This weekend, the LA 3-D Club is hosting the 9th Annual LA 3-D Movie Festival at the Downtown Independent Theater. The festival opens Friday, December 14th at 8pm with Robin Hood: Ghosts of Sherwood 3D, a 2012 feature from Germany, directed by Oliver Krekel and starring Martin Thon, Tom Savini, and Kane Hodder.

Short films in competition will screen at 1pm and 3pm on Saturday, December 15th, followed at 5pm by a special presentation of 20th Century Fox’s Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare,  a 2012 3-D animated short film starring the youngest family member of  The Simpsons. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with members of the creative team behind the film, including director David Silverman.

The festival’s Closing Night will showcase the feature U2 3D, the 2008 concert film that was shot in South America during the band’s Vertigo tour.  U2 3D will screen for FREE at 8pm on Saturday,  December 15th and will be introduced by 3D Producer and 3ality Technica CEO Steve Schklair.

Sunday, December 16th will be dedicated to remembering and celebrating the life of Ray Zone, LA 3-D Club Vice President and 9th Annual LA 3-D Movie Festival C0-Chair in a free public memorial at the theater. Ray was an author, 3-D film producer, speaker, and award-winning 3-D artist who passed away on November 13, 2012. A reception, hosted by the International 3D Society, begins at 5pm, followed by family and friends speaking in memorial to Ray in the theater. The evening will include displays of Ray’s art, writing, and film work.

If you buy a pass to the festival, you could be the lucky winner of a FujiFilm FinePix REAL 3D W3 digital camera. A Festival Pass is $30 and gets you into all screenings and events during the weekend  and enters you into a drawing to be held at the awards ceremony on Saturday evening at 7pm.

Come out and support a great local organization, a fantastic independent theater and see some amazing indie 3-D films and music videos from all over the world.

The 9th Annual LA 3-D Movie Festival
December 14th through 16th, 2012
Downtown Independent Theater
251 S. Main Street, Los Angeles 90012

Desert Noir, click to embiggen

If you love classic film noir and like it even better in 3D this could be do not miss this Sunday. The LA 3-D Club is sponsoring the screenings that will take place at the Downtown Independent Theater on Sunday October 28 at 7pm.  All the information you could want on the event as well as purchasing tickets online can be done HERE.

Deets:  Sunday 10/28, 7PM.  Admission $6 for current LA3DClub members, $12 for non-members, (admission is waived with USC Student ID). Downtown Independent Theater, 251 S Main, Los Angeles CA 90012. MAP HERE

Don’t even argue with me: Sergio Leone‘s Once Upon a Time in the West is the best film ever made. Leone got together with fellow Italian filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, studied some of the greatest Westerns (High Noon, The Searchers, etc.), including their locations and iconic shots, and came up with a film that is simultaneously a parody of and loving homage to the Western genre. You’ll see things that are subconsciously familiar, like dusters and Monument Valley, and things that are deliciously unfamiliar, like Henry Fonda as one of the meanest villains ever to grace the screen.

And hopefully you’ll see it all this Saturday, August 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, as part of the American Cinematheque film series. Of course, that part about Once Upon a Time being the greatest film ever made is subjective, but don’t seriously call yourself a movie lover or film buff until you’ve seen this classic.

As someone who would like to make it illegal to call a bartender a “mixologist,” the genius crew who embedded “It’s Gettin’ Real In The Whole Foods Parking Lot” into my own personal lexicon, have turned their laser sights on and taken dead aim to marvelous effect at the increasingly pretentious side of the cocktail biz. Drink it up!

Superheroes, nasty villains, and zombies will visit us as the Hero Complex Film Festival returns to Los Angeles on May 18-21, at the Regal Cinemas at L.A. Live. Cinema classics will be screened with stars and creators of the movies, such as RoboCop with an appearance by Peter Weller, Shaun of the Dead featuring director Edgar Wright, and A Clockwork Orange with Malcolm McDowell. On Monday, pioneer comic book creator Stan Lee (Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, etc.) will be there for a not yet announced screening. Although the $105 festival pass is listed as sold out, individual screening passes can be had for $20, which isn’t much more than a movie ticket on a weekend night nowadays.

See link above for full schedule and details.

God bless Bobcat Goldthwaite who has written/directed what very well may be the most satisfyingly angriest movie of our times and for all time: God Bless America!

Because one Angeleno did a lot of stuff, and she documented it with this cool video:

2011 from hey_rabbit on Vimeo.

Via PetaPixel.

