Movie Marathon Links Archives - Page 2 of 10

Movie Marathon Like a Navy SEAL

The Art of Manliness website has a great article on how military special forces pull all-nighters. You know those guys don’t fool around when staying awake all night. While I’ve previously written about how to stay awake during a movie marathon, I’ve learned a few new tips and tricks from this article.

The most useful tidbit is to watch what you eat. Typical movie marathons provide a cornucopia of carbohydrates, fats, sugars, and other delicious ingredients to delight your tastebuds. The military guys say gorging just sets you up for a crash. Eat light, and focus on proteins (jerky, nuts, etc.) to stay full. This will help you avoid the crash carbs and sugars bring. The same goes for your drinks – go sugar-free to avoid the crash.

The second most useful tip is to lay off caffeine prior to the movie marathon. The military guys would say that skipping caffeine the day before the movie marathon, and during the daytime portion of the start of your movie marathon, helps. The Caffeine Informer recommends an even longer period of 2 weeks to 2 months to get a full-body caffeine reset. Regardless of length, skipping caffeine when you don’t need it reduces your body’s tolerance to caffeine, so that it works when you do need it.

Like with the advice for food, spec ops recommends steady dripping the caffeine to avoid a crash. The article indicates 100-150 milligrams every 2-3 hours should do it. That’s a relatively high amount of steady caffeine, per my previous article on caffeine for movie marathons. For comparison purposes, that is one 16-oz McDonald’s Latte every 2-3 hours. I think the key is to start late when you need it, not continuously gulp down 12 lattes throughout the entire marathon.

Strategic napping is also a useful idea. A ninety minute nap is more effective than caffeine at boosting alertness. The recommended nap zone is between 1-3 PM and 1-3 AM. I think napping during the movie marathon itself defeats the purpose (you are trying to stay awake!) – but I like the idea of short naps immediately before the marathon. Sometimes you can’t always get a perfect night’s sleep ahead of time, but just 90 minutes of extra sleep immediately before might be able to give you a good boost in performance.

Caffeine for Movie Marathons

You need caffeine for movie marathons, and lots of it. Sure, you know what beverages are the tastiest, but which delivers the most stimulants for your dollar? And how much can you drink before it kills you? The website Caffeine Informer has the answers to these important questions, and more.

When planning your next movie marathon, you need to consult my movie marathon food checklist first. The checklist has recommendations for what type of caffeinated beverages you should offer, and more. But if you want to know how much caffeine is in those drinks, you can look them up at the Caffeine Informer’s caffeine database. You can browse the list or look up drinks by name. I like to use the sorting feature to rank all known sodas by their relative caffeine content.

My latest favorite soda is Pepsi Max. It supplies a little extra jolt compared to your run-of-the-mill Diet Coke. The caffeine database confirms that Pepsi Max has twice the caffeine (69 mg) as Coca-Cola Classic (34 mg), but about half the caffeine as Mountain Dew: Game Fuel (121 mg). Very informative!

Knowing the relative amount of caffeine in a drink is helpful, but what is safe? The caffeine calculator can tell you! The calculator tells me that my safe limit of Pepsi Max in one day is about 3 liters, and that drinking 70 liters would kill me. Now there’s some handy advice! Speaking of death, Caffeine Informer also has an article about the deadliest caffeinated products available. Impressively, a packet of pure caffeine powder can kill 13 healthy adults. Pro tip: you might want to avoid this product at your next movie marathon.

To further educate yourself, the site has helpful science articles, such as how the human body processes caffeine and how your caffeine sensitivity may vary from others.

Stay awake and stay safe! Happy drinking!

MST3K Turkey Day 2016

MST3K Turkey Day 2016 starts on November 24th at noon Eastern Time. You can watch on any device that can run the Pluto TV app (Roku, Amazon Fire stick, etc.) on Pluto TV channel 515, or you can watch directly on ShoutFactoryTV.com with your web browser. This turkey day marathon will play six top-rated episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, as voted for by fans.

