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Ahrya Fine Arts

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: KIRK MANN: GAIA’S BLESSING at the Royal

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Check out ART IN THE ARTHOUSE‘s latest exhibit at the Royal, KIRK MANN: GAIA’S BLESSING. These exquisite photographs are for sale and on display till September, 2018. Stop by our gallery at the theatre, no need to buy a movie ticket to view our art.

About the exhibit
With awe and a reverence for nature, photographer KIRK MANN presents a unique artistic convergence. He envisions beauty, balance, birth, growth, decay, and dissolution as Gaia’s Blessing – where living organisms interact with their natural surroundings to form life-sustaining synergies. At age 19, Mann began to empathize with living beings in a whole new way. His insight enabled him to recognize the kinship of all life: mineral, plant, and animal. With camera in hand, he sought beauty in the early morning light. Determined to capture nature’s essence, his photography became his meditation on creation. Drawn to the spirituality and philosophy of the East, Mann has practiced acupuncture and Chinese medicine for over 20 years.

Additionally, he is a student of yoga, Asian Art, and has studied Chinese Art, and has studied Chinese calligraphy, brush painting, and Sumi-e with Tomi Ito Levin. Mann is also a singer and songwriter who has written and produced five albums, often integrating his photography and videography with his music. Based in Ventura, CA, the artist has exhibited in Ventura, Carpinteria, and Ojai. It’s not uncommon to feel an instant connection, as I did, with the photography of Kirk Mann. His intimate view of nature reminds us of our first explorations of the outdoors, when we appraised the world with fresh eyes and childhood wonder. Gaia’s Blessing invites us to take that journey once again.
-Tish Laemmle, CURATOR

Laemmle Royal
11523 Santa Monica Blvd.
West L.A., CA

 

 

BULL DURHAM 30th Anniversary Screening in 35mm with Actor Robert Wuhl In Person on Tuesday, July 10th at the Ahrya Fine Arts

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 30th anniversary screening of Bull Durham (1988), widely considered the best sports movie ever made.

Writer-director Ron Shelton made his directorial debut with this semi-autobiographical baseball tale and romantic comedy, and he garnered an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay. His screenplay was also judged the year’s best by the New York Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics, and the Writers Guild.

At the time the film’s romantic triangle featured three future Oscar winners: Kevin Costner (Best Director, Dances With Wolves), Susan Sarandon (Best Actress, Dead Man Walking), and Tim Robbins (Best Supporting Actor, Mystic River).

Costner stars as a veteran catcher who is sent to a minor league team in Durham, North Carolina to mentor a rookie pitcher played by Robbins. They both encounter a “baseball groupie” and earth mother (Sarandon), who chooses the best player each year as her romantic partner, also acting as an unconventional muse for the team. This arrangement leads to a romantic rivalry when Sarandon selects Robbins as her lover and both she and Costner attempt to season the immature pitcher for the major leagues.

Writer-director Shelton (White Men Can’t Jump, Tin Cup) drew on his own experience as a baseball player in the minor leagues, and that authenticity impressed both the critics and sports fans. In 2003 Sports Illustrated ranked it the greatest sports movie of all time.

Among the critical acclaim, Vincent Canby in the New York Times wrote of tyro director Shelton, “This is one first-rate debut.” Newsweek’s David Ansen said the film “works equally as a love story, a baseball fable and a comedy while ignoring the clichés of each genre.”

Hal Hinson in the Washington Post found the film “limber, funny and in touch with the pleasures of the flesh as it is with the pleasures of the game.” The film co-stars Trey Wilson and, as the pitching coach, Robert Wuhl, our special guest for this screening.

Robert Wuhl is an actor, comedian and writer who was also featured in two other films by Ron Shelton, Blaze and Cobb. In addition he was the creator and star of the TV series Arli$$, and won two Emmys for writing Oscar shows hosted by Billy Crystal.

The 30th anniversary of Bull Durham will be presented in a special 35mm screening on Tuesday, July 10 at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Co-star Robert Wuhl will participate in a Q&A after the screening. Click here for tickets.

