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Q1 2024 Culture Vulture Films Announced!

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Happy New Year! Laemmle Theatres President Greg Laemmle just finished putting the finishing touches on our Q1 films for Culture Vulture, our long-running weekly film series of fine art, theater, opera, music and more. Have a look! The screenings are every Monday evening and Tuesday matinee at the Laemmle Claremont, Glendale, Monica Film Center and, expanding the map to the San Fernando Valley, the Town Center in Encino.
01/22 – 01/23   MENUS-PLAISIRS: LES TROISGROS
01/29 – 01/30   DEAR ENGLAND
02/05 – 02/06   CALL ME DANCER
02/12 – 02/13   ROMEO & JULIET
02/26 – 02/27   THE IMMORTALS: THE WONDERS OF THE MUSEO EGIZIO
03/04 – 03/05   SKYLIGHT
03/11 – 03/12   PAINTING THE MODERN GARDEN: MONET TO MATISSE
03/18 – 03/19   VANYA
03/25 – 03/26   AMERICAN SOCIALIST: THE LIFE & TIMES OF EUGENE VICTOR DEBS

See the Academy Shortlisted Foreign Films and Feature Documentaries at Laemmle.

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As a gifted filmmaker told the New Yorker last year, seeing a movie at home rather than in a movie theater is “like reading a novel where you read one word out of two.” With that in mind, check out the Academy’s just-announced list of feature documentaries and international films that they have shortlisted for nominations. We’ll be playing a number of them:

SOCIETY OF SNOW (Spain) is now playing at the NoHo for two-week run.

THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE (Germany) opened Christmas Day at the Royal and is expanding in January.

Aki Kaurismäki’s FALLEN LEAVES (Finland) is on screen at the Monica Film Center and set to return to Glendale.

THE PROMISED LAND from Denmark (with Mads Mikkelsen!), THE MONK AND THE GUN from Bhutan and TOTEM from Mexico are all set to open on February 2. And THE TASTE OF THINGS from France (with Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel!) will be back starting February 9.

And finally, we expect to be opening Jonathan Glazer’s THE ZONE OF INTEREST (United Kingdom) and Wim Wenders’ PERFECT DAYS (Japan)!

On the Doc side, we will be playing BEYOND UTOPIA, A STILL SMALL VOICE, THE ETERNAL MEMORY and TO KILL A TIGER for weekend morning shows at Glendale and the Monica starting on January 6.  And we expect to have a couple of the other shortlisted docs come back as well.
Twelve of the 15 shortlisted docs played on our screens earlier this year. Not bad!

Make plans to enjoy the cinematic feast of the holiday season well into 2024!

Now more than ever: Greg Laemmle on singing along to FIDDLER ON THE ROOF in times like these.

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From Greg Laemmle: “I started this as a Christmas Eve event (tradition!) specifically because I wanted to celebrate that as Jews in America, we did not need to hide in our homes. My grandmother hated this time of year because she had memories of her childhood in Tsarist Russia and the frequent episodes of violence (pogroms) against the Jewish communities there around the holiday. The America that I grew up in was open enough that it could accept the diversity of our society, recognizing that Americans of all religious (or non-religious) backgrounds were free to celebrate the end of year period in their own fashion. I’m not sure America is as accepting right now, but I’m not prepared to cede this ground to those pushing for a more restrictive vision of what America is. Now, more than ever, it is important that we not hide.  And now, as much as ever, we need to feel the joy of the free association that is a Constitutional right of living in America. Fiddler on the Roof tells a complicated tale about the fragility of living as a minority in an oppressive state. But it also shows the joy and beauty of life, and hints at the potential of modernity to provide a freer world that does not discriminate based on race, religion or gender. LOVE is the force that truly shakes the foundations of Tevye’s world. And LOVE, not HATE, will save us from our current predicaments.”

JOIN US on DEC. 24th for our umpteenth annual alternative Christmas Eve, the Fiddler on the Roof Sing-a-Long! Screening at 7 o’clock at our Claremont, Glendale, Newhall, NoHo, West L.A. and Encino theaters.

