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LAEMMLE LIVE: presents Street Symphony with Vijay Gupta – Sunday, April 30, 2017

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FALL16-Gupta-Box-01 2Please join us for a very special event as LAEMMLE LIVE presents STREET SYMPHONY Sunday, April 30, 2017. Vijay Gupta, LA Philharmonic violinist and founder of STREET SYMPHONY will perform with fellow Street Symphony musicians, Jin Shan Dai, violin; Michael Larco, viola; and Dahae Kim, cello.  Their program will include Dvořák: String Quartet #12 “American” and music by Duke Ellington. KUSC Announcer Rich Capparela will host and join Vijay in conversation to raise awareness of the humanity of people experiencing homelessness.  We are honored Street Symphony, a ground-breaking non-profit that connects professional musicians with these communities is bringing this life-affirming program to Santa Monica.

Today, Skid Row is the epicenter of the homeless capital of the United States. Nearly 20,000 people may sleep on the streets of downtown Los Angeles on any given night. Los Angeles County jails are the largest in America, and are effectively the largest in-patient mental health centers in the world. These communities comprise the audiences of Street Symphony. 

Street SymphonyIn the course of the last 4 years, the distinguished musicians of Street Symphony have presented nearly 200 free, live musical engagements with the Los Angeles community, presenting events in Skid Row, the greater Los Angeles Area and the LA County Jails. They bring jazz. They bring gypsy music. They bring the works of Schumann, Schubert and Mendelssohn. They bring music to lift up the brave stories and voices of people who, although living in an impoverished situation, are in no way impoverished in spirit.

VIJAY GUPTA is a violinist, speaker, and passionate advocate for the dedicated presence of citizen-artists in social and civic discourse. Gupta joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007 at the age of 19, after completing an undergraduate degree in biology and a Master’s degree in violin performance from the Yale School of Music. Gupta made his solo debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Zubin Mehta at age 11 and has performed on an international scale since the age of 8. 

A gifted spokesperson for the power of arts to change lives, Gupta believes that musical engagement reconnects us to our shared humanity across vast divides, and ultimately impacts social justice. Gupta is a TED Senior Fellow and currently serves on the board of directors of the DC-based national arts advocacy organization Americans for the Arts. In 2015, at the age of 27, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by the University of La Verne.

Vijay Gupta currently plays a 1731 Domenico Montagnana violin on generous loan through the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association.

RSVP using Eventbrite
This is a Free Event

EVENT DETAILS
Sunday, April 30, 2017
11:00 AM
Monica Film Center

Q&A with Scott Wilson Following Our 50th Anniversary Screening of IN COLD BLOOD on March 22th in West LA.

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scott-wilson-enewsLaemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of IN COLD BLOOD (1967), followed by a Q&A with actor Scott Wilson on March 22 at 7:00 PM at the Royal Theater in West Los Angeles. Click here for tickets.

In Cold Blood, the film version of Truman Capote’s immensely popular “nonfiction novel,” was nominated for four top Oscars in 1967. Richard Brooks received two nominations, for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and the film was also nominated for Conrad Hall’s striking cinematography and Quincy Jones’ memorable score.

In his best-selling book, Capote chronicled the events leading up to and following the senseless murders of a family of four in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. He drew a pointed contrast between the prosperous, all-American Clutter family and the two social outsiders, Perry Smith and Richard Hickok, who committed the murders.

In adapting the book, Brooks (the Oscar-winning writer-director of such films as The Blackboard Jungle, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Elmer Gantry, and Sweet Bird of Youth) resolved to be as faithful as possible to Capote’s chronicle, even filming in many of the actual locations where the events took place. With Capote’s encouragement, Brooks cast unknown actors as the two killers, and the performances of Robert Blake as Smith and Scott Wilson as Hickok earned critical raves. More established actors John Forsythe, Paul Stewart, and Will Geer filled out the supporting cast. Brooks also bucked the industry practice and decided to shoot the film in black-and-white at a time when color cinematography had become virtually mandatory for big-studio films.

Reviews at the time were largely positive. The Saturday Review’s Arthur Knight declared the film to be “one of the finest pictures of the year, and possibly of the decade.” Its reputation has not diminished. In an article in The Wall Street Journal in January of 2017, critic Peter Cowie called the film “a classic of American cinema” and added, “In Cold Blood retains its relevance today, even as random shootings continue to appall.”