In years past, Joel Hodgson hosted entertaining bumpers between each episode. It looks as if he’ll be doing that again with Jonah Ray. Jonah is the host for the next generation of MST3K, which will premiere on Netflix sometime in early 2017.

Not familiar with Mystery Science Theater 3000? A man and his wisecracking robots make fun of bad movies. Comedy ensues. See you there!

Update: The show is also showing live on YouTube here.

Horror Movie Marathon 2016!

October brings us crisp fall air, freshly harvested apples, and flickering images of unspeakable horror piped directly into our quivering eyeballs! Graphic eh? My high-school advanced english class did not go to waste. Anyway – want to know the best options for your very own 24-hour horror movie marathon 2016? Then read on…if you dare!!!

If you live in Ohio, you are in luck. The 8th Annual Ohio 24-Hour Horror Marathon “Shock Around the Clock” starts at noon on October 15th and goes until noon on October 16th. It plays at the Drexel Theater, and you can find the event on Facebook. Advanced tickets are $40. That is a mere $1.60 for each hour of horror! You would be stupid not to go! You can see the schedule of movies here.

If you live in Chicago instead of Columbus, you could try The Massacre 24-Hour Movie Marathon. It starts at noon on October 22nd and goes until noon(?) on October 23rd. It plays at the Patio theater. A detailed schedule doesn’t seem to be available, but advance tickets are $20. That is a mere $0.83 per horror hour! You’d be even stupider not to go!

Don’t live in the Chicago or Columbus. but you have cable? Then your next best bet is American Movie Classics Fear Fest. It starts on Thursday October 13th at 9 AM and runs until the wee hours of Tuesday, November 1st. That’s 19 days and over 80 movies. At a going rate of about $80 a month for cable TV, prorated for those 19 days, that’s $49 dollars for 19 days, or a mere $0.10 an hour! You’d be…well, you know.

Don’t have a good cable TV package? There’s still hope. You can stitch together your own horror movie / TV show marathon via this handy schedule of horror movies and shows playing on TV this month. The one nice thing about The Simpsons running for the last 26 years is we always get an annual Treehouse of Horror Episode.

Don’t watch cable or broadcast TV? Thankfully, we live in the 21st century where Netflix has done away with the need for such things. Paste magazine has put together an excellent article of the 60 best horror movies streaming on Netflix in 2016. Your choices range from The Exorcist to Zombeavers. Yes. Zombeavers. What? Zombeavers got a 69% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Is it unclear what the movie is about? (Hint: It’s about zombie beavers).

None of these sound good? I’ve got your back. 24hourmoviemarathon.com has some excellent recommendations for 24-hour horror movie marathons, if I do say so myself.

This season is truly an embarrassment of riches when it comes to opportunities for movie marathons. If you can’t find something to scare the pants off of you this season, then you make my head explode. Happy Halloween!

Photo by Alexas_Fotos

The Top 100 Films of The 21st Century

Is it too early to start proclaiming the best films of the 21st century? After all, this century is only about 16% complete. Shouldn’t we wait until at least 51%? Of course not! Otherwise, the BBC would have to fill their website with boring content like world events and dry British humor. And I would have to write original content instead of just linking to better websites than mine. Do you think I have that sort of time (answer: yes)?

Anyway, as I’ve noted elsewhere, most of the “best 100 movies” lists from movie critics are suspiciously devoid of movies made since 1980. I like watching classic movies as much as the next film snob, but sometimes I want to see a good movie where iPods and YouTube could be reasonably expected to appear. Thankfully, the BBC and about 200 film critics have the answer, with a list of the top 100 films of the 21st century.

Looking through the list, I was surprised to see I’ve only seen 13 of the 100 films listed. This is despite me having a couple of decades to address this problem. It sounds as if I have a new list of movies to get into the annual movie marathon rotation.