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You are here: Home / Special Events

GREMLINS 35th Anniversary with Director Joe Dante on Sunday, July 14 in Beverly Hills

July 4, 2019 by Lamb L.

“Don’t expose him to bright light. Don’t ever get him wet. And don’t ever, ever feed him after midnight.”

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the delicious horror comedy, GREMLINS, which demonstrated the dire consequences of ignoring those three simple rules. Chris Columbus (the writer or director of such hit films as ‘The Goonies,’ ‘Mrs. Doubtfire,’ ‘Home Alone,’ and the first two Harry Potter movies) conceived the story, and Steven Spielberg acted as executive producer, but it was director Joe Dante who set the distinctive tone of “malicious madcap mischief,” in the words of Newsweek’s David Ansen.

Dante had already brought wit to the underwater monster movie (‘Piranha’) and the werewolf movie (‘The Howling’), but ‘Gremlins’ took his talents to a new level. Kenneth Turan, then writing for California Magazine, declared, “’Gremlins’ is Dante’s most accomplished film, a paradigm of zesty, ghoulish fun.” Dante loved to pepper his movies with sly references to other films, and ‘Gremlins’ is set in the idyllic small town of Kingston Falls, meant to recall Bedford Falls from Frank Capra’s classic, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ (glimpsed on TV in a scene in Dante’s movie). ‘Gremlins’ is also set at Christmas, but the holidays are anything but festive in this vision of Norman Rockwell’s America turned upside down.

The story begins when a father (Hoyt Axton) purchases a lovable furry creature called a mogwai for his son Billy (Zach Galligan). The shopkeeper offers a few admonitions but neglects to say that if the mogwai is drenched or fed after midnight, it will turn into a spiteful, malevolent gremlin. Soon the entire town is overwhelmed with these miniature monsters determined to destroy. The other characters in the story are played by an engaging ensemble, including Phoebe Cates, Frances Lee McCain, Keye Luke, Glynn Turman, Dick Miller, Corey Feldman, Judge Reinhold, and Polly Holliday, with cameo appearances by Chuck Jones, composer Jerry Goldsmith, and Spielberg himself. But perhaps the biggest star was designer Chris Walas, who created the puppets who perform their own delirious dance of death.

The film incorporates several classic sequences, including one in which a small-town mom (played by McCain) battles the gremlins with her trusty kitchen appliances and the climactic nightmare in which the gremlins take over a movie theater presenting a holiday screening of Walt Disney’s ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ The movie was one of the biggest hits of 1984 and also earned many excellent reviews. Gene Siskel called ‘Gremlins’ “a wickedly funny and slightly sick ride…playfulness abounds.” Screen International added, “The sight gags are deliriously inventive and frequently devilishly sick.”

Dante went on to direct such films as ‘The Burbs’ with Tom Hanks, ‘Explorers’ with Ethan Hawke, ‘Innerspace’ with Dennis Quaid and Martin Short, ‘Matinee’ with John Goodman, and of course ‘Gremlins 2: The New Batch.’ For this special matinee screening, feel free to bring the kids—at least the older kids with a taste for macabre thrills.

Our 35th anniversary screening of GREMLINS (1984) followed by a Q&A with Director Joe Dante and film critic Stephen Farber plays on Sunday, July 14, at 3 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

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Filed Under: Ahrya Fine Arts, Anniversary Classics, Featured Post, Filmmaker in Person, News, Q&A's, Repertory Cinema, Special Events

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: The Pasadena Art Show 2019 June 30

June 19, 2019 by Lamb L.

Laemmle’s Art in the Arthouse proudly presents THE PASADENA ART SHOW 2019.  Please join us as we celebrate our local artists in an intimate theatre setting. Our special event features a slideshow on the big screen, artist talks, and of course refreshments. Meet the artists and stay for the bagels, mimosas and conversation Art in the Arthouse is known for. Sales benefit the Laemmle Foundation and its support of humanitarian and environmental causes in the Los Angeles region.

