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San Gabriel Valley: Voice Your Support for Laemmle at the Azusa City Council Vote on Monday, 5/16 at 7:30PM

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UPDATE 6/3/2016: Azusa City Council to RECONSIDER the Laemmle Theatre Mixed-Use project for Block 36 on Monday, June 6th at 7PM! Click here for details.

ONE FINAL UPDATE: Unfortunately, the Azusa City Council did NOT select our project for Downtown Azusa.

Sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to speak and email. The overwhelming display of public support at the council meeting warmed our little lamb hearts. We appreciate all of you.

On Monday, May 16th at 7:30PM the Azusa City Council is scheduled to vote on our proposal to build a new movie theater in Downtown Azusa and we hope you’ll support us by speaking at the meeting! Skip to meeting details.

The proposed “Laemmle Theatre Mixed-Use Project” includes a five screen, 300 seat movie theater (with programming similar to our Pasadena venue), 108 apartment units, retail/restaurant space, an above ground parking garage, and an outdoor plaza. Our project would occupy “Block 36” at the southeast corner of East Foothill Boulevard and North Azusa Avenue in Downtown Azusa.

City Council will choose between our project and a competing project that includes a bowling alley instead of a movie theater. Some of the competitive bowling players are definitely up for that, they’ve been researching ‘best bowling ball for a stroker‘ so they get themselves to the top of the leaderboard (that hasn’t even been built yet!). There has been a lot of talk on both sides, so we are in two minds about whether to choose the bowling alley or the bright lights of a Laemmle theater!

A new Laemmle theater in Azusa would operate in addition to our existing Pasadena and Claremont venues allowing us to bring more independent, foreign, and documentary films to audiences in the San Gabriel and Pomona Valley areas.

Fans of more mainstream films needn’t worry. You’ll still be able to catch big Hollywood movies like CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR at the nearby Foothill 10 operated by Regency Theatres. We’ll focus on indie and art film. We think there’s enough room for BOTH our theaters to thrive.

Here’s the important part: Public support for the project at this City Council meeting is critical. You can help by attending. Supporters wishing to speak must arrive before 7:30pm to fill out and submit a Blue Card.

The Azusa City Council meeting is scheduled for 7:30pm on Monday, May 16th:

Azusa City Auditorium
213 East Foothill Boulevard,
Azusa, CA 91702 (map)

If you can’t attend, you can still help by emailing Azusa Council Members in advance so they have written evidence that the community supports this project. Please email council members before May 16th. Include City Manager Troy Butzlaff in all correspondence to ensure your support is noted in the official record.

Here are their email addresses:

City Manager Troy Butzlaff – [email protected]

Mayor Joseph Romero Rocha – [email protected]
Mayor Pro Tem Angel A. Carrillo – [email protected]
Council Member Edward J. Alvarez – [email protected]
Council Member Robert Gonzales – [email protected]
Council Member Uriel E. Macias – [email protected]

Please share this post with any other community members interested in voicing their opinion on this exciting project!

We look forward to seeing you at the meeting.

LAEMMLE fans: Would you like to see a new Laemmle theater in Azusa?!

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UPDATED 6/3/2016: Azusa City Council to RECONSIDER the Laemmle Theatre Mixed-Use project for Block 36 on Monday, June 6th at 7PM! Click here for details.

ONE FINAL UPDATE: Unfortunately, the Azusa City Council did NOT select our project for Downtown Azusa.

Sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to speak and email. The overwhelming display of public support at the council meeting warmed our little lamb hearts. We appreciate all of you. <3 <3 <3

azusaUPDATE: On Monday, May 16th at 7:30PM the Azusa City Council is scheduled to vote on our proposal to build a new movie theater in Downtown Azusa and we hope you’ll support us by speaking at the meeting! Click here for details.

Our proposal to build a movie theater in Downtown Azusa has been selected as a finalist by the Azusa City Council!

In November, the City of Azusa requested proposals for a mixed use development opportunity on the southeast corner of East Foothill Boulevard and North Azusa Avenue in Downtown Azusa (referred to as “Block 36”). Our project was selected as one of two finalists in this process!

