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STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN 35th Anniversary Screening and Q&A with Director Nicholas Meyer on May 31 at the Ahrya Fine Arts

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35th Anniversary Screening of STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN
Followed by Q&A with Director Nicholas Meyer
Wednesday, May 31, at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre
Presented on DCP.

Click here for tickets.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 35th anniversary screening of STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, regarded by many buffs as the best feature film in the long running series. After the box office disappointment of the first Star Trek feature in 1979, Paramount Pictures and producer Harve Bennett decided to take a fresh approach to the follow-up film, cutting the budget drastically and bringing in talented newcomers to revitalize the popular franchise.

Nicholas Meyer, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter and novelist of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, had made his directorial debut with 1979’s Time After Time. He came to this new project, as he freely admitted, as a Star Trek novice, but he brought intelligence, ingenuity, and wit to the sequel.

Meyer and the screenwriters decided to bring back one of the memorable villains from the TV series, the intergalactic tyrant Khan, and hired Ricardo Montalban to reprise his role from that episode. Of course the regular cast members of the Starship Enterprise — William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, George Takei, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, and Walter Koenig — were also on board, along with newcomer Kirstie Alley.

Another newcomer to the enterprise was young composer James Horner, a future Oscar winner who had one of his first major credits on Star Trek II.

Critics endorsed the new approach. Variety called the film “a very satisfying space adventure, closer in spirit and format to the popular TV series than to its big-budget predecessor.” The commercial success of Star Trek II insured a long voyage for the Enterprise on the big screen and on television for decades to come.

Director Nicholas Meyer also worked on Star Trek IV, Star Trek VI, and the upcoming TV series Star Trek: Discovery. In addition to The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and Time After Time, his many other credits as writer and/or director include Volunteers, Company Business, Sommersby, the TV movie The Day After, and two Philip Roth adaptations, The Human Stain and Elegy.

55th Anniversary Screenings of DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE May 17th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and Anniversary Classics Abroad present a 55th anniversary screening of Pietro Germi’s Divorce Italian Style on Wednesday, May 17 at 7:00PM at the Royal, Town Center, and Playhouse 7. Click here for tickets.

The acclaimed satiric comedy and Oscar winner (Best Original Screenplay) stars Marcello Mastroianni as an impoverished, bored Sicilian aristocrat who hatches an elaborate scheme to murder his wife after inveigling her into an adulterous affair.

According to Italian custom, he would be justified in killing her, by defending his “honor,” (divorce being forbidden in Italy). Conveniently he would be then free to marry his young, beautiful cousin, who seems to return his affections, right up to the film’s final, wicked shot.

Director Germi, who co-wrote the slyly clever script with Ennio De Concini and Alfredo Gianetti, had a background in neorealist Italian dramas, and that would serve him well in his sendup of the Catholic country’s cultural habits and social mores.

Mastroianni’s voiceover narration offers wry commentary on those traditions, effectively skewered by Germi. Bosley Crowther in the New York Times called it “a dandy, satiric farce” and Time lauded Germi for “something wildly, wickedly, wonderfully funny. He has applied a cunning hotfoot to the world’s biggest boot.”

And director Martin Scorsese, who is of Sicilian ancestry, said, “Every detail in Divorce Italian Style is so truthful and right that all Germi had to do was to heighten everything a bit to make it funny.”

The film was a box office smash, breaking out of the art houses into general release, and garnered three Academy Award nominations: Best Director (Germi), Best Actor (Mastroianni) and Best Original Screenplay. It was the first time in Academy history that a foreign-language film was recognized in those top three categories, and the first-ever Oscar awarded to a foreign-language feature for writing. The film also helped elevate Mastroianni to international stardom, cementing his reputation as one of the era’s finest actors.

This screening is the latest installment of our Anniversary Classics Abroad series, presented the third Wednesday of each month. Our subsequent attraction will be Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night on June 21.

Two Courtroom Classics For the Price of One on May 2nd in NoHo, Pasadena, and Beverly Hills

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present two acclaimed courtroom dramas celebrating their 60th anniversaries as the second attraction in the popular Twofer Tuesdays program. 12 ANGRY MEN and WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, both 1957 Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, will be paired as a double bill (two movies, one admission price) on May 2nd at the Ahrya Fine Arts, NoHo 7, and Pasadena Playhouse 7. Presented on Blu-ray.

Click here to buy tickets to the 5:15PM show of 12 ANGRY MEN, admission to the 7:15pm WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION is included. Click here to get tickets to the 7:15PM show of  WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, admission to the 9:35pm 12 ANGRY MEN is included.

12 ANGRY MEN, about the deliberations of 12 jurors in a murder trial, was adapted by Reginald Rose from his 1954 teleplay, and directed by Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network) as his film debut. Henry Fonda, who also produced, heads a formidable cast of award-winning actors including Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, Jack Warden, E. G. Marshall, and Jack Klugman. Both Lumet and Rose were Oscar nominated for their work.

