Bruin Theater to Reopen

Joe Bruin at a promotion of the Bruin Theater, 1938*

As blog readers will surely know, there are two sibling old fashioned single-screen theaters in Westwood that were closed and appeared endangered. Now it appear both the more prominent Fox Village (because of its tower) and the Bruin will reopen. They have been used in recent years for movie premiers.

From Deadline: The Bruin Theater in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles is coming back with a hopeful re-opening in mid-October thanks to Toronto-based exhibitor Rui Pereira. Pereira recently signed a lease with the Martyn Skouras family (descendants of Spyros Panagiotis Skouras, president of 20th Century Fox), which owns the Bruin.

The Bruin Theater, which originally opened its doors in 1937, closed in July 2024 alongside its historic brother The Village after Regency Theaters’ lease ended. Pereira is a longtime theater owner in Canada... Pereira tells Deadline that the theater is in very good shape. He’s bringing back the 70MM and 35MM projectors and making upgrades to the digital projectors. Seats are in good working shape in addition to the screen. His mission is to keep the theater’s originality intact a la his previous properties. “I want to keep the essence of the theater, I don’t want to erase its history or gloss it over,” he said.

Pereira added that one hope down the road is to potentially add two screening rooms to the upstairs (15-seat theater venues). He’s already been approached by studios for potential premieres and screenings; hence there’s a chance we could see doors open before mid-October for special events. Before the venue opens, you’ll see the marquee lit up at some point with ads for Warner Bros’ Practical Magic 2. There was buzz for some time that Jason Reitman was making a go at the Bruin after purchasing The Village, which is set to undergo further restorations. However, we hear the Bruin wasn’t for sale...

Full story at https://deadline.com/2026/07/the-bruin-theater-westwood-re-opening-1237012571/.

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*Image from https://archive.org/details/motionpictureher1301unse/page/n611/mode/2up.

Straws in the Wind - Part 433

From the Mercury News: Stanford University has ditched its Flock camera system and hired a new license plate reader firm following controversy over who can access the images captured. The South Bay university signed a contract with Genetec Cloudrunner to provide cameras that can read license plates, collecting images its public safety department can use to investigate crimes, Stanford University said in a press release. “Unlike the Flock system, the new system is designed for use within a single institution,” said Patrick Dunkley, Stanford’s vice provost for institutional equity, access, and community.

Slightly under two years ago, Stanford University installed the Flock camera system at university entrances. Stanford, at the time, said it wouldn’t share any information harvested from the Flock cameras with other police agencies. Over the past several years, concerns have emerged nationwide over Flock camera systems. Its systems, critics say, allow law enforcement to access images from other agencies via the networked license plate readers...

“These license plate reader cameras are an important investigative tool,” Stanford Department of Public Safety Chief Laura Wilson said. “They are just one of the ways that DPS is leveraging technology to help keep our community safe.”...

Full story at https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/08/08/police-stanford-flock-camera-school-safety-crime-privacy-internet-ice/.

Patch Money?

Yesterday, we posted about the possibility that Berkeley athletics could deal with its budgetary problems by hosting concerts in its stadium. Today we note another patch on the budget:

From the Daily Californian: In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, Cal Athletics has cemented itself in history as the first ACC program to sign a jersey patch sponsorship with Dialpad, an “AI platform for customer experience.” The patch will be displayed on all 30 of the different sports’ jerseys. For the Bears, the new partnership is the largest corporate partnership in the school’s history... The decision comes on the heels of an NCAA decision from January allowing such sponsorships in college sports. According to the NCAA, the legislation is set to take effect Aug. 1, just before the college football season. The ruling allows for teams to have up to two commercial logos on their uniforms and one more on equipment during the preseason and regular season...

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/sports/special-report/cal-athletics-inks-first-of-its-kind-partnership-with-dialpad/article_47e2c3b9-13ff-4509-8798-346584bda033.html.

Hines

From the NY Times: Thomas S. Hines, [a UCLA] architectural historian whose thorough research, crystalline writing and unending passion for the urban landscape of Los Angeles did much to cement the region’s reputation as a global center for modernist design in the 20th century, died on July 26 in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 89. His son, Taylor Hines, said the death, at a hospital, was from complications of pneumonia...

