Movie Marathon Schedules Archives - Page 2 of 4

Movie Marathon 2015

I’ve finished the schedule for Movie Marathon 2015! We are following the usual theme of:

Movies at least one of the hosts have never seen before
Movies that the hosts want to see, or have heard we “should” see

We’ll be bringing back kid-friendly zones Saturday evening and Sunday morning. From 6:30 PM to 10:00 PM Saturday, we have The Muppets and Bolt. From 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM Sunday, we have The Lion King and Mulan. From 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM Sunday, we also have Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which would be suitable for older kids.

Movie Marathon 2015 Schedule Overview

Start Time	End Time	Title	Year	Runtime
12:00 PM	02:10 PM	Thunderball	1965	130 min.
02:30 PM	04:12 PM	Bringing Up Baby	1938	102 min.
04:15 PM	06:06 PM	Rebel Without a Cause	1955	111 min.
06:30 PM	08:13 PM	The Muppets	2011	103 min.
08:15 PM	09:51 PM	Bolt	2008	96 min.
10:30 PM	12:10 AM	To Have and To Have Not	1944	100 min.
12:15 AM	01:59 AM	The French Connection	1971	104 min.
02:00 AM	03:39 AM	Kung Fu Hustle	2004	99 min.
03:45 AM	05:13 AM	The Wicker Man	1973	88 min.
05:15 AM	07:03 AM	On the Waterfront	1954	108 min.
07:05 AM	09:02 AM	Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind	1984	117 min.
09:05 AM	10:34 AM	The Lion King	1994	89 min.
10:34 AM	12:02 PM	Mulan	1998	88 min.
12:02 PM	12:02 PM	Finish

Movie Marathon 2015 Details

Thunderball (1965)

Action | Adventure | Thriller – Rotten Tomatoes score: 85%

James Bond heads to The Bahamas to recover two nuclear warheads stolen by SPECTRE agent Emilio Largo in an international extortion scheme.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Comedy | Romance – Rotten Tomatoes score: 95%

While trying to secure a $1 million donation for his museum, a befuddled paleontologist is pursued by a flighty and often irritating heiress and her pet leopard “Baby.”

Rebel without a Cause (1955)

Drama – Rotten Tomatoes score: 96%

A rebellious young man with a troubled past comes to a new town, finding friends and enemies.

The Muppets (2011)

Comedy | Family | Musical – Rotten Tomatoes score: 96%

A Muppet fanatic with some help from his two human compatriots must regroup the Muppet gang to stop a avaricious oil mogul from taking down one of their precious life-longing treasures.

Bolt (2008)

Animation | Adventure | Comedy – Rotten Tomatoes score: 88%

The canine star of a fictional sci-fi/action show that believes his powers are real embarks on a cross country trek to save his co-star from a threat he believes is just as real.

To Have and To Have Not (1944)

Horror | Mystery | Thriller – Rotten Tomatoes score: 97%

During WWII, American expatriate Harry Morgan helps transport a Free French Resistance leader and his beautiful wife to Martinique while romancing a sexy lounge singer.

The French Connection (1971)

Action | Crime | Thriller – Rotten Tomatoes score: 98%

A pair of NYC cops in the Narcotics Bureau stumble onto a drug smuggling job with a French connection.

Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

Action | Comedy | Crime – Rotten Tomatoes score: 90%

In Shanghai, China in the 1940s, a wannabe gangster aspires to join the notorious “Axe Gang” while residents of a housing complex exhibit extraordinary powers in defending their turf.

The Wicker Man (1973)

Horror | Mystery | Thriller – Rotten Tomatoes score: 100%

A police sergeant is sent to a Scottish island village in search of a missing girl whom the townsfolk claim never existed. Stranger still are the rites that take place there.

On the Waterfront (1954)

Crime | Drama – Rotten Tomatoes score: 100%

An ex-prize fighter turned longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

Animation | Adventure | Fantasy – Rotten Tomatoes score: 86%

Warrior/pacifist Princess Nausicaä desperately struggles to prevent two warring nations from destroying themselves and their dying planet.

