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Home » Theater Buzz » Glendale

RAN, Akira Kurosowa’s final epic masterpiece, back on the big screen May 23.

May 13, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore 2 Comments

There are movies. There is cinema. And then there is auteur cinema. All are best experienced theatrically, but the last category, in particular, necessitates the big screen, the darkness, the audience of strangers. Next week, we are thrilled to once again unveil Ran, the 27th film by legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress).

In its epic scale, stylistic grandeur and tragic contemplation of human destiny, Ran (literally, “chaos” or “turmoil”) brings together the great themes and gorgeous images of the director’s life work. A brilliantly conceived meditation on Shakespeare’s King Lear crossed with Japan’s 16th-century civil wars, it stars the great Tatsuya Nakadai (Kagemusha, High and Low, Yojimbo, Hara Kiri) as Lord Hidetora Ichimonji, an aging ruler who decides to abdicate and divide his land equally among his three sons, unleashing an intense power struggle as his sons and daughters-in-law scheme for power and revenge. A spectacular adventure punctuated by epic battle scenes, Ran was, at the time of its release, the most expensive film ever made in Japan, with breathtaking color and a visual splendor that remains unparalleled. (Kurosawa devised the entire film in watercolors ten years before production began). Named Best Foreign Film of the Year by the New York Film Critics Circle and Best Film of the Year by the National Society of Film Critics, Ran was also Oscar-nominated for Best Director, Cinematography, and Art Direction, with Emi Wada winning for her dazzling, three-years-in-the-making costumes.

“Spectacular! Among the most thrilling movie experiences a viewer can have!” -The New York Times

“Awe inspiring! Takes its place among the major screen versions of Shakespeare. The battle scenes are horrifying, yet extraordinarily beautiful.” -The Village Voice

“Kurosawa’s late-period masterpiece, transposing King Lear to period Japan, is one of the most exquisite spectacles ever made, a color-coordinated epic tragedy of carnage and betrayal—passionate, somber, and profound.” -New York Magazine

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Filed Under: Featured Films, Films, Glendale, Monica Film Center, Repertory Cinema, Royal, Santa Monica, Theater Buzz

“Laura Piani’s splendid debut balances reality with the effervescent charm of vintage swooners.” JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE opens May 23.

May 13, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore Leave a Comment

If you are in need of some escapism that piques rather than insults your intelligence, we strongly recommend the new French rom-com Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. We open it May 23 at the Royal and May 30 at all but one of our other theaters. (Its writer-director, Laura Piani, is interviewed on the latest episode of Inside the Arthouse.)

Variety’s Chief Film Critic Peter Debruge perfectly captures the film’s charms in his review, whose subhead reads “Laura Piani’s splendid debut balances reality with the effervescent charm of vintage swooners.”

Debruge’s review is worth quoting at length:

“A diet of romantic literature is a recipe for disappointment in real life, argues French director Laura Piani with Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, about an aspiring writer who’s convinced she was born in the wrong century, if only because she still believes in things like soulmates and courtship. Part homage, part referendum on all those love stories that make it look easy, Piani’s just-jaded-enough alternative fills the regrettable gap left by such feel-good classics as Four Weddings and a Funeral and the Austen-inspired Bridget Jones’s Diary. Sony Pictures Classics plans a limited release for May 23, going wide a week later.

“At a time when practically the entire rom-com genre has gravitated to streaming, this bilingual theatrical offering from Sony Pictures Classics feels like the best kind of throwback. Presented as a lighthearted farce, complete with characters stepping (naked) through the wrong doors and a tense cross-country ride, in which Agathe complains in French (not realizing her companion speaks the language), the film is at once old-fashioned and refreshingly, realistically up to date in its take on modern courtship.

“Blocked in both love and literature, Agathe (Camille Rutherford) is an exasperated Frenchwoman working at Shakespeare and Company, the adorably cluttered English-language bookstore situated just a few meters from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. According to Austen’s standards, Agathe — who identifies most closely with Anne Elliot in Persuasion — might seem at genuine risk of spinsterhood, having made it to her mid-30s without a prospect. It’s been years since she’s had so much as a kiss, and the hopeless singleton finds herself pouring all of her idealism and frustration into futile creative writing exercises until … inspiration strikes during a solitary dinner as she stares deep into a novelty sake cup.

