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SILENT RUNNING 45th Anniversary Screening plus Q&A with Director Douglas Trumbull and Producer Michael Gruskoff

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 45th anniversary screening of the groundbreaking sci-fi movie, SILENT RUNNING, which marked the directorial debut of special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull. Trumbull and Producer Michael Gruskoff will participate in Q&A after the screening.

SILENT RUNNING screens Wednesday, December 13, at 7:30pm at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

Set 100 years in the future, the prophetic script written by Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino, and Steven Bochco stars two-time Oscar nominee Bruce Dern as an astronaut sent into space to preserve the last samples of plant life that are endangered on a dying Earth. His only companions are three drones named Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

The film’s ecological message was a daring one for the time, and its relevance has only grown over the subsequent decades.

Trumbull had made special effects films for NASA while he was still in his early twenties, and he was hired by Stanley Kubrick to execute many of the most challenging and innovative visual effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Reviewing Silent Running, Time’s Jay Cocks compared it to Kubrick’s masterpiece: “Silent Running displays the same kind of technical virtuosity, the same sense of the still, vast symmetry of the galaxies.” He added that the movie was “a quite captivating essay on futuristic ecology.” Life’s Richard Schickel declared that the film “provides a great, near-solo role for Bruce Dern.”

In addition to his work on 2001, Trumbull played a major role in creating the special effects for The Andromeda Strain, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: the Motion Picture, Blade Runner, and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life.

Trumbull directed Natalie Wood’s last film, Brainstorm. He is also known as an inventor and technical innovator in many other fields. He has received numerous awards over the years, including three Oscar nominations for his visual effects and The Gordon E. Sawyer Award for scientific and technical achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2012.

After working as a highly successful agent during the 1960s, Michael Gruskoff produced his first film, Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie, in 1971. His other films include Mel Brooks’ comedy smash, Young Frankenstein, Quest for Fire, and My Favorite Year, which we featured in a highly successful Anniversary screening earlier this year.

Presented digitally.

It’s Dennis Hopper December Every Throwback Thursday at the NoHo 7

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Method actor, filmmaker, photographer, and artist—the many sides of Dennis Hopper are explored in Nick Ebeling’s remarkable new documentary ALONG FOR THE RIDE opening December 8th in North Hollywood. In conjunction, our Throwback Thursday series will feature three Dennis Hopper films!

Our Dennis Hopper December Throwback Thursday series begins at the NoHo 7 on Thursday, December 7th with David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET. Doors open at 7pm, trivia starts at 7:30, and movies begin at 7:40pm. Our weekly #TBT series is presented in partnership with Eat|See|Hear. Check out the full schedule below!

December 7: Blue Velvet

Dennis Hopper is amyl-nitrite-snorting Frank Booth, one of the most dangerous, repellent, and magnetic psychopaths ever to haunt the screen. David Lynch’s controversial masterpiece also stars Laura Dern, Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, and Dean Stockwell. TICKETS.

December 14: Colors

Directed by Dennis Hopper, COLORS stars Robert Duvall and Sean Penn as partners on the LAPD’s gang crime division. Efforts to establish a truce between the Crips and the Bloods are stymied by the gang members themselves and police brutality. María Conchita Alonso and Don Cheadle also star. TICKETS.

December 21: Waterworld

In a future where the polar ice caps have melted and Earth is almost entirely submerged, a mutated mariner (Kevin Costner) fights starvation and reluctantly helps a woman and a young girl. Dennis Hopper plays Deacon, the leader of the “Smokers,” who believes a map to dry land is tattooed on the young girl’s back. TICKETS.

There’s no screening on December 28th. In January, we invite you to Support Your Local P.T.A. with four of our favorite Paul Thomas Anderson movies! Remember to check www.laemmle.com/tbt for updates!

Former ADL National Director Abe Foxman on the New Film ‘1945:’ “An astonishing new achievement.”

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Based on the acclaimed story “Homecoming” by Gábor T. Szántó, 1945 is a haunting film about the deep undercurrents beneath the surface of a quaint village that’s ultimately forced to face up to its “ill-gotten gains” from the Second World War. We open 1945 next week at the Royal, Town Center, and Playhouse and next month at the Claremont 5. Former National Director of the Anti-Defamation League Abe Foxman saw and loved the movie and wrote the following about it:

“The Hungarian Jewish experience during WWII was unique among European countries. Until 1944, Hungarian Jews lived in relative safety despite anti-Jewish laws that existed since 1920 and pogroms in which the military participated (e.g. the 1942 Novi-Sad pogrom where 1000 Jews were murdered).

Abe Foxman

“But then, in March 1944, when the Germans occupied Hungary, Adolf Eichmann implemented the “final solution” in that country and was surprised by the collaboration and great help received from the Hungarian authorities. Thus, the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews was swift and unparalleled among any other European country – in a few months more than 600,000 Jews were identified and sent to the murder camps.

“Only now, more than 70 years after, “Yad Vashem” has succeeded to identify the names of 80% of those who perished but the issue of their property and belongings has hardly been addressed.