The film, as timely as ever, challenges an audience to confront ethnic and social prejudices in considering innocence or guilt based on reasonable doubt.

Roger Ebert called it “a masterpiece of stylized realism,” enhanced by the expert black-and-white photography of Boris Kaufman, making the most of its one set in the jury room. Ebert further opined, “In its ingenuity, in the way it balances one piece of evidence against another that seems contradictory, 12 Angry Men is as meticulous as an Agatha Christie thriller.” The movie was added to the National Film Registry in 2007.

WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, based on an Agatha Christie play, is a spellbinding courtroom thriller about a murder suspect (Tyrone Power) defended by a wily barrister (Charles Laughton) against the testimony of the suspect’s wife (Marlene Dietrich).

Billy Wilder, collaborating with writers Harry Kurnitz and Larry Marcus, strengthened the characterizations and added a surprise twist at the end, heightening the suspense throughout.

Laughton received one of the film’s six Oscar nominations as Best Actor for his delightfully animated portrayal. Elsa Lanchester as the barrister’s no-nonsense nurse afforded comic relief and copped a supporting actress nod. Wilder nabbed the sixth of his eight career directing nominations.

The film was a critical and commercial hit, with Bosley Crowther of The New York Times applauding “Wilder’s splendid staging of some splintering courtroom scenes and a first-rate theatrical performance by Charles Laughton.”

Audiences at the time were aghast and delighted by the film’s wicked surprise ending, which they were urged to keep secret. Even the film’s cast did not know the ending until the last day of shooting. Both films were later cited in the all-time top ten of the AFI’s Courtroom Dramas category.

The Twofer Tuesdays double feature of 12 ANGRY MEN (shows at 5:15 pm and 9:35 pm) and WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (shows at 7:15 pm) plays May 2 at three Laemmle locations: Ahrya Fine Arts, NoHo 7, and Pasadena Playhouse 7.

Our New Twofer Tuesday Series Begins April 4th with a Double Dose of Bette Davis

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present Twofer Tuesdays, a classic movie double bill that will screen on the first Tuesday of each month as a recurring event at three Laemmle locations.

Our first attraction celebrates Hollywood legend Bette Davis in one of her most beloved roles, NOW, VOYAGER (1942), on its 75 th anniversary. As a bonus feature, we are pairing it with MARKED WOMAN (1937; 80th anniversary) starring Davis and Humphrey Bogart. Both movies will show as a double feature (two movies, one admission price) at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills, NoHo 7 in North Hollywood, and Playhouse 7 in Pasadena.

Click here to buy tickets to the 5PM show of MARKED WOMAN, admission to the 7:15pm NOW, VOYAGER is included. Click here to get tickets to the 7:15PM show of  NOW, VOYAGER, admission to the 9:45pm MARKED WOMAN is included.

NOW, VOYAGER is considered a consummate “woman’s film,” a genre that was Davis’ forte in her heyday in Hollywood’s Golden Age of the 1930s and 40s, an era that she ruled as a top box office star.

The plush melodrama, based on a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty (author of “Stella Dallas,” another classic tale of a self-sacrificing, independent woman), was adapted by Casey Robinson (Dark Victory) and directed by Irving Rapper (Deception).

The film was nominated for 3 Academy Awards, including Davis as Best Actress as a repressed spinster who emerges from her shell in one of the screen’s most dramatic makeovers.

Co-starring Paul Henreid as her suave romantic partner, Oscar nominee Gladys Cooper (Supporting Actress) as her domineering mother and Claude Rains (one of Davis’ favorite actors), as a paternal psychiatrist; the film was a huge commercial hit, the biggest box office success for Davis in that period.

In “The Essentials: 52 Must-See Movies and Why They Matter,” author Jeremy Arnold calls it “a movie that has stood the test of time for its high entertainment value, romanticism, and subversive theme of female empowerment.”

Featuring a lushly romantic Oscar-winning score by Max Steiner, and with one of the most memorable closing lines in movie history, Now, Voyager was added to the National Film Registry in 2007.

Our bonus feature, MARKED WOMAN stars Davis as a nightclub “hostess” who becomes the target of a vengeful mobster (Eduardo Ciannelli), who in turn is prosecuted by a crusading district attorney (Humphrey Bogart). Co-written by Robert Rossen (All the King’s Men, The Hustler) and Abem Finkel (Jezebel, Sergeant York), and directed by Lloyd Bacon (42 nd Street), the movie is notable for its “torn from the headlines” realism that characterized Warner Bros. style in the 1930s.

Because of the censorious Production Code, the brothel employing Davis’ character was disguised as a clip joint. Davis’ assured performance and the film’s success contributed to her rise as queen of the Warner’s lot, a position she held for the next decade.