“Behind Agathe’s back, her encouraging (if frequently inappropriate) best friend Félix (Pablo Pauly) sends off the first few chapters of this new project to a writer’s residency at Austen’s onetime abode, hoping to give Agathe the “kick in the arse” she needs. Friendship, as Austen herself wrote, is “the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.” The next thing she knows, Agathe is crossing the Channel to visit the author’s estate. There, she spars with (but also falls for) one of the author’s distant relatives: Austen’s priggish great-great-great-grandnephew Oliver (Charlie Anson).

“Piani shot the entire film in France, but it truly feels as if it has a foot in both cultures. Anson could be a young Rupert Everett’s bookish brother, and has clearly studied every wince and eye flutter in Hugh Grant’s arsenal, combining such tools into a 21st-century version of the Mr. Darcy archetype. From the frosty first encounter between Agathe and Oliver, in which she steps off the ferry and promptly retches on his loafers, audiences should find themselves rooting for these two to recognize how compatible they are.

“But Agathe is wrestling with more than just her insecurities, as kissing Félix just before she took the ferry has stirred up newfound feelings for her old friend. Félix is a serial womanizer and a classic cad with whom she’s always felt a certain unexplored sexual tension, despite their many years of platonic companionship, and even in his absence, this development stands to complicate whatever she feels for Oliver. (Lest one doubt where viewers’ allegiances should lie, composer Peter von Poehl’s score practically quotes “Yumeji’s Theme” from In the Mood for Love, a romantic melody that’s all but impossible to resist.)

“A few decades ago, a film like this might have had little chance of success competing with Hollywood-made rom-coms, but that steady stream has moved to, well, streaming, leaving a space wide open for audiences still looking to laugh and swoon at their local art house. As its almost defeatist title implies, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life has an intriguing relation to such escapism, recognizing that fiction in all its forms (whether literary or cinematic) has spoiled so many people’s expectations of what love can be.

“Piani casts a gangly, wide-eyed actor to play Agathe. Rutherford is far from the dime-a-dozen ingénues so often seen in French movies, with their voluptuous figures and vacant expressions — and so much the better, as it sets an unrealistic standard for young women to aspire to (while no such standard exists for their gargoyle-like male co-stars). Instead, she excels at being awkward, incorporating pratfalls and physical comedy into a role that doesn’t turn the head of every man she meets. Although Agathe is quite lovely in a less conventional way, Piani allows her intellect and personality to be the character’s most attractive traits.”

Click here to read the rest of the review.

 

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Filed Under: Claremont 5, Featured Films, Featured Post, Films, Glendale, Greg Laemmle, Inside the Arthouse, Newhall, NoHo 7, Royal, Theater Buzz, Town Center 5

I KNOW CATHERINE week at Laemmle Glendale.

May 7, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore Leave a Comment

They “alchemized pain and misfortune into profound art.” ~ Jessica Baxter, Hammer to Nail

“She just loved sex.”

It’s not the first laugh of surprise in I Know Catherine, the Log Lady, and it isn’t the last. The tone of the film — lively, fast-paced, underscored with original jazz and blues, and always embracing the absurdity of life — might seem a contrast to it’s subject.

Beginning its weeklong run in Glendale this Friday, May 9, I Know Catherine tells the story of what it took for Catherine Coulson to film her final scenes as the Log Lady for David Lynch and Twin Peaks, the Return. 

Just after The Return was announced, Coulson, in her 22nd year acting at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. The next nine months would see her race to keep ahead of death while Twin Peaks, the Return was in pre-production.

The final act of the documentary is a “Hail Mary pass into the end zone” (Kent Hill, Film Threat) as Catherine gets more than a little help from her friends to film her scenes for the series. 

Four days after filming, she was gone.

