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“Now, there’s nothing to be nervous about. I’ve flown thousands of miles and I can tell you it’s a lot safer than crossing the street!” ~ 50th anniversary screening of the mother of all disaster movies, AIRPORT.

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On Wednesday, December 15, at 7 PM at the Royal Theatre, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a (slightly belated) 50th anniversary screening of the melodrama that launched the all-star disaster movie craze, Ross Hunter’s production of Airport. Set during a fierce winter snowstorm at and around a Chicago airport, and with the added complication of a mad suicide bomber aboard a jet headed for Rome, the film was full of spectacle and a heady mix of tempestuous subplots. It earned 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay, and won the award for Best Supporting Actress Helen Hayes as a feisty stowaway aboard the plane headed for disaster.

David Newman, son of Airport composer Alfred Newman, will be in attendance.

"Now, there's nothing to be nervous about. I've flown thousands of miles and I can tell you it's a lot safer than crossing the street!" ~ 50th anniversary screening of the mother of all disaster movies, AIRPORT.

Multiple past and future Oscar winners were also in the cast, including Burt Lancaster, George Kennedy, Van Heflin, and Maureen Stapleton, along with “king of cool” Dean Martin, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean Seberg, Barbara Hale, Dana Wynter, Lloyd Nolan, and Barry Nelson. The film was written and directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker George Seaton (Miracle on 34th Street, The Country Girl, The Counterfeit Traitor). It was adapted from the best-selling novel by Arthur Hailey and also earned nominations for Best Cinematography, Art Direction, Film Editing, and Sound. It also marked the final Oscar nomination for composer Alfred Newman, who died shortly before the film opened. It was Newman’s 45th nomination in a remarkable career that included nine previous Oscar wins (for such diverse films as The King and I, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, and The Song of Bernadette).

"Now, there's nothing to be nervous about. I've flown thousands of miles and I can tell you it's a lot safer than crossing the street!" ~ 50th anniversary screening of the mother of all disaster movies, AIRPORT.

Although in essence an old-fashioned melodrama, the film broke new ground in several areas. The idea of a suicide bomber, a desperate and disgruntled construction worker, was a novel plot point in 1970. Although the movie was G rated, it dealt with extramarital romances in a nonjudgmental way that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. And its formula of an all-star cast of characters in jeopardy set the model for other disaster movies of the 70s, including The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, and Earthquake, not to mention three sequels and the hugely successful parody Airplane!

"Now, there's nothing to be nervous about. I've flown thousands of miles and I can tell you it's a lot safer than crossing the street!" ~ 50th anniversary screening of the mother of all disaster movies, AIRPORT.
AIRPORT, Dean Martin, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean Seberg, Burt Lancaster, Lloyd Nolan, Maureen Stapleton, Helen Hayes, Van Heflin, Dana Wynter, Barry Nelson, Barbara Hale, George Kennedy, George Seaton and Ross Hunter, 1970

The movie grossed a phenomenal $100 million (equivalent to more than $650 million today), making it the highest grossing picture in Universal’s history up to that time. When it had its TV network premiere three years later, it also broke records. Although reviews at the time were mixed, Variety declared good-naturedly, “Based on the novel by Arthur Hailey… with a cast of stars as long as a jet runway, and adapted by George Seaton in a glossy, slick style, Airport is a handsome, often dramatically involving” film. Or as Leonard Maltin put it, “Grand Hotel plot formula reaches latter-day zenith in ultra-slick, old-fashioned movie that entertains in spite of itself.”

Special guests and other surprises will enhance this fun-filled holiday screening.

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF Christmas Eve Sing-Alongs! Tickets Now on Sale.

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After a two year hiatus, we are pleased to announce the return of a tradition we began in 2008, Christmas Eve Sing-along FIDDLER ON THE ROOF screenings. We’re showing the classic musical at our Newhall, Pasadena, West L.A. and North Hollywood theaters, so you don’t even have to venture too far from your shtetl. For safety’s sake, we’ll have reserved seating, one-seat lateral spacing between parties, reduced capacity, and we’ll all sing with our masks on. Song lyrics on screen, in case you don’t know ’em by heart.
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF Christmas Eve Sing-Alongs! Tickets Now on Sale.

