Touch You Last

Well, we have a movie marathon first. One of the discs skipped like crazy. Big Trouble in Little China just finished, after an elapsed running time of 28 minutes. That's what I get for buying used CDs at the pawn shop. (Testament to my fatigue: it just took me four minutes to remember the words 'pawn shop.') Not a huge deal that the disc crapped out. Right now it's just me that's awake. (And Gunther.) Everyone else is snoozing. I won't judge though -- I was in and out of consciousness throughout all of The Conjuring. That's my deadly spot, 4am to 6am. Once light starts coming in the window, I'm fine. Fun day, but we've had better lineups for sure. I think it was Chris who said last year that "it was fun, but there wasn't as much goofing on movies as usual," which was true. Because I'd stacked MM8 full of films nobody had seen, so there was a ton of concentration involved. This year has more familiar titles, so smart-assery is up...

March 22, 2014: The Goonies - 10:00am The Magnificent Seven - 12:09pm Bronson - 2:47pm The Thin Man - 4:34pm Mystery Team - 6:26pm American Movie - 8:33pm Ip Man - 10:35pm Dark City - 12:36am Hellraiser - 2:31am The Conjuring - 4:19am Big Trouble in Little China - 6:26am Gravity - 8:20am

I think this was the first year I lived the entirety of Movie Marathon offline.  I mean, I've been slack-assing all of my online haunts of late, but it wasn't just a result of me being lazy.  No one was super-familiar with the lineup as a whole; on average, people had seen about two movies of the twelve beforehand.  I think we all paid more attention than usual.  Maybe too much attention.  I feel like the Mystery Science Theater 3000 style jawing was down at least 25%. Okay, quick bits about each movie. In Bruges - There's one movie each year that I'm desperate for everyone to love.  Sometimes it's a guaranteed slam dunk like Black Dynamite , other times it's less of a sure thing.  After the night was all over, more than one person told me this was their favourite out of the lot.  Colin Farrell is so fucking good in this movie, it made me like him not just as an actor but as a person.  So glad this was liked as much as it was. Frequen...

March 16, 2013

So we've lived this year mostly offline.  It's been freeing.  We've been diligent about the pictures and the movies, and it'll all be posted eventually, but we're* not aiming for real time updates this go around.  It's been a pretty good lineup so far.  One of the best, I think, but too early to name it The Best just yet.  Unforgiven was brilliant.  Robocop was shockingly violent, just as Mark promised.  Black Dynamite was far and away the best movie of the year.  When We Were Kings was good, but as Rebecca succinctly put it, "Our takeaway from WWWK was that George Plimpton was a pretentious twerp. And that Ali talks an awful lot."  Wet Hot American Summer was -- I want to say the worst of the lot, but it wasn't a bad movie, just odd.  Thrown together.  Like one of our fan films run way long.  Hanna came next.  No problems with that one.  (Yes, I'm aware these aren't the most insightful of film critiques, but I've...

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, All Three Of You Who Still Periodically Look At This Site, here is the program for Movie Marathon 7(to be held on Saturday, March 3rd, 2012): Unforgiven -- 10:00 AM Robocop -- 12:26 PM Black Dynamite -- 2:38 PM When We Were Kings -- 4:27 PM Wet Hot American Summer -- 6:11 PM Hanna -- 8:18 PM Bring It On -- 10:24 PM Attack the Block -- 12:17 AM Dead Alive -- 2:00 AM Three... Extremes -- 4:01 AM Enter the Dragon -- 6:15 AM They Live -- 8:07 AM Deepest apologies to the following movies which almost, almost made it: 13 Assassins, Big Trouble in Little China, Bonnie and Clyde, Diggstown, Double Indemnity, Showgirls, Super, The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across The 8th Dimension, The Wrestler.  Maybe those movies will play in some alternate reality MM7.  Or I'll just play them on the Sunday.  If you're up for it.

Holy crow, so Movie Marathon Six came and went already and I didn’t write a single word about it here. But that’s okay, because I also haven’t written about my kids, the amazing trip we just took, or frankly anything (good or bad) that’s happened in my life for the last six months or so. But I’ve been on Jorge’s site a bunch of times today, and he reports on this little party so consistently and exhaustively that I can’t let him go it alone. Here are the lessons I’ve learned from Movie Marathon 6: When choosing the lineup, trust your gut. This was probably the second worst lineup we’ve ever had. (MM1 was, inarguably, the worst. Some would say MM3 was a stinker, but that’s just the Suspiria/Sunshine stank that everyone can still taste. Other than that, everything played brilliantly.) I’m not saying we watched a bunch of bad movies this year, we just had too many dramas back to back. There was what felt like a six hour block where I felt like people were just pu...