That’s the “a death well lived” part of the movie. Interwoven with that last year are the surprises: Coulson was one of the first women assistant camera/focus pullers in Hollywood. She produced movies, served as a community leader, found the “love of her life” (her daughter, Zoey), and “everyone thought she was their best friend,” according to her friend, playwright Lisa Loomer.

David Lynch’s interview in the film may be his last on screen. Also featured are Twin Peaks alumni Charlotte Stewart, Kimmy Robertson, Grace Zabriskie, Michael Horse and Dana Ashbrook, and dozens more of Catherine’s best friends.

“A Wonderful tribute to Catherine Coulson” — Stephen Silver, The SS Ben Hecht

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Filed Under: Films, Glendale, Theater Buzz

“I wanted to bring to light the inner lives of these women, their mutual attraction, their powers, the ways in which they conceal in order to reveal at their own pace.” BONJOUR TRISTESSE opens Friday.

April 30, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore Leave a Comment

Based on Françoise Sagan’s controversial 1954 novel, published when she was only 18 years old, the new adaptation of Bonjour Tristesse follows teenage Cécile (Lily McInerny). Her relaxing summer with her father (Claes Bang) in the south of France is upended by the arrival of the enigmatic Anne (Chloë Sevigny), her late mother’s friend.

First-time filmmaker Durga Chew-Bose is a writer, editor, and filmmaker living in Montreal. Prior to making Bonjour Tristesse, her film writing and interviews have focused on a range of international directors, from Abbas Kiarostami to Mia Hansen-Løve, Mike Leigh, Olivier Assayas, and many more. She is a devoted cinephile and has spoken on the works of masters of the craft from Michelangelo Antonioni to Hsiao-Hsien Hou at numerous screening retrospectives around the world. Her study continued with the gorgeous collaboration she achieved on this film with her crew, especially her cinematographer and costume designer. As she says in her just-posted interview on Inside the Arthouse, “From the beginning, I had a strong sense of who I wanted to build this world with and, honestly, learn from, because I was going to be the least experienced person on the set. You’re very aware of every individual who is there making it with you because you only get this finite amount of time to do it.”

In another interview, Chew-Bose was asked, “What made you want to tell this story?”

A: I was drawn to the women. There was still more to tell. My understanding of what an adaptation could be, for a book as beloved as Bonjour Tristesse, that had also been previously adapted, was entirely based on…potential. I wanted to bring to light the inner lives of these women, their mutual attraction, their powers, the ways in which they conceal in order to reveal at their own pace, of course. Françoise Sagan was a singular force and I was inspired to use my voice to continue the story of Bonjour Tristesse, instead of simply retelling it. In some ways, it’s a very simple story. But is jealousy ever simple? Is growing up as a girl and feeling misunderstood by those you trust most, simple? Is finding love in the same places you might find pain, ever simple? I found myself under the influence of Cécile, even if on paper, we had little in common. I admired her ability to contradict herself, to experience the full-blown capacity of her feelings. There’s real freedom in that. I admired Anne, but wanted to write a version that felt truer to my understanding of womanhood, free of expectations, bright, funny, soft. I was excited to tell this story, scene by scene, allowing these women to compose a rhythm for the movie. Their choices are its momentum.

Q: The cinematography in the film is gorgeous, what was the process like of striking the right tone for the visual language of the film?

A: Max and I spent a long time simply watching movies. We’d watch a movie and then talk about it, even if it wasn’t an obvious inspiration for Bonjour Tristesse. In fact, we seemed drawn to films that weren’t sun dappled or set on beaches. We loved movies with dramatic blocking, where conversations were made tense, simply by how the characters were or were not facing each other. I wanted stillness, and Max encouraged me to seek moments where we could favor movement. We found a sweet spot in Ozu’s use of “pillow shots,” these sort of ‘place setting’ moments where cutaways of everyday life at the Villa provided an opportunity for composition and color, gentle rhythm, and summer’s natural appeal to time passing in a more poetic way.

I wanted certain scenes to feel like theater, on a stage, but in order to achieve that for our movie, Max and I found ways to bring the outdoors inside and vice versa, so our stage, so to speak, still involved shadows, a breeze.