“For that reason, the new Hungarian film 1945 , currently playing in NYC theaters and soon opening across North America, is quite relevant to today. But not only because of that…

“On one clear day, after the war ended, two Orthodox Jews appear in a small village in Hungary, hiring two locals to carry two trunks labeled “perfumes” for them. All they do is walk slowly, across the village, after the wagon carrying their trunks, but their appearance evokes strong feelings of guilt and remorse that slowly make the village community deteriorate.

“It seems most of the villagers collaborated in extraditing the Jews that lived there up to a year before and gladly took over their property, from kitchenware to their houses.

“Shot in beautiful black and white, director Ferenc Torok (who is not Jewish) interprets Gabor Szanto’s (who is Jewish) short story “Homecoming,” with vast strokes of sensitivity and a final mesmerizing emotional effect.

“1945 is a real masterpiece, heightened by the end of the film when we, the audience and the villagers, understand the real mission of these two Orthodox Jews. It’s a rare moment where one of Judaism’s most important contributions to the world, that of guilt and remorse over moral wrong doings and the sanctity of life, are presented in such a heart wrenching way on film.

“What is most astonishing is that the two Jews have not traveled to this village to claim their stolen property, but the emotional effect of their silence provokes this issue out from the conscience of the villagers.

“The issue of the stolen property of the Jews is still relevant today. Just recently the Polish government issued a new law which states compensation funds will be awarded only to people that are Polish citizens in the present, thus withholding compensation to the Jews and their descendants whose property was absconded in Poland during these years.

“Although Germany started compensating Jewish victims in the 1950’s, most Eastern European governments are still dragging their feet on this issue.

“The film 1945 is an astonishing new achievement which I highly recommend every human being to see, regardless of his/her religion.”

 

 

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.

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: ARCHIVING HESSE at the Royal Nov 1

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In 2016, the seminal artist EVA HESSE garnered national attention with an exhibit at the Whitney, an exhibit at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel in DTLA and with the opening of the film EVA HESSE , also featured at four Laemmle venues. The documentary, directed by Marcie Begleiter and produced by Karen Shapiro, was the first feature-length examination of Hesse’s life and work.

Barbara Brown_edit_lr
Barbara Brown, photographer

Laemmle’s Art in the Arthouse  proudly presents an encore exhibit of ARCHIVING HESSE at the Royal starting on November 1, 2017.  The exhibit, which premiered at the Monica Film Center last year, includes photography featured in the film. It showcases the work of photographer and raconteur, BARBARA BROWN, who, from 1962-1965, chronicled Hesse and the other luminaries that made up the Canal St. scene of New York’s Lower Eastside.

Unfortunately, most of Brown’s negatives were destroyed in a bizarre train fire and eternally lost. But we are pleased to present some surviving photos that capture the artist in particularly revealing moments. Interwoven are two images from Hesse’s 1968 solo exhibition at the Fishbach Gallery taken by NORMAN GOLDMAN.

About  Eva Hesse:  In 1938, at three years old, EVA HESSE was put on the kindertransport to escape Nazi Germany. She arrived in New York to reunite with her family, but seven years later lost her mother to suicide.

Hesse went on to study art and design at Yale University.  As an artist, she had a unique ability to alchemize her personal tragedies into searing and poetic works. Based mainly in New York, Hesse and her husband Tom Doyle briefly relocated their studio to Kettwig Germany where she transitioned from painter to sculptor.

“Stop [thinking] and just do!”  This strong note circa 1965 from her mentor Sol LeWitt opened Hesse up to an artistic stream of sculptures, paintings, drawings, and happenings. She incorporated industrial materials such as cord, wire, yarn, and latex to create magnificent walls sculptures that commanded attention. Hesse soon became a major figure in the post AbEx landscape movement. Tragically, Hesse died of brain cancer at age 34. She lives on in her works, which are displayed in museums worldwide.

 

 

Classic Detective Films Every Throwback Thursday in November at the NoHo 7

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Agatha Christie’s enduring detective, Hercule Poirot, returns November 10th in Kenneth Branagh’s remake of MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. To celebrate the famed detective (and his epic moustache), Laemmle presents Watching the Detectives,  a full month of our favorite fictional detectives!

Our Watching the Detectives Throwback Thursday series begins at the NoHo 7 on Thursday, November 2nd with John Huston’s THE MALTESE FALCON! Doors open at 7pm, trivia starts at 7:30, and movies begin at 7:40pm. Our weekly #TBT series is presented in partnership with Eat|See|Hear. Check out the full schedule below!

November 2: The Maltese Falcon

Humphrey Bogart is Sam Spade, a private detective who takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette.  TICKETS.

November 9: Kiss Me Deadly

This film noir stars Ralph Meeker as Mickey Spillane’s anti-social private eye Mike Hammer. After he and a hitchhiker are kidnapped by thugs, the semiconscious Hammer helplessly watches as the girl is tortured to death. Seeking vengeance, Hammer searches for the secret behind the girl’s murder. Note: Laemmle Theatres will screen the U.K. version of KISS ME DEADLY, which includes the original ending. TICKETS.

