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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

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: ISABELLA KELLY-RAMIREZ: WHO IS SHE? in Santa Monica

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Laemmle’s Art in the Arthouse presents ISABELLA KELLY-RAMIREZ: WHO IS SHE? Explore the bold, dynamic works of Kelly-Ramirez on Wednesday, September 5 in our intimate theatre setting. Our special event features a slideshow on the big screen, artist talk, and refreshments. Meet Isabella and stay for the wine, cheese, and conversation Art in the Arthouse is known for. A portion of the sales benefit the Laemmle Foundation and its support of humanitarian and environmental causes in Los Angeles.

About the Exhibit

Isabella Kelly-Ramirez creates paintings and collages that introduce a host of fascinating females. Modern-day saints and superheroes, champions of the avant-garde, and fashionable figures to be reckoned with; these are icons of a new mythology from the imagination of the artist. Her arresting collages are playful acts of defiance. Kelly-Ramirez coopts images from fashion and art magazines, repurposing them to create surreal urban legends and ironic emblems of commercialism.

The works address the unattainable standards of beauty in fashion and life by reconstituting mainstream imagery into something quirkier and more humane. Kelly-Ramirez’s visual world continues in the striking paintings framed in soft sculpture. Bright, colorful portraits of humanoid figures appear in whimsical, unearthly settings. Somehow this creative, alternative place is more human, more generous, and more authentic than our curated “reality.”

Isabella Kelly-Ramirez lives and works in Los Angeles. Born in Santa Barbara, she has been involved in the art and theatre communities since she was a child. She received her B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2008 and works primarily in painting, collage, soft sculpture, and assemblage—with a pop surrealist flair.

– Stacey Ravel Abarbanel, Curator

Artist Reception

RSVP HERE

MONICA FILM CENTER
Wednesday, September 5, 7-9pm
1332 2nd Street
Santa Monica, CA 90401

Refreshments will be provided

 

 

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

Q&As with DAMASCUS COVER book author Howard Kaplan and film director Daniel Berk on Friday, July 20th and Sunday, July 22 in West LA

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There will be Q&As with DAMASCUS COVER book author Howard Kaplan and film director Daniel Berk at the Laemmle Royal in West LA on Friday, July 20th following the 7pm show, and on Sunday, July 22 after the 4:10pm show.

About the film:
Ari Ben-Zion, haunted by the death of his son, is assigned by the Mossad to smuggle a chemical weapons scientist out of Syria. Within days his mission goes wrong. To survive Ari reaches out to a deep cover agent code named the Angel. He soon discovers that he is a pawn in a much bigger plan.

LAEMMLE LIVE presents: McCabe’s Guitar Shop Sunday, August 5

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RSVP ON EVENTBRITE
This is a Free Event

We are SOLD OUT
Email sheryl@laemmle.com
For wait list information

They’re back! Our good friends from McCabe’s grace us once again with their musical gifts on Sunday, August 5. LAEMMLE LIVE presents McCabe’s Guitar Shop for a free pop-up celebration of all things guitar and other choice instruments. McCabe’s renowned teachers and students share their wit and wisdom with lively performances and demos. Hosted by Head of Music School Denny Croy at the Monica Film Center.

It began in 1958. Furniture designer Gerald McCabe repaired guitars for his folk-singer wife’s musician friends who had no local music store. Gerald and his friend Ed Kahn decided to open a small music shop on Pico Blvd in Santa Monica. They began repairing instruments, selling folk music books and records, carrying Mexican guitars and old banjos. Word spread and local musicians began hanging out, relishing one of the only guitar shops in the Southern California area. One of those young musicians was Bob Riskin. Bob started as an employee in 1960. In the early 60’s lessons and classes were added. In 1969 McCabe’s began presenting live concerts. Bob Riskin became sole owner in 1986. Bob and his wife Espie are still running McCabe’s today! Over the years, musicians from all aspects of the musical spectrum, from gifted amateurs to seasoned professionals, have come to appreciate McCabe’s friendly, knowledgeable sales staff, expert repair shop and world class teaching staff.  Join us for memorable music from a local treasure!

EVENT DETAILS
Sunday, August 5, 2018
11:00 AM
Monica Film Center

RSVP USING EVENTBRITE
This is a Free Event

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

FAR FROM THE TREE Director Rachel Dretzin and Author Andrew Solomon in Person at the Royal.

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FAR FROM THE TREE director Rachel Dretzin and author Andrew Solomon will attend several screenings opening weekend at the Royal for introductions and/or Q&A’s: Thursday, July 26th after the 7 PM screenings; Friday, July 27th Q&A after the 5:30 PM and 7:45 PM shows; Saturday, July 28th for the 10:00AM (Mr. Solomon will sign his books after a Q&A); 1:00PM (intro only); Q&A’s after the 5:30 PM and 7:45 PM shows. Actress Kyra Sedwick will moderate the Friday, Q&A.

The first 50 ticketholders to arrive for the Saturday, July 28th, 10AM screening will receive a free copy of Mr Solomon’s book, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity. Mr. Solomon will sign copies of the book after the screening and Q&A.

Click here for tickets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_1bVhenzZ0

Horror-Thriller SUMMER OF 84 Q&A’s Opening Weekend.

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The SUMMER OF 84 filmmakers and select cast members will participate in a Q&A after the 9:55 PM screening at the Royal on Friday, August 10. On Saturday, August 11 the Dead Right Horror Trivia Night Team will host the screening with actor Caleb Emery and Rebekah McKendry of Dead Right with an introduction and post-screening Q&A.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxj0mgS3fRg