A Visit to El Capitan

I would have preferred being able to see a movie at the Chinese Theatre, but in some ways it made more sense for me to see one at El Capitan.  I mean Disney runs El Capitan and that is where they premiere their movies.  During my first week in LA, El Capitan was showing Gnomeo and Juliet.  I had really wanted to see that movie, but it just did not work out for me to go that week so I had to settle for their next movie: Mars Needs Moms.  In a cool coincidence, Jeremy's friend Amy played French horn on the soundtrack so we met up to see the movie.  As for the movie, the less said the better.  The movie palace itself is pretty spectacular though!

And yes there is actually a small soda fountain and studio store connected to the theatre.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre

On my list of things to do in Los Angeles, seeing a movie in one of the old movie palace theatres was towards the top of the list.  The obvious choice of course is the Chinese Theatre.  Well sadly the Chinese did not have a movie that I was interested in seeing during my 3 weeks there.  That did not stop me from taking pictures of it though!

The Chinese set up for a rainy movie premiere.

Hurray For Hollywood

One of the areas that I walked around in most Hollywood.  The Pantages Theatre where Beauty and the Beast was playing was in Hollywood, but there were several other attractions that I wanted to see.  I will get to some of them individually, but here are a few general pictures:

Even the subway stations are movie themed in Hollywood.

The Capitol Records building.  Some say that it looks like a stack of records (or pancakes).

The Kodak Theatre is the home of the Oscars.

El Capitan is one of the old movie palaces in Hollywood.  The one that Disney uses incidentally.

Grauman's Egyptian Theatre and of course...

The Chinese Theatre.

Pasadena Symphony

It turns out that the Los Angeles Philharmonic would not be the only orchestra concert I would attend during my time in LA.  Jeremy has a really good friend who was playing in the Pasadena Symphony while we were there.  She was able to get us tickets so we made the short trip up to Pasadena to hear Amy play horn in the Pasadena Symphony.

Camouflage.

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Since I had three weeks off in Los Angeles, I of course tried to fill my time with as much culture (well and Disneyland too!) as I could.  There really wasn't much theatre that I was interested in seeing so I turned to other performing arts.  The LA Philharmonic was high up on my list of things to do, and it just so happened that they had a concert that was the best of both worlds for me.  It was a concert of all Tchaikovsky Overtures which were based on Shakespeare plays: Hamlet, The Tempest, and Romeo and Juliet.  To make the concert even more interesting, they also used actors (like Orlando Bloom) to perform short segments from each of the plays before the orchestra played the corresponding Overture.  It was a great night of music and seeing Orlando Bloom!

Even if there had not been an LA Phil concert that I wanted to see, I would definitely have walked the few blocks from our hotel just to see Walt Disney Concert Hall where the orchestra performs.  Designed by Frank Gehry, the concert hall stirred up quite a lot of controversy during the many years that it took to build it.  But the end result is pretty spectacular inside and out.

Beauty and the Beast Photo Gallery

 As it turns out, I am not the only person on this tour who is into photography.  There were many people at the time, and so a couple of our enterprising crew members arranged a little photography exhibit in Los Angeles.  Those who were interested printed a few of their favorite photos and we set up a little gallery in a coffee shop in Downtown LA.  Of course with a gallery show there has to be an opening, so we had a little party there one night after the show.  It was great fun for us despite the fact that the photos did not sell (we were donating the proceeds to charity), and frankly we had a hard time getting the photos to stick to the wall.  Oh well!

The above and below were some of my photos.

Always judging!