CALLING ALL EARTHLING Q&A’s and Sound Baths!

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All Friday-Sunday, June 29-July 1 CALLING ALL EARTHLING screenings at the Fine Arts and the Sunday, July 1 screenings at the Playhouse will be feature live sound baths. There will be filmmaker Q&A’s after the Friday and Saturday screenings at the Fine Arts and each screening at the Playhouse, NoHo, and Monica Film Center.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7ya_2R-eEI
Date Location Soundbath? Q and A?
Friday June 29th @ 5PM
Ahrya Fine Arts
 Helaine Anderson and Sacral Sounds no
Saturday June 30th @ 7:30PM
Ahrya Fine Arts
 Kassia Meador and Farmer Dave Q and A
Sunday July 1 @ 9:55PM
Ahrya Fine Arts
 Helane Anderson from Sacral Sounds
Sunday July 1, 11am Pasadena Playhouse yes sound bath, TBD Q and A
Sunday July 1, 7:30PM Pasadena Playhouse yes sound bath, TBD Q and A
Monday July 2, 7:30PM
Noho 7
 no sound bath Q and A
Tuesday July 3, 7:30PM Monica Film Center  Santa Monica no sound bath Q and A

50th Anniversary Screening of OLIVER! with Actress Shani Wallis In Person on July 15 in Beverly Hills

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 1968, OLIVER!, the much-loved film version of Lionel Bart’s hit stage musical.

The movie was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won six, also including Best Director Carol Reed and a special award for choreographer Onna White. Reed, the acclaimed British director of such classic films as The Third Man and The Fallen Idol, had been working since the 1930s and finally received the Academy’s top honor for this late work.

Charles Dickens’ iconic 19th century novel, Oliver Twist, the heart-rending tale of an orphan who falls in with a band of thieves in London, has been filmed many times over the years; the first version was done in the silent era, and David Lean directed a brilliant rendition in 1948, with Alec Guinness as Fagin.

In 1960 Lionel Bart wrote the book, music, and lyrics for a musical theater version of the novel which scored an enormous success in London and later in New York. Ron Moody, who had played the part of Fagin in London, reprised his role for the film version, and the cast also included Shani Wallis as Nancy, Jack Wild as the Artful Dodger, Oliver Reed (the director’s nephew) as the villainous Bill Sikes, Oscar-winner Hugh Griffith as the Magistrate, and charming newcomer Mark Lester as Oliver.

The 1960s was a great decade for movie musicals, with three earlier films—West Side Story, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music—scoring Best Picture wins. OLIVER!, however, turned out to be the last musical film to win the Academy’s top award until Chicago took the prize 34 years later. Reed’s film earned outstanding reviews from most critics. Roger Ebert declared, “Sir Carol Reed’s Oliver! is a treasure of a movie.”

Pauline Kael also admired Reed’s achievement: “Oliver! has been made by people who know how; it’s a civilized motion picture, not only emotionally satisfying but so satisfyingly crafted that we can sit back and enjoy what is going on…there’s something restorative about a movie that is made for a mass audience and that respects that audience.”

Kael also had high praise for the performers. “As Nancy,” Kael wrote, “Shani Wallis is an unexpected pleasure—hearty (as Dickens described her), with a tough vitality that brings poignancy to the role.” Wallis got to perform some of Bart’s best songs, including the rousing “It’s A Fine Life” and the romantic ballad, “As Long As He Needs Me.” Wallis has had an extensive career performing in musical theater and in nightclubs, and she also has many credits in British and American television.

Our 50th anniversary screening OLIVER! (1968) plus Q&A with actress Shani Wallis is Sunday, July 15, at 3pm at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

LAEMMLE LIVE presents Musicians of Orchestra Santa Monica July 15

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This is a Free Event
RSVP on Eventbrite

We are SOLD OUT
Email [email protected]
For wait list information

Join us as LAEMMLE LIVE proudly presents musicians from Orchestra Santa Monica at the Monica Film Center July 15. Lisa Kohorn-clarinet, Larry Kohorn and Cindy Bandel-violins, Brooke Wharton-viola, Eran Marcus-cello perform Alexander Krein Jewish Sketches #1, op. 12 and Johannes Brahms Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115  for clarinet in A with String Quartet.