About the Exhibit
Our annual community exhibit is a powerful collective voice emerging from individual expression  – celebrating art-making through a communal creative vibration. This show encourages an engaged visual conversation between artists and moviegoers. In photography, painting and digital imagery, we discover surreal gardens, humans embracing, light and water, the human condition and the nature of space and bloom. These atmospheric elements act as a coalescing force. Many of the nineteen works presented explore themes in a nuanced fashion, creating shadows, tones and an array of dramatic environments. A large scale of song and fury prevails. Art that one creates, must move. While two-dimensional images stand still, stillness moves its viewers. Technical rigor is important, but passion and sensitivity is sought and found. Art patrons often search for messages articulated in specific languages. All of our creatives successfully hit this mark. Thanks to our artists and to producer Lynn Chang for once again transforming our halls into a magnificent gallery.
       -Joshua Elias, Curator

Artist Reception:
Laemmle Playhouse 7
Sunday June 30, 11-1pm
Refreshments will be provided

RSVP here
This is a Free Event

 

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Filed Under: Art in the Arthouse, Claremont 5, Featured Post, NoHo 7, Playhouse 7, Q&A's, Special Events, Town Center 5

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: THE LOCAL SEEN in Santa Monica June 5

May 15, 2019 by Lamb L.

Laemmle’s Art in the Arthouse presents The Local Seen, featuring the compelling works of three Santa Monica artists, Paula Goldman, Gwen Samuels, and Michal Story. Please join us for our opening reception Wednesday, June 5 at the Monica Film Center. Check out our bonus show, Paula Goldman’s Monuments, upstairs in our Mezzanine. Meet Paula, Gwen and Michal and enjoy the wine, cheese, and conversation Art in the Arthouse is known for. A portion of the sales benefits the Laemmle Foundation and its support of humanitarian and environmental causes in Los Angeles.

About the Exhibit
Artists often see things differently than others, and have a way of revealing new vistas of places that we think we know well. In The Local Seen, three artists—each of whom employs photography in distinctive ways—share their singular visions of Santa Monica’s local landscape.

Paula Goldman collected trash on Santa Monica State Beach between lifeguard towers 1 and 2 and composed the detritus into still lifes. Her intriguing photographs hint at the diverse lives and activities of beachgoers, and also evoke concerns for the environment. Gwen Samuels takes pictures of iconic Santa Monica landmarks and common flora and transforms them into patterns for sculptural dresses and panels, while Michal Story reworks her images of nearby buildings into portrayals of fantastical structures that are at once familiar and surprising. Together, these works offer an unusual, insiders’ take on our local scene—a far cry from stereotypical postcard-perfect shots of the coast or the pier—insights that come from living and working here everyday.

Paula Goldman’s Monuments is a separate show featured on our Mezzanine. Photographer Paula has long been interested in collecting and the role of photography in memorializing artifacts. In Monuments she plays with scale, juxtaposition, and modes of presentation to challenge commonly held ideas about the things she photographs, and to create new interpretations. Small porcelain figurines fill the frame taking on seemingly grand proportions, a “portrait” of a plucked head of lettuce brings new meaning to the term “headshot,” and everyday objects like plastic cups are photographed reverentially. The size of these images—20” x 24”—is a reference to the Polaroid 20×24 camera, Goldman’s personal monument to the vanished medium.

–Stacey Ravel Abarbanel, Curator

Artist Reception
RSVP HERE
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
7:00-8:30 PM
Monica Film Center
1332 Second Street
Santa Monica
Refreshments Served

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Filed Under: Art in the Arthouse, Music Hall 3, Royal, Santa Monica, Special Events

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: DANCING WITH COLORS in Pasadena

March 14, 2019 by Lamb L.

Swing, samba or shimmy on over to Art in the Arthouse’s newest exhibit in Pasadena, DANCING WITH COLORS. This bold festival of color from artists Nancy R. Wise and Raymond Logan runs till June, 2019.  Sales benefit the Laemmle Foundation and its support of humanitarian and environmental causes in the Los Angeles region.