Scott Wilson made his film debut earlier in 1967, in the Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night. In Cold Blood was only his second movie. He went on to co-star in John Frankenheimer’s The Gypsy Moths, the Robert Redford version of The Great Gatsby, Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff, The New Centurions, The Ninth Configuration, and more recent appearances in Dead Man Walking, The Last Samurai, Monster, and Junebug. He also is known for his roles in the popular TV series CSI and The Walking Dead.

For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, including an upcoming screening of AVANTI, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.

ROBOCOP Star Nancy Allen in Person for a Q&A at the NoHo 7.

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ROBOCOPROBOCOP star Nancy Allen (Officer Anne Lewis), will introduce and participate in a Q&A after the March 23 screening at the NoHo 7.

ROBOCOP is part of our weekly Throwback Thursday series in partnership with Eat|See|Hear. Upcoming screenings include BLADE RUNNER, THE BAD NEWS BEARS and more! For more details, visit: https://www.laemmle.com/tbt.

55th anniversary screening of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? on March 11th in Beverly Hills

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 55th anniversary screening of the cult classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, on March 11 at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts theater in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

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The new FX miniseries “Feud,” about the rivalry between Davis and Crawford while shooting the movie, will begin airing on March 5. This special anniversary screening will coincide with all the attention that juicy miniseries will surely receive. And there are undeniable parallels between Hollywood in 1962 and 2017. Feud’s lead actresses, Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange, probably face some of the same prejudice against aging actresses that plagued Davis and Crawford 55 years ago.

Baby Jane, a surprise box office smash, was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, including Bette Davis as Best Actress. It won the Oscar for black-and white costume design, and among its other nominations were newcomer Victor Buono (supporting actor) in his screen debut, and veteran cinematographer Ernest Haller (Oscar winner for Gone With the Wind).

Baby Jane is now regarded notoriously as a “camp classic,” and for teaming Hollywood legends Davis and Crawford who were at low points in their movie careers in 1962. There were very few good roles for aging actresses in that era, and studio disinterest forced the faded movie queens to seek unorthodox parts. The Henry Farrell novel about the psychological rivalry between two reclusive sisters, former actresses holed up in Hollywood obscurity seemed tailor-made.

Producer-Director Robert Aldrich hired Lukas Heller to write the screenplay, and the expert mix of black comedy and suspense, along with powerful acting by the cast, made the film a worldwide success. It revived the careers of both Davis and Crawford, restoring their places in the Hollywood pantheon, and spawned a genre of Grand Dame Guignol that gave other older actresses roles for the next decade.

Part of the appeal of the film was the alleged off-screen rivalry between Davis and Crawford, and that feud sparked great interest by both the stars’ fans and the press.

Show, the 60s magazine of the arts, salivated at the prospect: “For fans who are getting on, there is one certain treat in store. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford will be together in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, a melodrama about the murderous rivalry between two sisters, onetime film stars. Or is it perhaps Joan Crawford and Bette Davis?”

Among divided critical reception at the time, the Chicago Daily News saw “…the outlines of a modern Greek tragedy. Yet it is great fun, too, because this is pure cinema drama set in a real house of horrors.”

Whether seen as a “campy thriller” or a well-crafted domestic film noir, the movie’s appeal has lasted to this day. The FX series “Feud” testifies to its impact.

We will screen What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with a trivia contest and special introduction on the movie’s backstory and enduring legacy. Shows Saturday March 11 (7:30 PM) at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, including an upcoming screening of IN COLD BLOOD, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.

Announcing Our New Monthly Repertory Series ANNIVERSARY CLASSICS ABROAD

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We are having so much fun with our American repertory film series Anniversary Classics, which we began with film critic Stephen Farber two years ago, that we are pleased to announce a companion series: Anniversary Classics Abroad. We will be screening great foreign films on the third Wednesday of every month at three venues simultaneously: the Royal in West L.A., the Town Center in Encino, and the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. We are launching the Abroad program with 30th anniversary screenings of Bille August’s award-winning Danish film, Pelle the Conqueror (1987) at 7 PM on March 15. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 1988 and also won the Palme d’Or in Cannes that same year. Master Swedish actor Max von Sydow received his first Oscar nomination for his performance in the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIoZ5OYc9RE

PELLEThe beautifully crafted film is adapted from a popular Danish novel by Martin Andersen Nexo, published in 1908. It tells the story of a widower and his young son who journey from Sweden to Denmark in the 1850s in search of work. There they encounter prejudice and harsh working conditions; the story clearly takes on renewed urgency in light of rising anti-immigrant bias in Europe as well as the United States. August cast newcomer Pelle Hvenegaard in the title role.

