The official blog of Laemmle Theatres
THE WOMEN’S BALCONY filmmaker Emil Ben-Shimon will participate in Q&A’s on Saturday, April 8th after the 4:40 PM show at the Town Center and after the 7:20 show at the Royal. On Sunday, April 9th, he’ll do Q&A’s after the 1:50 show at the Royal and after the 4:40 show at the Town Center.
Here’s a short video message from the filmmaker about his Q&A’s:
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 45th anniversary screening of AVANTI! (1972) followed by a Q&A with co-stars Juliet Mills and Clive Revill on Wednesday, March 29, at 7 PM at the Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles. Click here for tickets.
Six-time Oscar winner Billy Wilder made one of his most underrated movies, Avanti!, in 1972. The film’s stature has risen dramatically in recent years. In his 1999 book, Conversations with Wilder, Oscar-winning writer-director Cameron Crowe declared, “The prize of Wilder’s later-period work, Avanti! is a melancholy classic.”
To make the film, Wilder reteamed with his favorite actor, Jack Lemmon (the star of Some Like It Hot and The Apartment), and Crowe declared, “The picture was a new peak in the collaboration of Wilder and the actor most tuned to his nuances.”
Lemmon plays a crass businessman who travels to Italy to claim the body of his father, who was killed in an automobile accident while on vacation. There he learns that his father was carrying on a long extra-marital affair with an Englishwoman, who died with him in the accident. He meets the woman’s daughter, played by Juliet Mills, and it seems that history may repeat itself as Lemmon and Mills fall in love. As Crowe wrote, Mills “is a wonderful foil for Lemmon.”
The uproarious and poignant film represents a sly reworking of one of Wilder’s favorite themes, the encounter of an innocent American and more worldly Europeans. It was a subject that Wilder first explored in his Oscar-nominated screenplay for Hold Back the Dawn in 1941, and he revisited this terrain in such other films as A Foreign Affair, Sabrina, Love in the Afternoon, and One Two Three. Avanti! was filmed on glorious Italian locations that gave added richness to the director’s exploration of the innocent abroad.
Clive Revill and Edward Andrews co-star in the film, which was written by Wilder and his long-time collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond. Luigi Kuveiller was the cinematographer, and the production designer was Ferdinando Scarfiotti, the Oscar-winning designer of The Last Emperor, The Conformist, and Death in Venice. Leonard Maltin called Avanti! a “sadly underrated comedy… lovely scenery, wonderful performances by all.” The film was nominated for six Golden Globes.
Juliet Mills is a member of one of the most distinguished British acting families. Her father, John Mills, was an Oscar winner as well as a lion of the theater. Her younger sister, Hayley Mills, the star of Disney classics Pollyanna and The Parent Trap, has also enjoyed a long career. Juliet has distinguished herself on stage, on screen, and on television. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in Avanti! and for her role on the hit television series, Nanny and the Professor. She won an Emmy for her performance in the miniseries, QB VII, and she was nominated for a Tony for her performance in Peter Shaffer’s first Broadway play, Five Finger Exercise.
Clive Revill was nominated for a Golden Globe for his delightful performance as the beleaguered hotel manager in Avanti! He has also had a stellar career in film, theater, and television. He earned a Tony nomination for his performance as Fagin in the original Broadway production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver. He co-starred in another Billy Wilder movie, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and also appeared in Modesty Blaise, The Assassination Bureau, and The Legend of Hell House. His television roles include the miniseries Centennial and such series as Columbo and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.
Laemmle’s Art in the Arthouse is proud to announce our newest exhibit, TRIMBLED, showcasing the works of artist SCOTT TRIMBLE. The show appears at the Royal Theatre through May 2017.
Curated by Joshua Elias, the exhibit features gestural oil paintings that tap into the psyche of the artist – and the world at large – in an arresting and provocative manner. Trimble’s unique application of color is also fascinating to behold. Don’t miss seeing Trimbled in person!
Based in Hermosa Beach, S
COTT TRIMBLE is a graduate of USC’s School of Cinema and Television where he focused on film history and criticism. He now creates psychological portraits in oil.
A Trimble Game: Walk down the aisle and take in each of Trimble’s paintings. Read the titles of each painting aloud to your self and move on. Then double back.
You will not be the same person. Moved through movement, visual richness, and a distinct phraseology you will be lent a hand, a journey, and a lens from the vantage point of the artist.
This is an experiential show – a blur inside a whir. It is a period in time where nothing makes sense. The paintings fragments are held together through poetic phrases, animated beings, cagey, sometimes frightened figures, not so carefully fielding their steps across a landscape within a room.
Rife with contradiction, each work is a navigation in an unnavigable urban setting. This noir mise-en-scene is a political horror house, where an implausible arm of a figure is reaching around the corners searching for the edge. Grappling for significance, in a world of continual motion, Trimble’s paintings offer a soulful rope to the long climb ahead.