About the Exhibit
NANCY R. WISE: Oil painter Nancy R. Wise is enchanted by color. She views her art as daily reality transformed by color and texture, woven on the loom of light. She states, “I love the vibrancy of bright colors, thick impasto-like textures against thin washes and strong forms to communicate an experience of a subject’s essence. It is my way to abstract and transform our ordinary experiences and reawaken life’s vibrant aesthetic.”

RAYMOND LOGAN: Don’t call Raymond Logan a “realistic artist.” While his work depicts real-life subject matter, it is grounded in abstraction and intuition. His true goal is to create a dialogue with you, the viewer, where a mutual discovery and re-imagining of “the self” can take place. Logan uses deft strokes of thick paint in surprising colors extrapolated from what he sees in the object – enhanced by how he wants those colors expressed. Get close up and you’ll find that his representational art becomes fully abstract.

Logan and Wise are connected through their mutual love of color and the ways they apply that color to their artwork. Logan spares nothing as he lavishly slaps thick globs of paint onto the canvas, while Wise contrasts impasto with thinner areas to create dynamic separation. From the first moment I saw their vibrant artwork, I knew their pieces would dance well together.

– Tish Laemmle, curator

 

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Filed Under: Art in the Arthouse, Claremont 5, Featured Post, Glendale, NoHo 7, Playhouse 7, Q&A's, Special Events, Town Center 5

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: Francisco Alvarado: Underpinnings of a Digital Landscape

January 25, 2019 by Lamb L.

Check out our brand spanking new art show in Santa Monica! Laemmle’s Art in the Arthouse proudly presents Francisco Alvarado: Underpinnings of a Digital Landscape. The show will run at the Monica Film Center till May, 2019. Sales benefit the Laemmle Foundation and its support of humanitarian and environmental causes in Los Angeles.

About the Exhibit
Ecuadorian artist FRANCISCO ALVARADO creates landscapes, foliage and gardens of flat color cut-outs. Raised near fields of beautiful South American farmland, butted against cooled lava pits, the artist recalls his childhood with paint and renders them with joy and animated vision. Alvarado alchemizes both his achievements and his losses through imagery, setting them in a visual forest of filled with intrigue and mystery. His works were painted, photographed, digitized, and reworked, creating fluid landscapes that alternate between internal and external compositions.

Alvarado moved to California in 1969 and began to follow the artwork of PETER MAX. The artist was also greatly influenced by his Ecuadorian roots, his service in the military, the artistry of Chilean painter ROBERTO MATTA and the intricate articulations of Viennese artist FRIEDENSREICH HUNDERTWASSER. Inspired by the emergence of Apple Computers, Alvarado enrolled at Long Beach State to study engineering. He threw himself into a brave new world of coding and digital imaging, ultimately leading to artistic experimentation with mixed media and a process aided by technology. The artist currently lives and works in Monrovia, California.

   – Joshua Elias, CURATOR

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Filed Under: Ahrya Fine Arts, Art in the Arthouse, Featured Post, Music Hall 3, News, Q&A's, Santa Monica, Special Events, Town Center 5

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: HILL & STUMP at the Royal

November 29, 2018 by Lamb L.

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE happily welcomes back artists DAPHNE HILL and ANNA STUMP, this time to the Royal for a festival of color just in time for the holidays. Swing by our gallery for a look at their newest work. The exhibit runs through February, 2019.

About the exhibit

Successful collaboration in the world of painting is a rare phenomenon. The duo of HILL and STUMP,  known for their breathtaking floral compositions, have nourished a unique and productive partnership. In a kind of creative symbiosis, they appear to “finish each other’s sentences,” layering each piece and editing each other to create something entirely new. Stump comments, “Our process is almost egoless because we can’t, as individual artists, get attached to anything we do. Hill confirms, “We never call a piece finished unless we’re both happy with it.”