In Newsweek, David Ansen wrote, “We are engrossed by the serene confidence of the storytelling, by August’s painterly eye, by von Sydow’s and Hvenegaard’s touching performances.” TIME Magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “Bille August’s gifts for austere, striking imagery and for the short, perfectly shaped scene impart to this film an epic richness, range and energy.” The film helped to catapult August to the front ranks of international directors. He went on to make several films in the U.S. as well as Europe, and Ingmar Bergman chose August to direct his autobiographical screenplay, The Best Intentions.

Y“The von Sydow performance is in a category by itself. It is another highlight in an already extraordinary career, and quite unlike anything that American audiences have seen him do to date.” – Vincent Canby, New York Times

“In Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror, Max von Sydow is so astoundingly evocative that he makes your bones ache.” – Hal Hinson, Washington Post

The subsequent films in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series are:

DISWednesday, April 19: Yojimbo (1962). Akira Kurosawa’s energetic, tongue-in-cheek samurai Western had an enormous influence on filmmakers all over the world. Toshiro Mifune stars as the amoral swordsman who strides into town and manipulates the opposing factions in a turf war.

Wednesday, May 17: Divorce Italian Style (1962). This Oscar-winning film from director Pietro Germi is a ferocious black comic dissection of Sicilian mores. The picture helped to cement Marcello Mastroianni’s position as a rising international superstar.

SOASN2Wednesday, June 21: Smiles of a Summer Night (1957). To coincide with the summer solstice, we present Ingmar Bergman’s elegant romantic comedy set on a Swedish estate on the longest night of the year. Eva Dahlbeck, Harriet Andersson, and Gunnar Bjornstrand star in the film that Pauline Kael called an “exquisite carnal comedy.” The film later inspired Stephen Sondheim’s musical, A Little Night Music.

Again, we will show all Anniversary Classics Abroad films on the third Wednesday of each month at three venues, the Royal, Playhouse, and Town Center, at 7 PM. Come experience these classics of world cinema as they were intended to be experienced, on a big screen in a dark auditorium full of fellow cinephiles.

LAEMMLE LIVE: Presents Lincoln Middle School Madrigal Singers – Sunday March 5, 2017

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Join us at the MLincoln New Photoonica Film Center on Sunday, March 5, 2017 for Laemmle Live’s third concert featuring Lincoln Middle School Madrigal Singers. The program will include a variety of classical and popular music, folk songs and audience participation, too!  Under the direction of Vanessa Counte, Choral Director, the Madrigal Singers are an audition-based a cappella ensemble that perform as part of Santa Monica’s Lincoln Middle School choral program. They meet once a week to rehearse and focus on Renaissance through contemporary a cappella choral literature. Recipients of top ratings in Southern California Festivals, they have been guest performers at local elementary schools, cub scout holiday meetings and the Aga Khan Foundation Walk.

Vanessa Counte has been the Choir Director at Lincoln Middle School since 2005. Mrs. Counte earned her BA in Music Education at Western Michigan University. An active member of the American Choral Directors Association and the Southern California Vocal Association, she is currently finishing her Master of Music in Choral Conducting through CAL State LA’s three summer program.

RSVP using Eventbrite
This is a Free Event!

EVENT DETAILS
Sunday, March 5, 2017
11:00 AM
Monica Film Center

50TH Anniversary of THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE Presented in 35mm on February 28th in Beverly Hills.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a tribute to Mary Tyler Moore with a 50th anniversary screening of THOROUGLY MODERN MILLIE (1967) in 35mm at 7:30PM on February 28, 2017 at the Ahrya Fine Arts. Click here to purchase tickets.

The musical romantic comedy, a spoof of the 1920s flapper era, stars Julie Andrews (at the height of her popularity), Carol Channing (Oscar-nominated for her role), Beatrice Lillie, John Gavin, James Fox, Pat Morita, Jack Soo, and Mary Tyler Moore.

Moore had just completed her role on television’s “The Dick Van Dyke Show” the year before, and before embarking on her own groundbreaking series “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in 1970, made several movies. THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE was the best of those 60s films, and a popular success in 1967. Moore would return to the screen in an Oscar-nominated performance in ORDINARY PEOPLE (1980).

Bosley Crowther in the New York Times called the film “A thoroughly modern burlesque of the manner and styles of flaming youth in the jazzy 1920s, of movie melodramas in the Silent days…it is a thoroughly delightful movie.”