The dust has settled, the guacamole has been retired, and MM5 is done for another year. Good line-up, probably not the best one yet, but definitely less duds than any year prior. More of my thoughts and the thoughts of people far smarter than me can be found in our post-game podcast here . Be warned that the audio quality is a bit raw and goes from quiet to deafening on more than one occasion. Before I stop talking about the Movie Marathon for another twelve months, I would be very remiss if I didn't thank the follow folks: Sarah - While I'm the programmer for this show, Sarah takes on the much harder task of running this party. As always, the party was amazing. An in addition, she also did a lot of Teddy juggling and taxiing of people and babies to and fro. I couldn't and wouldn't do this without you. Grandma Nonna and Grandpa - Sarah's parents took Teddy overnight and for a huge chunk of Sunday. Thank you so, so much for helping us out. I'm greatly in...

Okay, so we're almost at the end. I haven't mentioned it yet (because it's true every year as it is this year) but all the good stuff is on Jorge's site. I had some funny feelings about the end of this movie list, and they've proven a little true. I was worried they wouldn't be edge-of-your-seat enough, or compelling enough to keep us going. Outpost wasn't all that scary (but the company kept the energy up). Moon is good, but it's more of a slow burn. You really have to give it some effort. Not a hell of a lot, but some. Anyways, it's good so far, but I don't begrudge anyone who's taking a powder right now. More later. Tired, and can't compose a while lot of coherent thoughts.

And that purpose is: to give me a chance to update my blog. I don't think it's just my lack of attention span leading me to say that Bad Lieutenant is a really bad movie. For reasons I don't care to explore just right now. Not just because Harvey Keitel had a terrible, completely awkward nude scene -- although that certainly didn't help. Outside of this one, all the other movies have been really good. I think there were a few too many dramas early on and Lars and the Real Girl suffered as a result. Otherwise, everyone seems to like what's been playing. Overall wakefulness: high. Drunkeness: moderate. If we can maintain those levels, or at worst swap them, we're gonna coast on through to 10am.

We're less than twelve hours away now. Eeeeeeeee! Earlier today, Jorge and I recorded our thoughts, fears, hopes, and dreams about the event in a quick podcast. It only took us three takes. We had to delete the first two because it was filled with nothing but anti-French rhetoric . (All Jorge's.) Anyways, enjoy .

Clearly, once again, I’m behind on my everything. Movie Marathon 5 is less than forty-eight hours away now, and I ain’t said a word about it here. Don’t chalk this up to secrecy or anything, I just never got around to it. First off, here’s the line up: Pumping Iron - 10:00AM Last Night - 11:40AM Sunset Boulevard - 1:55PM Kung Fu Hustle - 4:00PM Lars and the Real Girl - 5:50PM Bad Lieutenant - 8:16PM Bon Cop Bad Cop - 10:05PM Near Dark - 12:16AM Battle Royale - 2:05AM Outpost - 4:14AM Moon - 5:59AM Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - 8:12AM As always, it’s from Saturday at 10AM to Sunday at 10AM. Unlike past years, we will not be contending with snowstorms, time changes, or hour long empty periods in the middle of the night as a result of math-related ineptitude. I’ll update here a few times during the day and I'll be tweeting away throughout. Jorge will be performing his usual super heroic blogging over at his site, and we’ll have AV material coming out the ying yang (wi...

That's what I feel like right now, because it took me forever to get a Flickr badge up on my sidebar. I mean I work on computers all day, I've got a half-dozen computer related interests that bleed into my evenings, but sometimes the most basic things don't come easily too me. Flickr was like a new language to me. A dead language . And if you've used Flickr , you know that's it not really all that complicated. Stupid today. Regardless, I've got a few photos from the Movie Marathon up there. Finally. Am old. And slow. And incontinent (but that's neither here nor there).

While my tweets petered out and I didn't do an immediate victory post, rest assured that we made it to the end. Delirious was super-dated and pretty awkward to endure at times, but then you get to a skit like "Ice Cream Man" and you can almost see everyone in the room mouthing the words. After that was through, we put the house back in place, hung out for a bit with Rebecca , dropped Jorge off in Stittsville to catch his ride back to T.O., and then we slept real hard for about five hours. Since then, I've eaten and cleaned up, and done my best to shake off the cobwebs. And now, thank yous. Thanks to the long distance travellers. Jorge, Rebecca , I hope your trips home were safe and mercifully quick. Thanks to my tech crew. Joe: the sound system rocked the house. Literally. And way to set that up in short order, too. Chris: thanks for the TV and PS3 loan, making this look like some kind of professional operation for once. Thanks to our first-timers—Shelley, Rebecca ,...