Each application of paint is separated from the next by a layer of clear resin, lending depth and brilliance to the compositions. Their work includes nods to Rococo foliage, gilt decoration, Japanese motifs, and Impressionism. Artists such as JAKUCHU, FRAGONARD and SARGENT, as well as the light and spectacle of the Southern California landscape serve as inspiration.

In this exhibit, curated for Art in the Arthouse by Tish Laemmle, the magic of the flower is utilized as a vehicle for light and form to express itself. Nothing is overlooked. Whether realized or abstracted, each individual mum, magnolia, or cactus blossom is rendered until it glows. The artists work together in their studio in San Diego and also maintain a space in the El Sereno neighborhood of Los Angeles. Hill has recently become bicoastal, returning to her childhood home of Tennessee while Stump has become involved in the blooming High Desert community. Both teach art in college and at a men’s maximum security prison.
– Tish Laemmle, curator

 

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Filed Under: Art in the Arthouse, Claremont 5, Featured Post, News, NoHo 7, Playhouse 7, Q&A's, Special Events, Town Center 5

Dyan Cannon In Person for 45th Anniversary of THE LAST OF SHEILA on November 28 in West LA

November 14, 2018 by Lamb L.

Following our sold-out screening of Death on the Nile, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present another treat for mystery lovers. THE LAST OF SHEILA is a modern-day whodunit, and according to Newsweek, “the story moves through intellectual gymnastics reminiscent of the best of Agatha Christie.” The scintillating screenplay represents the only script ever written by celebrated composer Stephen Sondheim, which he co-authored with actor Anthony Perkins.

Sondheim, Perkins, and director Herbert Ross were all fans of murder mystery games, and they channeled their enthusiasm into this intricate, suspenseful thriller, which also allowed them to poke fun at a whole gallery of Hollywood personalities. As Alan Howard wrote in The Hollywood Reporter, “The ingeniously constructed screenplay by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins is genuinely witty, gossipy and often downright malicious.”

The story begins with the death of Sheila, a gossip columnist who knew all the carefully guarded secrets of the stars and filmmakers in Tinseltown. She is run down in a hit-and-run accident, and the driver speeds away. A year later her husband, a wealthy and sadistic producer, invites their friends to a holiday on his yacht in the south of France. There he intends to have them join him in a series of mystery games, and he also plans to unmask one of them as the killer of his wife. But the games do not go exactly as planned, and soon a few more bodies begin to pile up.

Leonard Maltin called the elegantly photographed film a “super murder-puzzler about jet-set gamester who devises what turns into a deadly game of whodunit.” Ross assembled an all-star cast to play the conniving jet-setters: James Coburn as the producer, James Mason as a director fallen on hard times, Richard Benjamin as a struggling screenwriter, Joan Hackett as his supportive wife, Dyan Cannon as a bitchy Hollywood agent, Raquel Welch as a neurotic star, and Ian McShane as her manager husband.

Co-star Dyan Cannon received Oscar nominations for her performances in Paul Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait. She also earned a nomination for a short film she directed, Number One. Her other films include Such Good Friends, The Anderson Tapes, Revenge of the Pink Panther, Honeysuckle Rose, Deathtrap, Author! Author!, The End of Innocence (which she also wrote and directed), and Boynton Beach Club.

Writing of her performance in The Last of Sheila, The New York Times’ Vincent Canby declared, “Most colorful is Dyan Cannon, who plays the talent agent for all that the wisecracks are worth… she gives a very good, very comic performance. The others are also good, especially Richard Benjamin and Joan Hackett and James Mason… but the essential bitchery that makes the film work is provided by Miss Cannon and by all of the Sondheim-Perkins inside references.” The Hollywood Reporter agreed: “Dyan Cannon gives the performance of her career as a demonic Hollywood agent.”