Belt out your holiday spirit … or your holiday frustrations. Either way, you’ll feel better as you croon along to all-time favorites like “TRADITION,” “IF I WERE A RICH MAN,” “TO LIFE,” “SUNRISE SUNSET,” “DO YOU LOVE ME?” and “ANATEVKA,” among many others.

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF Christmas Eve Sing-Alongs! Tickets Now on Sale.

We encourage you to come in costume! Guaranteed fun for all. Children are welcome (FIDDLER is rated “G”) though some themes may be challenging for young children.

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF Christmas Eve Sing-Alongs! Tickets Now on Sale.
In discussing the return of FIDDLER this year, Greg Laemmle asks everyone who is buying tickets to consider the teaching from the Talmud (Shevuot 39A), “All Israel is responsible for one another.” There are things we can do (voluntarily, and without mandate) to make these screenings safer. Wear your mask while singing. Get vaccinated, and if already vaccinated, get a booster shot. Make sure you are feeling healthy before venturing out into public. And consider taking a home test before the screening. COVID-19 is real. There are things we can do as a community, however, to show care and concern for the health and well being of one another. We do not diminish our individual rights by acknowledging our communal responsibility. To paraphrase a favorite aphorism from Pirkei Avot, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  But if I am only for myself, what am I?  And if not at this year’s FIDDLER ON THE ROOF Sing-a-Long, then when?”
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF Christmas Eve Sing-Alongs! Tickets Now on Sale.

WRITING WITH FIRE Q&A with the filmmakers and Kenneth Turan.

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Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, co-directors of the double Sundance-winning film WRITING WITH FIRE, will participate in a Q&A at the Royal following the 7:20 PM screening on Thursday, December 2. Film critic Kenneth Turan will moderate.

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

‘Y Tu Mamá También’ 20th Anniversary Screenings Wednesday, December 8, 7 PM at the Royal, Playhouse, Glendale & Newhall.

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On December 8 we’ll screen our final Anniversary Classics Abroad film of the year — the modern classic Y Tu Mamá También — and stay tuned. We hope to have dates soon for both Airport and Mommie Dearest screening before year’s end.  We are also planning more Abroad titles for 2022.

Alfonso Cuarón’s sexy and provocative road movie, Y Tu Mamá También marked a homecoming as well as a breakthrough for Cuarón in 2001. After making his directorial debut a decade earlier in his native Mexico, Cuarón was drawn to Hollywood, where he earned strong reviews for A Little Princess and a modern-day reworking of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Then, however, Cuarón decided to return to Mexico to make a more personal film and he wowed the cinematic world with this coming-of-age drama. Y Tu Mamá También broke box office records in Mexico when it opened in the summer of 2001. It went on to win the Best Screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival and was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay the following year. Cuarón wrote the film with his brother Carlos Cuarón.

'Y Tu Mamá También' 20th Anniversary Screenings Wednesday, December 8, 7 PM at the Royal, Playhouse, Glendale & Newhall.

Cuarón cast two up-and-coming young actors, Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, as teenage friends from different social classes. The working class Julio (Bernal) and the upper class Tenoch (Luna) are friends and rivals. They both become infatuated with an older woman (Spanish actress Maribel Verdú) and invite her to join them on a road trip to a spectacular, secluded beach. She accepts and they embark on an adventure that turns out to be a funny, sexy and revelatory experience for all three of them. Much of the film was improvised by the actors, with Cuarón’s encouragement.

'Y Tu Mamá También' 20th Anniversary Screenings Wednesday, December 8, 7 PM at the Royal, Playhouse, Glendale & Newhall.

In addition to the luscious cinematography and the sexual candor (it was released unrated in the U.S.), the film features narration in the style of some of the European films that inspired Cuarón, particularly Truffaut’s Jules and Jim, another landmark movie about a ménage à trois. Reviews were almost universally glowing. In Newsweek David Ansen wrote, “The movie has an emotional kick that lingers like a primal memory.” Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum called the movie “sad, funny, sexy, and altogether marvelous.” The New York Times’ Elvis Mitchell concurred, describing Y Tu Mamá También as “fast, funny, unafraid of sexuality and finally devastating.”

