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Fourth Annual Tour de Laemmle is Sunday, July 23rd, 2017!

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Don’t be surprised if you see Greg Laemmle and 100+ other cyclists clip-clopping through a theater lobby this Sunday. They’re just rehydrating and taking a well-deserved break in the middle of their epic 135-mile bicycle tour of all eight Laemmle venues!

Our Fourth Annual Tour de Laemmle starts bright and early this Sunday, July 23rd. Participants leave the Monica Film Center in Santa Monica at 7:00AM before making their way to Beverly Hills, Claremont, Pasadena, Glendale, NoHo, Encino, West LA, and back to Santa Monica.

You can follow along from the comfort of your chair by visiting tourdelaemmle.com/share where riders will share their Instagram photos and tweets.

Our involvement with cycling events such as CicLAvia and Climate Ride stems not just from our love of the sport, but as a way to encourage alternative transportation and inspire creative thinking about our traffic and environmental challenges. In 2014, we stepped up to the plate by creating our own event.

As an avid cyclist and sustainability advocate, Greg Laemmle had always dreamed of traveling to each of his venues by bike in a single day. After researching the route, he soon recognized the cultural and historical import of many of the roads, pathways, and landmarks he discovered along the way. Realizing the potential value extended far beyond his original vision, he opened up the ride and invited the community to join him “on a 2-wheeled tour of L.A.’s richly diverse neighborhoods.” Find out more at tourdelaemmle.com!

25th Anniversary Screenings of INDOCHINE on Wednesday, July 19th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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For this month’s screening in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 25th anniversary screening of the Oscar-winning French film, INDOCHINE.

This sweeping epic about France’s troubled history in Southeast Asia was named best foreign language film of 1992, and Catherine Deneuve received an Oscar nomination (her only one) for her portrayal of a wealthy landowner who adopts a Vietnamese orphan.

TIME Magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “INDOCHINE sprawls and enthralls. It has the breadth and intelligence of the David Lean epics,” and he added, “In Catherine Deneuve, INDOCHINE has a star of epic glamour and gravity.”

The film spans 30 years from 1930 through the war of independence in the 1950s. Director Regis Wargnier brought impressive visual flair to the evocation of this society in transition.

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called the film “awesomely gorgeous, both in its landscapes and in its period-perfect settings and costumes.”

Wargnier filmed on location in Vietnam and Malaysia. The cast includes Vincent Perez, Jean Yanne, Dominique Blanc, and newcomer Linh Dan Pham.

INDOCHINE screens at 7pm on July 19th at the Royal in West L.A., the Town Center in Encino, and the Playhouse in Pasadena. Presented on DVD. Click here for tickets.

This screening is the latest installment of our Anniversary Classics Abroad series, presented the third Wednesday of each month. Louis Malle’s MURMUR OF THE HEART is coming up on August 16th.

Q&A’s with the TYRUS Filmmaker July 17-19 at the Ahrya Fine Arts, NoHo, and Playhouse.

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TYRUS director Pamela Tom will participate in Q&A’s after all three Laemmle screenings: July 17 at the Fine Arts, July 18 at the Playhouse, and July 19 at the NoHo. Click here for tickets.

TYRUS is a tour-de-force documentary about the Guangzhou-born, L.A.-based visual artist Tyrus Wong, his breathtaking scope of work across multiple artistic mediums, and his personal journey navigating racial bigotry in 20th century America.

The film takes the audience on a remarkable journey – from his birthplace of Guangzhou, China in 1910 to the boarding houses of LA’s old Chinatown and the studios of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The film explores his formative years as a young WPA artist and the influence of Sung Dynasty art on his work.

Mr. Wong passed away in December at 106 years old but we see him in the documentary still vibrant, flying his magnificent creations high above the Pacific Ocean – the same waters he crossed as a young boy over 95 years ago.

The film includes original interviews of Tyrus Wong, guest interviews, archival footage & photos, clips and concept art from early Hollywood movies and over 80 years of Tyrus Wong artwork – much of it rare and never before seen. TYRUS captures the richness and texture of Tyrus’s career while also revealing the inner life and character of this rare individual.

