Aero Space

If you're in or around Los Angeles, you might be interested in this: Sunday afternoon at 5 PM, the Aero Theater in Santa Monica is running a 70mm print of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I'm guessing this is the same print that the American Cinematheque group screened at the Egyptian Theater in December of '02. (The American Cinematheque group manages and I think owns the Aero.)

No guests or speeches have been announced…but the night before, the Aero is running Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machine, with director Ken Annikin in attendance. I'd go if I wasn't so burdened with deadlines.

The Aero, in case you don't know, is one of the oldest movie theaters in the Southland that is still operational. For a decade or three there, we kept hearing of plans to close it down and open three new Starbucks on the premises, but then film buffs would howl, common sense would prevail and the place would remain open. Happily, the American Cinematheque acquisition has put an end to that cycle, at least for now. It's a great old theater and beyond its history as a place to see movies, it also has a decent one as a place where movies are shot. Those deadlines prevent me from compiling a long list of them right now, though a scene in Get Shorty comes to mind. So here's a Note 2 Self: Keep an eye on this theater's calendar.