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Rejuvenate your spirit with Spring 2022 Culture Vulture films.

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We began our weekly Culture Vulture series in 2014 to showcase the best films from and about the world of dance, opera, plays, musicals, fine art and more. We screen them every Monday at 7:30 PM at the Playhouse 7, Royal, Newhall, Claremont 5, and Glendale. Can’t make it on Mondays? No problem! Catch discounted encore presentations Tuesdays at 1 PM. Our schedule through May:

April 11-12: The beautifully crafted Easter in Art explores the Easter story as depicted in art, from the time of the early Christians to the present day. Shot on location in Jerusalem, United States and throughout Europe, the film explores the different ways artists have depicted the Easter story through the ages and thus depicts the history of us all.

April 18-19: Raphael: The Young Prodigy tells the story of the Italian Renaissance artist, starting from his extraordinary portraits of women – the Mother, the Friend, the Secret Lover and the Client. From portraits of his mother, who died when the painter was only eight, to the female admirers who helped him on his road to success, Raphael was able to portray an ideal of celestial beauty and focus his gaze more on the psychology of his subjects than on their physical forms, so that their personalities emerge in a striking manner.

April 25-26: In Black Flowers, five Holocaust survivors choose art as a vehicle for healing the wounds of their past. An undeniable bond is visible between the horrors they experienced and the artistic expression they find. The necessity of optimism is eminent in the personalities of these survivors. Screening with Commandment 613, in which Rabbi Kevin Hale joyfully practices the sacred craft of Torah restoration, bringing new life to scrolls saved in Czechoslovakia during the Shoah. Black Flowers filmmaker Tammy Federman will participate in Q&As following the April 25th screening at the Royal and the matinee screening at the Playhouse on the 26th.

May 2-3: Gallant Indies features 30 dancers of hip-hop, krump, break-dancing, and voguing. It’s a first for the Director Clément Cogitore, the choreographer Bintou Dembélé, and the Paris’ Opera Bastille. By bringing together urban dance and opera singing, they reinvent Jean-Philippe Rameau’s baroque masterpiece, Les Indes Galantes. From rehearsals to public performances, it is a human adventure and a meeting of political realities that we follow: can a new generation of artists storm the Bastille today?

May 9-10: 42nd Street – The Musical ~ One of Broadway’s classics, this production of 42nd Street is the largest-ever production of the breathtaking musical. Set in 1933, it tells the story of Peggy Sawyer, a talented young performer with stars in her eyes who gets her big break on Broadway. Filmed in 2018 at London’s Theatre Royal and directed by the original author of the show, Mark Bramble, this eye-watering extravaganza is full of crowd-pleasing tap dances, popular musical theatre standards (“Lullaby of Broadway,” “We’re in the Money,” “42nd Street” and more), and dazzling ensemble production numbers.

May 16-17: To mark the centenary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, Tutankhamun: The Last Exhibition offers audiences an extraordinary opportunity to meet the Pharaoh, with exclusive coverage of how 150 of his treasures were moved to become part of the biggest international exhibition ever dedicated to him. Explore a continuous dialogue of cross-references between the ancient past when the Pharaoh was alive, the more recent times which saw the discovery of his tomb by archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922, and the present day with exhibitions and studies dedicated to Ancient Egypt.

May 23-24: Alain Resnais: Five Short Films ~ Five newly restored early short film masterpieces from the legendary filmmaker. Resnais would go on to make his mark in feature films, including the Oscar-nominated Hiroshima Mon Amour, but these early-career shorts demonstrate an already keenly developed eye. The films are a remarkable compendium of the stylistic elements found in his features, and represent an important contribution to the distinguished French documentary tradition.

Laemmle Oscar Contest, plus Kevin Costner’s Best Director Oscar Presentation.

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Welp, that’s a wrap for the 2022 Oscars and our contest. Laemmle moviegoers were able to foresee the Academy’s choices very accurately with two exceptions: they went for the more conventional Best Picture nominee with CODA over The Power of the Dog and the artier choice with Best Animated Short nominee Windshield Wiper over the family-friendly Robin Robin. The Power of the Dog was in a tight race for Best Adapted Screenplay with eventual winner CODA. Best Original Screenplay split somewhat evenly between Paul Thomas Anderson for Licorice Pizza and eventual winner Kenneth Branagh for Belfast.

See the full results in cool pie charts at laemmle.com/oscars. We’ll announce our winners on this page on Thursday, March 31.

