Tag Archives: Laemmle Noho 7

LEE CHANG-DONG’S BURNING

Lee Chang-dong was in town last month for celebratory, sold-out screenings of BURNING, his trenchant epic of dislocation and revenge—and the writer-director’s first film in eight years.

Greatly expanding on his original source material—Haruki Murakami’s ambiguous short story “Barn Burning”—Lee told an enthusiastic American Cinematheque crowd that “no matter what your age, race, class, or gender, a sense of rage is permeating the world today.” To frame this phenomenon, Lee has drawn from another tale of rage, William Faulkner’s story that shares a title with Murakami’s.

The exponent of the filmmaker’s concerns is Jong-su—an aimless, unpublished writer played with soulful veracity by Ah-in Yoo—who quickly attempts to establish a relationship with Haemi (Jong-seo Jun), a childhood acquaintance he runs into during one of his dead-end delivery jobs.

Added to the mix is a Delonesque character Ben (Steven Yeun)—rich and idle but for his habit of burning greenhouses—who insinuates himself into Jong-su and Haemi’s lives to deleterious effect.

(Indeed, a creeping shadow of Antonioni hangs over Lee’s film, and the performative mysteries of ethnic appropriation in La Notte and L’Eclisse are slyly referenced in BURNING’s masterful mise en scène.)

BURNING

Through January 17.

Laemmle Glendale

207 North Maryland Avenue, Glendale.

BURNING

With Lee Chang-dong and Justin Chang in conversation

Sunday, January 13, at 7:30.

Egyptian Theatre

6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Through December 13:

Monica Film Center

1332 2nd Street, Santa Monica.

NoHo 7

5240 Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood.

Steven Yeun post-screening conversation at the recent New York Film Festival.

From top: Jong-seo Jun in BurningAh-in Yoo (left) and Steven Yeun (2); Lee Chang-dong (right) and Hirokazu Kore-eda, the writer-director of Shoplifters; Yoo. Image credit: Well Go USA Entertainment.

ORSON WELLES — THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

Part Barefoot Contessa, part Nashville, part psychedelic head trip—a sixties hangover shot in the seventies, abandoned in the eighties, and finally edited down from over 100 hours of footage to a two-hour cut—Orson Welles’ final film, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, is a fascinatingly crass long day’s journey into night: the last fevered hours of Jake Hannaford, a past-his-prime Hollywood director played by John Huston with his signature leer and sense of exhausted disdain.

Surrounded by an entourage of enablers and trailed by a scrum of paparazzi and video documentarians, Hannaford makes his merry way out to Palm Springs to watch the rushes from his latest attempt at a cinematic comeback, which—as many early viewers have noted—plays like a Welles parody of Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point.

(The hyper-erotic film-within-a-film stars Welles’ partner Oja Kodar, and Robert Random—both frequently nude and both the objects of Hannaford’s obsession.)

Shot in multiple film stocks, this propulsive blend of coercion, abuse, and overwhelming cynicism teeters on and off the rails from its opening scene, but you won’t be able to divert your eyes from the action.

“More acutely than any other work attached to Welles, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND is built—in form and content—of thrown voices, feints, false fronts, and tall tales leading to and from Welles’ idea of himself as a public figure, as the performance of a lifetime, drawn at maximum clarity then cracked apart and squirreled within shadows of such depth as to permit only flashes, glimpses, and whispers of that self-image.

“To be a wreck is, it seems, a certain sort of freedom.” — Phil Coldiron in Cinema Scope.

Tonight, THEY’LL LOVE ME WHEN I’M DEAD—the Morgan Neville documentary on Welles and his struggle to make his last opus—will screen at LACMA. Tomorrow night at the same venue, producer Frank Marshall will present the Welles picture, followed by a Q & A.

(Later this week, Marshall will also present Welles’ film at UCLA.)

 

THEY’LL LOVE ME WHEN I’M DEAD

Monday, October 29, at 7:30 pm.