Professor Hines’s achievement was twofold: He not only demonstrated that the modernist architecture of midcentury Southern California was worthy of systematic historical attention, but he did so by expanding the scope of his field to include economic, social and cultural history. Rather than seeing the architecture of Los Angeles as an outlier to European and New York modernism — or the region as merely a refuge for European architects fleeing fascism — he showed that California modernism had its own history and dynamics...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/07/books/thomas-hines-dead.html.

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Lecture on LA architecture by Hines (2010):

https://dn800307.us.archive.org/0/items/sacramento-city-at-risk/Hines%20on%20LA%20architecture%205-15-2010.mp4.

Straws in the Wind - Part 432

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: The Department of Education’s... letter outlining principles for “every postsecondary institution” in the country was a bombshell for two reasons. One: The Trump administration was asking college presidents to sign onto its overarching vision for the sector. Two: Several prominent higher-ed leaders were reported to have helped draft it. The Association of American Universities was reportedly the primary partner... Douglas A. Girod, chancellor of the University of Kansas, was supposed to have been another major player. The very idea caused “great consternation to the KU faculty,” said Ronald M. Barrett-Gonzalez, a professor of aerospace engineering there.

...Andrew D. Martin, chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, issued a statement saying: “For several months, I have participated in broader discussions with the White House and other higher-education leaders about issues affecting the sector. I expect those conversations helped inform the administration’s thinking around their Monday letter. I was not involved, however, in the drafting of the letter.” ...In an interview with The Chronicle, Barbara R. Snyder, president of the AAU, described a complicated feedback process with the Trump administration in which AAU representatives had little control over drafts. She, Girod, and Ronald J. Daniels, president of the Johns Hopkins University, met with officials from the Education Department and the White House two or three times in person and a couple of times over the phone, she said. Girod and Daniels were acting in their capacity as chair and vice chair of AAU’s board. They always met with Trump officials as a group of three, Snyder said.

They provided feedback on drafts, which they did not receive copies of. They were allowed to see them only during the meetings. Without access to past drafts, Snyder said she couldn’t exactly recall what changed over the course of their meetings, but she said: “The first draft we saw was already quite different from the compact, and the final draft is quite different from the first draft. Did they listen to some of our suggestions? Yes. Did they take all of our suggestions? No.” Asked if Snyder’s description of the meetings was accurate, a spokesperson for the Education Department answered with a short statement: “We appreciate the candid dialogue with bold university leaders who are helping refocus higher education on its foundational commitment to academic excellence.” ...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/college-leaders-play-down-their-involvement-in-compact-2-0.

Music Money?

From the San Francisco Chronicle: UC Berkeley is close to reaching an agreement to host the first major concert at Memorial Stadium in 36 years, in an effort to generate fresh revenue for the school’s financially stretched athletic department. If the deal is finalized, it would mark the first concert at the stadium since Paul McCartney came to Berkeley for two sold-out shows in the spring of 1990...

The Panoramic Hill Association, comprised of homeowners near the stadium, filed a lawsuit (along with the city of Berkeley and California Oak Foundation) against UC in 2006 and reached a settlement four years later. That settlement, which included a commitment to prohibit “amplified music concerts” according to the university, expired in January...

Cal officials clarified... saying the concert with an undisclosed performer is not yet a done deal.

Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/college/article/cal-close-landing-memorial-stadium-s-first-22375938.php.

Going Down

We now have some numbers on federal funding cutbacks:

From the San Francisco Chronicle: 

Citing a steep reduction in federal research grants to the University of California under the Trump administration, UC President James Milliken is asking California’s congressional delegation for help in freeing up the stalled science funds. Grants from the National Science Foundation are down 39% from recent years, while funding from the National Institutes of Health has fallen by 22% as of July 13, Milliken told 54 members of Congress in a letter sent July 29, noting that these rates are a “substantially slower pace than historical norms.”

The slowdowns not only hamper UC by forcing hiring freezes and research delays, Milliken wrote, but they also “affect the economy, biomedical advances, technology commercialization, national security research, and partnerships between academia and industry” across the country...

UC spent $102.4 million on outside legal counsel alone in fiscal 2025-26 — a nearly 57% increase from the $65.4 million spent the year before, UC told the Chronicle...

Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/uc-congress-trump-research-funding-22376388.php.