The Twofer Tuesdays double feature of NOW, VOYAGER and MARKED WOMAN plays April 4 at three locations: Ahrya Fine Arts, NoHo 7, and Pasadena Playhouse 7. Special Introduction by film historian Jeremy Arnold at the Ahrya Fine Arts only.

NOW, VOYAGER plays at 7:15 pm; MARKED WOMAN at 5:00 pm and 9:45 pm.

45th Anniversary Screening of Billy Wilder’s AVANTI! March 29th at the Royal with Co-Stars Juliet Mills and Clive Revill In-person

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avanti-posterLaemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 45th anniversary screening of AVANTI! (1972) followed by a Q&A with co-stars Juliet Mills and Clive Revill on Wednesday, March 29, at 7 PM at the Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles. Click here for tickets.

Six-time Oscar winner Billy Wilder made one of his most underrated movies, Avanti!, in 1972. The film’s stature has risen dramatically in recent years. In his 1999 book, Conversations with Wilder, Oscar-winning writer-director Cameron Crowe declared, “The prize of Wilder’s later-period work, Avanti! is a melancholy classic.”

To make the film, Wilder reteamed with his favorite actor, Jack Lemmon (the star of Some Like It Hot and The Apartment), and Crowe declared, “The picture was a new peak in the collaboration of Wilder and the actor most tuned to his nuances.”

Lemmon plays a crass businessman who travels to Italy to claim the body of his father, who was killed in an automobile accident while on vacation. There he learns that his father was carrying on a long extra-marital affair with an Englishwoman, who died with him in the accident. He meets the woman’s daughter, played by Juliet Mills, and it seems that history may repeat itself as Lemmon and Mills fall in love. As Crowe wrote, Mills “is a wonderful foil for Lemmon.”

The uproarious and poignant film represents a sly reworking of one of Wilder’s favorite themes, the encounter of an innocent American and more worldly Europeans. It was a subject that Wilder first explored in his Oscar-nominated screenplay for Hold Back the Dawn in 1941, and he revisited this terrain in such other films as A Foreign Affair, Sabrina, Love in the Afternoon, and One Two Three. Avanti! was filmed on glorious Italian locations that gave added richness to the director’s exploration of the innocent abroad.

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Clive Revill and Edward Andrews co-star in the film, which was written by Wilder and his long-time collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond. Luigi Kuveiller was the cinematographer, and the production designer was Ferdinando Scarfiotti, the Oscar-winning designer of The Last Emperor, The Conformist, and Death in Venice. Leonard Maltin called Avanti! a “sadly underrated comedy… lovely scenery, wonderful performances by all.” The film was nominated for six Golden Globes.

avanti-image-2Juliet Mills is a member of one of the most distinguished British acting families. Her father, John Mills, was an Oscar winner as well as a lion of the theater. Her younger sister, Hayley Mills, the star of Disney classics Pollyanna and The Parent Trap, has also enjoyed a long career. Juliet has distinguished herself on stage, on screen, and on television. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in Avanti! and for her role on the hit television series, Nanny and the Professor. She won an Emmy for her performance in the miniseries, QB VII, and she was nominated for a Tony for her performance in Peter Shaffer’s first Broadway play, Five Finger Exercise.

Clive Revill was nominated for a Golden Globe for his delightful performance as the beleaguered hotel manager in Avanti! He has also had a stellar career in film, theater, and television. He earned a Tony nomination for his performance as Fagin in the original Broadway production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver. He co-starred in another Billy Wilder movie, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and also appeared in Modesty Blaise, The Assassination Bureau, and The Legend of Hell House. His television roles include the miniseries Centennial and such series as Columbo and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.

Q&A with Scott Wilson Following Our 50th Anniversary Screening of IN COLD BLOOD on March 22th in West LA.

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scott-wilson-enewsLaemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of IN COLD BLOOD (1967), followed by a Q&A with actor Scott Wilson on March 22 at 7:00 PM at the Royal Theater in West Los Angeles. Click here for tickets.

In Cold Blood, the film version of Truman Capote’s immensely popular “nonfiction novel,” was nominated for four top Oscars in 1967. Richard Brooks received two nominations, for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and the film was also nominated for Conrad Hall’s striking cinematography and Quincy Jones’ memorable score.

In his best-selling book, Capote chronicled the events leading up to and following the senseless murders of a family of four in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. He drew a pointed contrast between the prosperous, all-American Clutter family and the two social outsiders, Perry Smith and Richard Hickok, who committed the murders.

In adapting the book, Brooks (the Oscar-winning writer-director of such films as The Blackboard Jungle, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Elmer Gantry, and Sweet Bird of Youth) resolved to be as faithful as possible to Capote’s chronicle, even filming in many of the actual locations where the events took place. With Capote’s encouragement, Brooks cast unknown actors as the two killers, and the performances of Robert Blake as Smith and Scott Wilson as Hickok earned critical raves. More established actors John Forsythe, Paul Stewart, and Will Geer filled out the supporting cast. Brooks also bucked the industry practice and decided to shoot the film in black-and-white at a time when color cinematography had become virtually mandatory for big-studio films.

