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Recent news of the Newport Beach Film Festival’s hurried search for a new venue brought to mind a lesser known county festival, which briefly attempted to carve out a cinematic niche,  just south of Newport.

 

Back in the late 90’s, the Laguna Beach Exchange Club (a local chapter of the now 100 year old service organization) was in search of a new fundraising vehicle for the group’s child abuse prevention charity. At the time, film festivals were somewhat of a hot social commodity, with nearly every artistic community of note attempting to create the next Sundance. As Laguna Beach already possessed a rich cultural history and was home to a number of renown art based programs, the club deemed an independent film festival the logical choice for both a fund raiser and community social event. So, in March of 1997, the Laguna Beach Film Festival was launched.

 

Utilizing the city’s Festival of Arts grounds, as local theatres were already tied in to an earlier incarnation of the Newport Festival (unrelated to the current event), the Laguna Beach Film Festival featured three days of independent films, workshops, and social mixers. While garnering modest attention and relying on video projection (as opposed to actual film), the event was successful enough to warrant two more years of activity.

   

 

Had organizers remained content in the event being a small, local, affair, the Laguna Beach festival likely would have continued on indefinitely. However, in what has almost become an aspiring film festival cliche, dreams of going “big time” soon derailed the event. Outside parties were brought in, a professional director was hired, and aspirations quickly moved beyond the event’s modest means. Far worse, the Exchange Club basically lost control and rights to their festival in the process.

 

While the film festival had struggled with the limitations of amateur, volunteer based, operations, the “professionalization” of the planned fourth year proved to be a complete disaster. Bogged down under infighting, greed, and visions of self grandeur, the “bigger and better” festival never managed to move beyond the early planning stages. Having failed to even put on another event, most of the parties involved moved on and the Laguna Beach Film Festival faded in to the realm of what “might have been”. 

With the closure of Edwards Island 7, organizers of the Newport Beach Film Festival find themselves scrambling to procure another theatre to replace the Fashion Island site. While the annual festival’s high profile Lido and Big Newport venues remain in place, there remains a need for a theatre that can play a more utilitarian role, accommodating the bulk of the 300+ films that have come to populate the ever expanding event.

 

Front runners mentioned thus far have included Edwards University 6 and Westpark 8; either one being seemingly ideal, from a facility standpoint, but their inland Irvine location adding an element of disconnection from the costal Newport based festival. A second option has been suggested by the Irvine Company (the party behind the Island 7’s closure/remodel), offering up space at the Fashion Island shopping center and a company sponsored work crew. However, the Fashion Island proposal appears to be more of an Irvine Company public relations move, than truly viable option. Whatever the end result might be, 2011’s Newport Beach Film Festival is looking to be a bit of a setback in the event’s, thus far, successful eleven year run.

I stopped by Newport Beach’s Edwards Island 7 for the venue’s closing day (1/12/11). Per media accounts, the theatre will begin an extensive year long remodel and expansion tommorrow. While earmarked for a December 2011 reopening, there has yet to be an announcement on who the future operator will be. If the lack of advertising and downbeat mood of staff/management is any indication, it certainly won’t be Edwards/REG.  

       

For more pictures of the theatre, please click on the “Newport Beach’s Edwards Island 7” link above.

Over the holidays, Laguna Beach’s South Coast Cinemas faced off with an all too familiar threat, as heavy rain storms sent a river of mud and water through the downtown area. Flooding proved so severe that most of downtown Laguna was closed off for two days, with many area merchants experiencing significant property damage and a full week of cleanup in the aftermath. While the theatre was forced to pump out several inches of water and removed a carpet of mud from the forecourt area, the cinema escaped relatively unharmed; reopening in time for Christmas.

 

A semi annual occurrence, flooding has been a regular threat to the South Coast site since it’s inception. The property’s original theatre was damaged, beyond repair, during a flood in the early 1930’s; being rebuilt in to the brick and mortar structure we see today, in 1935.

Rumor holds true, as the Edwards Island 7 is set to shut down in early January and begin a year long remodel. Details, including whether Edwards/REG will continue as operators, remain a bit sketchy. However, the Irvine Company continues to allude to a high end upgrade for the twenty-one year old Newport Beach cinema. Whatever the end result might be, there is little doubt the theatre will be significantly larger, as the adjacent food court tenants are being pushed out, in favor of the “new and improved” Fashion Island cinema. Reopening of the theatre is scheduled for the 2011 holiday season.

In an attempt to draw in moviegoers, Anaheim’s Gardenwalk Theatre has installed twenty-six D-Box motion seats. The first county cinema to utilize the technology, Ultra Star invested $130,000 in the upgrade, which will be unveiled to the general public this Friday for the film “TRON: Legacy.”  If all goes well, Ultra Star has stated that more of the seats may be deployed in the near future. Naturally, this amenity comes with an added service charge; $8 extra, bringing a 3D admission ticket to $20.75 for the motion seats.

For those unfamiliar with D-Box; the service involves specially constructed seating which moves in tandem with action seen on screen. In addition to requiring seating fixtures with three actuators and projection communication lines, the technology also entails a custom designed “motion track” code be in place on the feature being shown.  

As cutting edge and high tech as this system may be, one can’t help but recall past cinematic novelties, such as the earth shaking sound of Sensurround or electrified “Percepto” buzzer seats employed for “The Tingler”. In an apparent case of history repeating itself, the industry once again turns to gimmicks during lean times. Is it only a matter of time before we see some incarnation of Smell-O-Vision?

What do  Fullerton’s Fox and Grauman’s Chinese have in common? Beyond the obvious link of being 20’s era theatres, each was designed by the gentleman pictured below.

 

A prominent architectural designer, Raymond M. Kennedy played  a major role in shaping the commercial landscape of southern california during the 1920’s. While employed by noted builder Meyer and Holler, Mr. Kennedy took part in a host of high profile projects, ranging from lavish churches to ornate office buildings. While his most famous work was, obviously, Grauman’s Chinese, Fullerton’s Fox Theatre (then known as Chapman’s Alician Court) served as Mr. Kennedy’s first venture in to theatre design and the testing ground for many of the ideas he would later incorporate in to Grauman’s.

 

After leaving Meyer and Holler, following the company’s depression era collapse, Mr. Kennedy divided his time between teaching at the University of Southern California and being a stage designer for several major film studios; briefly departing for Washington D.C. to take part in the design of the Pentagon. Raymond Kennedy wrapped up his illustrious career designing municipal buildings, for two leading California based architectural firms, retiring in 1960, at the age of 69.

On this evening, seventy five years ago, Santa Ana’s West Coast Theatre held their gala reopening, following a month long remodeling.

 

Thankfully, the West Coast still stands today, in remarkably good shape. While currently home to a church, there have long been rumors that the congregation is looking to move on to a larger facility, opening the door for a return to entertainment use. One of the late Joseph Musil’s final projects involved a concept for the revitalization of the West Coast Theatre and surrounding block.