Belt out your holiday spirit … or your holiday frustrations. Either way, you’ll feel better as you croon along to all-time favorites like “TRADITION,” “IF I WERE A RICH MAN,” “TO LIFE,” “SUNRISE SUNSET,” “DO YOU LOVE ME?” and “ANATEVKA,” among many others.

We encourage you to come in costume! Guaranteed fun for all. Children are welcome (Fiddler is rated “G”) though some themes may be challenging for young children.

Prices this year start at $16 for General Admission and $13 for Premiere Card holders. Typically, Fiddler sells out … so don’t miss the buggy!

Originally based on Sholem Aleichem’s short story “Tevye and His Daughters,” Norman Jewison’s adaptation of the long-running Broadway musical is set in a Russian village at the beginning of the twentieth century. Israeli actor Topol repeats his legendary London stage performance as Tevye the milkman, whose equilibrium is constantly being challenged by his poverty, the prejudice of non-Jews, and the romantic entanglements of his five daughters. Fiddler was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Director and Actor, and won three, for Cinematography, Sound and Score (John Williams).

Greg Laemmle on deactivating Laemmle Theatres’ Twitter accounts.

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From Laemmle Theatres President Greg Laemmle:

My wife’s uncle Bert has been guiding a Sunday morning family Zoom that started up during the early days of the pandemic.  While listening in, I have often heard him repeat a guiding principle for the group discussion.  Before speaking, ask yourself these questions:

1.) Is it true?
2.) Is it kind?
3.) Is it necessary?

A quick online search provides a number of different attributions.  This could come to us from Socrates (via Plato).  Another version is attributed to the great Sufi mystic, Rumi.  Or maybe it comes from radio host Bernard Meltzer …who may have picked it up from any number of Buddhist sources.  Whatever the origin, the point is that across multiple cultures and philosophic traditions, we are urged to think before we speak.

And then there’s the platform formerly known as Twitter.

While Twitter has always had a confrontational side, adequate content moderation kept rancid contributors in check, allowing it to better serve more positive activities like fostering community, encouraging democracy, providing a space for underserved voices, and allowing for a bit of irreverent fun. However, since its sale last year, Twitter is increasingly a bullhorn for hate and harassment, and the unfettered dissemination of conspiracy theories, disinformation, and outright lies. The new owner, who has loudly proclaimed himself a “free speech absolutist,” recently crossed a dangerous line into fascist hypocrisy by suing journalists for using their free speech rights to point out how corporations’ ads are appearing next to neo-Nazi content.  He regularly amplifies hateful posts and memes to his 164 million followers and for his latest provocation he has re-platformed the ghoulish torturer of Sandy Hook families, Alex Jones.

Twitter is not the only problematic platform.  Social media in general has encouraged disinhibition, contributing to a coarsening of public discourse. But whatever their faults (and crimes), at least these other platforms are working to improve so that they can have a greater positive influence.  Twitter has crossed into territory where the bad most definitely outweighs the good.  And from what we can see, they are aiming to go even lower.

At Laemmle Theatres, we have a high degree of tolerance for diverse and provocative voices.  But this chorus is offered in the hope that our community will be enriched by open discourse.  It is the exact opposite of the negative and hateful commentary that has become the bread and butter of Twitter.

At this time, we are deactivating our accounts on Twitter.  We hope to return, but only after serious efforts have been undertaken to provide greater content moderation and to root out hate speech.  This is not a First Amendment issue.  The Constitution limits the government’s ability to restrict speech.  But as a private platform, Twitter has the right (and responsibility) to restrict the most extreme and hateful speech.  They just don’t want to.

To connect with us on other platforms, visit laemmle.com/connect.

And for the New Year, let’s all make a resolution to better follow Uncle Bert’s maxim.  Whether in person or online, always remember the three rules when communicating.  Be truthful and kind, and always try to only say what is necessary for a listener to hear.

Greg Laemmle

ONLY IN THEATERS wins award from Film Threat. DVDs now on sale at all venues.

