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Q&A’s for RESTORING TOMORROW, Inspiring Documentary About the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

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This just in…

RESTORING TOMORROW filmmaker Aaron Wolf will participate in Q&A’s at select screenings with a variety of special guests. Join the conversation. Join the movement. This is a special moment for all cultures to come together and join the discussion, leaving with hope and a drive to take action.

Confirmed Q&A’s at Encino Town Center after the 7:30PM screenings on August 24th, 25th and the 3PM screening on August 26th.

August 27th at 7:30PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts.

August 28th at 7:30PM at the Laemmle Glendale.

August 29th at 7:30PM at NoHo 7.

August 30th at 7:30PM at Pasadena Playhouse 7.

Rabbi Steve Leder will join Aaron for the August 26th and 27th screenings. Other special guests TBA.

https://vimeo.com/119387836

35th Anniversary Screenings of THE MAKIOKA SISTERS on Wednesday, August 22 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest offering in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program, Kon Ichikawa’s poignant family drama, THE MAKIOKA SISTERS.

One of the great Japanese masters, Ichikawa is perhaps less widely celebrated than his countrymen Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu. He began directing features in the 1940s, and his films The Burmese Harp, Fires on the Plain, Tokyo Olympiad, and others found passionate critical defenders.

One of his later films, THE MAKIOKA SISTERS, is adapted from a popular Japanese novel by Junichiro Tanizaki and follows the fortunes of four sisters from a wealthy family in Osaka. Set in the 1930s on the eve of World War II, the film stars Keiko Kishi, Yoshiko Sakuma, Sayuri Yoshinaga, and Yuko Kotegawa as the orphaned sisters, heirs in a wealthy manufacturing family. Their marriages and romantic relationships are a source of tension and jealousy.

The sumptuous art direction and costume design help to create the lush atmosphere of the film. Reviewing the film at the time of its American release, the Los Angeles Times’s Kevin Thomas called it “exquisitely, subtly sensual.”

John Powers of the L.A. Weekly agreed that “this is an uncommonly vibrant and beautiful film.”

And the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael called it “the most pleasurable movie I’ve seen in several months…the rich colors, the darkness, the low-key lighting—they’re intoxicating.”

THE MAKIOKA SISTERS (1983) screens on Wednesday, August 22, at 7pm in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

Format: Blu-ray

Cary Grant Double Feature on August 14th in NoHo, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a tribute to one of most popular stars in Hollywood history, Cary Grant, in two of his most entertaining movies.

The program, part of the Twofer Tuesday series of double bills (two-for-the-price-of one) features a 55th anniversary screening of CHARADE (1963) paired with a 70th anniversary screening of MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE (1948) at three Laemmle locations: the Royal, NoHo 7 and Playhouse 7.

Cary Grant is remembered for his elegance, casualness and charm As writer Tom Wolfe once put it, he is “consummately romantic and consummately genteel.” These two movies showcase all the facets of his timeless appeal.

MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE is a genial comedy adapted from a novel by Eric Hodges (screenplay by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama) about a married advertising executive (Grant) with two daughters in post-WWII Manhattan who decides to leave the crowded city for the country life.

Myrna Loy, one of the popular female stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, plays his disarming wife and, according to Leonard Maltin, “no one ever described room colors better than Loy!” Melvyn Douglas plays a “friend of the family” who causes comic complications for Grant.

Directed by H.C. Potter (‘The Farmer’s Daughter’) with black-and-white cinematography by the great James Wong Howe, the film was the inspiration for the Tom Hanks’s 1986 comedy ‘The Money Pit.’

CHARADE is a tongue-in-cheek thriller set in Paris with Audrey Hepburn as a recent widow being pursued by villainous thugs for a cache of stolen money involving her murdered husband.

Grant plays an American stranger allegedly “helping” Hepburn. Stylishly directed by Stanley Donen (‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ ‘Two for the Road’) and written by Peter Stone (‘1776,’ ‘The Taking of Pelham One Two Three’) and Marc Behm, the film is a cross between screwball black comedy and Hitchcockian suspense.

