San Francisco Bay Area folks may have been wondering what was up with the Ghost in the Shell 20th anniversary movie night. Well, some bad news.

There weren’t enough pre-sales to rent the cinema. We might have just run it as a public showing, but the cinema could not find a way to secure the rights for a public showing despite best efforts and the use of Google Translate on promising Japanese sites. You might think in that case that you could just show it anyway, but the owners cited a story in which independent filmmakers once had to fork over a cool $8000 for an unauthorized showing of a film, even when the normal licensing was only $200. So, without licensing, no public showing. But that doesn’t have to stop us. We have technology.

A synchronozed home viewing of Ghost in the Shell

I’m watching Ghost in the Shell on Saturday, 28 March 2015, starting at 20:30 PDT. I may have a few friends over. Want to join? Well, my couch will likely be full, but get a copy of the movie yourself on Blu-Ray, or Amazon instant video, or Netflix DVD (not available at this time streaming through Netflix), and we can live tweet the event. I’ve just launched the twitter handle @SFImovienight, where

• I will announce upcoming movie nights
• I will track movie night requests
• I will live tweet movies as we’re watching
• Anyone else watching along can join in

The hashtag for this viewing will be #gits20.

Yes a contest

Since this won’t be a live event, let’s shake the contest up a bit. No trivia. Whatever tweet that:

• Includes #gits20
• Tags @SFImovienight
• Gets the most retweets

…between now and 28 March 2015 23:00 PDT will win an Adobe Creative Cloud license for 1 year, a $600 value, as an offer by in-kind sponsor Adobe.

Has anyone tried this before? Have suggestions?