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The official blog of Laemmle Theatres

Enter to Win a BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL Poster Signed by Legendary Director Takashi Miike

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Takashi Miike’s 100th feature film, BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL screens November 10th – 16th in Pasadena, NoHo, and Beverly Hills. To celebrate we’re giving away two BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL posters signed by the legendary filmmaker himself!

Enter for a chance to win by sharing a picture of your movie tickets on Instagram, checking-in at one of our theaters, and/or retweeting us (you’ll find full entry details below).

CLICK HERE to purchase tickets for the film. Enter the giveaway below.

Signed BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL poster giveaway

Two winners will be selected at random and announced on November 17th, 2017. Giveaway open to California residents only. No purchase necessary.

30th Anniversary: Lasse Hallstrom’s MY LIFE AS A DOG Screens November 15th in Pasadena, Encino, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the 30th anniversary of the American release of director Lasse Hallstrom’s breakthrough film, MY LIFE AS A DOG (1987).

This screening, the latest installment of the Anniversary Classics Abroad program, takes place at three locations: Royal in West LA, Town Center in Encino, and Playhouse 7 in Pasadena on Wednesday, November 15 at 7PM. Presented digitally.

Click here for tickets.


The film, based on an autobiographical novel by Reidar Jonsson, was a huge art-house hit in 1987, and was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Lasse Hallstrom as Best Director and Screenplay from Another Medium (Jonsson adapting his novel along with Hallstrom, Brasse Brannstrom and Per Berglund).

Its success launched Swedish helmer Hallstrom’s Hollywood career. The former music video director for 1970s pop group Abba went onto a run of acclaimed films including the Oscar nominated What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (supporting actor nod -Leonardo Di Caprio), The Cider House Rules (best picture, director nods and supporting actor Oscar for Michael Caine), Chocolat (best picture nod), The Shipping News, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, and the forthcoming Disney film version of The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.

MY LIFE AS A DOG, set in Sweden in 1958-59, relates the adventures of plucky 12-year
Ingemar Johansson (played to impish perfection by Anton Glanzelius), who is sent to live with relatives in a small town during his mother’s health crisis.

Through a series of anecdotes and vignettes, he copes with a variety of characters and encounters in such an engaging manner that Vincent Canby in the New York Times noted, “Ingemar is a most winning adolescent – skeptical, introspective, curious – trying earnestly to bring order of nature’s chaos.”

Leonard Maltin offered similar praise, “Both comedic and poignant, this is ultimately an honest depiction of the often confusing nature of childhood.” The Washington Post summed up its appeal as a “well-constructed crowd pleaser.”

Audiences agreed, and accolades followed, with the film winning year-end awards as best foreign film from the Hollywood Foreign Press, National Board of Review, and New York Film Critics.

LA Opera Presents a Provocative Adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s PERSONA at REDCAT November 9 – 12

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On November 9, Persona makes its West Coast premiere at the The Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts (REDCAT) Theater, through LA Opera’s Off-Grand series.

Based on Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film of the same name, Persona explores humanity at its most fragile. The piece made its world premiere in Brooklyn, NY, commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and National Sawdust in 2015, opening to great acclaim. Singer-songwriter Björk called Persona “a brilliant new opera.”

The opera’s creators, composer Keeril Makan and director-librettist Jay Scheib, spent ample time creating a piece that would highlight the raw, fervid nature of the film, both musically and dramatically.

Amanda Crider as Alma and Lacey Dorn as Elisabet in a scene from “Persona” (photo: Noah Stern Weber / Beth Morrison Projects)

Scheib studied the film “zealously,” adding: “What I learned about storytelling, physical gesture and conflict remain central to my thinking about film, theater and opera. More than any other work, Persona spoke to me in a very direct visceral language. With this opera, I am adapting both cinematic innovations and dramatic intensity to the operatic form.”

While composing the opera’s music, Makan paid equal attention to the film’s elevated emotional content. This precise awareness to the psyche was a new technique employed by Makan at the time.

“What is new in Persona is a lyricism that is wide-ranging in its emotional content. Sometimes direct, sometimes ambiguous, the emotional subtleties of the opera mirror the sonic subtleties found in my music,” says Makan. “The scope and ambition of the work exceeds anything I have attempted in the past.”

In addition, Scheib and Makan played off of each other’s creative energies to produce a cohesive story.

“I am interested in creating the perfect synthesis of Keeril Makan’s gorgeous composition—his sounds and his silences—with a mise-en-scène that finds its analogue in Bergman’s own remarkable use of film as a physical medium,” Scheib states.

Joshua Jeremiah as “The Man” and Amanda Crider as Alma in a scene from “Persona” (photo: Noah Stern Weber / Beth Morrison Projects)

Makan continues: “The process of composition benefitted from my close collaboration with [Scheib], who also directs the work. As a producer, Beth Morrison excelled at guiding the project to completion, both on the small-scale, because of her vocal expertise, and the large scale, thanks to her producing work.”

