Feeling Guilty About Food at the Aero

Agnes Varda, a pioneer of the French New Wave movement, made a documentary about gleaning from cast-offs in France and explores the people surrounding the issue. The Gleaners and I is beautifully put together and mixes interviews, personal experience, ideas on aging and death into a wonderful tapestry. You might think the kids dumpster diving behind Trader Joe's are fascinating, or obnoxious, or worse, but these people have so much need and integrity that it's hard to look away as they pick through heaps of potatoes and fields of wheat. And Varda is just so delightfully weird!

The Aero Theatre is screening Varda's portrait of life in world where there exists both excess and deprivation. Jeremy Seifert's
45 min. exploration into gleaning, American-style, in Dive! beforehand.

Following the film, our guests/panelists [Timothy Vatterott (DIVE! producer and composer), Rick Nahmias (founder and executive director of Food Forward, and Felicia Friesema (an L.A. County Master Food Preserver and a contributor to L.A. Weekly] will elaborate on several of the issues raised in the films to present a local perspective. Q&A moderated by Lisa Lucas Talbot, co-leader of Slow Food Los Angeles and Slow Food USA regional governor for Southern California. - Aero Theatre

Do your guilty middle-class conscience a favor and check these out Wednesday, July, 13 at the Aero Theatre (1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90403). The screening starts at 7:30 PM and general admission is $11. Find out about memberships on the American Cinematheque website.

Freaks at the Aero. Not in a mean way.

Tomorrow night, Saturday May 21 at 7:30pm, there will be a double-feature of Tod Browning films at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica (1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90403). The first film, Freaks (1932), is about a woman conniving with a circus strongman to rob a fellow sideshow performer who is a little person of his inheritance. The film does a beautiful job of showing inner-strength and inner-beauty through these characters.

With never-again duplicated eerie performances by real-life siblings Daisy and Harry Earles as Hans and Frieda. Featuring the beautiful conjoined Hilton Twins, Elvira and Jenny Lee Snow as Zip and Pip the pinheads, Johnny Eck as Johnny the half-boy and the unforgettable Prince Randian as the human Torso, with the most amazing cigarette-smoking scene in film history. Drawing from past experience working for the circus, DRACULA director Tod Browning cast actual people with disabilities and deformities instead of using special effects and makeup, something unthinkable for the time. - Aero website

It runs at 64 minutes, and is followed by Browning's 1936 film, The Devil-Doll starring Lionel Barrymore as an escaped convict who shrinks people "in order to execute a crime spree." This film runs at 78 minutes. Browning's works are fearless and fear-inducing, with heartbreaking consequences and a commitment to showing the far reaches of society up close. Don't miss the opportunity to see Freaks on a big screen. But beware, you'll be hearing "Gooble gobble, gooble gobble" in your nightmares.

Tickets are $11, $9 if you are a student or a senior. Or buy a membership for $7 tickets. Membership applies to both the Aero Theatre and the Egyptian Theatre.

2001: A Space Odyssey at the Egyptian Theatre

Thursday, May 19 at 7:30pm, the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood (6712 Hollywood Blvd. Hollywood, CA 90028) will be showing Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. This bizarre tale about technology gone wrong was so far ahead of its time, but it's so fascinating to watch. I personally have a hard time revisiting this movie because of the way it faces human existence and our future, but there's no denying that Kubrick's work is a masterpiece. The opening sequence alone is worth watching on a big screen.

If you've seen this movie before, you know that Hal is one spooky computer, and now you can see it all in 70mm. General admission is $11, $9 for seniors and students. Or go ahead and buy a membership and get tickets for $7. The Egyptian shows great movies that we all love, and the membership applies to the wonderful Aero Theatre in Santa Monica too. Check out the movie, and then maybe explain that opening sequence to me. I mean, seriously. What the heck.