Paris (Carmel) Theatre and Sunset Five Cinema – “Adults Only”!  Has the Sundance Cinemas in West Hollywood replaced the old Paris Theatre with “adults only” entertainment?  The Carmel Theater opened on 19th November 1924 was operated as a successful adult movie house (re-named the Paris Theatre) from 1966 to 1976.  It was seriously damaged by fire in January 1976 and was demolished.  You had to be 21 to see the gay and straight porn films.  Robert Redford has replaced the porn with overpriced booze and food at his new Sundance Cinemas in West Hollywood, so he can make bucks and not allow young people to be educated on film.

If you’re a film student at UCLA or USA, and want to see a foreign film at Robert Redford’s new Sundance Sunset 5 Cinemas – don’t bother!  You won’t be admitted! Redford would rather have “green” bucks from over-priced wine than educate young people looking for foreign and independent films.  

For the past six months, Sundance Cinemas offers “adults only” entertainment at the Sunset cinemas in West Hollywood.  Claiming to be promoting American independent and foreign films, the theatre chain has  excluded audiences 21 years and younger so Robert Redford can sell pizza and booze at outrageous prices.  The message from Redford is if you are not 21 we don’t want you and could care less if you want to catch a film that is not showing at some major house.  Of course,  this goes against his pompous mission statement for the Sundance Institute regarding developing young film makers.

Paul Richardson, President and CEO, of Sundance Cinemas.   He can’t heat theatre number 2 and discriminates against anyone under 21 just so he can sell high priced cheap booze in Redford’s “adults only” cinemas. Talk about “green” happy CEOs out for the bucks.  

(Left: Coke and Water for $12 in “green” plastic bottles) You pay $10 to $12 per showing plus a $3 fee for the reserved seats, the “chef” who makes the sandwiches, and supposedly commercial free entertainment   So admission plus popcorn and a coke can run $30 plus per person.  $60 for a date or $120 for a “family” if the anti-family Sundance Cinemas allowed them.

Adding insult to injury, the cinemas are not commercial free.  You sit through endless advertisements for the Sundance Institute showing a lot of people in cowboy hats pitching their latest cinema effort.  Then you get this pathetic barrage of photos of Redford owned bistros and hash houses in Utah where the Sundance artists go to eat.  In addition,  you have endless photos of celebrities attending Sundance.  A regular commercial pushing condoms would be a relief from this pathetic display fo self-promotion.

AVOID THEATRE 2 – THERE IS NO HEAT!

In fact,  the Sundance Cinemas seem more concerned about the booze and snack business than the movies.

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For his adaptation of the kitsch-fest known as Les Miz, Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) bets heavily on his cast, and loses big. His musical strategy is to have the singing done live on set, and to have the camera bore in on the actors, especially during solos. The singing does indeed have immediacy, and the close-ups give the audience intimacy with the characters but the overlong movie proves a monumental bore.

The movie-star cast designed to elicit a large box office, might be more accurately called “Le Miss,” if “Miss” were a French word rather than Mademoiselle. “Les Miz” might have been called “awesome” by the tour bus theater patrons, but those with a long history of theater attendance would probably find it wanting when compared with the greats of an earlier time including “My Fair Lady,” “South Pacific,” “Oklahoma” and the like.

Hooper and Cameron Mackintosh could have hired any of a number of Broadway or West End singers unknown outside the theater community with voices that would evoke the needed magic. But this collection of tone deaf stars only shows up the banality of the material in this clunky film. Russell Crowe (Javert) stunk, Hugh Jackman (Jean Valjean) tried, Anne Hathaway (Fantine) grinds and there was no chemistry between Marius and Cosette. Sacha Baron Cohen (Thénardier) and Helena Bonham Carter (Madame Thénardier’s) looked like a third rate comedy act left over from the Borscht Belt.

In his big climactic number “Bring Him Home,” Jackman is clearly straining to hit the notes almost as desperately as Crowe does throughout with his rasping voice.

Hathaway takes every opportunity to suck all the oxygen out of “I Dreamed a Dream,” the number that is this show’s “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” Earlier in the film, Fantine sells some of her back teeth to a shady dentist who promises to leave her “enough to bite.” Clearly, he also left her enough to gnash. It’s a ghastly, eyelid-fluttering, self-serving, sympathy-begging performance.

Sometimes I thought the show could have been “Oliver Miz” or “Les Twist” with the kid doing a “cockney” version of a song in Paris. Hooper seems to steal a lot of moments from Sir Carol Reed’s version of “Oliver”! Only this “Les Miss” turgid film experience had no “Oom Pah Pah” going for it.

Lumbering and redundant, Les Miz offers proof yet again — after “Nine,” “Idlewild,” “Burlesque,” “Rock of Ages” and more — that the Hollywood musical has become, like lye soap and cursive handwriting, almost a lost art.