Bing Theater, LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

 

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

Tuesday, October 30, at 7:30.

Bing Theater, LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

 

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

Thursday, November 1, at 7:30 pm.

James Bridges TheaterUCLA, 235 Charles E. Young Drive North, Los Angeles.

 

Through November 8:

Noho 7, 5240 Lankershim, North Hollywood.

From Friday, November 9:

Glendale, 207 North Maryland Avenue, Glendale.

And on Netflix.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND features screen appearances by Mercedes McCambridge, Paul Stewart, Norman Foster, Susan Strasberg, Edmond O’Brien, Lilli Palmer, Claude Chabrol, Dennis Hopper, Stéphane AudranPaul Mazursky, and Welles intimate Peter Bogdanovich, whose efforts in the assembly and release of the film were significant.

From top:

Oja Kodar(left) and Orson Welles (right) in the set of The Other Side of the Wind.

Kodar (2).

Robert Random and Kodar.

Credit for all images: Netflix.

DEE REES’ MUDBOUND

Dee Rees’ finely crafted third feature MUDBOUND—the Opening Night selection at this year’s AFI Fest—illustrates the perils of the too-faithful adaptation. In a series of sketches of post-Second World War life in the Mississippi delta—based on the source novel by Hillary Jordan—a group of very compelling characters is left stranded, perhaps casualties of the demands of the two-hour narrative.

Of particular interest is the truncated friendship between veterans Ronsel (Jason Mitchell)—the eldest son of a sharecropper—and Jamie (Garrett Hedlund), the younger brother of the owner of the farm.

Expectations are high for Rees’ recently announced fourth feature, now in pre-production: the Gloria Steinem biopic An Uncivil War, starring MUDBOUND lead Carey Mulligan.

 

MUDBOUND

Now playing.

Monica Film Center

1332 2nd Street, Santa Monica.

Laemmle Noho

5240 Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood.

 

Landmark

10850 Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Also on Netflix.

Above: Dee Rees at the Variety Portrait Studio during the opening night gala screening of Mudbound, AFI Fest, Thursday, November 9, 2017. Image credit: AFI.

Jason Mitchell (left) and Garrett Hedlund in Mudbound. Image credit: Netflix.

BAUMBACH’S STORIES

Elvis Mitchell: “You’ve made a film where art has replaced religion… The artist, played by Dustin Hoffman, feels patronized by the world. [Through his dialogue] he’s a narcissist writing history as it happens, as if no one around him is living it at the same time.”

Noah Baumbach: “Dustin told me that his lines were hard to remember because they referenced nothing external, but were all self-referential self-assessments… The best compliment I ever got was from Mike Nichols…”

Mitchell: “Well… ” [laughs]

Baumbach: “Nichols said, ‘You realize how embarrassed we all are.’ ”

(Conversation from the October 12 LACMA screening of Baumbach’s THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED), which was followed by a Q & A with Mitchell, curator of Film Independent at the museum.)

Embarrassment—recognized and shared—is always a delight in a room full of fellow movie-goers watching a new comedy by Noah Baumbach. And while Baumbach is happy for his current Netflix association, he’d prefer that you see his work in a cinema.

 

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED), through October 26.

LANDMARK, 10850 West Pico Boulevard, Rancho Park, Los Angeles.

landmarktheatres.com/los-angeles/the-landmark/film-info/the-meyerowitz-stories

LAEMMLE NOHO, 5240 Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood.

laemmle.com/films/42922

Opening Friday, October 27:

LAEMMLE MONICA FILM CENTER, 1332 2nd Street, Santa Monica.

TOWN CENTER, 17200 Ventura Boulevard, Encino.

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED), now streaming on Netflix.

netflix.com/title/80174434

Noah Baumbach (left) and Elvis Mitchell at LACMA, October 12, 2017. Image courtesy of WireImage and Film Independent.

thumbnail