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The story of the “gentlemen guerrilla filmmaking operation,” MERCHANT IVORY opens August 30 at the Royal and Town Center.

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Merchant Ivory is the first definitive feature documentary to lend new and compelling perspectives on the partnership, both professional and personal, of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant and their primary associates, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins. Some of their many career highlights include A Room with a View, Howards End, and The Remains of the Day. Footage from more than fifty interviews, clips, and archival material gives voice to the family of actors and technicians who helped define Merchant Ivory’s Academy Award-winning work of consummate quality and intelligence. With six Oscar winners among the notable artists participating, these close and often long-term collaborators intimately detail the transformational cinematic creativity and personal and professional drama of the wandering company that left an indelible impact on film culture.

Mr. Soucy on his film:

“There’s no other story like Merchant Ivory in the history of cinema and what a gift to be given an inside view of the Merchant Ivory
World from James Ivory and the more than 50 collaborators I interviewed in New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles, in making this documentary film.

“James Ivory is one of our greatest living directors and, at 95 years old, this Oscar-winner for the much-lauded Call Me by Your Name shows no sign of slowing down. He’s still working, having recently adapted a Ruth Jhabvala short story The Judge’s Will for director Alexander Payne and the French novel The End of Eddy slated to be a multi-episode miniseries.

“Once James Ivory, Ismail Merchant, and Ruth Jhabvala met, they were connected forever. Their work and personal lives entwined for over forty-five years, and they became the most famous collaborative troika in film history.

“Merchant Ivory released 43 films. Many were fraught productions, often budget-related, and their last film, The City of Your Final Destination, brought the company to bankruptcy. A look at the comprehensive list of films that Merchant Ivory made, and the roster of talent they worked with, reveals that theirs was a spectacular achievement.

“The Merchant Ivory story, with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant at its center, is about art, money, partnership, loyalty, dysfunction, love, jealousy, and, eventually for Jim, the necessity to move forward and embark on a new chapter after Ismail’s passing.”

“Anyone with a fondness for these movies and for tales of what might be described as a gentlemen guerrilla filmmaking operation will find immense pleasure here.” ~ David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge Launch New Video Podcast INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE.

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Greg Laemmle, President of Laemmle Theaters, along with actor and Emmy Award-winning director Raphael Sbarge, are launching a new  Video Podcast called INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE. The show is dedicated to highlighting new  releases, repertory classics, filmmakers, distributors, and the key personalities who bring movies to the big screen. INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE will be filmed and recorded at the Laemmle Royal Theatre, the 100-year-old theater that has been operated by three generations of Laemmles for the past half century.  

Laemmle says, “My family has been dedicated to providing a home for independent, foreign and documentary film for almost a century, and we have decided to launch INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE in order to promote the release of new films that will ultimately play in arthouses all across the country.” 

“Our interviews will be recorded in person or via Zoom, with filmmakers appearing large on  the screen,” says Sbarge, an independent filmmaker himself. “Opening a movie in theaters requires all the support they can get, and INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE, is dedicated to the  celebration of seeing films in theaters.” 

Their first guests include Stephen Soucy, the director of MERCHANT IVORY, a documentary about art house mainstays Ismail Merchant and James Ivory; the Golden Lion-winning director of the Swedish film PARADISE IS BURNING, Mika Gustafson; the writer and director  of PREY FOR ROCK AND ROLL, Cheri Lovedog and Alex Steyermark, re-released in theaters via Kino Lorber, for their 20th anniversary; and the co-directors of the new documentary UNION, out of the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals, Brett Story and Steven Main.

In subsequent episodes – initially to be released every two weeks – INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE will focus on new releases and repertory classics, filmmakers, distributors, and  personalities who are responsible for bringing movies to the big screen. The first episode of INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE will premiere on August 28, 2024. The show can be found on  YouTube and all major podcast platforms. For more information, visit www.insidethearthouse.com!