THE LAST OF SHEILA with Dyan Cannon in person screens at 7pm on Wednesday, November 28th at the Royal Theater in West Los Angeles. Click here to purchase tickets.

Format: DVD

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Filed Under: Actor in Person, Anniversary Classics, Featured Post, News, Q&A's, Repertory Cinema, Royal, Special Events

Two Horror Classics from the Universal Studio Vaults on Tuesday, October 30 in Pasadena, NoHo, and West LA

October 25, 2018 by Lamb L.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a double feature of classic Universal studios’ horror films on the eve of Halloween, October 30, in our popular Twofer Tuesday (two films for the price of one) program. We will show a “double treat” of the 85th anniversary of THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933) paired with the 70th anniversary of the horror-comedy ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948).

THE INVISIBLE MAN was a key entry in the cycle of terror films from Universal studios in the early 1930s that helped secure its reputation as the “house of horror” in the early sound era. Produced by Carl Laemmle Jr., son of the studio founder, the film stars Claude Rains in his American screen debut and Gloria Stuart, and was based on the H. G. Wells’ novel, adapted for the screen by R. C. Sheriff (‘Goodbye, Mr. Chips,’ ‘The Four Feathers,’ ‘Odd Man Out’). Universal called on James Whale, the acclaimed director of ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘The Old Dark House’ (with ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’ still waiting in the wings in the genre), to helm the project.

Rains portrays Dr. Jack Griffin, a chemist whose experiments with an obscure drug go awry, rendering him invisible and murderously insane. Rains played the title character mostly as a disembodied voice, often shown swathed in bandages, appearing only briefly on screen. He would later become one of the most recognizable of British actors working in Hollywood, garnering four Oscar nominations (‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,’ ‘Casablanca,’ ‘Mr. Skeffington,’ ‘Notorious’) and dozens of notable performances in his illustrious career.

Leading lady Gloria Stuart would have to wait sixty-four years before she capped her career with an Oscar nod for ‘Titanic’ in 1997. THE INVISIBLE MAN was a major hit at the box office, and was named one of the year’s ten best by The New York Times, whose critic at the time wrote,“The story makes such superb cinematic material that one wonders why Hollywood did not film it sooner…it is a remarkable achievement.” In 2008 the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry.


ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, as noted by TV Guide, is a “hilarious spoof of the Universal horror films of the 1930s and early 40s.” Bud Abbott and Lou Costello star as railway freight handlers who unwittingly deliver the “undead” bodies of Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange) to a wax museum, where they are revived. Lon Chaney Jr. co-stars, recreating his role as the Wolf Man, who tries to aid the comic duo. Lugosi donned Dracula’s cape in a featured role for the second and final time on the screen. The Invisible Man also makes a cameo appearance, this time with the voice of Vincent Price.

The film, directed by Charles Barton from a screenplay by Robert Lees, Frederic Rinaldo, and John Grant, was such a huge hit that it propelled Abbott and Costello onto the Top Ten Box Office Stars Poll the following year, where they would be ranked for four consecutive years. Its success also spawned a series of seven films in which the duo would “meet” more of the monsters from the Universal vaults. The film is ranked 56th on the AFI’s list of the Funniest Movies, and was added to the National Film Registry in 2001.

The Halloween Eve Twofer Tuesday double bill of THE INVISIBLE MAN and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN plays at three Laemmle locations: Royal, NoHo and Pasadena Playhouse 7 on October 30.

ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN shows at 4:40 PM and 8:10 PM. THE INVISIBLE MAN shows at 6:30 PM and 9:55.

Click here to get tickets for the 4:40 PM or 8:10 PM ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN with the 6:30 PM or 9:55 THE INVISIBLE MAN included.

Click here to get tickets for the 6:30 PM THE INVISIBLE MAN with the 8:10 PM ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN included.

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Filed Under: Anniversary Classics, Featured Post, News, NoHo 7, Playhouse 7, Repertory Cinema, Royal, Special Events, Twofer Tuesdays

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