If you're a fan of Gene Kelly, Le Ly Hayslip, Carl Spackler, clawed kitty cats and Bright Blue Gorilla, this weekend's remaining West Coast Film Festival offerings are for you.
The festival, which actually kicked off Wednesday, continues through Sunday night in San Juan Capistrano's Regency Theatre.
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The Mexican-in-Chief already previewed Saturday's Bright Blue Gorilla pre-concert before the acoustic duo's new romantic comedy Go With Le Flo screens:
Bright Blue Gorilla Go With Le Flow Screening This Saturday
Before that sure-to-be-cool event, you can get your kiddies out of the heat this afternoon by taking them into the cinemas at 26762 Verdugo St., where cool libations are served at Rick's Cafe. Screening at 3 p.m. is the family friendly double-bill of Black Beauty and Looney Tunes Back in Action. Tickets are $10.
Not so family friendly at 7 p.m. is Caddyshack, which many have noted is not as funny as it was in 1980 but still packs in its golf bag some classic comedy scenes, usually featuring Bill Murray's Carl Spackler. Tickets are $15 and there's an after-party at Vintage Restaurant and Steakhouse that you can get more information about HERE.
Saturday's programming starts purrrfectly at 2 p.m. with the documentary The Paw Project, which follows the grassroots movement to change laws and protect pet cats from de-clawing. Dr. Jennifer Conrad, the veterinarian who wrote, produced and directed the film that chronicles her refuting American Veterinary Association representatives, participates in a post-screening Q&A. Tickets are $10.
Speaking of which, if this issue really interests you but you just can't make Saturday afternoon's screening, The Paw Project opens Oct. 18 for a week at the Pasadena Playhouse 7 and screens the afternoons of Oct. 19-20 at Laemmle Santa Monica. Conrad will participate in Q&A's for select screenings; monitor pawprojectmovie.com to find out which ones. The documentary will also be available on DVD and Video-on-Demand this fall.
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Saturday at 5 p.m. it's the revenge-murder thriller Crossroad in the Regency, followed by a Q&A with writer-director Shervin Youssefian. Tickets are $10.
That's followed at 7 p.m. by the Bright Blue Gorilla concert referenced above, the Go With Le Flo screening at 7:30 p.m. and a Q&A party with duo Robyn Rosencrantz and Michael Glover and others associated with the film at Sarducci's. The ticket for all three events is only $10.
Sunday is packed with West Coast Film Fest events, starting at 1:30 p.m. with a reception at El Adobe Steakhouse for the 2:30 p.m. screening at nearby St. Margaret's Episcopal School's Performing Arts Center of Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris, which won six Oscars in 1952, including the one for Best Picture. But watch closely for the goof when Jerry (Gene Kelly) and Lise (Leslie Caron) are walking alongside the river and Jerry leaves his coat by a tree. A ticket to both events is $15.
Back at the Regency at 2 p.m., USC School of Cinematic Arts' short films screen ($10). Then at 5 p.m., it's a feature-length documentary from a producer that collegiate film program spawned, Scott G. Nguyen. His film Cruizin' follows Olympic cyclist Tony Cruz and 14 of his friends' 12-day, 1,000-mile bike ride from north to south Vietnam (also $10). Nguyen participates in an audience Q&A afterward.
Nam-in' continues at 7 p.m. with a very special event centered around the final film in Oliver Stone's Vietnam trilogy, Heaven N Earth. The movie is introduced at 7 p.m. by producer Robert Kline and When Heaven and Earth Changed Places author Le Ly Hayslip, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography about a village girl struggling to survive during the Vietnam War informed the screenplay.
Before the movie rolls, the documentary short Operation PTSD rolls, and after the movies there is an after-party at Thai Juan On. Your $15 ticket gets you into all events; go HERE for more details.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.