The Landmark Theatre chain seems to have decided that fighting a two-front war, while it didn't work out too well for the Germans, is its best strategy for thriving in an increasingly tumultuous movie business.
With its 12-screen flagship opening today at the Westside Pavilion, Landmark is clearly hoping to lure customers from the ArcLight, the Bridge and other upscale competitors. The complex offers reserved seats and the chance to bring your glass of wine with you in to the new Sofia Coppola or George Clooney movie.
But it is also designed to compete directly with your living room -- with your sofa, your flat screen and your ability to pause, rewind, turn on the lights or just give up on the movie idea altogether and switch over to "The Daily Show."
As if to acknowledge how tough it's becoming to drag people out of their houses for a night at the movies, with home-theater technology getting better and traffic getting worse, the Landmark includes a number of domestic architectural touches. The most striking are three "Living Room" theaters on the top floor that hold between 30 and 50 people each. They include sofas and side tables as well as overstuffed love seats and ottomans by the high-end French furniture company Ligne Roset.
As a piece of urban architecture, the Landmark is, well, no landmark. Designed by the Marina del Rey firm PleskowRael along with Pasadena's F+A Architects, it holds 2,000 seats, filling in what had been the open-air portion of the Westside Pavilion's 1991 annex. Both the original Pavilion and the expansion are the work of Jon Jerde; the older section, despite looking dated and a little grubby these days, represents a significant and inventive strain of retail postmodernism that largely got its start in Los Angeles.
The new facade along Pico, on the other hand, tries and largely fails for a kind of sophistication, aiming to bring its jumble of functions and materials into balance. The architects have re-clad the pedestrian bridge over Westwood Boulevard and the cylindrical tower that holds Barnes & Noble. They have also introduced a three-story picture window along Pico, framed rather awkwardly with a wide band of tan-colored stucco and offering views, from inside the theater, of Westwood and Century City.
