Anime in Theaters

noisywalrus:

The reason we need a 35mm print is not because the theater isn't equipped to play DVDs(I understand most now are) but the guy who owns the whole chain of Landmark Theatres doesn't like to show them. The manager said something about there being an opinion that real movies should be shown from 35mm prints...

You seem to have a good point about art house movie snobs. I mean you can play movies like 'Evil Dead 2' or 'Mallrats' over and over and they will probably do well. It seems that the only movies that get shown at these midnight showings are "cult" movies. I think any anime is seen as the 'token asian movie' for most of this crowd...

After discussing it with most of the Denver otaku, we are going to see about getting the theater to play the new 'Appleseed'. I know there was a print floating around about 6 months ago, so hopefully they can get a hold of that. I'm hoping that if we pester the guy enough he'll show it, either that or he'll set up a rule on his e-mail so he can ignore us...

Yeah, that's a pretty good pick actually. It's action-y enough and unusual enough (animation style) to pull people in. Not my taste in movies movie-wise, but it's an effort at something new which should be respected, like Waking Life and the new Scanner Darkly movie in production.

And by no means did I intend to imply that a movie theater that doesn't show video is a bad one. On the contrary, I strongly believe that unless there is no other alternative, 35mm is the proper choice for the destination theater experience. Period. Anything else is like dubbing Italian or German opera into English just so more people can see it. It's not criminal if out of necessity (i.e. whatever you're showing is native video and doesn't *have* a 35mm print) but if a theater owner were to seriously choose video over 35mm given equal footing, I'd really question their taste.

Landmark is a good business. The one here goes out of their way to get a print of all the big stateside anime releases. I'm not entirely sure they make a boatload of money on the deal, which deserves some kudos.

(* As a side note, many opera houses around the country now feature subtitles on an LED billboard playing near the stage during operas in foreign languages. How cool is that?)