'Y Tu Mamá También' 20th Anniversary Screenings Wednesday, December 8, 7 PM at the Royal, Playhouse, Glendale & Newhall.

The film’s success propelled Cuarón to the front ranks of contemporary directors. He went on to helm the best Harry Potter movie (The Prisoner of Azkaban), the dystopian Children of Men, and earned an Oscar for his direction of the sci-fi adventure Gravity. When he returned to Mexico to make the autobiographical Roma, he earned a second Oscar as Best Director.

Y Tu Mamá También will play for one night only at the Royal in West L.A., the Playhouse in Pasadena, Glendale, and Newhall December 8.

See IDA Documentary Awards Nominees at Laemmle: ‘Faya Dayi,’ ‘Writing with Fire,’ ‘Not Going Quietly,’ and more.

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The International Documentary Association just announced the nominees for its 37th annual awards, and we’re screening or soon to screen almost a dozen from this cinematic treasure trove:

FAYA DAYI is a triple nominee for Best Feature, Director and Cinematography and is available on Laemmle Virtual Cinema.

NOT GOING QUIETLY also garnered three nominations: Best Feature, Director and Writing. It, too, is on LVC.

We open the animated FLEE (Best Feature and Director) in January.

We have Best Feature nominee WOJNAROWICZ: F**K YOU F*GGOT F**KER  now on Laemmle Virtual Cinema.

We open Best Feature nominee WRITING WITH FIRE on November 26 at the Royal.

Pare Lorentz Award Winner and Best Cinematography nominee THE FIRST WAVE opens this Friday at the Monica Film Center. The filmmaker will attend for Q&A’s after the 7:30 PM screening on Saturday, November 20 and after the 4:40 screening on Sunday, November 21.

Best Cinematography nominee ASCENSION is available now on LVC.

Best Music Documentary Nominee LYDIA LUNCH is now on LVC.

We open Best Editing Nominee PROCESSION this Friday at our Glendale theater.

Finally, we open ABC News VideoSource Award Nominee LIKE A ROLLING STONE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BEN FONG-TORRES November 26 at the Monica Film Center.

See IDA Documentary Awards Nominees at Laemmle: 'Faya Dayi,' 'Writing with Fire,' 'Not Going Quietly,' and more.

A triple award winner at Sundance, the Albanian drama HIVE opens at the Royal and Playhouse this Friday, November 12. The filmmaker and lead actress will attend two Royal screenings for Q&As.

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Winner of the Audience, Directing and Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at Sundance earlier this year, HIVE is an intense, beautifully wrought drama based on the true story of Fahrije, an Albanian war widow coping with poverty and patriarchy. New York cinephiles turned out in force at the Film Forum last weekend following Manohla Dargis’ rave review in the Times. Headlined “In the Aftermath of War, a Survivor Finds Herself: In a tough, taut drama, the director Blerta Basholli explores the lives of women whose husbands went missing in the Kosovo War,” here’s an excerpt: “The spare, tightly wound drama HIVE opens with the movie equivalent of a hand grabbing your throat. An unsmiling woman with a hard, monumental profile stands alone next to a truck. People mill around nearby, murmuring indistinctly. Abruptly, the woman ducks under some police tape and into the truck, where she hastily begins unzipping one white body bag after another and just as quickly scanning their contents, her nose wrinkling at the exposed bundles of tattered clothing, remnants of missing persons. She’s soon ejected by a worker, but her search continues.
A triple award winner at Sundance, the Albanian drama HIVE opens at the Royal and Playhouse this Friday, November 12. The filmmaker and lead actress will attend two Royal screenings for Q&As.
Photo by Alexander Bloom.

