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Announcing the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre by Laemmle, Opening September 18th!

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Laemmle Theatres is proud to announce we have taken over the management and operation of the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills. The theatre has been closed for five years. At the time of its closure it was used exclusively as a private screening venue. Laemmle will book the theatre with first run films screening daily for the general public. Laemmle will also use the Ahrya Fine Arts to host regular series like our Culture Vulture program, festivals and special event screenings.

fineartsAccording to CinemaTreasures.org, the Fine Arts first opened in April 1937 as the Wilshire Regina, with seating for 800. It has been well maintained over the years and is – and under Laemmle’s stewardship will remain – a single-screen theater, though now with slightly more than 400 seats. (Movie patrons’ expectations of things like leg room have understandably risen over the decades.) We last operated the venue from 1985 to 1993, mostly screening foreign films.

fineartsdraculaThe Ahrya Fine Arts Theater is owned by Shawn Far. He runs Vertigo USA, a successful clothing company based in Downtown Los Angeles, and is a Beverly Hills resident. The Fine Arts will share its name with Mr. Far’s eldest son, Ahrya. Appropriately, our first film beginning September 18th will be JEREMY SCOTT: THE PEOPLE’S DESIGNER, a documentary about a rising star of the fashion industry.

We have promoted Guy Valdez, long-time manager at our Playhouse 7 venue in Pasadena, to lead the Fine Arts as its general manager.

Throwback Thursday: FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH at 7:30pm on 9/10 in NoHo. $5 Early Bird Tickets*

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Our Back to School theme continues this week at the Laemmle NoHo 7 with a Throwback Thursday screening of FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH starring Phoebe Cates, Sean Penn, Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Ray Walston, Vincent Schiavelli and more!

*Buy your tickets before Wednesday, 9/9 at noon and pay only $5! Full price tickets are $11.

FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH screens at 7:30PM on 9/10 at the Laemmle NoHo 7 and is part of our THROWBACK THURSDAY series in partnership with Eat|See|Hear. The Konestruction truck will arrive at the theater around 6:30pm. You can bring food from the truck into the theater! See you there!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKov1lmq_OU

Zhang Yimou on His Potent New Historical Romance COMING HOME: “This type of film is very difficult to make. It needs to be made in a state of serenity.”

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Zhang Yimou’s new film is set in the last days of China’s Cultural Revolution, following a newly-released political prisoner (Chen Daoming) as he tries to reconnect with his wife (frequent Yimou collaborator Gong Li), who is stricken with amnesia. We open the movie 9/9 at the Royal, 9/18 at the Playhouse and 10/2 at the Town Center. The director wrote this about his powerful new work: “Based on Yan Geling’s novel The Criminal Lu Yanshi, COMING HOME is a love story about joy and sadness, as well as separation and reunion. We used the end of the original story – with Lu Yanshi returning home – as the starting point of the script. Everyone knows that Chen Daoming and Gong Li are the finest actors working in China, and they were my first and only choices for their respective roles. I’ve learned a lot from working with them. They offered a lot of constructive opinions about even the smallest details in the story. That’s why their contribution to the film extends far beyond the portrayal of the characters.

“Having a so-called “rising star” in the daughter’s role was not a must as her character serves a very important function in the story. When I first met [Zhang] Huiwen, I noticed her bright shining eyes, which resembled the aura of young Red Guards. It was what I needed. For the second part of the film, I needed to change the way her eyes look. They should look as if they are in a trance, always hesitant. Huiwen had the ability to do that.

“This type of film is very difficult to make. It needs to be made in a state of serenity. If I thought about benefits and profits even a little, then I would lose my way. That’s why, for me, this film represents a return to an earlier state of mind and an older approach to creativity. The most important thing for me is whether the audience will keep this film in their hearts and whether they will truly remember the emotions behind COMING HOME.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hoea7Cz3Hj0

One of the most important and influential filmmakers in China, and a core member of China’s “Fifth Generation” directors, Zhang Yimou started his career as a cinematographer and became a director in 1987. Over the years, Zhang has directed films which received accolades from around the world: RED SORGHUM (1987, Golden Bear winner at the Berlin International Film Festival), JU DOU (1990, In Competition at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards®), RAISE THE RED LANTERN (1991, Silver Lion winner at the Venice International Film Festival and nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards®), TO LIVE (1994, Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival), to name a few.

In 2002, his martial arts epic HERO ushered in a new era of blockbusters for Chinese cinema, and was followed by the equally successful HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS (2004), and CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER (2006)

Guests for September’s ANNIVERSARY CLASSICS screenings include Bruce Dern, Cloris Leachman, Michael York, and Richard Chamberlain

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As we move into the Fall season, there are several new Anniversary Classics screenings scheduled for September, all at the Royal Theatre in West L.A.

First up on September 17th is the 55th anniversary of Director Elia Kazan’s WILD RIVER, an underappreciated gem from 1960 starring Montgomery Clift, Lee Remick, Jo Van Fleet, and featuring the film debut of our guest star, two-time Oscar nominee Bruce Dern, who will appear for a Q&A following the screening on Thursday the 17th at 7:30PM at the Royal.

Cloris Leachman will participate in a Q&A following the September 24th screening of CRAZY MAMA (1975). CRAZY MAMA was one of the early movies directed by Oscar winner Jonathan Demme.