We also focused our attention on photographers like Luigi Ghirri or painters like Félix Vallotton. The former was a huge source of inspiration for the movie’s faded blues and browns. The latter inspired us to favour dark interiors, stylized with a single lamp. One painting in particular, titled “Le Diner, effect de lamp” was the blueprint for a dinner scene in the movie where I insisted our characters should look like they are floating in space at the table, surrounded by blackness. We planned a lot and then forgot everything, finding our rhythm each day on set. We played. We listened to our surroundings.

Also, while it isn’t totally related to the movie’s cinematography, it is related to its visual style. We worked closely with the designer and artist, Cynthia Merhej, whose work inspired the world of Anne’s designs. Cynthia’s eye for color, fabric, detail, was a collaborative no-brainer for Miyako. Together, they imagined a sophisticated, romantic, dancerly, and sometimes handsome design language for Anne. Cynthia’s dresses provide real moments of beauty in the movie, and personally, reminded me of so many classic films where costume encouraged an otherworldly quality to a scene. We can marvel, be awed. She makes clothes for twirling and twirling is so cinematic.

Q: The music in the film is singular and incredibly thoughtful—can you talk through your decisions and inspiration for it?

A: I’ve always loved movie soundtracks. If I was going to make my first film, I was going to make one with a singular soundtrack. Aliocha Schneider was a huge source of inspiration for our music, given his talent and voice. I rewrote scenes for his character, Cyril, after he and I went for a walk a couple years ago in Montreal. He was learning how to sing in Italian, the rest is history.

Our composer, Lesley Barber, designed a score that feels timeless but also spooky, and in moments, very romantic. I loved working with her in Toronto, watching as she played the piano, feeling out a scene’s many movements. We referenced everything from Disney movies to John
Adams to Laraaji to Ravel to Harold Budd, but ultimately, we found our own sound. My friend Hailey Gates recorded an original song for the movie with Z berg—something like a narration of Cécile’s summer. It’s haunting and totally out there but also, like everything with Bonjour, it feels familiar (and again, a little bit Disney). Early in the movie, a song by Dorothy Ashby plays. Something about her harp always sets forth a dreamier side of my imagination, and I wanted that same stirring quality to awaken our audience.

Q: How did your own research of Francoise Sagan inform your approach to Bonjour Tristesse?

A: I researched for my own curiosity. I’ve always found it strange that book covers of Bonjour Tristesse are designed with photos of Françoise. She became fiction, in some ways, and I wanted to preserve her original story, and in turn preserve her, separate from the book. She was so much more. I was under the influence of her love of cars, though, and made sure we had plenty of road, so to speak, and moments of speed (in image and score), to pay tribute to her love of racing. She loved an accelerated life. Personally, I’m much…slower. I tried to strike a balance. I loved reading about her life and learning about her life, through her son, Denis and her longtime publisher Editions Julliard.

Q: Where did the shoot take place and how long did you film for?

A: Beautiful Cassis. There wasn’t a day that passed where I wasn’t acutely aware of our breathtaking location—white rocks, blue water, wild, 300 year old pine trees that our Villa was actually built around. I loved our Villa. It was the first one we saw and I couldn’t unsee it. A real
coup de cœur. It was designed by the architect Fernand Pouillon and what drew me to it was how it was all at once unassuming but rich with character, like sneaky colors here and there, heavy doors and shallow stairs. It had an inside-outside build with windows that provided something voyeuristic to the design. There were multiple terraces which is ideal for a movie with a lot of sitting and talking—I was able to adapt the script to the Villa’s character easily, as if it was all preordained. Max choreographed the camera movements to bring out the Villa’s
particularities, and in some ways, I think the Villa encouraged our imagination, challenged our imagination. We listened to the Villa; we spent time there at various moments in the day, to understand what it looked like at sunset or midday, how the stone walls shifted their varieties of warmth. Even our costume designer, ever-thoughtful in her thinking, Miyako Bellizzi, joined us at different times of day, to understand how her costumes might look against the Villa’s walls, among the trees. We shot for 30 days.

Q: Talk about the casting process and how you came to cast such an extraordinary group of actors here?

