The official blog of Laemmle Theatres
THE BURIAL OF KOJO Q&A’s with filmmaker Blitz Bazawule following the 7:30 pm show on Friday, 3/29, after the 5 pm and 7:30 pm shows on Saturday, 3/30. Ava DuVernay will moderate on Friday and Constance Ejuma of The African Artist Association will moderate after the Saturday 5 pm show.
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of one of the most provocative and explosive films of the late 60s, Haskell Wexler’s MEDIUM COOL followed by a Q&A with Robert Forster.
Wexler was already an Oscar-winning cinematographer of such films as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, In the Heat of the Night, and The Thomas Crown Affair when he made his directorial debut with this picture. He also had a background in documentaries, which he put to use in this feature set in Chicago in the summer of 1968, with a climax that takes place during the Democratic convention and the bloody police riot that accompanied it.
The film mixes fact and fiction, documentary footage and staged scenes, as it tells the story of a TV news cameraman, played by Robert Forster, who comes to recognize the moral obligations of a journalist during turbulent times. The film’s co-stars include Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill, and the late Verna Bloom, who gave an especially poignant performance as an Appalachian woman who becomes involved with Forster. Newcomer Harold Blankenship plays her son, who is befriended by Forster. Wexler wrote the screenplay and acted as his own cinematographer. Oscar winner Verna Fields edited the picture, and Mike Bloomfield composed the score.
The film was controversial but enormously successful. It was rated X by the Classification and Ratings Administration of the MPAA, ostensibly for nudity and language, but Wexler commented that “it was a political X.” It was later re-rated R without cuts.
The New York Times’ Vincent Canby wrote, “The result is a film of tremendous visual impact, a kind of cinematic Guernica, a picture of America in the process of exploding into fragmented bits of hostility, suspicion, fear and violence.” The Los Angeles Times’ Charles Champlin agreed that “Medium Cool provides an astonishingly wide but economical documentation of this particular moment in our history.” And Newsweek’s Joe Morgenstern called it “an exciting piece of work that must be seen by anyone who cares about the development of modern movies.”
The film’s reputation continued to grow in later years, with Siskel and Ebert hailing it as “a well-crafted masterpiece.” In 2003 it was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
Robert Forster made his film debut as the object of Marlon Brando’s obsession in John Huston’s controversial 1967 film, Reflections in a Golden Eye, which also starred Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Harris, and Brian Keith. Forster continued to work with top directors of the era, co-starring in Robert Mulligan’s The Stalking Moon and George Cukor’s Justine. Later he earned an Oscar nomination for his vivid portrayal in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, and he delivered striking performances in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and Alexander Payne’s The Descendants. He has continued to make a strong impression in TV series Last Man Standing and the reboot of Twin Peaks, and just last year he bolstered the family drama, What They Had, in which he co-starred with Blythe Danner, Hilary Swank, and Michael Shannon.
Our 50th anniversary presentation of MEDIUM COOL with Robert Forster in person screens Wednesday, March 27, at 7pm at the Royal in West LA. Click here for tickets.
Format: Blu-ray
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series invite you to celebrate April Fools’ Day with a double feature starring writer-director Blake Edwards’ inspired creation of accidental mayhem, Inspector Clouseau. Peter Sellers plays the inept French detective to comic perfection in the 55th anniversary screenings of THE PINK PANTHER and A SHOT IN THE DARK on April 1 in Pasadena, North Hollywood, and West LA. Showtime information.
THE PINK PANTHER, the first of a series of films with the blundering sleuth, opened in the United States in April 1964 and was an immediate hit.
Audiences thoroughly enjoyed the jewel heist caper, especially the antics of Sellers, who effectively stole the film from an ensemble cast including David Niven as the suave thief Sir Charles Lytton, Robert Wagner as his playboy nephew, Capucine as Clouseau’s philandering wife, and Claudia Cardinale as the exiled Princess Dala, the owner of the fabulous diamond known as “the Pink Panther.”
Variety found the original screenplay by Edwards and Maurice Richlin (Pillow Talk) “intensely funny,” with kudos to the cast and especially Sellers’ “razor-sharp timing.” Location shooting in the Italian Alps by cinematographer Philip Lathrop in lush Technicolor enhanced the comedy.
Of course, the memorable theme music by Henry Mancini is the film’s greatest legacy. Mancini’s original score was Oscar-nominated and won three Grammy awards, as well as inclusion in the Grammy Hall of Fame. The score is ranked #20 in the AFI’s all-time top 100. In addition, the feline character that cavorted across the screen in the merry main title sequence by the DePatie-Freleng animation studio became an Oscar-winning cartoon star. The film was added to the National Film Registry in 2010.
Edwards, Sellers, and Mancini reunited for A SHOT IN THE DARK, the second of their several collaborations that continued into the 1970s.
Director Edwards enlisted William Peter Blatty to co-write a screen version of the French play by Marcel Archard (adapted by Harry Kurnitz for Broadway). Edwards brought along Inspector Clouseau, who was not a character in the original play, and turned Sellers loose in the murder mystery plot.