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called it “a fast-moving urbane entertainment,” with Variety citing Grant as the “suave master of romantic banter.” Grant and Hepburn make for a delightful team, and a terrific supporting cast features turns by three future Oscar winners, all in the supporting actor category: Walter Matthau, James Coburn and George Kennedy.

The Oscar-nominated music (Best Song) is by Henry Mancini. The film was a smash hit in 1963, and kept Grant in the top ten box office stars poll that year.

We present the Twofer Tuesday Cary Grant double bill as a refreshing movie tonic to help beat the summer heat. MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE plays at 5:00 pm and 9:30 pm; CHARADE at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, August 14 at the Royal, NoHo 7 and Playhouse 7.

Click here to buy tickets for the 5:00pm MR. BLANDINGS with the 7:00pm, CHARADE included. Click here to buy tickets for the 7:00pm CHARADE with the 9:30pm MR. BLANDINGS included.

CHARADE Format: DCP
MR. BLANDINGS Format: DVD

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: CALEY O’DWYER: SCORING MOVEMENT in NoHo

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ART IN THE ARTHOUSE proudly presents our latest NoHo exhibit CALEY O’DWYER: SCORING MOVEMENT. These bold, modern mixed media works are for sale and on display till October, 2018. Come on in and check out our gallery.

About the exhibit
CALEY O’DWYER is a practicing artist, writer and therapist based in Los Angeles at the Brewery Arts Complex. His body of work serves as unmistakable proof that the professional triangle of Art, Writing, and Therapy inform each other. In this series, O’Dwyer explores multiple selves through deft application in a variety of media. Each figure moves through space playing with time and boundaries, visually appearing as a horizontal musical score. Gouache and collage cutouts, and literal scratching to create and understand surface, are key aesthetics. The dynamic intersection of pluralism and the singular self through syncopation and movement is the result of O’Dwyer’s intelligent, clear vision.

As a licensed therapist, O’Dwyer works with artists and creatives. The “artist as therapist as artist” is a very real dialogue that plays itself through line and the duplication of lithe figures, both urban in their action and oceanic fresh in lime colors and tones.After earning an MFA in creative writing from UC IRVINE, O’Dwyer was awarded the Academy of American Poets Fellowship prize, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has been a recipient of a Helene Wurlitzer grant for poetry. He currently teaches creative writing at Antioch University in Los Angeles. O’Dwyer’s second book, Light, Earth and Blue, features poems written in response to the abstract expressionist paintings of MARK ROTHKO. The poems were featured at the TATE MODERN in London as part of a 2008 Rothko retrospective. Enjoy this exploration of the artist moving through a post-modern space.

– Joshua Elias, CURATOR

NoHo 7
5240 Lankershim Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91601
310-478-3836

 

 

Q&A’s with the PUZZLE Filmmaker this Weekend in Encino & Pasadena.

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PUZZLE director Marc Turtletaub will participate in Q&A’s at the Town Center on Friday, August 3 after the 4:10 and 7 PM screenings and at the Playhouse on Saturday, August 4 after the 4 and 7 PM screenings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl_SoMNi0rw

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: RAYMOND LOGAN: CARVING IN PAINT in Glendale

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ART IN THE ARTHOUSE  proudly presents the eye-popping exhibit RAYMOND LOGAN: CARVING IN PAINT at our sparkling new theatre, Laemmle Glendale.  The art is for sale and on display till October 2018. Stop by our new galleries at Laemmle’s newest theatre; no need to buy a movie ticket to view.

About the exhibit
Don’t call Raymond Logan a “realistic artist.” While his work depicts real-life subject matter, it is fundamentally grounded in abstraction and intuition. His true goal is to create a dialogue with you, the viewer, whereby mutual discovery and re-imagining of “the self” can take place. “Without the viewer, I am that proverbial tree in the forest,” he muses.

