Outfest lands at the Orpheum
Outfest, the 27th annual Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, opens tonight at the Orpheum Theatre with Peter Bratt’s drama, “La Mission,” starring his brother Benjamin Bratt.
Other screenings at the city’s oldest continuously running film fest include the drama “Mississippi Damned,” “El Nino Pez,” “Fig Trees” and “Dare,” starring Emmy Rossum and Alan Cumming, which closes the event on July 19 at the Ford Amphitheatre. www.Outfest.org.
‘Ivan’ in new light
As my colleague Kenneth Turan mentions above, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art screens Sergei Eisenstein’s final film, the two-part historical epic “Ivan the Terrible, Parts I & II,” Friday and Saturday evening. The first part of the film chronicling Russia’s first czar was released in the USSR in 1944. Presenting Ivan as a hero, the film was warmly embraced by Joseph Stalin. But not so the second part, which was completed in 1946. In that, Eisenstein offered a less sympathetic portrayal. The film was banned and didn’t get its premiere until 1958, a decade after the director’s death. www.lacma.org.
What a grind
The American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theatre feels the grind with its “So Sweet, So Perverse: Italian Grindhouse Treasures!,” which begins tonight with Dario Argento’s 1987 thriller “Opera” and Michele Soavi’s 1996 film “Cemetery Man.”
A Carroll Baker double bill is on tap for Friday with 1968’s “Paranoia” and 1973’s “A Quiet Place to Kill.” Scheduled for Saturday is a sword-and-sandal double feature: Mario Bava’s 1961 treat, “Hercules in the Haunted World” and 1963’s “Duel of the Titans,” with Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott.
Two rare spaghetti westerns mosey onto the screen Sunday: 1968’s “Sartana” and 1965’s “Minnesota Clay.” www.americancinematheque.com
Astronauts on film
Shuttle commander Scott Altman and members of the STS-125 shuttle crew will be discussing how they were trained to operate digital and IMAX 3-D cameras in space at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ “Astronaut as Filmmaker” on Tuesday evening at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
The event is hosted by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (“The Right Stuff”) and Oscar-winning visual effects wizard John Dykstra (“Star Wars”). www.oscars.org.
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