen photographs and memorabilia. I never gave up hope of finding the 65 hours of original footage. However, after two full years of chasing down every lead and digging  deep into vaults across the country as well as government storage facilities in Washington, D.C., Maryland  and Virginia, we came up empty. The mystery of what became of that material remains.

This film sheds light on history through a fascinating lens. It’s not a biography of the band, nor is it just for music lovers or fans of Blood, Sweat & Tears. It’s a compelling story that explores a unique moment in time and has surprisingly powerful resonance and parallels to what’s going on in the world today. ~ John Scheinfeld