Raised locally, Logan developed as an artist in that wonderful vacuum known as childhood. As a young adult, he went on to graduate from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and proceeded to serve multiple tours of duty in graphic design and advertising. This cumulative history heavily influences his painting today, especially in the realm of color. After a twenty-year hiatus from art, a chance encounter with a Cézanne self-portrait in Nashville inspired Logan to pick up a brush again. He selected oil paint as his medium because of its fluidity and malleability, often referring to his painting style as “carving” rather than painting.

Engaging Logan’s work is either an exercise in mysticism or quantum mechanics, depending on your bent. Go up close and experience the chaotic interplay of color and texture that plays out on the quantum level. Pull back and the artistic detail miraculously resolves into a recognizable pattern; the cosmos is familiar once more. Logan is still a resident Angeleno, living in our midst with his wife and two ebullient and boundlessly optimistic sons. We are thrilled to present him and his work as our first Art in the Arthouse showcase here at the brand new Laemmle Glendale.

– Tish Laemmle, CURATOR

Laemmle Glendale
207 North Maryland Avenue
Glendale, CA 91206
310-478-3836

 

ROBIN WILLIAMS: COME INSIDE MY MIND: Q&A with the Composer.

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ROBIN WILLIAMS: COME INSIDE MY MIND soundtrack composer Adam Dorn will participate in a Q&A at the Playhouse after the 7 PM screening on Saturday, July 14.

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL 20th Anniversary Screenings on Wednesday, July 18 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest offering in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series: 20th anniversary screenings of the Academy Award-winning Best Foreign Language Film of 1998, Roberto Benigni’s LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.

The film was nominated for seven Oscars in all, including Best Picture of the year, an unusually strong showing for a foreign language film. It also won an Oscar for Benigni as Best Actor, the first time in the Academy’s 70-year history that a male actor had won the top prize for a foreign language performance.

Nicola Piovani also won for his lyrical musical score. In addition to its awards, the film scored an enormous success at the box office. It became the highest grossing foreign language film at the U.S. box office up to that point, and its success reverberated all over the world. With well over $200 million earned worldwide, it remains one of the most financially successful of all foreign language titles.

Benigni was primarily known as a comic actor and filmmaker when he decided to shift gears and tackle the dark realities of the Holocaust in this daring tragicomic fable. The first half of the film plays as a romantic comedy, with Benigni cast as a Jewish Italian bookshop owner who is determined to woo a spirited teacher (played by Benigni’s real-life wife, Nicoletta Braschi) despite formidable obstacles. After they marry and have a young son, the tragic realities of the Second World War intrude on their lives, as they are all sent to a Nazi concentration camp. In a desperate desire to save his son, Benigni’s Guido devises an elaborate game to keep the boy distracted from the horrors around him.

Benigni, who directed and wrote the screenplay with Vincenzo Cerami, said that he was inspired by the memoirs of a Jewish Auschwitz survivor named Rubino Romeo Salmoni, whose book, In the End, I Beat Hitler, told how a sense of dark humor helped him to transcend his enslavement. The cast of the film also includes Giorgio Cantarini as the couple’s young son, Giustino Durano as Guido’s beloved uncle, and veteran German actor Horst Buchholz as a German doctor who befriends Guido and his son in the camp.

Although there were a few critics who were discomfited by the film’s whimsical approach to a historical tragedy, most endorsed the film enthusiastically. The Washington Post’s Michael O’Sullivan called the film “sad, funny and haunting.” Kenneth Turan wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “its sentiment is inescapable, but genuine poignancy and pathos are also present, and an overarching sincerity is visible too.” Leonard Maltin hailed “a unique and beguiling fable that celebrates the human spirit.”

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL screens Wednesday, July 18, at 7pm at the Royal Theatre, Town Center, and Playhouse. Click here for tickets.

Format: Blu-ray