Founded in 2012, Orchestra Santa Monica (OSM) has already established itself as an important civic institution, providing Santa Monica and its surrounding communities with a first-class orchestra which presents accessibly-priced concerts. In addition to innovative programming and compelling interpretations of the classical and contemporary repertoires, outstanding local composers and soloists are featured in OSM’s programs and reflect the musical diversity of the cultures present in Los Angeles County. Beyond its regular full orchestra concert programming, OSM brings musical outreach to the community through performances by smaller music ensembles at venues like the Miles Playhouse and the Laemmle. Furthermore, educational outreach to young people is an especially important OSM priority. Each year the OSM Woodwind Quintet plays in local Title I schools where the children have little access to classical music. Tom O’Connor is Executive Director and Julia Tranner is Communications Coordinator.  www.OrchestraSantaMonica.org

Event Details
Sunday, July 15, 2018
11:00 am
Monica Film Center

This is a Free Event
RSVP on Eventbrite

55th Anniversary Screening of IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963) on Father’s Day in Beverly Hills

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Celebrate Father’s Day at the movies as Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 55th anniversary screening of an all-star comic romp, Stanley Kramer’s IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD.

After making several Oscar-winning and nominated dramas like Judgment at Nuremberg, Inherit the Wind, On the Beach, and The Defiant Ones, Kramer (the winner of the Motion Picture Academy’s prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award) decided to shift gears and make his first slapstick comedy.

The plot revolves around the frantic and desperate search for a cache of money hidden by an ex-convict. Although the film is basically lighthearted and riotous, Kramer does throw a few pointed barbs at all-American avarice. The director recruited a gigantic cast of comedians from television and theater as well as film; these performers span several decades of Hollywood history. The leading roles are played by Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Dick Shawn, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, Phil Silvers, Edie Adams, and Ethel Merman, with supporting and cameo roles essayed by everyone from Jimmy Durante, Buster Keaton, Jerry Lewis, and Terry-Thomas to Peter Falk, William Demarest, Barrie Chase, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, and the Three Stooges. Spencer Tracy, who had starred in Inherit the Wind and Judgment at Nuremberg for Kramer, relished the opportunity to bring off a change of pace as the detective with his own devious plans for the hidden cash.

William Rose, who later won an Oscar for writing Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, created the ingenious screenplay. The picture was nominated for six Academy Awards, including nods for cinematographer Ernest Laszlo (Ship of Fools) and composer Ernest Gold (Exodus). It won the Oscar for Sound Effects. Mad World was one of the top grossing films of 1963 and earned mainly positive reviews. Variety observed, “The comic competition is so keen that it is impossible to single out any one participant.” The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther concurred: “So many excellent actors and stunt men do so much in this film.”

Against Kramer’s wishes, the film was edited after its release. The Criterion Collection released a complete, restored version on Blu-ray in 2014, and this is the version that we will be screening.

Before the film, Kramer’s widow Karen and daughter Kat will participate in a Q&A along with actress Barrie Chase. Unfortunately, Chase will not be in attendance.

IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD screens at 4pm on Sunday, June 17th at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: DANIELA SCHWEITZER: THE JOYFUL DANCE TO WATER in Santa Monica

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ART IN THE ARTHOUSE invites you to view our newest exhibit in Santa Monica, DANIELA SCHWEITZER: THE JOYFUL DANCE TO WATER. All works are for sale and on display till August 29, 2018. Please visit our galleries on both floors at the Monica Film Center next time you come for a movie. Or just stop by; movie tickets are not required to view our art.

About the exhibit
DANIELA SCHWEITZER is an artist, a painter, deeply connected to movement, light and the color of water. She captures moments and manifestations of aquatic colors, oceanic gatherings, and the compositional arc of a young dancer’s arms. With a nod to the Bay Area figurative movement and artists David Park and Richard Diebenkorn, Schweitzer’s work exudes a fluid harmonious quality, a balance of color and pictorial composition.