As the years draw on, opera and film seem to marry in a myriad of other ways. With recent advances in HD live-streaming, which brings opera from the stage to screen, opera has been more accessible than ever. Additionally, with works such as Persona subsequently labelled as “live cinema,” the cameras play an integral part of the story that is just as important as the music. The combination of these two artistic mediums solidifies the relationship between cinematography and live theater.

Persona runs from November 9th through November 12th at REDCAT. Each performance will be followed by a post-performance talkback with the creative team behind the Opera.

Click here to purchase tickets.

All Friday November 10th ticketholders 21 years and over are free to join us for an after party featuring lite bites, drinks and a live DJ hosted by LA Weekly.

A RIVER BELOW Filmmaker Q&A’s Friday & Saturday at the Music Hall.

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A RIVER BELOW filmmaker Mark Grieco will participate in Q&A’s at the Music Hall after the 7:40 PM screenings on Friday and Saturday, November 3 and 4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvMJZRJX9CI

A BRIDE FOR RIP VAN WINKLE Posters for the First Five Ticket Holders.

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The first five A BRIDE FOR RIP VAN WINKLE ticket holders will receive a free BRIDE movie poster before the Royal, Playhouse, and NoHo screenings November 10-12.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ya6Rn2OKxc

Gilbert Gottfried in Person for Q&A’s at the Fine Arts and Monicas.

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Q&A’s with Gilbert Gottfried on Friday 11/10 after the 7:00PM GILBERT screening at the Monica Film Center, after the 8:00PM show at the Ahrya Fine Arts, and on Saturday 11/11 after the 7:00PM show at the Monica Film Center.

CLICK HERE for tickets.

About the Film:
Legendary comedian Gilbert Gottfried has had quite the career. Rocketing to fame in the 1980’s, he was thrust into public consciousness thanks to his brash personality and off-kilter comic timing. Now, foul-mouthed and unapologetic after decades of flying solo in both his work and in his personal life, Gilbert has shockingly reinvented himself…as a family man.

Director Neil Berkeley’s “Gilbert” reveals an unexpected side to the iconic comedian. The film peeks behind the larger-than-life persona at a more personal story about growing up in Brooklyn and becoming a husband and father late in life. Gottfried’s ability to bring humor to even the darkest situations has, at times, gotten him into trouble. Still he soldiers on, an expert craftsman at bringing his audience to the edge (and sometimes pushing them over). Gilbert strips the comedic character away to reveal the man behind it. Berkeley allows the audience an intimate — even vulnerable — view of Gottfried out of character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLa3XVMfUzo

JANE Filmmaker in Person this Weekend for a Santa Monica Q&A.

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JANE filmmaker Brett Morgen will participate in a Q&A after the 7:50 PM screening at the Monica Film Center on Saturday, November 4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc7a57a1ZgQ

THE WHALES OF AUGUST 30th Anniversary Screening November 8th in Encino with Producer In-person

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 30th anniversary screening of THE WHALES OF AUGUST (1987), a poignant drama featuring an all-star cast of actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Silent screen legend Lillian Gish and two-time Oscar winner Bette Davis play elderly sisters spending the summer on an island off the coast of Maine, struggling with jealousy, loss and regret.

The supporting cast includes Ann Sothern, who earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the film, screen veterans Vincent Price (who co-starred with Davis in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex in 1939 and went on to become the master of horror for producer Roger Corman) and Harry Carey Jr., one of the favorite actors of director John Ford.

The film is adapted from a play by David Berry and was directed by Lindsay Anderson (the acclaimed British director of This Sporting Life, If…, and O Lucky Man), making his American film debut.

The lovely cinematography of the windswept New England coast is by Mike Fash, and Anderson’s frequent collaborator Alan Price provided the musical score.

Margaret Ladd, Mary Steenburgen, and Tisha Sterling (Sothern’s daughter) portray the three women in flashbacks to their youth.

The New York Times’ Vincent Canby wrote, “With its two beautiful, very different, very characteristic performances by Miss Gish and Davis… Lindsay Anderson’s ‘Whales of August’ is a cinema event.”

Leonard Maltin called it “an exquisitely delicate film,” adding that “Gish and Davis dominate the film, a lifetime of movie memories in each classic face.”

Producer Mike Kaplan is a long-term member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a marketing and sales veteran who first met Gish when he worked on her 1967 film, The Comedians, early in his career. Over the years he consulted for many top directors, including Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, and Mike Hodges.

Kaplan produced Barbet Schroeder’s The Valley, Hodges’ I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead starring Clive Owen and Malcolm McDowell, and Never Apologize, a documentary that recorded McDowell’s one-man stage show about his collaboration and friendship with Lindsay Anderson.

The film and Q & A will be followed by a special bonus screening of revealing interviews with the five principal actors of The Whales of August, filmed on location in Maine at the time of the shooting.

THE WHALES OF AUGUST screens at 7:30pm on Wednesday, November 8th at the Laemmle Town Center 5 in Encino. Producer Mike Kaplan will participate in a Q&A at the screening. Click here for tickets.

For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.