Commissioner Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), driven to comic psychosis by Clouseau’s ineptitude, and Clouseau’s servant Cato (Burt Kwuok), characters who would become mainstays in the ensuing movie series with Sellers, appear for the first time. Also starring Elke Sommer as the main murder suspect and veteran actor George Sanders as the owner of the chateau where the bodies keep piling up.
The comedy was released in the summer of 1964 and became an even bigger hit than The Pink Panther. The New Yorker praised Edwards and Blatty for “the good sense to toss the foundation stock out the window and let Mr. Sellers run amok…All in all, extremely jolly.” Mancini created a whole new jazzy theme for Clouseau and the main title’s animation sequence was once again crafted by DePatie and Freleng.
So avoid pranks and hoaxes this April Fools’ and see the real comic deal – the Inspector Clouseau Twofer at three Laemmle locations: Royal, NoHo and Pasadena Playhouse. Two delightful comedies for the price-of-one on Monday, April 1.
Buy tickets to the 5pm A SHOT IN THE DARK with admission to the 7:10pm THE PINK PANTHER included here. Or, buy tickets to the 7:10pm THE PINK PANTHER with admission to the 9:30pm A SHOT IN THE DARK included here.
Format: DVD
AMERICAN RELAPSE Q&A with filmmaker Pat McGee following the 7:10 pm show on Tuesday, 4/2.
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
THE WIND director Emma Tammi will participate in a Q&A on Thursday, 4/4 following the 7:30 pm show.
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present this month’s installment of our Anniversary Classics Abroad program. In keeping with the start of spring, we commemorate Francois Truffaut’s evergreen feature film debut, THE 400 BLOWS, which earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Original Screenplay of 1959.
Truffaut’s autobiographical picture, drawn from events in his own childhood, helped to introduce American audiences to the French New Wave. Truffaut had started as a critic for Cahiers du Cinema along with fellow aspiring directors Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol. When he unveiled his first feature, he dedicated it to pioneering French critic Andre Bazin.
Critics around the world hailed the arrival of a major new talent. The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther declared, “Not since the 1952 arrival of Rene Clement’s Forbidden Games…have we had from France a cinema that so brilliantly and strikingly reveals the explosion of a fresh creative talent in the directorial field.” Indeed Truffaut won the award for Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959.
Jean-Pierre Leaud starred as the director’s alter ego, Antoine Doinel, and the character re-appeared in four more films over the course of Truffaut’s career. Albert Remy and Claire Maurier co-star. Another of Truffaut’s frequent collaborators, Henri Decae, provided the lustrous black-and-white cinematography.
The screenplay by Truffaut and Marcel Moussy follows the exploits of Antoine as he battles with his parents, teachers, police, and administrators of the reformatory where he is sent. The director employed an arsenal of fresh cinematic techniques to capture the hero’s irreverent spirit and journey toward liberation. The final freeze frame became one of the most imitated shots in cinema history.
Almost all critics endorsed the film. As Roger Ebert wrote, “The 400 Blows, with all its simplicity and feeling, is in a class by itself.” Directors around the world, including Akira Kurosawa, Luis Bunuel, and Jean Cocteau, also praised Truffaut’s audacious vision. Writing many years later, The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane said, “time has fortified this sharp, slender account of a misbegotten boyhood into one of the unassailable monuments of French cinema.”
THE 400 BLOWS (1959) screens Wednesday, March 20 at 7PM at the Royal, Town Center, and Playhouse. Click here for tickets.
Format: DCP
ART IN THE ARTHOUSE proudly presents a timely and important exhibit, JEFFREY SKLAN: ELEGY in Glendale. The art is for sale and on display till June 2019. Sales benefit the Laemmle Foundation and its support of humanitarian and environmental causes in Los Angeles. Stop by our gallery – no need to buy a movie ticket to view.
About the exhibit
A seasoned photographer, JEFFREY SKLAN understands the essence of his subjects, allowing them to reveal themselves and honoring their light. Born in Miami in 1954, Sklan is self-taught. From the moment he absconded with his father’s camera to photograph Hurricane Betsy (1965) at age 10, Sklan has been drawn to dramatic, moving incidents. Now with 45 years behind the lens, Sklan has created a significant body of work. Each image is deeply concentrated and form-driven, with his still-life and portraiture especially resonant. This powerful series entitled ELEGY is part of larger traveling exhibition. Calla lily flowers are developed into bruised, poetic, and stunningly beautiful imagery and then juxtaposed against the idea of brutal tragedy. According to the artist: “It pays homage and respect to those who have been taken from us by unjustifiable acts of violence – starting with the Pulse Nightclub/Orlando shooting in June, 2016 and ending with the local Thousand Oaks murders in late 2018.”
“The show came to life through an amazing series of synchronicities. I knew two of the victims of homicides. This project is meant to be a teaching aide, a catalyst for dialogue and civil discourse, and a call to action.”
Sklan’s recent exhibitions include a show at PhotoLA and solo exhibits at The Icon and Gabba Gallery. He is currently working on a book project called Brush Off featuring 200 artist portraits that will coincide with a solo exhibition in 2020. He works daily at his studio in downtown, Los Angeles.
– Joshua Elias, curator
