Ah, for the days of real movie theaters. Just as a certain Seattle-based company has made the brick-and-mortar bookstore obsolete, the real-deal cinema house died a slow death — first maimed by the multiplex and then killed by the Internet.
If you're under 30, you probably wouldn't know that people actually used to go to the movies to make out and the popcorn was god-awful. In Tokyo, old movie theaters were bastions of art, culture and sexual experiences accompanied by the smell of disinfectant wafting from the restrooms. I spent most of my youth frequenting places such as Bungei-za in Ikebukuro, Namikiza in Ginza and, the most glorious local theater of all, Mitaka Oscar in Mitaka, where you paid ¥1,000 and got to see three movies in a single afternoon.
The Oscar showed some heavy-duty cinema — anything with Dennis Hopper, the slaughter epics of Sam Peckinpah, Sophie Marceau in one inexplicable love story after another, Michelangelo Antonioni fests and Ingmar Bergman retrospectives. The theater was jam-packed, couples made out or stuffed their faces with mini doughnuts (sold in the lobby) and there was a shared sense that if the Oscar should suddenly burn down with us in it, at least our last sight would be a lofty movie frame directed by a master of the medium.
Mitaka Oscar closed down in 1990 but, for the past five years, a local film festival called Mitaka Community Cinema has been held every Nov. 21, 22 and 23 to honor the theater's memory. The theme this year is "idoru," ("idols"), featuring 20th-century stars such as Momoe Yamaguchi and Seiko Matsuda. For more details, visit cinema.mall.mitaka.ne.jp.