“A rare work of art that thrills the senses and the mind… Worthy of that overused superlative ‘masterpiece.’” — Manohla Dargis, The New York Times. Melville’s ARMY OF SHADOWS opens Friday at the Royal and Town Center.

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ARMY OF SHADOWS, Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 epic of the French Resistance unseen in the U.S. until its acclaimed 2006 release by Rialto Pictures, returns in a stunning new 4K Studiocanal restoration, having its L.A. premiere starting this Friday at at the Royal in West L.A. at the Town Center 5 in Encino. Winner of the New York Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 2006 — 36 years after it was made — ARMY OF SHADOWS stars Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and Simone Signoret.

Occupied France: an escape from the Gestapo, so sudden and hairsbreadth as to leave Ventura, the toughest of tough guys, gasping with the icy sweat of terror and relief; two brothers remain unaware, to the end, of each other’s clandestine activities; patriots, who, in relentless pursuit of traitors, must steel themselves to the most brutal of face-to-face violence. But heroism can come at a truly high price.

 

French gangster movie legend Melville (Bob Le Flambeur, Le Samouraï, etc.) realized the dream of a quarter century when he adapted “the book of the Resistance,” written in 1943 by Joseph Kessel (Belle de Jour). Melville turned the detached, unblinking gaze of his film noir classics on these memories of his youth — he himself served for years underground — adding a finale so stoically uncompromising as to reduce Kessel himself to sobs.

Rialto’s 2006 release was the arthouse movie event of the year, getting awards from both the New York and Los Angeles Film Critics Circles, but also appearing on over 20 major Top Ten lists of the year, including the number one pick for Manohla Dargis of The New York Times.

PRAISE FOR ARMY OF SHADOWS

“A rare work of art that thrills the senses and the mind…Worthy of that overused superlative MASTERPIECE!” — Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“THE TIGHTEST THRILLER IN TOWN! Lovers of cinema should reach for their fedoras, turn up the collars of their coats, and sneak to this picture through a mist of rain.” — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

“A LOST MASTERPIECE…NOT JUST ONE OF THE GREAT FILMS OF THE ’60s BUT ONE OF THE GREAT FILMS — PERIOD.” — Stephanie Zacharek, Salon

Restored in 4K from the original 35mm negative. Scanned by Image Retrouvée, with the project carried out by Sophie Boyer and Jean-Pierre Boiget of StudioCanal. Digitization and restoration with the support of the CNC.

Repertory Central – Upcoming Classics include THE CONVERSATION, ARMY OF SHADOWS, PARIS, TEXAS and BASQUIAT.

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Wasn’t it fabulous getting to see Akira Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI on the big screen?  Well, there’s more where that came from. Get fired up for Francis Ford Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION, Jean-Pierre Melville’s ARMY OF SHADOWS, Wim Wenders’s PARIS, TEXAS, and Julian Schnabel’s BASQUIAT in the coming weeks, plus our one-night screening of LEGENDS OF THE FALL (with director Ed Zwick in person for a Q&A).  We’re planning even more for the fall. Add to these all the award-season films coming to Laemmle screens, that is a lot of rewarding moviegoing!
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THE CONVERSATION follows lonely wiretapping expert and devout Catholic Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), who is hired to record a seemingly innocuous conversation in San Francisco’s Union Square between two lovers (Frederick Forsythe and Cindy Williams). Upon re-hearing the tapes, however, Caul believes he may put the couple in danger if he turns the material over to his client (Robert Duvall). But what one hears can ultimately turn out to be quite different from what was actually recorded. Opens this Friday at the Laemmle Royal, Town Center, and Glendale.
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ARMY OF SHADOWS opens August 16 at the Royal and Town Center: A gorgeous restoration of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 epic of the French Resistance during World War II, starring Lino Ventura and Simone Signoret. Based on the novel by Joseph Kessel (perhaps best known for Belle de Jour), the film draws on the wartime experiences of Kessel and Melville himself, both active members of the Resistance and Free French Forces. This is the first time the film has been released in the U.S.
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PARIS, TEXAS opens August 30 at the Royal. New German Cinema pioneer Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) brings his keen eye for landscape to the American Southwest in Paris, Texas, a profoundly moving character study written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Sam Shepard. PARIS, TEXAS follows the mysterious, nearly mute drifter Travis (a magnificent Harry Dean Stanton, whose face is a landscape all its own) as he tries to reconnect with his young son, living with his brother (Dean Stockwell) in Los Angeles, and his missing wife (Nastassja Kinski).
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BASQUIAT, opening September 13 at the Laemmle NoHo, depicts the meteoric rise of the brilliant artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, played by Jeffrey Wright in one of his first roles. Starting out as a street artist, living in Thompkins Square Park in a cardboard box, Jean-Michel is “discovered” by Andy Warhol’s art world and becomes a star. But success has a high price, and Basquiat pays with friendship, love, and, eventually, his life.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s RED DESERT (1964) 60th Anniversary Screenings.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classic Series present this month’s screening in our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program: Michelangelo Antonioni’s vibrant masterpiece RED DESERT, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1964 and collected rave reviews around the world on its release over the next several months. We will show the film at five of our theaters at 7 PM on Wednesday, July 31.

