PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF DESIRE post screening Q&A’s:
Saturday Dec 1st: 4:10pm (director Hao Wu & Adrian Chen, staff writer at The New Yorker) and 7:00pm (director with a panel of Chinese online influencers).
by Lamb L.
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF DESIRE post screening Q&A’s:
Saturday Dec 1st: 4:10pm (director Hao Wu & Adrian Chen, staff writer at The New Yorker) and 7:00pm (director with a panel of Chinese online influencers).
by Lamb L.
WELCOME M1LL10NS director Milroy Goes and producer Manpreet Singh (Manna Mohie) will participate in a Q&A following the 7:00 pm show.
by Lamb L.
GHOSTBOX COWBOY Q&A’s with filmmaker John Maringouin on Friday, 11/30 and Saturday, 12/1 after the 7:00 pm show. Actress Pollyanna Mcintosh (‘The Walking Dead’) will moderate on Friday and editor Curtiss Clayton (My Own Private Idaho, Drugstore Cowboy & more) will moderate on Saturday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehsqDYiblIo
by Lamb L.
From the New Yorker today, November 27, 2018, by Richard Brody: From the title alone, it’s obvious that “Bathtubs Over Broadway,” a new documentary by Dava Whisenant that opens this Friday, will be a delight. Its subject is the industrial musical—plays produced by corporations for their employees to enjoy at nationwide or regional sales meetings and conventions. Steve Young, who was, for more than twenty years, a writer for David Letterman, became obsessed, in the mid-nineties, with these shows—in particular, with LPs of them, which were pressed solely to be distributed to employees as souvenirs. The ostensible subject of “Bathtubs Over Broadway” is the amusement value of these exotic, eccentric by-products of show business, whose kitschy pleasures include celebrations of automobiles, dog food, and disposable blood-absorbing liners for the operating room, in a number that rhymes “hysterectomy” and “appendectomy.” But the overarching and underlying question that the film poses is nothing less than: What is art? And, for that matter, is the conventional definition of good art too narrow to account for the merits of such works as these?
Young admits that he was initially attracted to these records because he found them “unintentionally hilarious.” (This is the quality that led him to work the musicals into bits on the Letterman Show, for the recurring segment “Dave’s Record Collection.”) But, as he devoted himself to collecting the albums more intensively and combed archives and personal collections for memorabilia, whether sheet music or handbills, photographs or reels of film, Young discovered that, alongside the intrinsic element of absurdity and incongruity, there’s often a sincere and authentic spark of creative imagination and ingenuity.
He noted that some of these shows employed major artists (or ones who’d later become famous), both behind the scenes and onstage, including the composers Sheldon Harnick (better known for “Fiddler on the Roof”) and the team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (“Cabaret”); such actors as Chita Rivera, Florence Henderson, Bob Newhart, and Martin Short; and directors including Bob Fosse and Susan Stroman. Young also became fascinated by other performers and composers whose prominence in industrial musicals wasn’t matched by success in public theatre, and he sought to learn more about their art and their lives.
“Bathtubs Over Broadway” chronicles Young’s own story, as a writer early in his career who had no hobbies and instead found an obsession—and whose increasing involvement with industrial musicals coincided with David Letterman’s retirement and Young’s own withdrawal from comedy writing. (Fascinatingly, Young describes himself as “comedy-damaged,” explaining that decades of immersion in comedy have left him evaluating the craft rather than responding to it, and his sideline in industrial musicals appears to restore him to a state of unjaded passion.) Yet the central enticement of the documentary comes from the records and films of the musicals themselves. “Bathtubs Over Broadway” springs to life above all when Young puts an LP on his turntable, when he’s in a Library of Congress viewing room and sees a private 16-mm. copy of a production, or when digitized copies of soundtracks and films are excerpted directly into the film. The movie includes clips from the disco-style Johnson & Johnson “sunscreen musical of 1978,” a musical number called “Xerox Spoken Here,” the sheet music for an instrumental number called “Seagram’s Symphony,” and a scene of a kick-line chorus singing a financial ditty about “the extra margins that accrue.”
by Lamb L.
by Lamb L.
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 55th anniversary screening of acclaimed director Luchino Visconti’s sumptuous masterpiece, THE LEOPARD (Il Gattopardo). The film will close out the year for the popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program of showcasing vintage foreign-language cinema.
The Leopard is based on the historical novel by Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa, an international best seller upon publication in 1958. The story is set in the 1860s during the turbulent period of the “Risorgimento,” the struggle for the unification of Italy.
All this is reflected in the fate of one Sicilian aristocratic family, headed by Prince Fabrizio de Salina (Burt Lancaster). The Prince (the Leopard) at first resists all the political and social changes, but comes to accept them after their embrace by his pragmatic nephew (Alain Delon), who joins Garibaldi’s Red Shirts and marries the daughter (Claudia Cardinale) of an ambitious small-town merchant mayor to secure the family’s place in the new Italy.
Visconti was drawn to the material about fading aristocracy from his own heritage, as he was born to nobility in Milan. He had previously explored his country’s past with another historical adaptation, Senso, in 1954, and that film is also considered a masterwork.
The Leopard won the Palme D’or at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival and has been reissued on several occasions. The film is notable for its rich production design by Mario Garbuglia, cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno, and Oscar-nominated costume design by Piero Tosi, who won an Honorary Oscar in 2014.
The original release reaped praise from The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther, “a stunning visualization of a mood of melancholy and nostalgia at the passing of an age.” Admiration has grown through the decades, with The London Observer calling it “That rare thing—a great film from a great book.” J. Hoberman in the Village Voice exclaimed, “The greatest film of its kind since World War II.”
Martin Scorsese is one of the film’s champions, placing it on his own personal list of the 12 greatest films ever made, extolling “the deeply measured tone…its use of vast spaces, and also the richness of every detail.” As a lament for a lost world, the film is considered Italy’s Gone With the Wind.
Also starring Terrence Hill (Mario Girotti), Paola Stoppa et al. Music by Nino Rota (La Strada, Romeo and Juliet, The Godfather). Visconti co-wrote the screenplay with Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Enrico Medioli, and Massimo Franciosca.
The Leopard screens on December 5 at 7:00 PM at the Royal, Town Center, and Pasadena Playhouse.
Joanna Lancaster, daughter of Burt Lancaster, will participate in a pre-screening Q&A moderated by film critic Stephen Farber at the Laemmle Royal in West LA.
Click here for tickets.
Running time: 187 minutes
Italian with English subtitles
Format: Blu-ray
by Lamb L.
This is the last week Project Angel Food cookies will be available at our concession stands and Charo is coming to help drum up support!
The actress, comedian, and flamenco guitarist will be selling cookies from 7pm to 8pm on Saturday, November 24th at the Laemmle Royal in West Los Angeles.
For the month of November, all Laemmle Theatres concessions stands feature Project Angel Food cookies with all proceeds going to this amazing organization that prepares and delivers healthy meals to feed people impacted by serious illness. You can also add a little extra cash donation with any purchase.
Can’t make it to one of our theaters or want to do more? Do what we did and volunteer! Team Laemmle spent last Thursday preparing food at Project Angel Food and had a blast. Find out how you can help at www.angelfood.org!
by Lamb L.
THE LONG SHADOW Q&A’s Friday, 11/23 – Sunday, 11/25 following the 4:40 pm shows with filmmakers Maureen Gosling, Jed Riffe and subject/producer Sally Holst.