Additionally, her work exhibits a keen understanding of atmosphere, controlling mood and expressing locational flavor through juxtaposition of vibrant color. Schweitzer’s paintings begin with a photograph to create emotional impact and story. Schweitzer reflects, “I select my scenes … because they possess a simple, beautiful, and usually colorful human gesture that is energetic, calm, or harmonic. The balance and contrast between light and shadows, values and temperatures, and my loose and contrasting brushstrokes and lines all come together during the painting process to create my own style or point of view.”

Much of her oeuvre is personal. The painting Dancer, for instance, is a deftly rendered work of admiration, an observant balletic posturing of the artist’s daughter.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Daniela is a highly respected pediatrician, currently residing in Los Angeles. She studied at the Atelier Clásico de Dibujo y Pintura, Buenos Aires, Academia Central Mendía and earned her medical degree at the Buenos Aires School of Medicine, University of Buenos Aires.

Above all, Daniela Schweitzer’s work celebrates a genuine joie de vivre.

– Joshua Elias, CURATOR

Monica Film Center
1332 2nd Street
Santa Monica, CA
310-478-3836

 

 

THE DEER HUNTER with Actor John Savage In Person on Tuesday, May 29 at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills

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On the day after Memorial Day, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present one of the greatest of all war films, Oscar’s Best Picture of 1978, THE DEER HUNTER.

Actor John Savage will participate in a Q&A at the 40th anniversary screening on Tuesday, May 29th at 7:15pm at the Ahrya Fine Arts theater in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

The film won four other Oscars, including Best Director for Michael Cimino and Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Walken. Robert De Niro earned a nomination for Best Actor, and Meryl Streep earned her very first nomination for her performance in the film. Deric Washburn wrote the screenplay from a story that he created with Cimino, Louis Garfinkle, and Quinn Redeker. Master cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond shot the film, and Peter Zinner was the editor.

This epic vision of working class America follows three steelworkers from Pennsylvania as they journey halfway across the world to fight in Vietnam. De Niro, Walken, and John Savage play the three best friends. The first hour of the film immerses us in the routines of their lives as they prepare for the wedding of Savage’s character.

In the second section the three friends find themselves in a North Vietnamese prison camp, where they endure horrific physical and psychological torture before making a heroic escape.

In the third section, they try to readjust to life back home but find this re-entry just as traumatic as their wartime experiences. George Dzundza and John Cazale (who played Fredo in the first two ‘Godfather’ films and who died before the release of THE DEER HUNTER) round out the cast.

Roger Ebert praised “one of the most emotionally shattering films ever made.” In Newsweek Jack Kroll wrote, “THE DEER HUNTER is a film of great courage and overwhelming emotional power, a fiercely loving embrace of life in a death-ridden time.” The Wall Street Journal’s Joy Gould Boyum declared, “It is one of the boldest and most brilliant American films in recent years.”

Frank Rich, then the critic for Time magazine, added, “De Niro, Walken, John Savage…and Meryl Streep are all top actors in an extraordinary film.” In addition to its Oscars, the film was named best picture of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle.

The film was also greeted by protests by some activists who felt that the movie falsified the complexities of the Vietnam War and demonized the North Vietnamese. But Cimino argued persuasively that the film was intended to belong to an antiwar tradition that went back to one of the very first Oscar-winning films, ‘All Quiet on the Western Front.’ The film was added to the National Film Registry in 1996, an honor reserved for films deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”

John Savage had his first important screen role in THE DEER HUNTER, and he went on to star in Milos Forman’s film of the classic counterculture musical, ‘Hair,’ in the film version of Joseph Wambaugh’s best-selling novel, ‘The Onion Field,’ Richard Donner’s ‘Inside Moves,’ Oliver Stone’s ‘Salvador,’ ‘The Godfather Part III,’ Spike Lee’s ‘Do the Right Thing’ and ‘Summer of Sam.’ He also distinguished himself in the theater, playing in the original production of David Mamet’s ‘American Buffalo,’ among other roles. In addition to many TV appearances, he has worked as a producer and composer as well as an actor.

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