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Only in Theaters, the documentary about the history and future of Laemmle Theatres that includes interviews with Allison Anders, Cameron Crowe, Ava DuVernay, Nicole Holofcener, James Ivory, Kenneth Turan, Leonard Maltin and more, just won the Film Threat’s Award This! award in the Film About Movies or Filmmaking category. The ceremony was last Sunday at The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana. In his acceptance speech, which you can watch below, director Raphael Sbarge spoke about the century-long story he sought to tell and said “there’s been a Laemmle in the movie business since there’s been a movie business.”

The just-released Only in Theaters DVD is now available for sale at all seven of our theaters. In his recent Film Factual review of the release, Brent Simon described the film as “a rich and fortifying watch, and it thankfully isn’t fanciful enough to peddle easy solutions, or clear skies on the horizon. It’s funny and sad and at times emotionally piercing, but most of all it’s honest — a quality we should all want more of in movies, big and small.”

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “staggeringly heartbreaking” MONSTER opens Friday.

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Gently devastating in its compassion, Monster, the latest from Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda (After Life, Shoplifters, Broker), is a masterpiece of shifting perspectives that defies expectations. It begins with a mother who confronts a teacher about her child’s behavioral changes. This is the first time Kore-eda has directed a film he did not write in almost 20 years. (The film was the last scoring project by Ryuichi Sakamoto.) We open Monster this Friday at the Laemmle Monica Film Center, Glendale, Town Center/Encino and Claremont 5.

Leading film critics have weighed in:

“Monster is one of the finest films of the year, and its structure — like its circle of characters — carries secrets that can only be unraveled through patience and empathy.” ~ Natalia Winkelman, New York Times

“If possible, watch Monster more than once.” ~ Anthony Lane, New Yorker
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“It poetically shows the power of perspective. So well-observed, nuanced, and compassionately told.” ~ Claudia Puig, FilmWeek (KPCC – NPR Los Angeles)
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“As you’d expect from Kore-eda, it’s all told with the utmost detail and care, and a gentle score from the late Ryuichi Sakamoto only adds to the overarching air of thoughtfulness and empathy.” ~ Dave Calhoun, Time Out
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“There is so much beauty in Monster, and so much sadness.” ~ Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

“What Monster most comes to resemble is a reminder of the rich inner and emotional worlds of children — of their autonomy, even, in the context of a culture reluctant to acknowledge it. ~ Zachary Barnes, Wall Street Journal

“Monster’s three perspectives are not so much in argument with one another as they are pieces of the same puzzle. And once they are locked together, the final portrait is staggeringly heartbreaking.” ~ Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail

“While Monster depends on dramatic irony and revelatory twists, it’s also a showcase for director Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose knack for collaboration brings out the best in his actors, especially his younger cast members.” ~ Simon Abrams, RogerEbert.com

“One of the director’s finest, its thematic scope and emotional power growing with each new revelation.” ~ Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

“Across the film, you can feel the push and pull between a master technician who built his career on the patient, delicate plucking at our heartstrings and his newfound desire to please a wide audience with the broadest of affective strokes.” ~ Kyle Turner, Slant Magazine

“Monster is another striking piece of work from a master, a movie that’s so carefully calibrated that you get lost in these characters, forgetting they’re performers and not people caught up in a genuinely traumatic chapter of life.” ~ Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

“Monster keeps its secrets until its final moments, leaving us with the feeling that we have earned its trust and are worthy of the precious, beautiful truths that lie at its heart.” ~ Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, AWFJ.org

“A case of Kore-eda’s incredible felicity in handling child actors, or perhaps the kids challenging and inspiring Kore-eda yet again.” ~ Namrata Joshi, The New Indian Express

“Kore-eda is a master of directing children’s performances, so it’s no wonder that Monster is at its best when there are no adults on screen, the children living in their own world of fantasy and adventure and emotion.” ~ Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

FANNY AND ALEXANDER 40th Anniversary Holiday Season Screenings of Bergman’s Final Masterpiece December 13.

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The Anniversary Classics Series and Laemmle Theatres present 40th anniversary screenings of Ingmar Bergman’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1983) on Wednesday, December 13 at 7:00 PM at four Laemmle locations: the Royal, Newhall, Glendale, and Claremont. The Academy Award-winning film is the last entry of the year of the popular Anniversary Classics Abroad series, and a timely program for the holiday season.