Interviewees include Tyrus Wong, best selling writer Lisa See, animation artists and writers Don Hahn, Charles Solomon, Eric Goldberg, John Canemaker, Paul Felix, Milton Quon, art curators Sonia Mak, Bill Stern, Ellen Harrington, Mark Johnson, California watercolor expert Gordon McLelland and Hollywood film historian Joe Musso.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTpq1iy0phM

TYRUS premiered at the 42nd Telluride Film Festival and has garnered awards at the San Diego Asian Film Festival (Audience), Hawaii Int’l Film Festival (Audience), Newport Beach Film Festival (Audience), DisOrient Film Festival (Best Feature Documentary), Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (Special Jury Prize), Cintopia Film Festival (Best Director), Boston Asian American Film Festival (Audience) and Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival (Best Feature Documentary).

Pamela Tom is a writer, director and producer whose work includes documentary and narrative film and television. Tom served as a production executive at KCET and was the post-production producer on the BBC/PBS national series WW2: Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, The Nazis, and the West and the network producer on Wired Science, a PBS national primetime series produced in partnership with Wired magazine. She was also the field producer on the PBS pilot, Becoming the Buddha in Los Angeles.

Tom’s award-winning narrative short film Two Lies, about a divorced Chinese woman who has plastic surgery to make her eyes rounder, screened at hundreds of film festivals including the Sundance Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, the Smithsonian Institution, and aired on numerous PBS stations, including KCET, WNET and WGBH.

THE REAGAN SHOW Q&A’s Friday and Saturday at the Playhouse.

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THE REAGAN SHOW co-writer Josh Alexander will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:30 PM screenings at the Playhouse on Friday, June 30 and Saturday, July 1. Dan Fierman of MTV News will moderate on Friday and Akiva Gottlie of the International Documentary Association will moderate on Saturday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07BHVGm-Y6s

FOOD EVOLUTION Q&A’s this Weekend in Santa Monica and Pasadena with Filmmaker Scott Hamilton and Special Guests.

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FOOD EVOLUTION filmmaker Scott Hamilton will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:30 PM screening at the Monica Film Center on Friday, June 30 and after the 10:45 AM show at the Playhouse on Saturday, July 1. He will be joined by Pam Ronald (Professor, Plant Pathology & the Genome Center, UC Davis) at the Santa Monica screening and Dr. Emma Naluyima (Ugandan smallholder organic farmer & veterinarian) at both screenings.

July 4th Twofer Tuesday Double Bill of THE MUSIC MAN and YANKEE DOODLE DANDY in Pasadena, NoHo, and Beverly Hills!

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a star-spangled double feature on the 4th of July in the popular monthly Twofer Tuesdays program – the 75th anniversary of Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), paired with the 55th anniversary of The Music Man (1962). Both films represent unabashed celluloid tributes to the American spirit.

And so you won’t miss fireworks, we screen the double feature (two films, one admission) as a special holiday matinee on July 4 at three locations: Ahrya Fine Arts, NoHo 7 and Pasadena Playhouse 7. Yankee Doodle Dandy at 1:00 pm; The Music Man at 3:30 pm. Presented on blu-ray.

Click here for tickets.

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY is the musical biopic of Broadway showman George M. Cohan, showcasing the Oscar-winning performance of screen legend James Cagney (Best Actor). The rousing patriotic musical was released during the early months of WWII, and was designed to lift the American psyche, which it accomplished resoundingly.

The film was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Director (Michael Curtiz), and Supporting Actor (Walter Huston, playing Cohan’s vaudevillian father). Roger Ebert noted, “the greatness of the film rests entirely in Cagney’s performance. While he’s in full sail, as in “Give My Regards to Broadway” or “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” it’s like regarding a force of nature.” And Cohan himself, still alive at the time, is reputed to have said of Cagney’s performance, “My God, what an act to follow.”

THE MUSIC MAN is the colorful screen adaptation of Meredith Willson’s Tony-winning Broadway musical, preserving the triumphant stage performance of Robert Preston in the greatest role of his career. Pauline Kael aptly observed, “the star, Robert Preston, has a few minutes of fast patter—conmanship set to music—that constitute one of the high points in the history of American musicals.”