Antonioni had earned critical acclaim for the three movies in his “alienation trilogy”—’L’Avventura,’ ‘La Notte,’ and ‘Eclipse’ — made during the early 1960s. RED DESERT explored some of the same themes but introduced a new element to the director’s work. The three earlier movies were all shot in black-and-white, but with RED DESERT Antonioni decided to experiment with color cinematography for the first time, and critics heralded his achievement. The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann declared, “With Michelangelo Antonioni’s RED DESERT, the art of the film advances…quite simply, it is the best use of color I have ever seen in a film, exquisite in itself.” Kauffmann added, “there is a buried history of modern painting in it, from the Impressionists through Mondrian to Hopper and Wyeth.”

Monica Vitti, who had starred in all three of Antonioni’s earlier movies, has the leading role of Giuliana, the wife of an industrialist in Ravenna. She is emotionally troubled and eventually begins an affair with an employee at her husband’s factory. Carlo Chionetti plays the husband, and Richard Harris — fresh from his Oscar-nominated performance in Lindsay Anderson’s ‘This Sporting Life’ — plays her lover. Antonioni wrote the screenplay with frequent collaborator Tonino Guerra.

In addition to its psychological themes, the film offers prescient critique of industrial pollution, with the color cinematography contributing to this political commentary. A key collaborator was director of photography Carlo Di Palma, who worked closely with Antonioni to paint the landscapes when necessary to create the desired mood of malaise. Antonioni and Di Palma collaborated again on the director’s most successful movie, the English-language ‘Blowup,’ an Oscar nominee in 1966. Other directors around the world — including Ettore Scola, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Sidney Lumet — worked with Di Palma. The cinematographer later established a fruitful collaboration with Woody Allen on such films as ‘Hannah and Her Sisters,’ ‘Radio Days,’ and ‘Bullets Over Broadway.’

Time magazine called RED DESERT “at once the most beautiful, the most simple and the most daring film yet made by Italy’s masterful Michelangelo Antonioni.” More recently, Geoff Andrew of Time Out hailed “perhaps the most extraordinary and riveting film of Antonioni’s entire career.” Robbie Collin of London’s Daily Telegraph declared, “Almost half a century on, RED DESERT remains a film of rare beauty and brooding erotic intensity.” The New Yorker’s Richard Brody called the film Antonioni’s “most mysterious and awe-inspiring work.”

Screening one night only at the Royal in West Los Angeles, the Town Center in Encino, and Laemmle Theatres in Glendale, Claremont, and Newhall.

Glendale Arts Summer Soiree “Under A Thousand Stars” to Honor Laemmle Theatres’ Greg & Tish Laemmle.