The sad, shocking incident during the ceremony overshadowed everything but one thing worth taking a second look at is Kevin Costner‘s presentation of the Best Director Oscar. It was probably the best presentation of the evening. He has won the award himself, of course, 30 years ago for Dances with Wolves. He spoke movingly and deliberately about the experience of seeing movies in theaters and how seeing How the West was Won at the Cinerama Dome inspired him to become an actor and filmmaker. The in-person audience giggles at first, but by the end you could hear a pin drop. Here’s a transcription and video:

You know, about a half-mile from here, I saw my first full-length adult movie. I know what you’re thinking, but I was seven years old and I was away from my parents and wanted to have some fun. It was a cowboy movie called How the West Was Won. And what I witnessed that afternoon in the Cinerama Dome was perfect. The curtain, when we still had them, opened to a film almost four hours long. It had an intermission where the score continued, subtly signaling at one point that the second half was about to start. I don’t know where everyone went, but I wasn’t going to move an inch. I decided that I would not give up my magic seat. I was determined that I would not miss a minute. And as I sat in that dark that afternoon 60 years ago, all I really knew was that I was in careful hands. Little did I know that three directors would be responsible for that epic moment in my life. They fired my imagination, and they captured my heart. That’s what can happen when you direct a movie. You can change a mind. You can change the trajectory of a life, of a career. You can capture a heart. But you can’t do it alone. And directors, tonight’s directors all know the possibilities. They know what’s at stake. It’s why they give their precious time. It’s why they choose to fight through the long days, and the longer nights, and the endless questions, and the inevitable second guessing that comes from those who would do it differently if given half a chance. These five directors have all managed to stay the course. They have all held the line and masterfully given us the gift of a single vision, and for that we honor them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y52t3CVKeyc&t=167s

Exclusive clip from the upcoming French comedy THE ROSE MAKER.

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On April 1 we’ll open THE ROSE MAKER at the Claremont, Playhouse, Royal and Town Center. Catherine Frot stars as one of France’s greatest artisanal horticulturalists, whose rose business is on the brink of bankruptcy. When her secretary hires three inexperienced ex-convicts, they must team up to rescue the business in this verdant comedy. Enjoy this clip for a whiff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbAxOiZ-Irs

Moviegoers, last chance to catch the Oscar nominated films in theatres.

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For cinephiles, there is nothing like awards season, when studios and distributors release their finest films in hopes of garnering rapturous reviews, capturing audiences’ attention, and earning accolades, none more coveted than an Academy Award. The 2021-2022 season comes to a close this Sunday at 6801 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, CA and on a TV screen near you, but there’s still time to see the nominees. We’re playing the animated and live action shorts at the NoHo and bringing them back to Glendale and we have the documentary shorts on Saturday and Sunday at the Royal.  Some of these films, like THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD, PARALLEL MOTHERS, LICORICE PIZZA, DRIVE MY CAR and FLEE, are so good they’re worth seeing twice. On Laemmle Virtual Cinema, see LUNANA and ASCENSION.  All terrific. Enjoy!
Riz Ahmed in Best Live Action Short nominee THE LONG GOODBYE.

Stand with Ukraine through Film: THE GUIDE and Ukraine War relief.

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We all know of the tragedy that is happening in Ukraine because of the Russian invasion.  Thousands of civilians are dying in the streets while as of today 3,000,000 people are fleeing the country.

Film exhibitors around the country want to do their small part. Working with filmmaker Oles Sanin, who is currently in Ukraine, we have banded together to screen his 2014 Ukrainian film The Guide and will donate 100% of the proceeds to help his fellow Ukrainians. We’ll begin screening the film this Friday at the Monica Film Center. The Guide follows an American boy named Peter and and a blind minstrel, Ivan, who are thrown together by fate during the Stalin-perpetrated genocide in 1930s Ukraine.

Here’s the official website: STAND WITH UKRAINE THROUGH FILM

Here is a message from the director that will precede the screenings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ea5wsqA6xI

Here is the film’s trailer:

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

Brevity is the soul of wit: The 2022 Oscar-nominated short films are now playing everywhere.

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This Friday we’ll expand our screenings of the 2022 Oscar-nominated short films — live action, animated and documentary — to almost all our venues so cinephiles from throughout L.A. County and beyond can enjoy them theatrically. Robert Abele of the L.A. Times weighed in on his favorites:

Documentaries: “The Queen of Basketball is a joyous portrait of college legend, breakthrough Olympian, and only ever female NBA draftee Lusia “Lucy” Harris, a gifted athlete without a professional league of her own. Harris died in January, but here she’s a wry chronicler of her underappreciated majesty, making Queen a fitting film obituary. Matt Ogens’ percussively energized, heartfelt Audible takes us into the tightknit huddle of high schoolers in the successful football program at the Maryland School for the Deaf, their Big Game preparation a poignant metaphor for the feelings of pride, loss and community that make them different from, but also no different than, any teenager facing an uncertain world…Looking back on a childhood choice (and seizing on a wild coincidence) is the province of veteran experimental filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt’s When We Were Bullies, a wonderfully intimate, collage-styled reckoning with memory, hurt and the ethics of storytelling.”

From WHEN WE WERE BULLIES. Courtesy of ShortsTV.

