Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Lights Out for Canal Place Cinema
Posted by Alex Woodward on Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 3:32 PM
This weekend there was much speculation online and on Twitter concerning the future of the theater located within the Shops at Canal Place. Landmark has now confirmed its days are numbered:
Landmark Theatres, a Wagner/Cuban Company, today announced that it will no longer operate the Canal Place Cinema in New Orleans, Louisiana. Monday, September 7, 2009 will be their final day of operation at that location.
“It saddens us to leave the great City of New Orleans. Unfortunately, we were unable to come to terms with our landlord,” said Ted Mundorff, Chief Executive Officer of Landmark Theatres.
Canal Place Cinema was built and has been operated by Landmark Theatres since 1988. It is located on the third floor of the upscale Canal Place Shopping Center at Canal Street on the edge of New Orleans' world-famous French Quarter. The Canal Place Cinema is New Orleans' downtown home for independent film and foreign language cinema, and has been host to the New Orleans Film and Video Society's annual film festival since 1988.
Comments (9)
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This is a tragedy and a blow to independent film, independent thinking and our cultural landscape. Is Gambit doing the work to tell the whole story? Is it truly the landlord or is Landmark looking to escape outrage?
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NOLAmotion, no joke. I really loved the offerings of that theatre, unlike anywhere else in Nola. CONSISTENT and quality independent offerings. Too many Q's currently, curious to see how it pans out.
The place has been going downhill for years. They show some good films but the facilities except for the large theatre suck and it was often unclean. I hate sticky floors in movie theatres. My hunch is that it's the economy and the spread of flat screen teevees that did them in. Theatres with postage stamp screens have been in decline for years.
Southern Theaters (the Solomon Family) is taking over. I would love to know the behind the scenes that went into them putting out Landmark and pretty soon the family run theater in Kenner (which is the only place showing Bollywood movies and tried to renovate and expand but strangely got shut down by the city of Kenner).
So it will remain a movie theater, then? I don't know anything about Southern Theaters. Would they maintain the repertoire of indie and foreign films?
The Palace and every other theater has just as nasty floors in my experience. I just appreciate that they show indy and foreign films. I've had many a date at that place. It'll be missed.
So does this mean that the Prytania is the only movie theater left in Orleans Parish?
So Mike Scott is reporting they are going to turn it into a nicer theater keeping the theater's programming and adding another screen, stadium seating, and bigger chairs with a full service bar and bistro. Guess this will be the closest we get to an Alamo Drafthouse here in New Orleans. I am going to be cautiously optimistic and hope they do what they say they are going to do.
C.M. - There's still the Zeitgeist Arts Center on Oretha Castle Haley, which shows films that are, in most cases, even more "art-house-ish" than the ones at Landmark. I spoke to Zeitgeist proprietor Rene Broussard over the weekend, and he expects to take up some of the slack by getting some of the titles that would've gone to Canal Place Cinema. Zeitgeist is a great local indie business and we list their movies (often with previews) in Gambit's listings every week. Check 'em out.
