movie marathon ideas Archives - Page 3 of 10

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.

Marvel Movie Marathon – Phase 2

In case you missed it, another movie marathon in a box is now available: The Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 2. For those playing along at home, you can now acquire all Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies in two convenient (and expensive) boxes (see phase 1 box set here), complete with their own infinity stones and other nerdy nonsense!

When Avengers: Age of Ultron premiered, some were brave enough to watch all the previously released MCU films in one 27-hour marathon. Some pop culture reporters attended these marathons, and their movie marathon diaries are a hoot to read. My favorite quote is from the AV Club’s Alex McCown, who said:

The movie induces a sense of floating. All cares have subsided, all desires sated, all needs met. It’s like 1984: I’m at a Marvel movie marathon. I have always been at a Marvel movie marathon. I will always be at a Marvel movie marathon. This is life.

And that, right there, is the pure, transcendental experience good movie marathons provide. Wasting time with meditation and self-reflection is for suckers.

Sadly, not everyone is ready to achieve Nirvana. Scott Bixby at Arts.Mic was rooting for Ultron by the time his marathon was over, and Alex Abad-Santos from Vox just sounded plain old tired. Still, their misery is our gain, like this goofy quote from Scott:

11:36 p.m.: Two tubs of popcorn later, I’m thirsty enough to try cracking open my can of Monster. I discover that the worst thing about Monster is how good Monster tastes. It’s like how cats love the taste of antifreeze because it’s so sweet.

Anyway, take a look at their harrowing accounts of 27-hours of spandex-clad superheros. Maybe a Marvel movie marathon is finally within your grasp! Like, you know, ultimate power or something.

Photo by QuadAssassinCustoms

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.

Halloween Movie Marathon Ideas from The A.V. Club

Halloween is the closest thing to an annual horror movie marathon holiday. You can’t swing a dead cat during Halloween without hitting a horror movie or a horde of people lunging to consume it. So – if you want to have your own Halloween movie marathon, what the fastest way to conjure up a 24-hour unholy vision of the gaping maw of hell?

If you are a do-it-yourselfer like myself, you probably just want a great list of horror movies to start from. I wrote a Horror Movie Marathon Where-to-Start article a while back.

However, I was surprised to find out the A.V. Club (affiliated with The Onion) are big fans of 24-hour movie marathons – and a 24-hour Halloween movie marathon is one of their annual traditions. Even better, the A.V. Club is well-connected enough to have celebrities put together Halloween movie marathon schedules for them! Check out their Halloween movie marathons from years past:

2007 – Director Eli Roth’s movie picks and schedule
2010 – Voiceover artist Brendon Small’s movie picks and schedule
2011 – Director Edgar Wright’s movie picks and schedule
2012 – Director Joe Dante’s movie picks and schedule
2013 – Slayer’s Kerry King’s movie picks and schedule
2014 – Onion’s panel of experts picks and schedule
2016 – Onion’s panel of experts picks and schedule

If assembling one of these schedules sounds like work, maybe channel surfing is more your style. So what’s on TV this Halloween? American Movie Classics seems to be throwing themselves most enthusiastically into the horror fray with their AMC Fearfest. But if you need more options, there are other Halloween Movie Marathons on TV too. Or you can assemble your own marathon from the list of Halloween movies on the Huffington Post. There are a lot.

If bothering to look up showtimes of horror movies on cable TV sounds like work to you, dang, are you one lazy bum! There is yet still a way to stream images of violence and depravity on-demand directly into your ocular receptors. Check out Reel Life with Jane’s 31-day Netflix Halloween Movie Marathon.

I hope one of these horrible options works well for you. Happy Halloween! Don’t turn off the light!

Update 22 July 2017: Updated list of links for mid-2017. All of the other TV schedule references are still from 2014.

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