Reviews at the time were largely positive. The Saturday Review’s Arthur Knight declared the film to be “one of the finest pictures of the year, and possibly of the decade.” Its reputation has not diminished. In an article in The Wall Street Journal in January of 2017, critic Peter Cowie called the film “a classic of American cinema” and added, “In Cold Blood retains its relevance today, even as random shootings continue to appall.”

Scott Wilson made his film debut earlier in 1967, in the Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night. In Cold Blood was only his second movie. He went on to co-star in John Frankenheimer’s The Gypsy Moths, the Robert Redford version of The Great Gatsby, Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff, The New Centurions, The Ninth Configuration, and more recent appearances in Dead Man Walking, The Last Samurai, Monster, and Junebug. He also is known for his roles in the popular TV series CSI and The Walking Dead.

For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, including an upcoming screening of AVANTI, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.

ROBOCOP Star Nancy Allen in Person for a Q&A at the NoHo 7.

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ROBOCOPROBOCOP star Nancy Allen (Officer Anne Lewis), will introduce and participate in a Q&A after the March 23 screening at the NoHo 7.

ROBOCOP is part of our weekly Throwback Thursday series in partnership with Eat|See|Hear. Upcoming screenings include BLADE RUNNER, THE BAD NEWS BEARS and more! For more details, visit: https://www.laemmle.com/tbt.

Announcing Our New Monthly Repertory Series ANNIVERSARY CLASSICS ABROAD

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We are having so much fun with our American repertory film series Anniversary Classics, which we began with film critic Stephen Farber two years ago, that we are pleased to announce a companion series: Anniversary Classics Abroad. We will be screening great foreign films on the third Wednesday of every month at three venues simultaneously: the Royal in West L.A., the Town Center in Encino, and the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. We are launching the Abroad program with 30th anniversary screenings of Bille August’s award-winning Danish film, Pelle the Conqueror (1987) at 7 PM on March 15. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 1988 and also won the Palme d’Or in Cannes that same year. Master Swedish actor Max von Sydow received his first Oscar nomination for his performance in the film.

PELLEThe beautifully crafted film is adapted from a popular Danish novel by Martin Andersen Nexo, published in 1908. It tells the story of a widower and his young son who journey from Sweden to Denmark in the 1850s in search of work. There they encounter prejudice and harsh working conditions; the story clearly takes on renewed urgency in light of rising anti-immigrant bias in Europe as well as the United States. August cast newcomer Pelle Hvenegaard in the title role.

In Newsweek, David Ansen wrote, “We are engrossed by the serene confidence of the storytelling, by August’s painterly eye, by von Sydow’s and Hvenegaard’s touching performances.” TIME Magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “Bille August’s gifts for austere, striking imagery and for the short, perfectly shaped scene impart to this film an epic richness, range and energy.” The film helped to catapult August to the front ranks of international directors. He went on to make several films in the U.S. as well as Europe, and Ingmar Bergman chose August to direct his autobiographical screenplay, The Best Intentions.

Y“The von Sydow performance is in a category by itself. It is another highlight in an already extraordinary career, and quite unlike anything that American audiences have seen him do to date.” – Vincent Canby, New York Times

“In Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror, Max von Sydow is so astoundingly evocative that he makes your bones ache.” – Hal Hinson, Washington Post

The subsequent films in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series are:

DISWednesday, April 19: Yojimbo (1962). Akira Kurosawa’s energetic, tongue-in-cheek samurai Western had an enormous influence on filmmakers all over the world. Toshiro Mifune stars as the amoral swordsman who strides into town and manipulates the opposing factions in a turf war.

Wednesday, May 17: Divorce Italian Style (1962). This Oscar-winning film from director Pietro Germi is a ferocious black comic dissection of Sicilian mores. The picture helped to cement Marcello Mastroianni’s position as a rising international superstar.

SOASN2Wednesday, June 21: Smiles of a Summer Night (1957). To coincide with the summer solstice, we present Ingmar Bergman’s elegant romantic comedy set on a Swedish estate on the longest night of the year. Eva Dahlbeck, Harriet Andersson, and Gunnar Bjornstrand star in the film that Pauline Kael called an “exquisite carnal comedy.” The film later inspired Stephen Sondheim’s musical, A Little Night Music.

Again, we will show all Anniversary Classics Abroad films on the third Wednesday of each month at three venues, the Royal, Playhouse, and Town Center, at 7 PM. Come experience these classics of world cinema as they were intended to be experienced, on a big screen in a dark auditorium full of fellow cinephiles.