Thursday, Nov. 22
“Thanksgiving Day Feast”

The leaves has changed, the jackolaterns rotted, and the first whispers of snow appeared. Ahh, it is Thanksgiving, time for gorging oneself on a righteous schmorgesborg of meat, potatoes, desserts, and maybe the occasional vegetable. And no Thanksgiving Day would be complete without an equally gluttonous movie marathon. Enjoy a 24 hour movie meal perfectly paired with just about anything you might eat on Thanksgiving.

1. “Ratatouille” (2007)
   Run time: 110 minutes
   A bumbling young chef gets some help in the kitchen from an unlikely source: a rat with a sophisticated palette. Rats in the kitchen, even cute ones that are voiced by Patton Oswald, give me the heebie jeebies.

2. “Super Size Me” (2004)
   Run time: 100 minutes
   Have you ever thought to yourself, “What would happen if I ate nothing but fast food for 30 days?” Well Morgan Spurlock has, and he even made an unappetizing documentary about it.

3. “Good Burger” (1997)
   Run time: 103 minutes
   “Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger. May I take your order?” A small, local burger joint is threatened by the new, big and evil Mondo Burger. Can Kenan and Kel save the day?

4. “Blow” (2001)
   Run time: 124 minutes
   Travel back in time to the 1970s, in a hedonistic world of cocaine, drug smuggling and high rollers. Ahh, the good old days.

5. “Maria Full of Grace" (2004)
   Run time: 101 minutes
   Imagine swallowing little balloons of heroin and smuggling them into the United States in your stomach. You can’t eat, you can’t throw up and you can’t poop. And you want to complain about your mother’s cooking?

6. “Sideways” (2004)
   Run time: 126 minutes
   There is nothing quite like two friends touring the California countryside in the search of glass after glass, and bottle after bottle of great wine. Unless, that is, one is engaged to be married yet searching for that one last fling who happens to find out about the pending nuptials.

7. “Pieces of April” (2003)
   Run time: 80 minutes
   An angsty Katie Holmes (before Tom Cruise, Suri and Scientology) attempts to cook Thanksgiving dinner for her estranged family.

8. “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” (1967)
   Run time: 108 minutes
   A woman brings her black fiancé home to her parents, whose views are tested over one day and one extended dinner.

9. "Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006)
   Run time: 120 minutes
   What happens to little girls who eat when they aren’t supposed to? Well, they wake up creepy creatures with eyeballs in their palms.

10. “Soul Food” (1997)
    Run time: 114 minutes
    If anything can bring a family together, it is down-home and grease-laced soul food. Or so you would think.

11. “Gremlins” (1984)
    Run time: 106 minutes
    The moral of the story: Don’t feed the gremlins after midnight, or you will be sorry.

12. “A Christmas Story” (1983)
    Run time: 94 minutes
    “Be a good boy. Show mommy how the piggies eat!” Randy can never seem to finish his dinner, Ralphie wants a Red Rider BB Gun, and their father is obsessed with a leg lamp.

Friday, Nov. 23
Shopping Madness

This movie marathon is going to supplement those of you (and your families) that want to stay away from Black Friday but still want to experience the soul-shaking experience of shopping malls, spending sprees, and good-old-fashion toy rumbles.

1. “Career Opportunities” (1991)
   Run Time: 83 minutes
   A janitor spends one entire night locked in a Target with Jennifer Connelly making sweet love in a tent on a top shelf and hiding from petty crooks.

2. “Blank Check” (1994)
   Run Time: 93 minutes
   When a young boy on his bike is run over by a limo, the limo patron gives him a blank check to replace the cost of the bike. The boy does what any preteen would do - writes the check for a cool $1 million and buys everything his heart desires.

3. “Brewster’s Millions” (1985)
   Run Time: 97 minutes
   Can Richard Pryor spend $30 million in 30 days without having gained anything? This movie would have been believable if more lap dances had been purchased.

4. “Dawn of the Dead” (1978)
   Run Time: 126 minutes
   A small group of people hold out in the bowels of a shopping mall after mindless zombies take over the town. How this differs from any other mall, who knows?

5. “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (1989)
   Run Time: 90 minutes
   The mall in this film had live Jazzercise; could it be any better than that? Wait, yes: Fights to the death in the local Dick’s Sporting Goods.

6. “Clueless” (1995)
   Run Time: 97 minutes
   Being the pretty, popular, rich girl in school isn’t all flowers and sunshine, quite often it’s shopping at the mall and spending all of you parents’ money on pricey makeovers.

7. “Dawn of the Dead” (2004)
   Run Time: 101 minutes
   Much like its predecessor, what will a group of survivors do while trapped inside a mall, besides fornicate and find love while hiding out from zombies? I still fail to see how this is different from any other day at the mall.