A: I always knew I wanted a very international cast, built entirely on instinct. I wanted to make a contemporary version of Bonjour Tristesse and that included updating the characters’ pursuits, sensibilities, sensitivities. I had known Lily for years and personally, just had a feeling she would become Cécile beyond what was on the page. The moment we cast her, Cécile was no longer mine. She was Lily’s. And Lily took the role and ran, with intensity, with subtlety, with an Audrey Hepburn-type grace.

Many years ago, when I was only outlining Bonjour, my producers joined me in Montreal to go over my vision for the film. We talked a lot about Anne and I expressed my deep love for this woman who wants to protect her powers but also, who moves with elegance, who is tender with those that she loves, who is visionary and a romantic. Chloe was an immediate choice. Her immense talent, the roles she takes and the directors she takes chances on, her wit, her style, her deep love for her family and friends, it was so obvious. It took us years to make this movie and years to reach the moment we would cast her, but like everything with this process, there’s been some magic, some destiny. The day we wrapped Chloe, there were tears on set. Nobody wanted her to leave.

It took us a long time to find our Elsa but the moment I saw Naïlia, I knew she was the one. Her smile, her impossible coolness, her kindness. Elsa, in our adaptation, is probably the biggest departure from the book, and Naïlia was very excited and passionate about giving Elsa a story
beyond her relationship to Raymond. There’s a softness, too, to Elsa that isn’t obvious, but Naïlia has a natural tenderness to her. She’s an observer. She pays attention to everyone’s feelings in the room. I learned so much from Naïlia about the power of subtlety.

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Filed Under: Claremont 5, Director's Statement, Featured Films, Featured Post, Filmmaker's Statement, Films, Glendale, Greg Laemmle, Inside the Arthouse, Newhall, News, NoHo 7, Royal, Theater Buzz, Town Center 5

Filmmaker Jia Zhangke in person at the Laemmle Glendale to introduce CAUGHT BY THE TIDES.

April 27, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore Leave a Comment

Caught by the Tides filmmaker Jia Zhangke will introduce the May 2 screening at the Laemmle Glendale.

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Filed Under: Filmmaker in Person, Films, Glendale, Theater Buzz

“This is lived reality. It’s not a period drama.” Powerful West Bank-set THE TEACHER opens Friday in Glendale.

April 16, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore Leave a Comment

This Friday in Glendale we are pleased to open The Teacher, a drama starring Saleh Bakri and Imogen Poots about colleagues at a West Bank school who try to help a student cope with a tragedy.
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Palestinian-British filmmaker Farah Nabulsi was interviewed on the latest episode of Inside the Arthouse. After receiving an Oscar nomination for her short film The Present, Nabulsi spoke about taking audiences on an intense, emotional journey into the Israeli-occupied West Bank through a story based upon the actual experiences of her relatives. The story lifts the curtain on the hardships and difficult choices they have to make.
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“Extraordinary…riveting.” ~ Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter
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“Captures the intimate horrors of life under harrowing circumstances — and the lifesaving power of the relationships that people still manage to forge and nurture.” ~ Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic
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“Gripping and full of tension, The Teacher not only makes for a wonderful cinematic experience, but poses some all-important questions the wider world has seemingly avoided answering for too long.” ~ Grace Dodd, Little White Lies
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“Nabulsi hits the dramatic beats with confidence and Bakri has genuine distinction.” ~ Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
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“Ground zero here – for the characters, for the nations, for the filmmaker – is futility. Nabulsi drops us on that ground and doesn’t let us pretend it’s anything else.” ~ Steve Pond, TheWrap
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“Ultimately, it’s this imbalance of power and relative worth (or the lack of it) of human lives that is the font of Nabulsi’s creative anger that propels her film.” ~ Namrata Joshi, The New Indian Express

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Filed Under: Featured Films, Featured Post, Filmmaker's Statement, Films, Glendale, Greg Laemmle, Inside the Arthouse, Press, Theater Buzz

Culture Vulture Q2: Beethoven, Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, and more.

