Hello Blog:
Apparently the rumors of the long in development ImaginAsian Center LA are true and not only that it's a reality!
Launching December 7, 2007 and located at the same spot as "...a number of historic theaters, including the Arrow, the Aztec and most recently the Linda Lea, which was a Japanese-language film theater..." the new ImaginAsian Center LA will be the West Coast answer to the ImaginAsian media mini-empire's East Coast flagship theater. (Trivia fact: where several years of the New York Asian Film Festival were held!)
The opening film will be the Shochiku Studios Hollywood-wanabee action flick MIDNIGHT EAGLE, which just opened in NYC this past Saturday as a part of a revolutionary concept for Japanese companies: Day and date world-wide releasing -- see it in Japan and NYC on the same day! (Grady Hendrix at Kaiju Shakedown has more on this here.)
Word on the street is that MIDNIGHT EAGLE is flakey popcorn weenieness, but I'm looking forward to catching it here in LA at the ImaginAsian because it somehow feels spiritually appropriate to the history of Japanese films in LA.
'What do you mean?' I can hear you say. Well, once upon a time there were a number of Japanese language movie theaters in LA including a Toho Studio Movie Theater (the above mentioned La Brea Theater). Why should you care? Well, if it weren't for this then Alain Silver wouldn't have been able to pen his seminal treatise on Samurai cinema, "THE SAMURAI FILM," which he started writing after watching tons of Chanbara and Jidai-Geki films there. (They had subs then! How cool would it be if someone started a new theater just for Japanese films, new and old?)
And now you know.
Link to Film at Eleven's write-up.
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