Bergman, one of the greatest and most influential film directors of all time, was a towering figure in international cinema who came to prominence in the mid-twentieth century “golden age of the arthouse” era, with such meditative classics exploring the psyche and soul as ‘The Seventh Seal,’ ‘The Virgin Spring,’ ‘Through a Glass Darkly’ (the latter two winning consecutive Foreign Film Oscars in 1960-61), ‘Persona,’ and expanding into the 1970s with ‘Cries and Whispers,’ a best picture Oscar nominee in 1973, and ‘Scenes from a Marriage’ among others. In the 1980s the Swedish auteur originally planned his memory piece FANNY AND ALEXANDER as his cinematic swan song, with a six-part version for television along with a shortened theatrical release, which premiered internationally first. The theatrical version went onto global acclaim and is widely considered one of Bergman’s finest films.

Set in the first decade of the twentieth century, the film opens with the Ekdahl family’s Christmas celebration, with extended family members and servants gathering for a merry holiday in the town of Uppsala (Bergman’s birthplace). The film unfolds principally through the eyes of ten-year-old Alexander Ekdahl (Bertil Guve) and his younger sister Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) who are soon separated from this warm family after the death of their actor-manager father, and the subsequent marriage of their mother (Ewa Froeling) to a strict, cold bishop (Jan Malmsjo). Familiar themes of religious zealotry, which Bergman explored throughout his career, are reexamined with a ghostly supernatural touch in Bergman’s haunted memories of his own clergyman father.

Plaudits for the film ranged from Variety’s “a sumptuously produced period piece (with) elegance and simplicity,” to Vincent Canby in The New York Times, “a big, dark, beautiful, generous family chronicle,” as a prelude to both the New York Film Critics and L.A. Film Critics naming it the best foreign film of the year. Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Examiner described it as “an epic family film that revisits Bergman’s favorite subjects—marriage, passion, infidelity, death, God—and yet in ways more generous and less austere than in his other films.” Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian praised “the glorious acting ensemble, an amazing collection of pure performing intelligence,” and summarized the film as “a brilliant—in fact maybe unique—fusion of Shakespeare and Dickens.”

The film went on to garner a record six Academy Award nominations, with directing and writing nods for Bergman, along with four wins: Foreign Language Film (Bergman’s third), Cinematography (Sven Nykvist, his consummate collaborator over two decades and his second win, both with Bergman), Art Direction (Anna Asp), and Costume Design (Marik Vos-Lundh). The four Oscars were the most for an international film in the twentieth century, and a fitting tribute to the legacy of a master filmmaker. Experience FANNY AND ALEXANDER back on the big screen this holiday season for one showing only on December 13.

A “genuinely delightful” movie about a brilliant teacher, RADICAL Opens Friday.

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Joining the list of inspiring films about brilliant teachers like Stand and Deliver and Dead Poets Society, Radical is set in a Mexican border town plagued by neglect, corruption, and violence. A frustrated teacher (Eugenio Derbez) tries a radical new method to unleash the curiosity and potential of his students… and maybe even their genius. Based on a true story and winner of the Festival Favorite award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Radical will make you think about the best teachers you’ve had the good fortune to meet. (Thinking of you, Ray Schaefer!) We open the movie this Friday at the Town Center, Newhall, Claremont and Monica Film Center.
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“Christopher Zalla’s truth-based drama is a rarity, a crowd-pleaser about an unorthodox 6th-grade school teacher and his students that actually earns its stand-up-and-cheer status.” Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News
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“Destined to bring a tear to even the most hardened of viewers, Radical is a genuinely delightful reimagining of a tale we might have mistakenly believed had run its course.” ~ Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, AWFJ.org
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“Comes to a stirring close that balances optimism with a side of heartbreak for those kids who lack access to the right resources.” ~ Tomris Laffly, Variety

“Zalla teaches a lesson on how to deliver an affirming, emotional gut punch.” ~ Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

“Derbez, always a charismatic screen presence, is at his best interacting with young people.” ~ Nell Minow, RogerEbert.com

“Those who inspired Radical deserved to be celebrated, and it’s likely that a mass-appealing filmic interpretation of their against-the-odds accomplishments might function as the farthest-reaching vehicle to disseminate them.” ~ Carlos Aguilar, indieWire