– Joshua Elias, Curator
Critical Review for Scott Trimble:
Shana Nys Dambrot writing for the Huffington Post
Please join us for a very special event as LAEMMLE LIVE presents STREET SYMPHONY Sunday, April 30, 2017. Vijay Gupta, LA Philharmonic violinist and founder of STREET SYMPHONY will perform with fellow Street Symphony musicians, Jin Shan Dai, violin; Michael Larco, viola; and Dahae Kim, cello. Their program will include Dvořák: String Quartet #12 “American” and music by Duke Ellington. KUSC Announcer Rich Capparela will host and join Vijay in conversation to raise awareness of the humanity of people experiencing homelessness. We are honored Street Symphony, a ground-breaking non-profit that connects professional musicians with these communities is bringing this life-affirming program to Santa Monica.
Today, Skid Row is the epicenter of the homeless capital of the United States. Nearly 20,000 people may sleep on the streets of downtown Los Angeles on any given night. Los Angeles County jails are the largest in America, and are effectively the largest in-patient mental health centers in the world. These communities comprise the audiences of Street Symphony.
In the course of the last 4 years, the distinguished musicians of Street Symphony have presented nearly 200 free, live musical engagements with the Los Angeles community, presenting events in Skid Row, the greater Los Angeles Area and the LA County Jails. They bring jazz. They bring gypsy music. They bring the works of Schumann, Schubert and Mendelssohn. They bring music to lift up the brave stories and voices of people who, although living in an impoverished situation, are in no way impoverished in spirit.
VIJAY GUPTA is a violinist, speaker, and passionate advocate for the dedicated presence of citizen-artists in social and civic discourse. Gupta joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007 at the age of 19, after completing an undergraduate degree in biology and a Master’s degree in violin performance from the Yale School of Music. Gupta made his solo debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Zubin Mehta at age 11 and has performed on an international scale since the age of 8.
A gifted spokesperson for the power of arts to change lives, Gupta believes that musical engagement reconnects us to our shared humanity across vast divides, and ultimately impacts social justice. Gupta is a TED Senior Fellow and currently serves on the board of directors of the DC-based national arts advocacy organization Americans for the Arts. In 2015, at the age of 27, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by the University of La Verne.
Vijay Gupta currently plays a 1731 Domenico Montagnana violin on generous loan through the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association.
RSVP using Eventbrite
This is a Free Event
EVENT DETAILS
Sunday, April 30, 2017
11:00 AM
Monica Film Center
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of IN COLD BLOOD (1967), followed by a Q&A with actor Scott Wilson on March 22 at 7:00 PM at the Royal Theater in West Los Angeles. Click here for tickets.
In Cold Blood, the film version of Truman Capote’s immensely popular “nonfiction novel,” was nominated for four top Oscars in 1967. Richard Brooks received two nominations, for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and the film was also nominated for Conrad Hall’s striking cinematography and Quincy Jones’ memorable score.
In his best-selling book, Capote chronicled the events leading up to and following the senseless murders of a family of four in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. He drew a pointed contrast between the prosperous, all-American Clutter family and the two social outsiders, Perry Smith and Richard Hickok, who committed the murders.
In adapting the book, Brooks (the Oscar-winning writer-director of such films as The Blackboard Jungle, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Elmer Gantry, and Sweet Bird of Youth) resolved to be as faithful as possible to Capote’s chronicle, even filming in many of the actual locations where the events took place. With Capote’s encouragement, Brooks cast unknown actors as the two killers, and the performances of Robert Blake as Smith and Scott Wilson as Hickok earned critical raves. More established actors John Forsythe, Paul Stewart, and Will Geer filled out the supporting cast. Brooks also bucked the industry practice and decided to shoot the film in black-and-white at a time when color cinematography had become virtually mandatory for big-studio films.
Reviews at the time were largely positive. The Saturday Review’s Arthur Knight declared the film to be “one of the finest pictures of the year, and possibly of the decade.” Its reputation has not diminished. In an article in The Wall Street Journal in January of 2017, critic Peter Cowie called the film “a classic of American cinema” and added, “In Cold Blood retains its relevance today, even as random shootings continue to appall.”
Scott Wilson made his film debut earlier in 1967, in the Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night. In Cold Blood was only his second movie. He went on to co-star in John Frankenheimer’s The Gypsy Moths, the Robert Redford version of The Great Gatsby, Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff, The New Centurions, The Ninth Configuration, and more recent appearances in Dead Man Walking, The Last Samurai, Monster, and Junebug. He also is known for his roles in the popular TV series CSI and The Walking Dead.
For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, including an upcoming screening of AVANTI, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.