November 16: The Long Goodbye

Applying his deconstructive eye to the “film noir” tradition, Robert Altman updated Raymond Chandler in his 1973 version of Chandler’s novel, The Long Goodbye.

Smart-aleck, cat-loving private eye Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is certain that his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) isn’t a wife-killer, even after the cops throw Marlowe in jail for not cooperating with their investigation into Lennox’s subsequent disappearance.

Once he gets out of jail, Marlowe starts to conduct his own search when he discovers that mysterious blonde Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt), who hired him to find her alcoholic novelist husband Roger (Sterling Hayden), lives on the same Malibu street as the absent Lennox and his deceased spouse. As numerous variations on the title song play in unexpected places, Marlowe encounters a shady doctor (Henry Gibson), a bottle-wielding gangster (director Mark Rydell), and a guard aping Barbara Stanwyck (among other stars), before heading to Mexico to stumble onto the truth once and for all. TICKETS.

November 30: Murder by Death

Neil Simon’s comic tribute to detective films begins when a reclusive millionaire invites a number of famed detectives, each a parody of a famous literary sleuth, to dinner. Naturally, a series of murders begins, and the humorous race to be the first to solve the mystery is on. Starring Alec Guinness, Peter Falk, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, David Niven, Truman Capote, and more. TICKETS.

Details about December #TBT screenings are coming soon. Remember to check www.laemmle.com/tbt for updates!

LAEMMLE LIVE presents: SOL-LA Music Academy and Saint Anne School Nov 5 at the Royal

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This is a Free Event
RSVP on Eventbrite

LAEMMLE LIVE IS ON THE MOVE for November only.  We proudly present SOL-LA Music Academy and Saint Anne School in a collaborative musical concert on Sunday, November 5, 2017, at Laemmle’s Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles. SOL-LA Music Academy is a nonprofit music school in Santa Monica that provides high quality performing arts education to students from all backgrounds and economic circumstances in an engaging and encouraging environment fostering achievement and community. Their comprehensive program reflects the belief that vibrant cultural education nurtures all areas of learning, connects diverse societies and enhances the enjoyment of life.

Saint Anne School is Santa Monica’s only nonpublic Title I school, with at least 40% of families qualifying as low income according to federal standards. The school serves a diverse population of families from 66 zip codes. Without SOL-LA, most of these students would not have access to the myriad benefits that a comprehensive music education can offer. The SOL-LA at Saint Anne School program, now in its seventh year, was born out of a desire to see music included as a core curriculum subject.

As a parochial school, Saint Anne has the flexibility to include music as a priority rather than as an elective. Saint Anne partners with SOL-LA to bring high-quality music instruction to its students on-site, with an option for the students to further participate in after school instruction at SOL-LA’s campus. SOL-LA at Saint Anne School is a sequential music education program, providing free music instruction and instruments to 270 K–8th Grade students during regular school hours at Saint Anne.

SOL-LA’s program at Saint Anne is thoroughly integrated into the curriculum; all students in all classrooms participate in the program. Additionally, SOL-LA provides instruments to students during the school year at no cost.

EVENT DETAILS
Sunday, November 5, 2017
11:00 AM
Laemmle’s Royal Theatre
11523 Santa Monica Blvd.

This is a Free Event
RSVP on Eventbrite

Director Richard Donner In-person for LETHAL WEAPON 30th Anniversary Screening on October 24 at the Ahrya Fine Arts

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 30th anniversary screening of LETHAL WEAPON, the hyperkinetic buddy cop movie that launched an enormously popular franchise.

LETHAL WEAPON (1987)
Q&A with Director Richard Donner
Tuesday, October 24, at 7:30 PM
at the Ahrya Fine Arts
Click here for tickets

Mel Gibson and Danny Glover star as cops who are polar opposites but are forced to work together to break up a deadly drug ring. Gibson plays a reckless, undisciplined, suicidal detective who is paired with a cautious family man, played by Glover.

Screenwriter Shane Black brought a fresh twist to the thriller genre with these unexpected characterizations, and Richard Donner directed with energy and finesse.

Gary Busey and Mitchell Ryan portray the villains, and Darlene Love and Traci Wolfe co-star. Joel Silver produced the film.

The Washington Post called the film—a box office smash in 1987–“a vivid, visceral reminder of how exciting an action film can be.”

Roger Ebert declared, “This movie thrilled me from beginning to end,” and his critical confrere, Gene Siskel, added, “Gibson and Glover make a great team.” Three sequels and a TV series followed.

After starting in television, Richard Donner scored his first big-screen success with a low-budget horror movie, The Omen. He then launched the comic book film craze with Superman in 1978, which introduced Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel. Donner’s many other films include the three Lethal Weapon sequels, Inside Moves, Ladyhawke, The Goonies, Scrooged, and Conspiracy Theory.