8. “Vertigo” (1958)
   Run Time: 128 minutes
   Since the season is all about giving, why not watch a film where a man buys a bunch of clothes for his living girlfriend just to make her look like his dead girlfriend?

9. “Mannequin” (1987)
   Run Time: 90 minutes
   There is nothing wrong with this movie, I don’t care how creepy you find man on mannequin action. And anyway, this film features a long forgotten shopping tradition: window displays.

10. ”Pretty Woman” (1990)
    Run Time: 119 minutes
    There’s nothing like giving your hooker your credit card and sending her out to buy a new wardrobe. Quick question: What’s the difference between a horse in a $50,000 dress and Julia Roberts? Quck answer: Nothing.

11. “Mallrats” (1995)
    Run Time: 94 minutes
    A group of friends spends an entire day at a mall, not unlike you and your family, except these people actually like each other. As if we all haven’t wanted to punch at a costumed mall character in the chops. I’m not saying Santa, maybe just one of the bitchy elves.

12. “Jingle All the Way” (1996)
    Run Time: 89 minutes
    Gov. Schwarzenegger and Sinbad fight over an action figure for just under 90 minutes of film. It’s like an hour and a half-long fight over a Tickle-Me-Elmo. This movie actually drains you more mentally and physically then the real Black Friday.

13. “Shopgirl” (2005)
    Run Time: 104 minutes
    This movie proves that you can buy love, no matter how old you are or how over your career is. You just need to spend a lot.

14. “Big” (1988)
    Run Time: 104 minutes
    Tom Hanks works in the Mecca of all toy stores. If only we all had this job, then we too could dance on a keyboard.

Saturday, Nov. 24

After you’ve gorged yourself on Thursday and braved the mass hysteria on Friday, you’ll need a day to just sit on your ass and do nothing. Thankfully, this Saturday movie marathon will let you indulge all of your laziest fantasies.

1. “Weekend at Bernie’s” (1989)
   Run Time: 97 minutes
   Bernie is so lazy, that he forces others to carry him around. Granted, he’s dead, but that’s beside the point.

2. “Slacker” (1991)
   Run Time: 100 minutes
   If the title of this Richard Linklater film doesn’t clue you in to why it is on the list, then you should probably close the newspaper and just take a nap.

3. “Idle Hands” (1999)
   Run Time: 92 minutes
   Widely considered to be one of the greatest films of the 20th century, “Idle Hands” taught valuable life lessons, such as the ramifications of laziness and apathy. Also, girls watching Devon Sawa stretch his acting chops definitely did not have idle hands.

4. “Bad Santa” (2003)
   Run Time: 98 minutes
   Call me crazy, but there’s something heartwarming about seeing a man in a Santa costume piss himself because he’s too lazy to get up.

5. “Van Wilder” (2002)
   Run Time: 94 minutes
   If a fifth year college student is called a “Super Senior,” then what would you call a seventh year student? Answer: You’d call him Ryan Reynolds, the sexiest sloth on this whole damn list.

6. “Return of the Jedi” (1983)
   Run Time: 135 minutes
   Jabba the Hutt epitomizes the very idea of sloth like no other character in the history of cinema. In fact, he’s so lazy, he didn’t even have the strength to overpower a scantily clad Princess Leia as she choked him to death.

7. “Sleeping Beauty” (1959)
   Run Time: 75 minutes
   There’s nothing lazier than someone who won’t get out of bed. Disregard the fact that she’s been cursed by an enchanted spindle. I still think she was just lazy.

8. “Office Space” (1999)
   Run Time: 89 minutes
   After a session with a hypnotist goes awry, a lowly office worker begins to go through life without a care in the world. The life of Peter Gibbons can be summed up accurately by the movie’s opening theme, the Geto Boys’ “Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta.”

9. “Raging Bull” (1980)
   Run Time: 129 minutes
   Although the first 100 minutes depict the life of prize-fighter Jake La Motta in his prime, the film closes with a thoroughly depressing series of scenes featuring the legendary boxer as an overweight slob whose finest hour is far behind him.

10. “I Heart Huckabees” (2004)
    Run Time: 106 minutes
    Mark Wahlberg plays a firefighter who decides to pretty much give up on life after his marriage falls apart. To top it all off, his quasi-religion falls apart on him. Those two things combined are enough to drive any person to a life of apathy.

11. “The Big Lebowski” (1998)
    Run Time: 117 minutes
    Fun fact: I’ve contemplated giving up my life style in favor of The Dude’s carefree outlook on anything and everything.
    Fun fact number two: Like The Dude, I have also had a rug ruined by having someone piss all over it.

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