Mann Festival Theater
10887 Lindbrook Drive,
Los Angeles,
CA
90024
10887 Lindbrook Drive,
Los Angeles,
CA
90024
25 people
favorited this theater
Showing 51 - 72 of 72 comments
Apparently, the Festival is now closed.
Whatever name you call it this has always been an also-ran to the grand palaces of Westwood, but with the demise of these (National, Plaza, Regent [still there, under different mgt.], Picwood, and the Mann Westwood and UA CInema Center) it is one of the few left. Even ACVO is a distant memory of what it once was.
I’ve been unable to discover who was the architect for the conversion of this building into a movie theater in 1970, but the building itself was designed by Russell E. Collins, and built for Ralphs Market in 1929. In 1988, the city of Los Angeles declared the building Historic Cultural Monument #360. In 1992, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The Festival is a nice screen. I’m sure it won’t last forever, but it fits the Westwood Village mold perfectly, it is one of the last single screens in a world of “Monster-Plexes”.
In light of what is happening with the National, the Rialto and other single-screeners, I was a bit disappointed that the Cinematreasures are holding their meeting to discuss theatre preservation etc. at the brand-spanking-new Landmark 12!!! Less than 2 miles away from Westwood Village, the densest grouping of open single screeners in the country. Are they serious? Are they serious about preservation?
I expressed my disappointment here:
http://cinematreasures.org/news/17409_0_1_0_C/
Feel free to express your feelings as well.
Most theatre chains are good that way. If you complain, they’ll send you a couple free passes. I have always found the presentation at the Festival to be up to Mann’s Westwood standards. I wonder how long Mann will hold on to the Festival, being that their theatres are dropping like flies in Westwood. I think they would need to hold on to it for flexibility in bookings since they only have 3 screens left in Westwood.
The manager wrote to me personally letting me know that they’ve brought the technician back in, and the sound is now back up to par! All is well at the Mann Festival. They even threw in a couple free passes to boot. Classy – I’ll continue to go there…
I saw Oceans Thirteen at this theatre today, and unfortunately there was a problem with the sound. Every 7 or 8 seconds, there was a small electrical buzzing through the center channel. Not noticable too much in the louder scenes, but in the quieter ones, it was distracting! I notified the people who worked there and unfortunately their reply was “the tech is up north”… as in “we can’t fix this.” I almost went to see this at the Century 15, but went to the Festival to support these slowly dying 1 screen theatres in westwood. If they can’t get their presentation up to par, that’s a real shame…
Also, the initial first-run engagement of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW was here (in its UA Westwood days), back when it was treated as a “normal” movie and not a cult curiosity. Supposedly, this was one of the few theatres where the movie was successful, and there was already a sort of recurring clientele that attended which suggested to Fox executive Ashley Boone that the movie could have a second life as a midnight movie.
Around that time it was the UA Theatre Westwood.
This theatre should also have listed as known as:
UA Theatre, Westwood
UA Egyptian Theatre, Westwood
Odeon Cinema, Westwood
When I lived in LA (1979-84) I’m pretty sure this was not called the Festival. What name did it have back then?
View link
…is the address of my essay about my time running this theatre, or more specifically the thing I swiped from it when UA gave up. I’m hoping the statute of limitations applies.
The Cineplex Odeon Westwood Theatre reopened on Wednesday June 15th, 1988 with the feature “Bull Durham”. After taking over the theatre from UA and remodeling the entire theatre.
Oops, my mistake… ‘Team America’ is showing at the National; the Festival, which appears to mostly be a move-over house, is currently screening ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’, with ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ scheduled to open Friday.
First-run Hollywood product, Robert; their current offering is ‘Team America: World Police’.
What do they play here now?
It is still a very nice theatre. Nice sized screen and comfortable balcony. It is a much better theatre than when UA ran it. I remember it being a real dump when they ran it. They remodled it and later Cineplex Odeon did a refurbishing. It remains pretty much as Cineplex had it except for the marquee and they changed the seats.
The Festival is open and currently playing a double feature of “Bad Santa” and “Mystic River.”
In high school I watched “1984” here in the balcony. This was the first time I ever sat in the balcony to watch a movie. Sadly this theater is now closed.
i love the festival! it has a beautiful balcony that makes you watch the movies as if you were right at home.
The theatre opened in 1970. The first film to play was Watermelon Man.
This theatre opened as the UA theatre in Westwood. It was remodeled into the UA Egyptian Westwood (UA operated the Egyptian in Hollywood at the same time). When UA’s lease was up a bidding war, happened for this theatre. Note this was the last theatre north of Wilshire Blvd. that was not a Mann. All theatres north of Wilshire were operated by Mann Theatres. All the theatre companies started to bid for this theatre (Mann,Pacific,GCC,Cineplex) This after being remodeled again would become The Cineplex Odeon theatre. After Cineplex’s lease ended it became a Mann theatre.