Anime in Theaters

Cyphr99,

The Armatage movie I saw in the Theater was the second one which was Dualmatrix.

I have not seen any of the Macross movies advertised in any theaters here in the States but from what I have seen more Anime movies are planned to show up at least on small distribution on "Arts" theaters to qualify for Oscar consideration.
That's why we have seen the Miyazaki's movies as well as Appleseed and others on the big screen.

So far...
Princess Mononoke
Cowboy Bebop
Tokyo Godfathers
Spirited Away

My cousin knows places in chinatown that shows & premiers anime movies. I recall sprited away and TG being the only movies I saw subbed. I think the inuyasha movies were airing in the theaters as well.

Wasn't the escaflowne movie briefly airing in select theaters? I don't remember...

1) What anime movies have I seen dubbed, in a theater, within the last few years?
Escaflowne
Spirited Away
Howl's Moving Castle
Metropolis
Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence
Cowboy Bebop

2) What movies would I think be worth showing in a theater for a midnight show?
If you want something emotional go for
Grave of The Fireflies. Otherwise pretty much whats been said already are great choices.
But generally, something lovely like- My Neighbor Totoro would probably be better screened during the day, if the target audience is little kids.

3) These things are always available in Vancouer! I'm very lucky to have two theatres which generally always shows animes when they're released on the NA continent (if it all).

1) None....

2) Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust for it was just of spectacular animation and special in a way. Ghibli's "The Cat returns" is also great.

3) YEAH!

When I was in Israel for the last 2 weeks, I went to the theater with my newly discovered brother. There were posters for Inuyasha, the FIRST movie there. I wonder if it was dubbed Hebrew. Would have loved to check it out, but he said the poster sucks.

Getting 35mm prints of this stuff -- if that's the goal -- is notoriously difficult. We have a somewhat unique theater chain here in Austin called the Alamo Drafthouse. They serve food, beer, and (sometimes) strange event movies. (http://www.drafthouse.com)

I saw Oseam (korean actually - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0359784/) there during one of their now-retired weekly anime events at the downtown location. I can say somewhat anecdotally that even in a fairly liberal town in a movie theater known for adventerous movie goers, there seems to be very little interest in anime. There's probably more interest in their showings of movies intended to be awful that appease the crowd that likes thinking of themselves as ironic and clever.

To their credit (?), their one Houston theater is showing Gantz DVD 3&4 today. But that's a DVD. And it's Gantz.

The point (had one when I started) is that it's probably fantastically hard to make money back on anime. The vast majority of stuff worth watching is on R1 DVD. Theaters like the Alamo that set up actual "event nights" around watching anime and serving Japanese food seem to have trouble drawing crowds. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to get 100-150 people to pack a normal midnight show for anime unless it's something super special, new, universal, not long-winded, and largely unknown.

Miyazaki's out because the only people who would go are people who have already seen his movies. Any movie based on a TV show is out. Any short OVA will confuse people with episode breaks (if the whole "video" format doesn't already). Any movie made before 2000 is out. (I assure you, the GiTS and Akira tapes at your local Blockbuster are well-worn.) Satoshi Kon is a good candidate, but his movies are all readily available on DVD. Besides, only Perfect Blue has enough sex and violence to connect with what people -- even art house people -- think of anime to what anime is. If this were 1998, I'd say take a chance on a print of Perfect Blue.

To make a long story short (too late), no anime I have ever seen fits this catagory. *shrug*