Our proposal includes a five screen movie theater (with programming similar to our Pasadena venue), 108 residential units, retail/restaurant space, and an outdoor plaza. It is estimated that our theater will draw approximately 75,000 people per year to Downtown Azusa.

Public support and outreach for the project and at upcoming City Council meetings is critical. You can help by emailing Azusa Councilmembers in advance so they have written evidence that the community supports this project. Please email them before their next meeting on May 2nd. Here are their email addresses:

Mayor Joseph Romero Rocha – [email protected]
Mayor Pro Tem Angel A. Carrillo – [email protected]
Council Member Edward J. Alvarez – [email protected]
Council Member Robert Gonzales – [email protected]
Council Member Uriel E. Macias – [email protected]
City Manager Troy Butzlaff – [email protected]

Thanks for your support!

OUR LAST TANGO opens Friday in Santa Monica and Pasadena! Enter to win the Soundtrack on CD!

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OUR LAST TANGO is a story of love between the two most famous dancers in tango’s history. And the story of their tremendous love of tango. María Nieves Rego (81) and Juan Carlos Copes (84) met when they were 14 and 17, and they danced together for nearly fifty years.

In OUR LAST TANGO Juan and María tell their story to a group of young tango dancers and choreographers from Buenos Aires, who transform the most beautiful, moving and dramatic moments of Juan and Maria’s lives into incredible tango-choreographies.

OUR LAST TANGO opens Friday, April 22nd at the Monica Film Center in Santa Monica and the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena.

Enter to Win the Soundtrack

The film’s soundtrack features original music by Luis Borda, Sexteto Mayor and Gerd Baumann. We’re giving away three soundtrack CDs! Enter to win using the form below!

OUR LAST TANGO CD Soundtrack Giveaway

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmnY22lNr6M

DOUGH director John Goldschmidt: “The best way to challenge prejudice is through comedy.” Plus a video message to audiences from Pauline Collins, the Oscar-nominated female lead of DOUGH.

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In the comedy DOUGH, which we’ll open April 29 at our West L.A., Pasadena and Encino theaters and May 6 in Claremont, curmudgeonly widower Nat Dayan (Jonathan Pryce) obstinately clings to his way of life and his livelihood as a Kosher bakery shop owner in London’s East End. With a dwindling clientele and the pressures of encroaching big box stores, Nat reluctantly enlists the help of teenager Ayyash, who has a secret side gig selling marijuana to help his struggling immigrant mother make ends meet. When Ayyash accidentally drops his stash into the mixing dough, the challah starts flying off the shelves and an unlikely friendship forms between the old Jewish baker and his young Muslim apprentice. DOUGH is a warmhearted and gently humorous story about overcoming prejudice and finding redemption in unexpected places.

Dough (7)
Pauline Collins, Jerome Holder and Jonathan Pryce. Photo courtesy of Menemsha Films.

Director John Goldschmidt said this about his film: “Some of the most innovative and successful independent films have been comedies with contemporary social themes. I was looking for such a story when I met the screenwriter Jez Freedman. He pitched DOUGH, a story about the unlikely friendship of an old Jewish baker and a young Muslim cannabis dealer. What I liked was the ‘buddy movie’ concept. Two guys as different as can be, divided by race, religion, and age. Both prejudiced about the other, but needing each other to survive. This is a universal story, which will be understood everywhere. Tensions between Muslims and Jews are increasing worldwide and the best way to challenge prejudice is through comedy.

Dough (10)
Pauline Collins and Jonathan Pryce. Photo courtesy of Menemsha Films.

“The story is set in a multi-cultural part of London and is a film of contrasts. From the ethnic High Street shops, to the corporate environment of a big supermarket chain. From middle class suburbia, to a grotty housing estate. From the staid adult community to the vibrant youth culture.
“But it’s the humanity of the film that connects with people everywhere. The characters touch and move the audience and the casting of the leading roles was paramount. Legendary theatre actor Jonathan Pryce as the old Jewish baker became a real father figure to first-time black actor Jerome Holder, who played the Muslim cannabis dealer. And I like to think that everyone, young and old, will leave the cinema with a smile on their face, and the word will spread about their enjoyment of DOUGH.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPAcqo7ZzlU

Bonus: Pauline Collins is DOUGH‘s female lead and she created this greeting to audiences:

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

Spanish Director Alex de la Iglesia in Person for Q&A’s after EL CRIMEN PERFECTO and MI GRAN NOCHE

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iglesiaFilmmaker Alex de la Iglesia will participate in Q&A’s after the 7:30 PM screening of A PERFECT CRIME at Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills on 4/13 and after the 4:30 PM screening of his new release MY BIG NIGHT at the Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills on 4/16.