“The woman, Fahrije (Yllka Gashi), is looking for her husband, one of the missing, who disappeared years ago during the Kosovo War. Now, with her two children and a disabled father-in-law, she struggles to keep the family going. She labors with the beehives that her husband once managed, selling jars of honey at a local market. Sales are modest and sometimes close to nonexistent, but the bees are her only means of scraping together a meager living. Every so often, she meets up with a women’s collective whose members face the same hurdles under the unhelpful watch of the town’s men. And she keeps looking for her husband — a haunting, troubling phantom.

A triple award winner at Sundance, the Albanian drama HIVE opens at the Royal and Playhouse this Friday, November 12. The filmmaker and lead actress will attend two Royal screenings for Q&As.
Photo by Astrit Ibrahimi.

“A liberation story told with easy naturalism and broad political strokes, HIVE tracks Fahrije on her path to independence. (It’s based on the experiences of an Albanian Kosovo woman of the same name.) Like its protagonist, the movie is stern, direct and attentive to ordinary life. The writer-director Blerta Basholli doesn’t bludgeon you with the character’s miseries, or hold your emotions hostage. Fahrije isn’t lovable; sometimes she’s scarcely likable, which means she’s more of a human being than an emblem of virtuous suffering. She has her charms, though these tend to emerge in the intimacies she shares with her family and female friends like Naza (a piquant Kumrije Hoxha)…HIVE seizes and holds your interest simply through the drama created by sympathetic characters trying to surmount awful, unfair hurdles. Mostly, though, what holds you rapt is Gashi’s powerful, physically grounded performance, which lyrically articulates her taciturn character’s inner workings. Together, the performer and her director reveal the arc of a life through Fahrije’s gestures and in the hard lines of her jaw, in her unsmiling lips and in her quickly lowered gaze. And while the character’s stoicism seems like an unbreachable wall, these two women dismantle — and rebuild it — to stirring effect.”

A triple award winner at Sundance, the Albanian drama HIVE opens at the Royal and Playhouse this Friday, November 12. The filmmaker and lead actress will attend two Royal screenings for Q&As.
Photo by Alexander Bloom.

HIVE writer-director Blerta Basholi, producer Yll Uka, and lead actress Yllka Gashi will participate in Q&As at the Royal after the 7:30 PM screenings on Friday and Saturday, November 12 and 13. Clayton Davis, President of the Latino Entertainment Journalists Association, will moderate the Friday Q&A.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yqwb2IfyUY

 

“The three great escapes — smoking, drinking, bed.” LA DOLCE VITA 60th Anniversary Screenings November 17.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Abroad Series present Federico Fellini’s masterpiece, LA DOLCE VITA, as part of the monthly revival series of great international classics. LA DOLCE VITA earned four Academy Award nominations in 1961, including Best Director Federico Fellini (the first time in Oscar history for a director of a foreign language film) and Best Original Screenplay. It won the Oscar for Piero Gherardi’s elegant costumes.

"The three great escapes -- smoking, drinking, bed." LA DOLCE VITA 60th Anniversary Screenings November 17.
Marcello Mastroianni & Anita Ekberg.

Fellini’s sardonic epic about the decadence of modern Rome is one of the most influential of foreign films, and its influence can still be seen today in films like the recent international Oscar winner, The Great Beauty. Fellini even added a new word to our vocabulary when he introduced the character of the celebrity-chasing photographer, Paparazzo. Cruise along the Via Veneto with Marcello Mastroianni, then take a dip in the Trevi Fountain with the voluptuous Anita Ekberg. Writing in The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther praised the film as a “brilliantly graphic estimation of a whole swath of society in sad decay.” Roger Ebert called it “an allegory, a cautionary tale of a man without a center…a handsome, weary, desperate man, who dreams of someday doing something good, but is trapped in a life of empty nights and lonely dawns.”

"The three great escapes -- smoking, drinking, bed." LA DOLCE VITA 60th Anniversary Screenings November 17.
Anouk Aimée & Marcello Mastroianni.

Also starring Anouk Aimee, Nadia Gray, Walter Santesso, and Yvonne Furneaux, the 60th anniversary of LA DOLCE VITA will play for one night only on November 17 at 7:00 PM at the Royal, Playhouse 7, Glendale and Newhall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyC_mJ7QjRc