Critics and public alike at the height of the Cold War embraced the ebullient celebration of early twentieth-century small town Americana, and the film was a box-office smash. Produced and directed by Morton Da Costa (Auntie Mame), with Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett, Paul Ford, Hermione Gingold and a future Oscar-winning director, seven year old Ron Howard. Nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Both films feature the craftsmanship of Warner Bros. staff composer and musical arranger Ray Heindorf, who won his first Academy Award for Yankee Doodle Dandy, and his third and final Oscar for The Music Man twenty years later. Additionally, the two musicals were inducted into the National Film Registry for “historical, cultural, and aesthetic significance.” Here is a rare opportunity to see them back on the big screen.

One Night Only! Stephen Fry’s THE HIPPOPOTAMUS, with Pre-recorded Q&A, June 28 at the Playhouse, Town Center, and Ahrya Fine Arts.

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The gifted British actor Stephen Fry first came to the attention of American audiences with his role as the title character in the 1997 bio-pic Wilde. He has enjoyed a brilliant career ever since, and not just in films. One of his novels has just been adapted into a feature film.

The Hippopotamus is the story of a poet who is summoned to his friend’s country manor to investigate a series of unexplained miracles. Three-time Olivier Award-winner Roger Allam (Endeavor, The Queen, V for Vendetta) stars as the disgruntled, cantankerous, semi-famous poet Ted Wallace who is hired to investigate strange doings at Lord and Lady Logan’s country manor, Swafford Hall. Golden Globe Winner Matthew Modine (Stranger Things, Short Cuts, Full Metal Jacket) plays the stupendously rich and gregarious Lord Michael Logan. Fiona Shaw (five Harry Potter movies) co-stars as the doting mother Lady Logan. Tim McInnerny (Notting Hill, Game of Thrones) plays the flamboyant and gullible theater director Oliver Mills. The film is directed by John Jencks and produced by Jay Taylor and Alexa Seligman.

Each The Hippopotamus screening will include an exclusive post-screening Q&A with Stephen Fry, actor Roger Allam, and director John Jencks which was captured live on May 28, 2017. The Hippopotamus screens at 7:30pm on Wednesday, June 28th at the Playhouse, Town Center, and Ahrya Fine Arts. Click here for tickets.

 

Twofer Tuesday: A Hitchcock Double Feature of SABOTEUR (1942) and FRENZY (1972) on June 6th!

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics series present two of the less frequently revived films from the Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock: a 75th anniversary screening of the World War II-era thriller, SABOTEUR, and a 45th anniversary screening of one of his final films, FRENZY. See two films for the price of one on June 6th at the Ahrya Fine Arts, NoHo 7, and Pasadena Playhouse 7. Presented on DCP.

Click here to buy tickets to the 5pm show of SABOTEUR, admission to the 7:20pm FRENZY is included. Click here to get tickets to the 7:20pm show of FRENZY, admission to the 9:45pm SABOTEUR is included.

Both films are variations on one of Hitchcock’s favorite themes, that of the wrong man in jeopardy—a story that he first explored in one of his early British classics, The 39 Steps, and that he reworked in such American films as Spellbound, Strangers on a Train, and North by Northwest.

In Saboteur Robert Cummings plays a munitions factory worker suspected of setting a destructive industrial fire and forced to go on the lam to prove his innocence. The tart and witty screenplay was penned by Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison, and Dorothy Parker and centers on a conspiracy by a group of softspoken but sinister American Fascists. The Statue of Liberty finale is one of Hitchcock’s memorable set pieces. Priscilla Lane, Otto Kruger, and Norman Lloyd costar. The New York Times called it “a swift, high-tension film.”

In Frenzy, Hitchcock filmed in his native England for the first time in more than two decades. Jon Finch plays the innocent man accused of a series of grisly murders by the notorious “Necktie Strangler.” British actors Barry Foster, Anna Massey, Billie Whitelaw, Alec McCowen, and Vivien Merchant costar. This thriller was written by acclaimed playwright Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth) and received the best reviews of Hitchcock’s late career. Roger Ebert noted that “Frenzy is a return to old forms for the master of suspense,” and Leonard Maltin declared, “All classic Hitchcock elements are here, including delicious black humor, several astounding camera shots.”