April 2, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore Leave a Comment

Our long-running Culture Vulture series continues every Saturday and Sunday morning and Monday evening at our Claremont, Glendale, Newhall, Encino, and Santa Monica theaters.

April 5-7: Far Out: Life on and After the Commune ~ In 1968, a group of radical journalists leave the city and politics to live communally as organic farmers. The film examines their lives and return to the political world and how the commune became a community.

April 12-14: In Search of Beethoven ~ The makers of In Search of Mozart return with a new feature-length bio-doc about Beethoven. Director Phil Grabsky brings together the world’s leading performers and experts on Beethoven to reveal new insights into the legendary composer.

April 19-21: Art for Everybody ~ Thomas Kinkade’s pastoral landscapes made him the most collected painter of all time — and the most despised. Following his shocking death, his family discovers a vault of never-before-seen paintings that upend his entire image, revealing a complex, multifaceted American artist.

April 26-28: Escape to Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story ~ Narrated by Corin Redgrave and Vanessa Redgrave as the voices of Klaus Mann and Erika Mann, Escape to Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story is the result of a remarkable pairing between fiction and nonfiction filmmakers Wieland Speck and Andrea Weiss. It depicts another remarkable relationship, that of Erika and Klaus Mann, the brilliant eldest children of German author Thomas Mann.

May 3-5: Vanya ~ Andrew Scott (Sherlock, Fleabag) brings multiple characters to life in Simon Stephens’ radical new version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Hopes, dreams, and regrets are thrust into sharp focus in this one-man adaptation which explores the complexities of human emotions, directed by Sam Yates. Filmed live during its sold-out run in London’s West End.

May 10-12: Marcella ~ Marcella Hazan didn’t just teach Italian cooking—she changed the way America eats. Fearless, passionate, and exacting, she introduced authentic recipes to millions. Julia Child called Marcella “my mentor in all things Italian.” Featuring Jacques Pépin, Danny Meyer, April Bloomfield, and Lidia Bastianich, this intimate portrait reveals the bold woman who forever shaped home kitchens.

May 17-19: ADA: My Mother the Architect ~ Ada Karmi-Melamede is one of the most accomplished architects in the world, yet her work remains largely unrecognized beyond architectural circles. In the 1970s, she moved to New York from Israel, following her husband’s rising career, and spent the next 15 years balancing academia, large-scale public projects, and motherhood. In the early ’80s, after being denied tenure at Columbia, Ada left New York and her family for Israel where she designed landmarks such as the Supreme Court Building, the Open University, the Israel Institute for Democracy, and Ben Gurion University, among many others.

May 31-June 2: Michelangelo: Love and Death ~ Spanning his 89 years, Michelangelo: Love and Death takes a cinematic journey from the print and drawing rooms of Europe, through the great chapels and museums of Florence, Rome and the Vatican to explore the tempestuous life of Michelangelo. We go in search of a greater understanding of this most charismatic figure, his relationship with his contemporaries and his valuable artistic legacy.

June 7-9: A Streetcar Named Desire ~ Gillian Anderson (The X-Files, The Crown), Vanessa Kirby (The Crown), and Ben Foster (Lone Survivor) lead the cast in Tennessee Williams’ timeless masterpiece, returning to cinemas. As Blanche’s fragile world crumbles, she turns to her sister Stella for solace – but her downward spiral brings her face to face with the brutal, unforgiving Stanley Kowalski. From visionary director Benedict Andrews, this acclaimed production was filmed live during a sold-out run at the Young Vic Theatre in 2014.

June 14-16: A Photographic Memory ~ How well can we know someone through the things they leave behind? Director Rachel Elizabeth Seed was only 18 months old when her mother, the world-travelling journalist Sheila Turner-Seed, died suddenly. Thirty years later, after she discovers more than 50 hours of audio interviews conducted by her mother, Seed hears her mother’s voice for the first time. Through a wealth of audio recordings, photographs and films, the filmmaker sets out to connect with her late mother while at the same time unveiling an invaluable archive of conversations with some of the most renowned photographers of the 20th century.