The results of Sunday’s Oscars were pretty ho-hum right up until somewhere around the 245th minute, when we all witnessed the most embarrassing accounting error of all time. Apparently the gentleman from PricewaterhouseCoopers was more focused on his star-struck tweeting than making sure he gave Warren Beatty the right envelope. However, let’s not let this snafu obscure the fact that the Academy surprised everyone and honored a genuinely marvelous film, Moonlight, only the second Best Picture Winner about LGBTQ people (the first was Midnight Cowboy) and the first with an all-African American cast.
Anyway, in our little Oscar contest, the winner was the only one with 20 correct, so they stood alone at the top. For the 2nd-5th place winners, 24 people correctly guessed 18 categories – and even with the Tie-Break question about the show’s running time there were still multiple ties.
Interestingly, for Best Picture, our winner picked La La Land – which for about two minutes was the correct answer – but they still beat their competition by two answers. Among the winners, the difficult categories were Best Picture (Moonlight or La La Land), Best Actor (Denzel Washington or Casey Affleck), Best Sound Mixing (La La Land or Hacksaw Ridge), and Best Live Action Short.
Congratulations to all. If we’ve heard back from you, your Laemmle Premiere Cards are en route. And Moonlight is back in theaters.
20 correct
1st Place) Mariano A. of Beverly Hills.
18 Correct – 1 minute off official time
Tie 2nd) Jen M. of Pasadena.
Tie 2nd) Marina O. of Los Angeles.
18 Correct – 6 minutes off official time
3rd Place) Martha C. of Valley Village.
18 Correct – 8 minutes off official time
Tie 4th) Tristan K. of West Hollywood.
Tie 4th) Cory G. of Los Angeles.
Tie 4th) Jacob W. of Los Angeles.
18 Correct – 9 minutes off official time
5th Place) Rachel S. of West Hollywood.
We are having so much fun with our American repertory film series Anniversary Classics, which we began with film critic Stephen Farber two years ago, that we are pleased to announce a companion series: Anniversary Classics Abroad. We will be screening great foreign films on the third Wednesday of every month at three venues simultaneously: the Royal in West L.A., the Town Center in Encino, and the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. We are launching the Abroad program with 30th anniversary screenings of Bille August’s award-winning Danish film, Pelle the Conqueror (1987) at 7 PM on March 15. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 1988 and also won the Palme d’Or in Cannes that same year. Master Swedish actor Max von Sydow received his first Oscar nomination for his performance in the film.
The beautifully crafted film is adapted from a popular Danish novel by Martin Andersen Nexo, published in 1908. It tells the story of a widower and his young son who journey from Sweden to Denmark in the 1850s in search of work. There they encounter prejudice and harsh working conditions; the story clearly takes on renewed urgency in light of rising anti-immigrant bias in Europe as well as the United States. August cast newcomer Pelle Hvenegaard in the title role.
In Newsweek, David Ansen wrote, “We are engrossed by the serene confidence of the storytelling, by August’s painterly eye, by von Sydow’s and Hvenegaard’s touching performances.” TIME Magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “Bille August’s gifts for austere, striking imagery and for the short, perfectly shaped scene impart to this film an epic richness, range and energy.” The film helped to catapult August to the front ranks of international directors. He went on to make several films in the U.S. as well as Europe, and Ingmar Bergman chose August to direct his autobiographical screenplay, The Best Intentions.
“The von Sydow performance is in a category by itself. It is another highlight in an already extraordinary career, and quite unlike anything that American audiences have seen him do to date.” – Vincent Canby, New York Times
“In Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror, Max von Sydow is so astoundingly evocative that he makes your bones ache.” – Hal Hinson, Washington Post
The subsequent films in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series are:
Wednesday, April 19: Yojimbo (1962). Akira Kurosawa’s energetic, tongue-in-cheek samurai Western had an enormous influence on filmmakers all over the world. Toshiro Mifune stars as the amoral swordsman who strides into town and manipulates the opposing factions in a turf war.
Wednesday, May 17: Divorce Italian Style (1962). This Oscar-winning film from director Pietro Germi is a ferocious black comic dissection of Sicilian mores. The picture helped to cement Marcello Mastroianni’s position as a rising international superstar.
Wednesday, June 21: Smiles of a Summer Night (1957). To coincide with the summer solstice, we present Ingmar Bergman’s elegant romantic comedy set on a Swedish estate on the longest night of the year. Eva Dahlbeck, Harriet Andersson, and Gunnar Bjornstrand star in the film that Pauline Kael called an “exquisite carnal comedy.” The film later inspired Stephen Sondheim’s musical, A Little Night Music.
Again, we will show all Anniversary Classics Abroad films on the third Wednesday of each month at three venues, the Royal, Playhouse, and Town Center, at 7 PM. Come experience these classics of world cinema as they were intended to be experienced, on a big screen in a dark auditorium full of fellow cinephiles.
REVOLUTION: NEW ART FOR A NEW WORLD filmmaker Margy Kinmonth will participate in a Q&A following the 7:30 PM screening at the Royal on Wednesday, March 8.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG3lMDQYdgA