As of right... ... ... ... now!--I'm the only one to not have nodded off at least once. It was down to me, Jorge, and Chris, but they've started making zees on either side of me. Audition was slow to start, but awesome in its complete over-the- topness (I know that we woke all the sleepers with our screams of auuuuuughhhhhh , and gaaaaaaaaaah , and ohgawdnaaaaaaaghhhh . Brutal. Totally. Not sure that we'll ever find something quite that... gross? Messed-up? Impression-leaving? I don't think The Mist played quite as scary as I thought it would, but the ending was a complete and utter downer--now that I think of it, one of many downer endings tonight. Now it's Tremors and despite the Kevin Bacon- ness , Paul Gross- titude , and Reba McEntire - ity , I don't think anyone is terribly compelled. But like I said: we're almost through. Just the shortish Delirious next, and we can all fall into blissful oblivion.

So... oops. I used some bad maths and it looks like we have a whole extra hour of free time in the middle of the night. We're watching some videos of Jorge's kid, and then maybe we'll review some of the tribute movies we've made. There are five of us left standing at the moment: Chris, Shelley, Jorge, Isha, and me, although I think Joe should be back in action some time soon. Since last time: Hard Core Logo: good stuff, especially enjoyed the soundtrack this time around, and I think everyone liked it. The Oh in Ohio: really did not go the way I thought it would, right from the start. And it involved a lot more Danny Devito lovin' then any of us expected. Dolemite : weak, and sad. The trailer was eight times more awesome than the movie itself. Audition is coming up next, and we're trying to get all the last-minute eating in while we can. I don't know that much about the movie, but the phrase "stomach churning" came up an awful lot.

Okay, we're five movies in now and it's going nicely. Everything has played well so far, people are happy and fed (thanks, Sarah!), and our A/V material is wicked. Jorge is rocking some real time updates , videos and all. We're running pretty late at the moment, but I can slash some time off the dinner break and put us back on track. Death Race 2000 was so good I almost want to start every Movie Marathon with it. Butch and Sundance went... well. I was on the go for most of it, but it seemed to me that once the boys got to Bolivia, it got a bit long for people. Lifeboat : universally enjoyed by all those who remained conscious. The Iron Giant: we laughed, we cried; it became a part of us. Now we're into the highly profane (but no less awesome) Glengarry Glen Ross. Only slightly less profane than Glen and Gary and Glen and Ross .

I've had serious ants in the pants all day, for obvious reasons. Work was busy, fortunately, filled with goal-setting. Not my favourite thing in the world, but it kind of forces you into active participation, and if I didn't have that diversion I probably would have lost my ever-loving mind with the waiting. The house is 85% ready. Most of the food prep is done (thanks to Sarah), the house is clean and the cooler is stocked (thanks to me), and now we do some waiting. Chris will be coming by in a bit to drop off his TV, then I'll head out to the airport to pick up Jorge. I'll feed Jorge beer and make him help me move some furniture around, then I'll force him to go to sleep (with the assistance of ether, if necessary ). My audio system arrives early tomorrow courtesy of Joe and Isha , and shortly thereafter, we'll be watching David Carradine run over people and overact. ... Oh Jebus . And then Chris came, and there was TVs, and Mega Men, and I was late picking u...

Weeknights, my bedtime comes at midnight. That’s generally the earliest I pass out and that means I average seven hours of sleep a night. It works. It grinds me down a bit as the week goes on, but I usually catch up on a few lost hours over the weekend. Now, I’ve tried experiments with getting less sleep before which have always been unsuccessful. But this week I’m trying something crazy: I’m getting more sleep. I think it started Sunday, where I was half unconscious by 11:00, and rather than fight it like I usually do I just went to bed. And I felt really good the next day. It felt so nice I tried it twice. Then it occurred to me that there are worse weeks for me to be building up my sleep stores. So, all of this week I’ve been getting a full eight hours of sleep. I can definitely feel the difference. My concentration is better, my mood has been consistently good, in general I feel measurable more with it . I miss that hour, though. That’s a full on hour of Me Time I’...

Of the twelve movies I need for Saturday, I have seven of them in my possession at this moment. Three others I can rent at pretty much any video store out there. The last two—Dolemite and Audition—are giving me grief. My go-to place for this kind of thing is Elgin Street Video. It’s a little place just two minutes away from where I work, and they’ve got a great collection of cult and arthouse films (but at the same time t hey’re not too proud to carry stuff like Roadhouse, Footloose, and The Thing). Sadly, they’ve let me down this year, 0 for 3 on the hard-to-get films (Dolemite, Audition, and Death Race 2000—the last of which no one was renting so I had to go and buy). My second choice video store in these instances is Invisible Cinema, which has an even wider selection of rare movies than Elgin Street. Problems being: a lot of their stock is in VHS, they have a limit of five rentals per customer, and the last time I was there the place reeked—like a Sumo Wrestling match had finished...