MY BIG NIGHT [Mi Gran Noche] is an audaciously inventive ensemble comedy brimming with showbiz satire that received four GOYA nominations. It opens April 15th at the Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills and the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. Click here for tickets.

THE PERFECT CRIME [El Crimen Perfecto or Crimen Ferpecto] is De la Iglesia’s 2004 black comedy set in an upscale department store in Madrid. It screens at 7:30PM on April 13th at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills, NoHo 7 in North Hollywood, and Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. Click here for tickets.

AFERIM! Return Engagement at the Fine Arts Starts Friday with Special Screenings at the NoHo, Playhouse, Monica Film Center and Claremont 5 April 11-14

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Eastern Europe, 1835. Two riders cross a barren landscape in the middle of Wallachia. They are the gendarme Costandin and his son. Together they are searching for a gypsy slave who has run away from his nobleman master and is suspected of having an affair with the noble’s wife. While the unflappable Costandin comments on every situation with a cheery aphorism, his son takes a more contemplative view of the world.

Radu Jude’s brilliant third feature AFERIM! has been aptly compared to films as diverse as THE SEARCHERS, THE LAST DETAIL and PULP FICTION (the latter for its rambling, coarse and endlessly entertaining dialogue), but the film is ultimately a moving parable about late-feudal Europe developed from historical documents and songs: its power structures and hierarchies, people’s ideas of themselves and others, interaction with minorities and the resulting conflicts. A Balkan Western in black-and-white that brings the cacophony of the times strikingly to life and explores the thematic arcs that stretch into the present.

Cineuropa interviewed Mr. Jude on the occasion of his film’s inclusion at the Berlin Film Festival:

Cineuropa: These days, filmmakers prefer to shoot their films digitally; what persuaded you to return to film and black and white?


Radu Jude: DoP Marius Panduru and I decided that the film should be shot in black and white out of a wish to highlight the historical re-enactment artifice: we wanted to make the audience understand from the very beginning that what they are seeing is a subjective re-enactment, one carefully played out, but still only a re-enactment. We therefore tested different methods: a digital camera, one colour film and two types of black-and-white film. Comparing them, we concluded that the black-and-white film (namely, Kodak Double-X) was the most expressive and the one best suited for our project.

Information about Gypsy slavery was removed from the historical accounts published during the Romanian communist regime. What difficulties did you encounter in documenting the year 1835 and this particular topic?


It’s not really a subject lacking in documentation. There are several Rroma histories, studies and archives that also depict their slavery. Besides, our main historical consultant, Constanţa Vintilă-Ghiţulescu, helped us immensely by suggesting more titles of interest. I cannot say we faced major hurdles, but the past is obviously lost, and we can access only limited information. Starting from there, all one can do is try to create a sufficiently accurate image of the past.

Naturally, the biggest risk – and we have warned the audience of this risk through the way the film is made – is to forget that we are always involved in a process of interpretation. We interpret everything, starting from the reality around us that we access through our senses and brain, so of course we pass our historical reality through the same process. In this respect, I recommend the video installation created by Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan, Pacta sunt servanda (http://www.arnoldestefan.ro/art-projects/-pacta-sunt-servanda/). The installation shows how the same historical event, the Trianon peace treaty, is presented differently in history books from Hungary and Romania. This goes to show that when we speak of the past, we in fact speak of our perspective of the past. I hope this view is obvious in my film and that the vigilant cinemagoer will take note of it.

The events in the film take place 180 years ago, but many of the characters’ remarks are relevant to the present day. Is your film a satire of the present?


I truly believe what Johan Huizinga said: “We analyse every age for the sake of the promises it contains for the next age.” My film is about the relationship between the past and the present – or, even better rephrased, about the relationship of the present with the past.