Live action: “The nerviest conscience buster is Aneil Karia’s The Long Goodbye, a companion film to actor/rapper Riz Ahmed’s same-named album. He plays one of many members of a large British-South Asian family in a bustling house preparing for a wedding until a violent reality intrudes, leading to a wall-breaking rap about race, history and nationalism that Ahmed delivers like a frontline soliloquy. On the more Black Mirror end of things is KD Davila’s Kafkaesque satire Please Hold, which fuses our blind fascination with all things contactless, online and privatized with our inability to reform a byzantine justice system, following it to a not-too-far-off conclusion for someone like innocent Latino 20-something Mateo (Erick Lopez).”

From PLEASE HOLD. Courtesy of ShortsTV.

Animation: “Lives marred by cruelty factor into the hand-drawn Boxballet and stop-motion Bestia. The former, from Anton Dyakov, brings together a hulking, banged-up pugilist and an up-and-coming ballerina for a wordless-but-not-soundless meeting of sensitive souls. The latter is Chilean animator Hugo Covarrubias’ slow-burning, textural glimpse — set during the country’s military dictatorship — of the corrosive duality in a policewoman’s daily life with her dog, her body and her demons. The eerie airlessness of the dollhouse-like settings and the porcelain shine on the puppets are memorably unsettling.’

From BESTIA.

“Influential designer/animator Alberto Mielgo, who sparked the aesthetic of Into the Spider-Verse, is another wizard with texture and visual depth. His meditative The Windshield Wiper poses the question “What is love?” to a man in a café, then seeks clues in a series of vignettes with couples around the world. Mielgo’s urbanized hybrid of the painterly and the digitized is hypnotic and its own example of an artist’s love.’

From THE WINDSHIELD WIPER.

“British animator Joanna Quinn’s enthusiasm for the wiggly expressiveness of traditional animation, meanwhile, makes her latest romp starring middle-aged feminist factory worker Beryl, Affairs of the Art, a raucous delight. (The last Beryl short was in 2006.) Now hellbent on becoming a “hyperfuturist artiste,” drawing-obsessed Beryl (voiced as ever by Menna Trussler) relays a family history of sibling rivalry, imperiled pets, morbid curiosities and eccentric tastes, while Quinn’s masterful caricatures and love of bulbous bodies in motion would make Da Vinci blush, laugh and be jealous simultaneously. Drawing becomes riotously, beautifully alive in Quinn’s vaudeville of aging and anatomy, but so does the wonderfully personal message delivered through her never-too-late-to-try heroine: There’s power in passion, whenever it strikes you in life.”

From AFFAIRS OF THE ART.

Please note that the animated shorts are not MPAA rated but if they were they’d likely receive an R or NC-17 rating. Only adults will be admitted.

https://vimeo.com/678295462/7a10ce4892

The Top Ten Films of 2021 contest results are in.

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Filmmakers managed to create some amazing cinema during the beginning of the pandemic, as our Top Ten Contest results below attest. Heavyweights like Campion, P.T. Anderson, Spielberg, Almodóvar, and Villeneuve delivered, as did younger filmmakers like Hamaguchi and Ducournau.
We assigned each level a point value (1st choice = 10 points, 2nd choice = 9 points, and so on). Based on the results of that calculation, Laemmle moviegoers loved:
Nightmare Alley was a close 11th place. No one had an exact match to this list. In fact, even though Licorice Pizza was number one in terms of points, it was picked as number one only three times. It just happened to be somewhere on everyone’s list. Our point system does favor the more “popular” films since they are likely to have been seen by the most people. Had we used different metrics, where we listed the most common film in each category, #1 would be Drive My Car as it was the film most frequently chosen as the number one choice and The Power of the Dog would be the second most frequent number one pick. Licorice Pizza would be tops in category #2, #4, & #6, and probably tops in other categories too.
We will announce three randomly chosen contest winners on this page soon. We’ll send each of them 10 passes, good at any of our theaters and watch.laemmle.com.

“Beautiful…timely” new documentary about Laemmle Theatres ‘Only in Theatres’ premieres at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

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The new documentary about Laemmle Theatres, ONLY IN THEATERS, was begun just before the pandemic began and completed last year. It recounts the company’s history and features interviews with all the surviving players as they face the seismic changes in the film exhibition industry. The family members behind this multigenerational business—whose sole mission has been to support the art of film—remain determined to see it survive, despite enormous challenges. From the festival program:

“Laemmle Theaters, the beloved L.A. art house cinema chain, has an astonishing legacy with ties to the origins of Hollywood. This is a story about a family business and their determination to survive in the face of headlines that question the future of movie theaters. For more than 84 years and through three generations, this family’s personal mission has been to elevate the art of films and the artists who make them.”

ONLY IN THEATRES premieres this Saturday night at the prestigious Santa Barbara International Film Festival. There is a second screening on Monday, March 7. Programming Director Claudia Puig was quoted in the L.A. Times today calling it “a beautiful film, and a timely one.”

Follow the film on Facebook for updates on future screenings at https://www.facebook.com/onlyintheaters and check out the trailer:

https://vimeo.com/547583876