Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman star in "Australia"
I was out of the loop Wednesday because I was in Cleveland most of the day at the movies: "Seven Pounds," the new Will Smith feature, and "Australia," the epic from Baz Luhrmann. Reviews will be later. But, for those of you keeping score, that adds up to a little over 4 1/2 hours of screen time. I've done marathon movie days before; once, in my younger years, I paid a buck to see a double feature of "The Godfather Part II" and "Lady Sings the Blues." That was about 5 1/2 hours of movies. As I said, I was younger then. A lot younger, judging by the way I felt at the end of yesterday.
So what's the most time you've spent at the movies? What did you see? And was it worth it?
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Every year since 2000, I have attended "Butt-Numb-a-Thon," hosted by AintItCoolNews.com. BNAT is a 24-hour continuous film marathon that often runs closer to 25 or 26 hours. We watch 11 or 12 movies, plus a plethora of vintage trailers, short films, and other presentations. It's a blast. I've done several other marathons that went 12 or 13 hours, and after a few BNATs, that's nothing.
Every year at the Cleveland International Film Festival, I do one marathon Saturday. This year, it was the snow day and, although I missed the first screening of the day, I watched films through the midnight show (because I was staying over in the hotel).
I'm impressed by both of your endurance. But how are the movies? As the marathons go on, is it more difficult to focus on the movies? I've often thought that reviews should come with some description of field conditions, like "saw it in a theater so cold that I wore my coat and gloves throughout," or "saw after a bad night's sleep."
I was forced to see Mel Gibson's snuff film "The Passion of the Christ." I was tempted to walk out of the movie, but endured. We all have our crosses to bare, eh? It felt like I was in there ten hours. Does that count?
Yeah, your experience at the theater definitely can color your impressions of a movie, for good or ill. BNAT mixes sleep deprivation, the euphoria of being with 200-ish other rabid movie geeks, good food (it's held at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, which offers a full menu), and the inevitable case of heartburn into your impression of the movies. What we watch is a mix of new movies (often premiering months ahead of their actual release dates), vintage TCM-type movies, and some really oddball stuff. At around the 16-hour point (4am!) we usually get some movie designed to test our sanity and endurance — often some screwed-up B-horror movie, or some awful '60s or '70s sexploitation movie. It's fun, because we never know what we're going to see until each film is introduced, and the group experience of the highs and lows is exhiliarating. And exhausting.
jim, we saw "The Passion of the Christ" at BNAT a few months before it came out. It was the last movie of the day, and actually started near the 24-hour point. The movie sucks anyway, but it really suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked in that case.