The film’s conversations are peppered with sayings and aphorisms taken from the works of a number of Romanian and foreign authors from those times, whom you list in the closing credits. Why pay so much attention to the folkloric culture of the era?


I started by reading works from the 19th century in order to familiarise myself with the language and mentalities of those times (which, I think, are the true theme of the film). At one point, I found in Iordache Golescu’s works some beautiful sayings that were perfectly appropriate for one of the sequences in Aferim!. I used them in the screenplay, which I wrote together with Florin Lăzărescu, and then we found others that we used, gradually “stuffing” the story with quotes from the literature of those times. This was also a declaration of love for the Romanian language and a way to stress the “artificial construct” characteristic of the film.

https://vimeo.com/135831249

Q&A with Pulitzer Prize-Winning Food Critic Jonathan Gold Sunday, March 27 in Pasadena

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MORE Q&A’s ADDED: CITY OF GOLD filmmaker Laura Gabbert and subject Jonathan Gold will participate in Q&A’s following the 7:40 PM screening at the Monica Film Center in Santa Monica on Saturday, April 9 and after the 5:20 PM screening at the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena on Sunday, April 10.

Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold will participate in a Q&A following the 5:30PM screening of CITY OF GOLD on Sunday, March 27 at the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena.

Tickets are available here.

Last week we highlighted a few restaurants on Jonathan Gold’s list of 101 best that are near your local Laemmle. Check it out here.

CITY OF GOLD is now playing at the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena and Town Center in Encino. It opens March 25th at the Monica Film Center in Santa Monica and April 1 at the NoHo 7 in North Hollywood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__2uT1cZWkY

Culture Vulture Q2 2016: Opera, Dance, Theater and More, now also in Santa Monica!

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Prepare for a wealth of high art this April, May and June because we’ll be projecting some excellent stuff on screens at our Claremont, Beverly Hills, Encino, Pasadena and now Santa Monica locations as part of our ongoing Culture Vulture series.

We begin April with a new production The Damnation of Faust, Berlioz’s légende dramatique. Director Alvis Hermanis grapples with the complexity of bringing Faust to modern audiences, asking us to identify the Faust of our times. Seeing a modern equivalent to Faust’s intellectual rigor in the fascinating mind of Stephen Hawking, Hermanis sets Berlioz’s work on the futuristic eve of mankind’s first settlement on Mars.

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

Next we’ll have the Bolshoi Ballet’s The Taming of the Shrew. Many suitors dream of marrying the lovely, docile Bianca, but her father will not let anyone marry her before her elder sister, the ill-tempered shrew Katharina, is herself married. French choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot lands a coup with his adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy tailored specifically to the Bolshoi dancers, and achieves a magnetic two hours of breathtaking, nonstop dance unlike any other, portraying the Bolshoi’s audacity and energy in a completely new way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJTAMhtHZC4

Subsequent to that: Oscar Wilde’s much-loved masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the most enduring plays in British theatre. Performed shortly before Wilde fell foul of society’s unbending condemnation, this farcical comedy fizzes with wit as Wilde delights in debunking social pretensions and piercing the hypocrisy and pomposity of the Victorian Era. Recorded live from the Vaudeville Theatre on 8 October 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4UVgvzpUnU&app=desktop

After that we will screen Florence and the Uffizi Gallery, a multi-dimensional journey through the city that was the cradle of the Italian Renaissance. Get an exclusive tour through the most beautiful and representative works of art of the period from Michelangelo and Brunelleschi, to Leonardo and Botticelli, with a detailed central chapter dedicated to the treasure house containing their masterpieces: the Uffizi Gallery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIH9eqtzFM4

We’ll start May with Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov. Following the death of the Tsarevich Dmitry, Boris Godunov is persuaded to become Tsar of Russia. Boris, however, seems plagued by guilt. A greedy aristocrat and a restless young monk each plot to turn Boris’s fears to their advantage. Musorgsky based Boris on the play of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, published in 1831 but the censorial ban on which was only lifted in 1866. Pushkin’s play was loosely inspired by the true story of Boris Godunov, Tsar of Russia from 1598 to 1605.