The Lion King (1994)

Animation | Adventure | Drama – Rotten Tomatoes score: 90%

Lion cub and future king Simba tests his limits, supported by his family, but sometimes gets in over his head.

Mulan (1998)

Animation | Adventure | Family – Rotten Tomatoes score: 86%

To save her father from death in the army, a young maiden secretly goes in his place and becomes one of China’s greatest heroines in the process.

Movie Marathon Of Flops

We all love catastrophic failures, and Hollywood flops can single-handedly lose hundreds of millions of dollars, bankrupt entire studios, and ruin prestigious careers. A movie marathon of flops would be like watching a train transporting a load of fireworks smashing into an orphanage located on an active volcano during a Sharknado. You know you couldn’t look away.

However, just because a movie wasn’t a commercial success doesn’t mean it isn’t good. In fact, the most spectacular flops have great production values simply based on the sheer amount of money spent on them. I think a movie marathon of flops has some real untapped potential. It is going to be an entertaining spectacle one way or another.

However, to put together a decent flop movie marathon schedule, the key thing we need to know is: how much money was lost in bringing this cinematic experience to you? The answer is harder to figure out than you might think. Hollywood has strange and secretive accounting practices, which are only amplified when they just lost a ton of money.

So, knowing that the best we can do is form an educated guess, I found some decent flop lists (with financial figures) on Wikipedia, CNBC, the the-numbers.com. Each list disagreed with the other in terms of the movies on the list, and how much money was lost, and one of them wasn’t adjusted for inflation. So, what I did was take an average based on the numbers from each list (when available), and adjusted for inflation as needed. That sounds a lot like science, in that math is involved.

And so, I came up with a list (dollar amounts are in 2014 dollars).

Top 20 Movie Flops, Based on Total Loss

Movie	Year	Estimated Loss
Mars Needs Moms	2011	-$144,439,582
Cuttthroat Island	1995	-$142,147,256
The Alamo	2004	-$134,784,016
John Carter	2012	-$133,289,640
The 13th Warrior	1999	-$133,127,431
The Adventures of Pluto Nash	2002	-$130,429,259
Sahara	2005	-$127,167,887
The Fall of the Roman Empire	1964	-$126,417,784
47 Ronin	2013	-$126,158,267
The Lone Ranger	2013	-$119,173,592
Town and Country	2001	-$115,352,672
How do you know?	2010	-$115,215,810
Heaven’s Gate	1980	-$112,748,057
Final Fantasy: The Spirits within	2001	-$108,125,697
Speed Racer	2008	-$106,054,234
Jack the Giant Slayer	2013	-$105,813,215
RIPD	2013	-$94,250,663
Inchon	1982	-$89,870,942
Treasure Planet	2002	-$83,833,389

Now, this is a fine list, but we have a 24-hour movie marathon format to satisfy. So, to get the most flop in the least amount of time, we’d want to schedule the biggest losers according to how much money they lost per minute of movie. That results in the following list.

Top 20 Movie Flops, Based on Dollars Lost Per Minute

Movie	Year	Loss / Minute
Mars Needs Moms	2011	-$1,641,359
The Adventures of Pluto Nash	2002	-$1,372,940
The 13th Warrior	1999	-$1,305,171
Cuttthroat Island	1995	-$1,146,349
Town and Country	2001	-$1,109,160
47 Ronin	2013	-$1,069,138
Sahara	2005	-$1,025,547
Final Fantasy: The Spirits within	2001	-$1,020,054
John Carter	2012	-$1,009,770
The Alamo	2004	-$983,825
RIPD	2013	-$981,778
How do you know?	2010	-$952,197
Jack the Giant Slayer	2013	-$928,186
Treasure Planet	2002	-$882,457
The Lone Ranger	2013	-$799,823
Solider	1998	-$797,095
Speed Racer	2008	-$785,587
The Fall of the Roman Empire	1964	-$672,435
Gigli	2003	-$644,311

Picking off the top of this list, and making a few creative choices along the way to create a decent schedule, I give you….