We’re still finalizing the Culture Vulture schedule beyond that, but we do have two other terrific titles locked in for July and September:

July 5-7: Heartworn Highways ~ In the mid 1970s, filmmaker James Szalapski documented the then-nascent country music movement that would become known as “outlaw country.” Inspired, in part, by newly long-haired Willie Nelson’s embrace of hippie attitudes and audiences, a younger generation of artists including Townes Van Zandt, David Allan Coe, Steve Earle and Guy Clark popularized and developed the outlaw sound. It borrowed from rock, folk and bluegrass, with an edge that was missing from mainstream Nashville country. This newly restored documentary includes rarely captured performances of these musicians as they perfected this then-new style and helped change the course of country music history.

September 27-29: Inter Alia ~ Oscar-nominated Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl, Saltburn) is Jessica in the much-anticipated next play from the team behind Prima Facie. Jessica Parks is a smart Crown Court Judge at the top of her career. Behind the robe, she is a karaoke fiend, a loving wife and a supportive parent. When an event threatens to throw her life completely off balance, can she hold her family upright? Writer Suzie Miller and director Justin Martin reunite following their global phenomenon Prima Facie, with this searing examination of modern motherhood and masculinity.

 

 

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Filed Under: Claremont 5, Culture Vulture, Films, Glendale, Monica Film Center, Newhall, Santa Monica, Theater Buzz, Town Center 5

The bio-documentary JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE opens tomorrow.

April 2, 2025 by Jordan Deglise Moore 2 Comments

Tomorrow we’ll be opening Janis Ian: Breaking Silence, the new documentary about the singer-songwriter. Filmmaker Varda Bar-Kar will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:00 o’clock shows on Thursday, April 3 at the Laemmle NoHo and April 4 and 5 at the Monica Film Center, as well as after the 1:00 o’clock show at the Laemmle Glendale on April 5.  Ms. Ian will join her for the NoHo and Santa Monica screenings. The filmmaker is also featured on the latest episode of Raphael Sbarge and Greg Laemmle’s video podcast Inside the Arthouse.

Director’s Statement: “The pandemic began when I finished my music documentary Fandango at the Wall (HBO/MAX), about a transformative musical convergence at the border between the United States and Mexico. Before Fandango, I had made another music documentary called Big Voice (Netflix) about a high school choir director and his most advanced ensemble. I love experimenting with the alchemy of combining film with music and wanted to continue working in that genre.

“Conversations about identity and how we identify were buzzing at that time. I considered my own identity. How do I identify? Do I feel represented in mainstream media? I resist defining my identity since definitions mainly serve to box us in. I am a free thinker, a bisexual woman, born Jewish, now with a Buddhist bent, and an artist. Like all artists, I am an outsider. I am capable, a roll-up-your-sleeves can-do-it kind of person, and I am an optimist. I don’t see many women like me represented in the media.

“I sat with the question, ‘If I made a film about a female artist with whom I closely identify, who would she be?’ Janis Ian popped into my mind. Her name hit me like a lightning strike. Yet I knew nothing about her outside of a lingering high school memory of listening to her masterful album Between the Lines and crying because her music penetrated my isolation, making me feel seen and heard. Her music assured me that I was not alone. Her music meant the world to me at that time.

“Through research, I discovered that Janis Ian has a significant body of work spanning 60 years. I compiled lengthy playlists of my favorite of her songs – many I had never heard before. I discovered she had written a riveting autobiography called Society’s Child. I could not put the
book down. I learned that not only has Janis made significant contributions to the music world, but she is also a social justice champion and an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. She has endured tremendous hardships and overcome them one after another. Her story of commitment to
artistry and incredible resilience inspired me.

“How could it be that a film had not yet been made about her? This might sound crazy, and maybe it is, but I felt it was my destiny to make a film about Janis.

“I am forever grateful that Janis entrusted me with her magnificent musical story, and I am excited to share it with the world. I am also thankful to my unstoppable producing team and creative collaborators for working with me to overcome a myriad of obstacles and challenges to bring Janis Ian’s story to the screen so that today’s audiences can feel seen and heard just as I did when I listened to Between the Line so many years ago.”

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