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

 

Then we are excited to host screenings of a dance/sculpture/music hybrid, Journey in Sensuality: Anna Halprin & Rodin. Auguste Rodin said, “the world will only be happy when all people have the souls of artists.” After the international success of Breath Made Visible, Journey in Sensuality brings new insight into Halprin’s influential artistic work. Auguste Rodin’s sculptures and Halprin’s creative process come together with the music of composer Fred Frith in this poetic film of dances in nature.

https://vimeo.com/104396701

Based on the calls and email we’ve been getting, our most hotly anticipated Culture Vulture screening is Les Liaison Dangereuses. Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 novel of sex, intrigue and betrayal in pre-revolutionary France follows former lovers the Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont, who now compete in games of seduction and revenge. Merteuil incites Valmont to corrupt the innocent Cecile de Volanges before her wedding night but Valmont has targeted the peerlessly virtuous and beautiful Madame de Tourvel. While these merciless aristocrats toy with others’ hearts and reputations, their own may prove more fragile than they supposed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY7l51L1eQM

After that we’ll have Goya: Visions of Flesh and Blood. Heir to Velázquez, hero to Picasso, not only a brilliant observer of everyday life and Spain’s troubled past, Francisco Goya was a gifted portrait painter and social commentator par excellence. Discover Spain’s celebrated artist based on the National Gallery’s must-see exhibition Goya: The Portraits, originally captured as part of the acclaimed Exhibition on Screen series.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/154599374

At the end of May we’ll screen Concerto: A Beethoven Journey. Filmmaker Phil Grabsky is renowned for bringing some of the world’s most important art exhibitions to cinemas. Also famous for his In Search of… classical music documentaries, he has now returned his lens to the world of classical music with Concerto: A Beethoven Journey. Filmed over four years, Grabsky followed leading concert pianist Leif Ove Andsnes’s attempt to understand and interpret one of the greatest sets of works for piano ever written: Beethoven’s five piano concertos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=74&v=6u4hdY3ATRk

As we do at the beginning of each month, we’ll start June with an opera, in this Turandot. No man shall ever possess her – the Chinese princess Turandot sets three riddles for every man that comes to woo her. So far none have been able to solve the riddles, and have paid with their heads. Then an unknown prince achieves the impossible: he correctly answers all three questions. But Turandot is still unwilling to surrender to him. So the Prince is ready to lay down his life if she can find out his name by morning. Throughout the night, no one may sleep: everyone must try to discover his name…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m4aMgPdnO0&feature=youtu.be

We follow opera with dance: A sensational new dance event from the acclaimed choreographer Matthew Bourne and his Dance Company New Adventures, The Car Man is loosely based on Bizet’s popular opera (CARMEN) and has one of the most thrilling and instantly recognizable scores in classical music, brilliantly arranged by Terry Davies. The familiar 19th century Spanish cigarette factory becomes a greasy garage-diner in 1960’s America where the dreams and passions of a small-town are shattered by the arrival of a handsome stranger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL545D14C00BA0B1A2&v=tUSY3MtAvSM

The summer solstice finds us in London’s West End for Hangmen. In his small pub in the northern English town of Oldham, Harry (David Morrissey, The Walking Dead, State of Play) is something of a local celebrity. But what’s the second-best hangman in England to do on the day they’ve abolished hanging? Amongst the cub reporters and pub regulars dying to hear Harry’s reaction to the news, his old assistant Syd (Andy Nyman, Peaky Blinders, Death at a Funeral) and the peculiar Mooney (Johnny Flynn, Clouds of Sils Maria) lurk with very different motives for their visit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcpcMeJ-1Vc

We’ll end the first half of 2016 with one of the great masters: Leonardo Da Vinci: The Genius in Milan. Based on “Leonardo 1452- 1519,” one of the most decisive exhibitions ever to be held on Leonardo and the result of six years work by leading experts, Pietro Marani and M. Teresa Fiorio, divided into 12 sections, retracing with scientific rigor the multiple paths traveled by the mind of the genius: the foundation of drawing, the role of nature and science, comparison between the arts, reflection on the ancients, the utopian projects, anatomy and mechanics, the unity of knowledge, images of the divine, and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2JGljDx3tY