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Laemmle Theatres President Greg Laemmle and his wife Tish Laemmle are being honored by the good folks at Glendale Arts “in recognition of their unparalleled legacy of dedication to independent filmmakers and the art of storytelling on the screen.” Glendale Arts is an award-winning 501(c)3 non-profit organization that generates opportunities throughout greater Los Angeles to showcase, promote, encourage, and engage with the arts. From their announcement:

Glendale Arts proudly announces the organization’s highly-anticipated Summer Soiree “Under A Thousand Stars” to be held on Saturday, July 27, 2024 from 7:00-10:00 P.M. at ace/121 Gallery. Tickets for the event of the season are now available for purchase here.

Guests are invited to revel in the dazzling beauty of the gallery, transformed into an elegant indoor/outdoor spectacle of art and performance. The inspirational evening will comprise epicurean delights, artful mixology, a silent auction featuring original works of art by emerging and renowned artists from the Los Angeles area and beyond, and a celebratory program highlighting GA’s dynamic programmatic pillars – the Glendale International Film Festival, Solo Fest, and ace/121 Gallery.

A highlight of the event will be the presentation of The Aura, Glendale Arts’ inaugural award honoring luminaries who power the arts. The first-ever recipients of The Aura are Laemmle Theatres Head Greg Laemmle and his wife Tish Laemmle, Art in the Arthouse Curator at the family-run theatres which have brought the best of foreign and independent cinema to Los Angeles for over 85 years. The Laemmles will be honored in recognition of their unparalleled legacy of dedication to independent filmmakers and the art of storytelling on the screen.

Summer Soiree proceeds benefit Glendale Arts, the city’s premier arts non-profit. Funds raised will support GA’s mission to cultivate year-round opportunities for artists and audiences to convene around mutually enriching experiences that promote creativity, foster meaningful connections, and build community through the performing, cinematic, and visual arts mediums.

“We are excited to bring supporters and community, business, and industry leaders together for a night that salutes the transformative power of the arts,” said Glendale Arts Board Chair Marci DeSousa. “The Summer Soiree will not only showcase the heart and soul that drives Glendale Arts’ mission, but will also celebrate what distinguishes GA as a unique non-profit with local roots, regional impact, and a global footprint.”

“Remembering Norman Mailer and His Thorny Legacy ‘HOW TO COME ALIVE With Norman Mailer’ hits on an ingenious structure that avoids hagiography even as it includes friends and family.”

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From Alissa Wilkinson’s New York Times review of the superb new documentary we are opening next week, HOW TO COME ALIVE with Norman Mailer:

Given the hagiographic bias of most celebrity documentaries, HOW TO COME ALIVE with Norman Mailer sails into choppy waters. The director Jeff Zimbalist had to figure out a way to sum up one of the 20th century’s most admired, and most notorious, cultural figures. Mailer’s legacy as a novelist, speaker, filmmaker and pop culture icon — the movie reminded me how often he’s mentioned in “Gilmore Girls” — is full of bad behavior and also brilliant work, and making a film about such a person seems nearly impossible in our nuance-averse climate.

The key is to play with the documentary’s structure, eschewing the usual soup-to-nuts setup. HOW TO COME ALIVE with Norman Mailer is admittedly designed as a roughly chronological recounting of the writer’s life, covering all the highlights: six wives (one of whom he famously, horribly stabbed with a penknife), nine children, a stint in the military, best-selling novels, a fascination with brawling, combative TV appearances, opinions about God and machines and Americans’ midcentury impulse toward conformity.

But Zimbalist hits on a great idea: arrange the film in terms of what Mailer’s friends, enemies and acquaintances believe his “rules for coming alive” might be. The author’s life and legacy can thus be traced through those rules, and his evolution as a person — and he did evolve, constantly, insatiably — starts to make more sense. What emerges is a portrait of a man as often at war with himself as with his family, friends and countrymen, driven relentlessly toward machismo and always spoiling for a fight. This is not a person you can present neutrally to an audience.

There are seven rules, announced in intertitles, including, “Don’t Be a Nice Jewish Boy,” “Be Wrong More Than You’re Right” and “Be Willing to Die for an Idea.” It’s an appealing structure, and the many interviewees discuss the ways Mailer embodied them, supported by archival film and interviews with the man himself. There’s a lot of footage to work with. By midcareer, Mailer was ubiquitous on camera; as one person notes, he seemed to never turn down an opportunity to be interviewed or share his views publicly.

