Beverly Center 13 Cinemas
8522 Beverly Boulevard,
Los Angeles,
CA
90048
8522 Beverly Boulevard,
Los Angeles,
CA
90048
14 people
favorited this theater
Showing 126 - 150 of 175 comments
I found that one other film played in 70mm here: The Last Emperor in 1988.
Which auditorium? I gather the big one upstairs?
Side note: The last few times I attended the theatre near the end of Loews Cineplex run and throughout Mann’s management no film I have seen there seems to have been in surround at all. They just seemed to be turned off.
As much as I try to avoid this theatre sometimes it is the only place to see a film that has played out elsewhere. One must go in with low expectations and enjoy it for the train wreck as it is, especially if you see a scope picture in one of the small houses with a screen the size of TV when properly masked.
The Beverly Center was also where Universal and DTS quietly tested the latter’s disc-based digital sound system on several titles between the fall of 1992 and the spring of 1993. If you saw Mr. Baseball, The Public Eye, CB4, Mad Dog and Glory, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story or several other Universal releases that played at the Beverly Center during this time, you got to experience DTS before it went public with Jurassic Park.
Side note: That first DTS test unit from 1992 is still in use at the Beverly Center to this day.
I was looking on the fromscripttodvd.com website and I was surprised to find out that a 70mm engagement played here. It was Point Break, the James Cameron-produced surfing action film with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze from 1991.
The info should give the aka Cineplex Beverly Center, the name it had in the L.A. Times theater listings in the 1980s.
I never went to this theater, and was only in the Beverly Center itself twice. I urgently desire never to see a movie here, or to enter the Beverly Center ever again.
I’m convinced that the entire Beverly Center complex was dropped onto the landscape by an alien spacecraft, and then the aliens used a mind-control ray to gull humans into thinking the monstrosity had been legally and deliberately erected by a developer. Someday the Intergalactic Court will require the offenders to return to Earth and remove their hideous heap of discarded refuse. I don’t want to be inside the place when that happens. (/rant)
Movietickets.com lists a full set of showtimes for the theatre as of today – looks like they’re open and eager for customers.
Can anyone confirm or deny that the the theatre has closed down?
The Cineplex Beverly Center worked in the 80’s. It was a hip place to see films. I saw many Indie Films first run there during the 1980’s. Films like Parting Glances, Mike’s Murder (brief exclusive re-issue), Educating Rita, My Beautiful Laundrette, Dance with a Stranger and just above any other avant-garde film from that ERA. It was long before Sunset 5 came along and the Beverly Center was part of 80’s pop culture. Time was not nice to the Theatre and The Beverly Center. When Pacific and AMC started building larger multiplexes it was not cool to sit in a theatre that was the size of a mini-van. Mann probably has very affordable rent or perhaps is just booking it for the shopping center so it could stay open. I understand the MANN emblem is not anywhere on the marque.
This happened to me when I saw “Girl With the Pearl Earring”. Except it was the reverse in a top-masking auditorium so there was open screen above and below the 2.35:1 projected image. They did come in and fix it without anyone asking.
It is a wonder it is open in a town like this when better theatres in the area have been shuttered. Mann must have a good deal with the mall in order to keep the place open. Their ticket prices are lower the other Mann theatres, however, making it a quasi-first run/second run theatre.
Funnily I am always amused coming here (only under dire cirqumstances, like when it was the last place in LA that “Flags of Our Fathers” was still playing). Its like seeing a bad car crash, a museum of bad cinema design. I do have to hand it to Cineplex Odeon, even though all their builds were generally crappy grey and purple shoe boxes with bad slope, bad line of sight, bad light reflective painted grey walls in auditoriums, (the list goes on), they ALWAYS at least had Dolby Stereo in all their theatres, something which many crummy shoeboxes of the 70’s and 80’s did not have.
I think it’s actually kind of incredible that a theatre this crappy can still stay in business in los angeles of all places. How they can charge full price for 2nd run films is beyond me. The first and last time i went to this theatre was to see Mean Creek. In an auditorium of maybe 40-50 seats and with a screen maybe 8 feet wide. But the kicker is that they were projecting it in the wrong aspect ratio— they had the masking set to 2.35, and in closeups everyone’s heads (and eyes) were getting cut off. It was a Thursday PM screening, so I can only imagine that it was projected this way for the entire week. When I went to complain, they actually didn’t know what the words “aspect ratio” meant, but at least they fixed it.
Ugh, I saw a few movies when I lived nearby this horrible theater, but after a while I couldn’t stand the tiny screens/theatres and stopped going there. Then I switched over to the newly opened Hollywood Galaxy, now closed. Did see David Bowie and Iman coming out of a show one time at the BC.
That tiny theatre has a screen only slightly larger than the one I use at home for my video projector! Yikes. And I only counted 51 seats in that photo.
The problem with your idea of Pacific taking over the National would not work because of the zoning in Westwood area. Because you are stuck with a large single screen theatre and can not add extra screens because of the zoning. That’s why no one has added new theatres to that market.
What irks me is that Mann added this pit to their roster, but is getting rid of the National, one of the best theatres in LA. If I were King, Pacific would take over the National and give it the Arclight treatment just like they did the dome.
Either Mann needs to upgrade this place or put it out of its misery.
I watched “Tamara” in auditorium 2. I was very happy to see the place back in business, it looks like it’s had a thorough cleaning. One thing that made me sad though, the extra concession in the hallway leading to the big rooms is gone, there’s just a wall there now.
Perhaps they are putting very little into now with plans later on for a renovation. They probably took over the least to have the lease. If they could gutt out the place and build nicer and bigger screens they could have something.
I went today to see “Good Night And Good Luck”.
Was in auditorium 3. The big theatres had Munich and King Kong I beleive.
Most of the movies are older movies. business was dead. Five people in my theatre, about 12 or so around the entire complex.
Mann cleaned up the place though. Still looks the same however.
New seat covers in the theatres(a nice bright red), cup holders behind the seats , new carpets, and a clean look for a 20+ year old theatre. Floors were nice and clean.
restroom had new stalls.
Also, no Mann signage anywhere. The old Cineplex Odeon logo was replaced with a generic “Beverly Center 13 Theatres” sign. They have new letters for the marquee. No more showtimes on there. they put a small board over the box office window with showtimes (like any mann theatre)
Presentation and sound was good.
It’s now listed on Mann’s website. I’m going to ask the CinemaTreasures folks to update the status and chain.
Anyone know what changes or upgrades have been done by Mann if any. It reopened very quickly…
Based on a few online movie-times sites I’ve seen, this is reopening today as a Mann theatre. Can someone confirm this from, say, today’s LA Times ad? (It is not yet on Mann’s website.)
Photos posted here:
http://www.cinematour.com/tour.php?db=us&id=2114
Taken a few months prior to closing. I counted a whopping 67 seats in that small auditorium.
Give it alittle time, it’s only been a week or so. All the screens on the main floor of that plex need tobe gutted, so better theatres can be made. All to replace all of that crap equipment in the booths. I worked that theatre many times and the equipment was just wore out.
I hope if MANN does take over the space they gut it out a build some nice screens. Wasn’t Pacific going to build more screens at the Grove?
So what is happening to this theatre? On another page, someone linked to an article claiming that Mann would take it over.
The Cineplex Beverly Center 14 was the original configuration when they opened back in 1982. Sometime in 1986 the theater underwent a major renovation. When Cineplex added the 2 five hundred seat theaters upstairs they re configured the original 14 theaters downstairs to 11. They made some of the original small theaters larger.By the time they finished the renovation, the Beverly Center was just 13 screens.