The film was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including the title song, and won for composer Elmer Bernstein his only career Oscar in the original score category.

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Directed by George Roy Hill from an original screenplay by Richard Morris and produced by studio era veteran Ross Hunter, the movie was one of the 60s’ brightest musicals. It was later adapted for Broadway in 2000. Hill used it as a tune-up for his homage to another bygone era with the Oscar-winning THE STING in 1973.

THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE will show as a special tribute to the late actress Mary Tyler Moore on Tuesday, February 28 at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. We will screen in 35mm as a special presentation.

For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, including an upcoming screening of WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.

Enchanting Turkish Cat Documentary KEDI Slinks into L.A. Theaters February 17.

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Hundreds of thousands of Turkish cats roam the metropolis of Istanbul freely. For thousands of years they’ve wandered in and out of people’s lives, becoming an essential part of the communities that make the city so rich. Claiming no owners, the cats of Istanbul live between two worlds, neither wild nor tame –and they bring joy and purpose to those people they choose to adopt. In Istanbul, cats are the mirrors to the people, allowing them to reflect on their lives in ways nothing else could.

Critics and internet cats agree – the cat documentary KEDI, which we open at the Royal, Playhouse and Town Center on February 17, will charm its way into your heart and home as you fall in love with the cats in Istanbul. This film is a sophisticated take on your typical cat video that will both dazzle and educate. What’s more, free organic “Turkish blend” catnip to opening weekend audiences, while supplies last!

https://vimeo.com/152779982

In his Variety review, Joe Leydon called KEDI a “magical and remarkable…splendidly graceful and quietly magical documentary about the multifaceted feline population of Istanbul…heartfelt…the beautifully spare musical score by Kira Fontana provides the perfect accompaniment for what gradually emerges as a profoundly affecting meditation, at once dreamy and precise, on a force of nature – several forces of nature, actually, with paws and tails – surviving and thriving in an industrialized world.”

A scene from KEDI.

Writing in the Hollywood Reporter, Sheri Linden said, “for anyone who’s curious about the historical events and municipal policies affecting Istanbul’s thriving population of street cats, KEDI offers little in the way of informative detail. But if you’d just like to hang with a few of the scrappy felines, Ceyda Torun’s entrancing documentary is manna from the cat gods. A collective portrait that’s as elegant as its light-footed subjects, it’s guaranteed to soothe a weary mind, and just might lower blood pressure, too.

A scene from KEDI.

Born in Istanbul, KEDI director-producer Ceyda Torun spent her formative early years among the street cats while her mother worried she’d get rabies and her sister worried she’d bring home fleas. After her family left the country when she was eleven, Ceyda lived in Amman, Jordan, and ended up in New York for her high school years, never encountering a street cat. Ceyda studied Anthropology at Boston University, returned to Istanbul to assist director Reha Erdem and then off to London to work alongside producer Chris Auty. She returned to the U.S. and co-founded Termite Films with cinematographer Charlie Wuppermann and has since directed her first feature documentary. She still misses her feline companions, gets excited whenever she sees a cat on the streets of Los Angeles, but they rarely feel the same way about her. About KEDI, she said the following:

13 - Yellow Sh_t in KEDI

“I grew up in Istanbul until I was eleven years old and I believe my childhood was infinitely less lonesome than it would have been if it weren’t for cats. And I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Every year that I returned to the city, I saw it change in ways that made it less and less recognizable, except for the cats; they were the one constant element, becoming synonymous with the city itself and ultimately, embodying its soul. This film is, in many ways, a love letter to those cats and the city, both of which are changing in ways that are unpredictable.

9 - Gamsiz in KEDI

“When we set out to make this film, I had many ideas about what it should be. I hoped to show Istanbul in ways that went beyond tour guides and news headlines. I wanted to explore philosophical themes that would make you, the audience, ponder about our relationship to cats, to nature, to each other.

CATNIP
KEDI Turkish blend organic “Katmint” catnip!

“In the end, I hope this film makes you feel like you just had a cat snuggle up on your lap unexpectedly, and purr fervently for a good long time, while allowing you to stroke it gently along its back; forcing you, simply because you can’t move without letting go of that softness and warmth, to think about things that you may not have given yourself time to think about in the busy life you lead, to discuss them with a group of new friends, friends from Istanbul who tell you what the city is really like.

“Hopefully this film will be that experience for you, and that you’ll leave with a yearning in your hands to pet a cat, and visit Istanbul.”