Sunday, August 3, 2008

The Fall Line-up is here!

We've finalized dates, and the next several months of Mad Movie Party programming. As noted yesterday, our Wednesday screenings will continue with The Stand, then move to Spaced, followed by Sam Raimi and Shaun Cassidy's excellent American Gothic.

On Saturday, August 23, I'm pleased to announce we'll be screening the Blu-Ray import of one of my all-time favorites: Peter Hyams' Capricorn One. Up till now this title has only been available in a non-anamorphic transfer. Thanks to our friends in the UK, they not only had the good sense to get this title out in Hi-Def in time for the film's 30th anniversary, they were kind enough to do so as a region free disc. One of the many sad factors in HD-DVD losing the format war was that it was a region-free format, whereas Blu-Ray is not. Hence our not watching the UK-only Blu-Ray disc of Escape From New York this month. I'm tentatively planning to pair that with Gerry Anderson's recently released Journey to the Far Side of the Sun.

On Saturday, September 20, we've got a special party planned that Vonna will be producing. Our theme will be cooking in the movies, and you can bet that the food for this event will be extra special! We're planning to screen two films, one of which will be The Last Supper. As for the second feature, we're considering things like Big Night, Chocolat, and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

As all of you should know, this year marks the 40th anniversary of George Romero's seminal classic, Night of the Living Dead. On Wednesday, October 1st, following our weekly showing of American Gothic, we will be screening the original Night of the Living Dead to celebrate the actual 40th anniversary of the October 1st premiere at the Fulton Theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Not to worry - for those of you who won't be able to attend that screening, you'll want to mark your calendars for the following Saturday, October 4th, when we have a special event planned. Starting at 12 noon and going until 12 midnight, we'll be celebrating the anniversary with a marathon: ALL DAY OF THE DEAD.


Here's the schedule for ALL DAY OF THE DEAD:
12pm Tom Savini's remake of Night of the Living Dead (1990)
1:45pm Dawn of the Dead (1979) in HD
4:15pm Day of the Dead (1985) in HD
6:15pm Land of the Dead (2005) in HD
8:15pm Night of the Living Dead (1968)
10:15pm Diary of the Dead (2008)

We don't schedule a lot of marathons, because we recognize the effort those take to attend. That said, this anniversary was too near and dear to our heart to let it pass without doing something special. While you're in for a good time if you come for the whole day, I urge you to come out if only for one or two films. The current popularity of flesh eating zombies in fiction and film all stems back to this independent production from the fall of 1968, so what better time to revisit, or introduce yourself to, the most important American horror film of all time. So important, in fact, that event now has it's own blog.

Since our ALL DAY OF THE DEAD party is a special event, we still have something separate lined up for the month of October. In advance of the theatrical release of Quantum of Solace, on Saturday, October 25, we'll be screening Casino Royale alongside a few other TBD James Bond films. As that draws nearer, we'll have some polls as we did with Batman to determine what else we'll be watching.


We've set dates for November (the 29th) and December (the 27th) parties - both the Saturday after the holiday - although we haven't yet lined up the programming. There will be plenty of new and interesting films released in the next few months, so it shouldn't be too difficult to pick the next themes.

We look forward to seeing you all at our weekly, monthly, and occasional impromptu events throughout the remainder of 2008!

John & Vonna

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