I’m impressed by how well the film balances criticism and fondness. Several of Mailer’s children are among the interviewees, as are ex-wives, all of whom have frank stories, while also respecting his rapacious intellectual curiosity, his drive to always be thinking and questioning. Especially delightful is the segment that revisits his appearance as rabble-rouser in an explosive panel discussion on feminism held in 1971 and documented in D.A. Pennebaker’s excellent documentary “Town Bloody Hall” (streaming on the Criterion Channel). Mailer was set up on the panel as the opposing voice to feminist theorists, and came in for a drubbing; this film reminds us that Mailer was there because he was valued by those same interlocutors, some of whom are interviewed expressing their respect for his input.

I expect every viewer of HOW TO COME ALIVE with Norman Mailer will have some quibble with it, but it’s an accomplishment nonetheless — a model for how to reimagine a standard documentary structure to accommodate a multifaceted subject without smoothing over the rough spots and slapping on a halo. And for those who don’t know his work, it’s a worthy introduction: a study in how not to live, but also in how to come alive.

“A rapturous cinematic experience,” JANET PLANET opens Friday at the Laemmle Royal, Town Center, and Glendale.

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From film critic Tim Grierson’s recent L.A. Times profile of Janet Planet star Julianne Nicholson:
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“When she was 18, Julianne Nicholson came to New York City to model but quickly grew tired of that — she knew she wanted to act. “I was waitressing and just living my best life,” she says over Zoom, smiling, from A24’s Manhattan offices. “I was basically being a young person in New York without a care in the world. It was wildly different from Janet Planet.” She’s referring to the wonderful new film set during summer 1991 in which she stars — a film that, like Nicholson, doesn’t put on airs but is capable of small miracles. Since its premiere at Telluride, Janet Planet, the debut feature of acclaimed playwright Annie Baker, has been the sort of understated indie revelation that discriminating viewers excitedly share with their friends like a gift.

“Now finally opening in New York on Friday, with the Los Angeles release planned for June 28, Janet Planet is ready for its grand unveiling — and, in a sense, so is the marvelous Nicholson, an Emmy winner who has read the same stories about her that you have.

“Normally, the first thing that’s said about me is ‘underused,’ ‘underappreciated,’ ‘overlooked,’” says Nicholson, with a heard-it-all grin, At age 52, she tries to ignore other people’s perception of her fame and how much more massive they think it ought to be. “Normally, I’m fine with it because I continue to work. But every once in a while, I feel like, ‘Oh, my God. I’m so tired — am I still trying to get people’s attention?’”

“Those who have worked with Nicholson need not be reminded of her greatness or the way she makes her artistry invisible. Just don’t expect them to explain why Nicholson isn’t a huge star. When I ask Baker in a separate interview why she thinks the actor isn’t more renowned, she’s mystified that the industry can’t see what she and so many others do. “I find that really perverse,” Baker, 43, replies. “I’m outside of the Hollywood machine, and in my world, Julianne is a mega-celebrity.””

 Click here to read the rest of Mr. Grierson’s profile.
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“There is no way to predict what will strike a chord, or an arrow into your heart, but one thing is certain: the temporal, emotional, and sensory experience of Janet Planet is a uniquely rare gift that needs to be seen and savored.” ~ Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
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“Janet Planet is a brilliant debut for Baker, who doesn’t so much translate her artistry to the screen as discover a whole new frontier for her singular sensibility.” ~ Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times

“It’s the kind of minimalist, yet emotionally rich memory piece that’s so quietly attuned to people, place and the passing of time that, ironically, it makes you want to shout hosannahs from a mountaintop until you’re hoarse.” ~ David Fear, Rolling Stone

“Whether you’re a longtime fan of Annie Baker’s plays, or meeting her work for the first time, Janet Planet is a rapturous cinematic experience.” ~ Drew Gregory, Autostraddle