The World’s Best Movie Marathon of Flops

Start Time	Title	Runtime	Loss / Min
12:00 PM	Mars Needs Moms	88 min.	-$1,641,359
01:45 PM	The Adventures of Pluto Nash	95 min.	-$1,372,940
03:30 PM	The 13th Warrior	102 min.	-$1,305,171
05:15 PM	Cuttthroat Island	124 min.	-$1,146,349
07:30 PM	Town and Country	104 min.	-$1,109,160
09:15 PM	47 Ronin	118 min.	-$1,069,138
11:15 PM	Final Fantasy: The Spirits within	106 min.	-$1,020,054
01:15 AM	John Carter	132 min.	-$1,009,770
03:30 AM	The Alamo	137 min.	-$983,825
06:00 AM	How do you know?	121 min.	-$952,197
08:15 AM	Jack the Giant Slayer	114 min.	-$928,186
10:15 AM	Treasure Planet	95 min.	-$882,457
12:00 PM	Finish

This movie marathon cost the studios an astounding $1,472,716,233 (that’s almost $1.5 BILLION dollars – adjusted for inflation) of their own money. These movies lost an average of $1,118,384 per minute of runtime. Awesome!

So hey – the next time you complain about movie ticket prices – remember – sometimes the studios take one for the team too.

Highest Body Count Movie Marathon

Sure – plot, character development, and beautiful cinematography are important factors for movies, but what about sheer on-screen body count? In fact, I think the real question we should be asking ourselves is: what is the highest body count movie marathon possible?Of course there are tools available on the internet to assist us with answering this question (you doubted it for a second?). I was first alerted to this fact by Randal Olson’s blog, which has a handy infographic of the deadliest films of all time – as measured by on-screen deaths.

After some investigative work (i.e. I read the article), I discovered Randal’s source was moviebodycounts.com. This site does all the exhaustive work of cataloging on-screen deaths in popular movies – so you don’t have to! Their counting methodology is described in the FAQ. Since they have a website, clearly they are the most scientific source on the subject of on-screen movie deaths.

They have the 101 highest body count movies in a convenient list (they also have a deadliest character list). If you simply took the top entries, and jammed them into a 24-hour period, you would come up with a movie marathon schedule like the following.

Top Body Count Movie Marathon

Start Time	Title	Year	Runtime	Body Count
12:00 PM	LoTR: Return of the King	2003	201 min.	836
03:21 PM	Kingdom of Heaven	2005	144 min.	610
05:45 PM	300	2007	117 min.	600
07:42 PM	Troy	2004	163 min.	572
10:25 PM	The Last Samurai	2003	154 min.	558
12:59 AM	LoTR: The Two Towers	2002	179 min.	468
03:58 AM	Grindhouse	2007	191 min.	310
07:09 AM	Hard Boiled	1992	128 min.	307
09:17 AM	Titanic	1997	194 min.	307
12:31 PM	Finish

That’s 4,568 on-screen deaths spread across nine movies over 24.5 hours. That’s not bad, but the schedule is a little over the 24-hour time limit and, well, the schedule includes Titanic. Is that really the best that you can do?

Since time in any movie marathon is limited (to, you know, 24 hours), I thought that a better way at looking at the problem is the efficiency of the movies – as measured in average bodies per minute. When you look at things that way, you get a schedule like this.