Via the Eastsider LA blog, Silver Lake resident Matt Hartman went up on his rooftop in the pre-dawn chill of December 10 and came down with an awesome sequence of the moon getting rubbed out from behind a thin veil of high clouds:

Thanks to the Internet Archive by way of Blogdowntown I found this high-resolution digitization of some amazing footage of 1940s downtown, apparently filmed for use in some unidentified motion picture. Look close and you might see John Fante (or perhaps even Arturo Bandini) walking around.

The clip is made up of several segments, and is literally the next best thing to actual time travel. As best as I can plot it the car follows this route from 2nd Street to Grand, to 5th Street to Flower and back up to 2nd. I’ve already spent too much time scrolling through it frame by frame just entirely mindblown at the slice-of-life details to be discovered in the people and places and passenger vehicles the camera captures in passing, and invite you to get lost in this record of a long-gone Bunker Hill (best viewed full screen in 1080p) :

Heads up: Tonight is the No Budget Film Festival, a nifty experiment in which filmmakers are challenged to make a movie without a budget.  Literally – these aren’t movies made on a shoestring budget; these are made without the shoestrings, period.  Filmmakers only could rely on things they already had, things they could borrow, or things that were donated.

Out of the 50 or so films that were entered in the festival, 15 were chosen for tonight’s screening at the Downtown Independent. And, of course, there will be prizes: the Critic’s Choice Award, as well as the Audience Choice Award, chosen by you, truly.

Tickets are $10 online and $15 at the door.

The number of versions of “Blade Runner“, which had already jumped the shark, has now jumped the Loch Ness Monster: director Ridley Scott plans to make yet another “Blade Runner” movie. It is not yet known whether the new “Blade Runner” will be a sequel, prequel, reboot, or otherwise. Either way, what can Angelenos expect if the new “Blade Runner” is again set in Los Angeles?
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My friend Stephen Roullier just posted this Super 8 clip he and his fellow-filmmaker John Watson made (and co-starred in) showcasing a nice variety of the quick eateries found in and around the East Hollywood, Los Feliz Village, Silver Lake and Atwater Village area from back in a day when McDonald’s boast wasn’t the boringly general “Billions and billions served,” but rather the relatively paltry and more specific “Over 30 billion served.” Those were the days my friend.

My favorite moment comes when the legendary and still sorely missed Jay’s Jayburgers at Virgil and Santa Monica Boulevard makes an appearance at the 1:34 mark. Dig in:

As I’ve mentioned here before, I love Miranda July. I’ve loved her since I saw Me And You And Everyone We Know.

I’ve read her book, No one belongs here more than you. I’m looking forward to seeing her Eleven Heavy Things installation at PDC. I read her blog, and I can hardly wait for her new movie, The Future, to screen in LA. And so, when I saw that she was appearing at Cinefamily to kick off their new show-and-tell series, I bought a ticket right away.  According to Cinefamily, their show-and-tell series

invites artists, filmmakers, musicians and other cultural heroes to divulge their deepest, darkest media obsessions by opening their closets, digging through their attic and plundering their garages to curate an evening of…whatever they want to share! From thrift store finds to late-night Tivo, from foreign film bootlegs to home movies, from the popular to the perverse –- all media will be presented live by the honored guests, as they take us on a personal tour of the material that has inspired them, delighted them, or just plain freaked them out.

If you know Miranda July’s work at all, you know that this is a slow pitch right to her. Read the rest of this entry →

We Angelenos are certainly no strangers to the old saw about everyone in LA having a screenplay they are working on or trying to sell, but here at Blogging.LA we know that’s not true. The city’s waitstaff don’t have screenplays, because they’re waiting for their big acting break.

But LA is not a city where everyone is simply waiting for something big to happen; some folks are out there really doing it. To wit: the Egyptian is showcasing some local talent next Wednesday night with a screening of short films by LA filmmakers. According to the theater’s website, there will be nine short films screened, followed by a discussion with the filmmakers.

What: Locals Only! Showcase of Short Films
Where: Egyptian Theater, Hollywood
When: Wednesday, July 13th, 7:30pm

Goldstar has tickets here.

“Blade Runner” is, for Angelenos, part of our cinematic DNA. It envisions a dystopic future Los Angeles that borrows from the past but, to some, it disturbingly resembles the present. However, I suspect that more than a few Angelenos are jaded by the repeated “Blade Runner” viewings and the comical number of versions that have been released, especially the “Blade Runner For Dummies” narration of the original U.S. theatrical release. As one such Angeleno, I was mesmerized upon discovering the above video showing the real-life “Blade Runner” filming locations matched shot-for-shot with their depictions in the movie.
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