Movie Madness Weekend
Posted by Neil Crosby on May 2, 2006 06:00 PM
This last weekend has been the most movie-tastic I’ve had for a very long time. The plan was to get some friends together, buy a load of junk food, and then pretty much vegetate for the weekend. And more or less, that’s what happened.
We started on the saturday morning with that staple of 1980s saturday morning cinema viewing - The Care Bears Movie. Compared with, say, The My Little Pony movie (which we watched a few weeks ago) this was a modern masterpiece. Compared with good films though, it wasn’t so ace. It was fun though, and a nice jolt back to childhood when I used to go the the cinemas that my dad ran for the saturday morning matinees.
Straight after The Care Bear movie we popped out to our local UGC Cineworld cinema for an early afternoon showing of Slither, the new Nathan Fillion movie. I enjoyed it, but it was a bit long for what it was. Probably about 20 minutes could have been sliced off in all, leaving a much tighter movie. Unfortunately, if they’d done this we’d have been left with a 75 minute film!
After Slither we came back to the flat for Becca’s 21st birthday party, where lots of SingStar was sung and lots of Buzz was played on the PS2. Fun was had, drinks were drunk, and a couple of people were left a little the worse for wear for the experience. We also watched The Care Bears movie for a second time. We crashed out at some time in the early morning ready to start it all again the next day.
Sunday morning brought with it a bad fish - fish gone bad! - in the shape of Jaws. Not what I’d have personally chosen to nurse a hangover with, but it worked well with the four of us huddled together on the bed. After Jaws we pretty much lounged about for a couple of hours until it was time for Sunday’s main event - the Indiana Jones trilogy! Nazis, a grizzled tomb-raiding college professor, and a different gil in every film - what could be better? Well, getting to exclaim with glee when Indy shouts “There’s a big snake in the plane Jock!” made our evening in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And then in The Last Crusade Indy got into a tangle with some Snakes on a Train! What next, Snakes on a Third-Method-of-Transport-that-Happens-to-Rhyme-with-Plane? Anyway, the Indiana Jones trilogy was ace.
It wasn’t the main event of the weekend though. That came on monday, with one of the stupidest things I’ve ever decided to do. The plan for the day was to watch eight Star Wars films.
Yes, you heard me right - eight Star Wars films. The idea behind the day was that I was going to try and beat my previous record of six films viewed in one day that I set down in Plymouth a couple of years ago, and since it’s always better to have a theme than not I decided to go with Star Wars. The only problem with that though is that there are only six “normal” Star Wars films. So, we decided to tack on the two made for TV live action Ewok movies too! At least, that was the plan.
The idea was to start at 7:30 in the morning with Caravan of Courage, immediately followed by Battle for Endor (these were scheduled first thing so that the people who wanted to see the proper Star Wars films could arrive at something approaching a civilised time). Then, starting at 11am and finishing at 2am we were going to watch the films in the order 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6.
<aside>I know what’s happened. You’ve just called me crazy, haven’t you? There was a reason for this ordering, you know. The classic trilogy is just that, the classic trilogy, and it holds the entire six film epic together. In my opinion, it really should bookshelve any back to back viewing of the series. First, you get to meet Luke - he goes off and destroys the Death Star, finds Yoda, gets trained as a Jedi and finds out that Darth Vader is his Father. At this point, we have the most epic of flashbacks ever (seven hours worth, give or take), learning all about Anakin’s path to the Dark Side, before seeing his redeption in the final chapter of the sextilogy. Now, try telling me it doesn’t make sense to watch it that way!</aside>
It didn’t quite work out like that… After watching Caravan of Courage, there was no way that I could force another Ewok film down my throat, so we popped out to Sainsbury’s to buy some nibbles. That was the last sunlight I saw that day. We then got down to the long, hard, 13 hour slog of the Six Real Star Wars films. It was great.
So, that’s three things crossed off my 101 things in 1001 days list this weekend. We held a party, I watched a trilogy back to back with friends, and watched seven films in one day. All in all, I’m pretty happy.