On September 29th, we feature the 40th anniversary of Director Richard Lester’s THE FOUR MUSKETEERS (1975), with a special reunion of two of its co-stars, Michael York and Richard Chamberlain, who will appear for a Q&A at the screening at 7 PM.

Tickets for all three screenings are on sale now. Do not wait to buy tickets; these shows will sell out. For tickets and info on upcoming screenings, bookmark http://www.laemmle.com/ac.

Also, check out the Laemmle’s Anniversary Classics Facebook group: https://facebook.com/groups/laemmlesanniversaryclassics/

Special screenings of ATTACK ON TITAN PART ONE and TWO in Claremont, NoHo, and Pasadena!

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We’re pleased to announce that ATTACK ON TITAN THE MOVIE PART ONE and TWO will screen at our theaters in Claremont, NoHo, and Pasadena!

The ATTACK ON TITAN (“Shingeki no Kyojin” in Japanese) live-action movies, which take their name from the original manga series, were developed in close collaboration with series’ creator Hajime Isayama and tell the story of a world where the last of humanity fights to survive against almost unstoppable, man-eating giants. Over the years it has gained almost a cult following with collectables from sites like Solaris Japan becoming very popular amongst the people who watch it. With more than 50 million copies in print today, the “Attack on Titan” manga series has inspired four spin-offs as well as a terrific 25-episode anime series, while also inspiring certain amateur artists to create animated adult content featuring characters, and it doesn’t just stop at Attack on Titan, click for More Info.

PART ONE of the live-action film screens at 7:30pm on Wednesday, 9/30 and at 9:55pm on Thursday, 10/1 at the Claremont 5, NoHo 7, and Playhouse 7. Tickets are available here!

PART TWO screens at 7:30pm on Tuesday, October 20 and at 9:55pm on Thursday, October 22 at the Claremont 5, NoHo 7, and Playhouse 7. Tickets are available here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpP4GDGovp0

Throwback Thursday: MEAN GIRLS at 7:30pm on 9/3 in NoHo. $5 Early Bird Tickets*

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This #TBT at the Laemmle NoHo 7: Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert, and Tina Fey star in MEAN GIRLS!

*Buy your tickets before Wednesday, 9/2 at noon and pay only $5! Full price tickets are $11.

MEAN GIRLS screens at 7:30PM on 9/3 at the Laemmle NoHo 7 and is part of our THROWBACK THURSDAY series in partnership with Eat|See|Hear. The Haute Burger truck (where classy meets trashy) will arrive at the theater around 6:30pm. You can bring food from the truck into the theater! See you there!

Click here to buy tickets.

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The French Hit Comedy PAULETTE Stars Legendary Actress Bernadette Lafont in One of Her Last Roles.

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Next Friday, September 11th we’ll be opening a French comedy that stars the wonderful actress Bernadette Lafont in one of her last performances, playing the title character in PAULETTE. A brash and opinionated retiree, Paulette lives alone in a housing project on the outskirts of Paris. One evening, upon observing some mysterious dealings outside her building, she discovers a surprising way to supplement her meager pension: an unlikely but successful career selling cannabis.

Writing in Film Journal International, Doris Toumarkine wrote that “PAULETTE offers a heap of laughs and ultimately delights like a shelf of colorful fresh pastries.”

In his L.A. Weekly review, Chuck Wilson wrote that Lafont “died in 2013, at age 74, one year after PAULETTE became a hit in France. A working actress since she was 19 [IMDB lists 190 credits over the course of her career], Lafont was at the forefront of the French New Wave, with François Truffaut, who discovered her, once calling her, lovingly, ‘a wild child.’ It would appear that she remained so all her working life.”

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

Vox: “The quietly radical DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL turns the page on coming-of-age films.”

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This Friday, at five of our six venues, we’ll be opening a film we enjoyed immensely, THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL. The girl of the title is Minnie Goetze (fantastic newcomer Bel Powley), who is longing for love, acceptance and a sense of purpose in the world. She begins a complex love affair with her mother’s (Kristen Wiig) boyfriend, “the handsomest man in the world,” Monroe Rutherford (Alexander Skarsgård). What follows is a sharp, funny and provocative account of one girl’s sexual and artistic awakening, without judgment.

Based on a 2002 graphic novel, film critics have embraced the film (it has a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing). Writing in New York Magazine, Bilge Ebiri exclaimed, “the first thing to know about THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL is that young British actress Powley is staggeringly good in it.” In the L.A. Times, Rebecca Keegan wrote, “big summer action movies can be thrilling, but if you really want to feel your heart pounding out of your chest, try being a 15-year-old girl for 101 minutes.” In the New Republic, Elaine Teng called the film “a startlingly tough, authentic depiction of budding womanhood.” And in the New York Times, Manohla Dargis declared the film “exhilarating…the novel is life-specific, but what makes Minnie – on the page and now on the screen – greater than any one girl is how she tells her own story in her own soaringly alive voice.”

The extended Vox review included this observation by the film’s director, Marielle Heller: “I think as a society, we’re just a little bit afraid of teenage girls, and we’re definitely afraid of their sexuality. There’s a desire to shelter girls and also to ignore what they might be feeling or experiencing. The result of that is if you’re a teenage girl who’s having thoughts about sex, you think something’s wrong with you.” This is the same approach to the topic as what you can find other people writing about, and what the reasons are it for, for instance on this Lovegasm blog article about sexual forward-thinking within the media.

THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL wonderfully rejects that path.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2M9kqb5wVw