Top Bodies Per Minute Movie Marathon

Start Time	Title	Year	Runtime	Body Count	Bodies / Minute
12:00 PM	300	2007	117 minutes	600	5.1
01:57 PM	Kingdom of Heaven	2005	144 min.	610	4.2
04:21 PM	LoTR: The Two Towers	2002	179 min.	468	2.6
07:20 PM	LoTR: Return of the King	2003	201 min.	836	4.2
10:41 PM	The Last Samurai	2003	154 min.	558	3.6
01:15 AM	Troy	2004	163 min.	572	3.5
03:58 AM	Rambo	2008	92 min.	247	2.7
05:30 AM	Hard Boiled	1992	128 min.	307	2.4
07:38 AM	We Were Soldiers	2002	138 min.	305	2.2
09:56 AM	Equilibrium	2002	107 min.	236	2.2
11:43 AM	Finish

This schedule has 4,739 on-screen deaths spread across ten movies over 23.5 hours. That’s 171 more kills, one extra movie, accomplished in one less hour, with exactly one less Titanic movie! Now we’re talking! Also, this schedule delivers an impressive average of 2.5 bodies per minute. This will dull your sense of empathy for your fellow man in no time!

What do you think? Can you improve on this schedule? Or is it truly the pinnacle of cinematic carnage?

Photo by The Official CTBTO Photostream

Comedy Movie Marathon – Where to Start?

Planning a comedy movie marathon is a special type of challenge.

Every human being has slightly different comedic tastes, resulting in the same movie falling flat for some and knee-slappin’ to others. This variety of taste results in a proliferation of sub-genres. Wikipedia lists about 14 sub-genres of comedy films, while this handy infographic claims 35 comedy sub-genres.

By the way, is it funny to anyone else that British humor is its own comedic sub-genre? Here is a bit of an explanation of what sets it apart, but how come you never hear of Canadian humor? Or Polish humor? Oh wait, I suppose there is a certain form of Polish humor out there.

Anyway, I digress. Another challenge is you have to consider your attendees’ health. You wouldn’t want to have your movie marathon added to this Wikipedia page of documented cases of people dying of laughter.

Oops. I digress again. So there are lots of types of comedies out there, and there are many comedies out there widely regarded as “classics”. Where do you start?

In my opinion, variety is the spice of every movie marathon. If you scheduled a movie marathon consisting of the entire Three Stooges Filmography, I think you would start using Moe‘s signature eye-poke on yourself about halfway through.

So, what I did is take some of the comedy sub-genres out there, and picked a good representative of that sub-genre. 13 sub-genres / movies later, and you have yourself a comedy movie marathon! I also listed a link to further explanation of the comedy sub-genre, in case you’d like delve deeper into the depths of humor in a particular area.

Your mileage may vary. If you successfully pull off this comedy movie marathon schedule or another one of your own devising, I’d love to hear about it!

Comedy Movie Marathon Movies

Tootsie

Category: Dramedy

My take: Dustin Hoffman’s character dresses in drag to gain acting success on a soap opera. This comedy is remembered because it is a movie that is running on all cylinders. It is serious, funny, satiric, its characters change, and has great music. In other words, it all comes together for a great final result.

My Cousin Vinny

Category: Fish out of water

My take: One of my favorite comedies. It exemplifies the fish-out-of-water scenario (New Yorker transplanted to the Deep South) but also has characters and a plot that you can care about (kids falsely accused of murder).

Airplane!

Category: Parody

My take: The comedy that launched a thousand imitators. Take a premise from serious 1970s disaster movies, plant serious actors of the day (Peter Graves, Leslie Nielson) acting very seriously, and then jam every scene with pure ridiculousness. Required viewing for all serious comedy enthusiasts.

Animal House

Category: Gross out

My take: The template for all subsequent teen / high-school / college comedies. Raunchy, gross, funny. Authority figure villian. Slacker protagonists. The first movie writing credit of Harold Ramis, and part of the class National Lampoon comedy of the day.

Some Like it Hot

Category: Classic

My take: This is a fantastic classic comedy with impossible-to-replicate elements. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon cross-dressing undercover in a girl band which features ukulele-player Marilyn Monroe.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Category: British humor

My take: The king (ha!) of silly humor, and the most quotable movie by high school boys and other nerds in the last century. Follow King Arthur as he seeks the grail (spoiler alert: he fails in his quest to due the movie running out of money) and faces enemies like a killer rabbit and european vs. african swallow trivia.

When Harry Met Sally

Category: Romantic comedy

My take: Romantic comedies are a much-maligned category of comedy. They’ve been all but dormant in recent years, after having a boom around the 1990s. Why not try out one of the first, and best?

Dr. Strangelove

Category: Black comedy

My take: This movie is a strange, singular experience – but what else would you expect out of Stanley Kubrik? A “comedy” depicting World War III could be started by a single unhinged individual in power. Laugh-out-loud funny? Maybe not so much. Darkly absurd? Yes.

Duck Soup

Category: Slapstick

My take: The best Marx Brothers film, featuring slapstick, puns, political satire, jokes, and classic vaudeville-style performances. It is a comedy time capsule.

This is Spinal Tap

Category: Mockumentary

My take: The fake documentary that takes a hard look at the world of Rock and Roll, and reveals what an absurd mess it can be. More dry, quotable humor than laugh-out-loud funny.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Category: Sophisticated Comedy

My take: A character-driven, witty comedy, featuring Audrey Hepburn playing a manic-pixie dream girl before that term became a thing. I do appreciate classic cinema’s ability to produce comedy, drama, and emotion just from the dialog of a few individuals.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Category: Teen Comedy

My Take: High-school comedy from the early 1980s, which many laud for capturing the reality of teenage life at the time.

Bringing Up Baby

Category: Screwball comedy

My take: Goofy, frenetic, and funny. Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant go from one implausible situation to another, mostly driven by Katherine’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl-ness. I guess she beat Audrey Hepburn to that trope.

Comedy Movie Marathon Schedule

Start Time	Title
12:00 PM	Tootsie
02:30 PM	My Cousin Vinny
04:45 PM	Airplane!
06:15 PM	Animal House
08:30 PM	Some Like it Hot
10:45 PM	Monty Python and the Holy Grail
12:30 AM	When Harry Met Sally
02:15 AM	Dr. Strangelove
04:00 AM	Duck Soup
05:15 AM	This is Spinal Tap
06:45 AM	Breakfast at Tiffany’s
08:45 AM	Fast Times at Ridgemont High
10:30 AM	Bringing Up Baby
12:12 PM	Finish

Horror Movie Marathon – Where to start?

Nothing inspires movie marathons quite like the horror genre. Seriously, the movie marathon landscape is littered with them! (for example, see the Ohio 24-hour horror movie marathon, Brookline horror, etc.)

Why is that? There are lots of psychological theories on why we like to watch horror films. Most of them sound like utter malarkey. I like the theory that we enjoy the jolt of adrenaline experienced in a safe environment.

Regardless of the reason, if you want to have a horror movie marathon, you have a lot of material to choose from. Horror movies are cheap, and there are a lot of them. IMDB lists 53,915 entries in the “horror” category (this includes both film and TV) and there are almost 25 horror subgenres out there according to this authoritative-looking infographic. So where do you start?

How about viewing the entire history of horror films in one day? By that, I mean watching the most ground-breaking, influential horror films ever made. The movies that spawned a thousand imitators. At least it gives you a good, horrible foundation of classics to start with. I have a sample schedule for you below. Enjoy 24 hours of sheer terror!

Horror Movie Marathon Schedule

Start Time	Title
12:00 PM	Nosferatu
01:45 PM	Frankenstein
03:00 PM	Godzilla
04:45 PM	Psycho
07:00 PM	Night of the Living Dead
08:45 PM	The Exorcist
11:00 PM	Texas Chainsaw Massacre
12:30 AM	Jaws
02:45 AM	Halloween
04:20 AM	Alien
06:30 AM	The Shining
09:00 AM	The Evil Dead
10:30 AM	The Blair Witch Project