Every held your own "film festival"?

Cafe Society
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A long time ago when I worked in a video store, I had at my disposal the ability to host my own personal Film Festival of the stars or Themed movies that I was into at that moment.

One day I decided to watch all the **John Wayne ** flicks we had
( and we had nearly every one of them that was on video at the time) in the order they were made. It took the better part of two weeks. I was saturated with the Duke after that, pilgrim.

Funny thing was, that in his first role in "Big Trail "( not a bad film either) and about twenty or thirty westerns later, John Wayne, in both of the films greeted a bunch of Indians using the same “How” way. A really cheesy greeting that sounded like a made up word. Only one was Plains indians, the other was Apache or Comanche. It was vastly amusing.

I went through a mafia film festival, oldest gangster film to the Granddaddy of them all, "Godfather " ( two wasn’t on video and three should have been aborted)

Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart have also been featured in the Ujest Film Festival. Gene Kelly and just about any musical is always a crowd pleaser. (“New York New York, It’s a wonderful town!”)

Jimmy Stewart and Katherine Hepburn have also been lauded and then there was the Star Wars Film Festival, followed very closely by the Indiana Jones Film Festival and dipping over to the ** Rutger Hauer** Du Jour Fest. (Rutger was by far the best B actor in the 80’s)

Everyone once in awhile I host a mini-Peter o’Toole festival with *Lion in the Winter * and the silly *High Spirits *

Steve martin and Billy Crystal have been honored here as well. I’ve watched everything Robin Willliams has done (Including stand up) which in the standup, one was where he was still using drugs and antoher one where he was clean. After watching both standups of his several times, you can see a difference in performance and the coke was truly an enhancer in his performance from what I saw.

I’ve had Jane Austen Film Festivals ( which seem to drive Mr. Ujest from the house at a very fast rate.)
and the newer stuff from A&E is vastly superior over the some made in the 30’s and 40’s. The older BBC attempts are not half bad, but dreary compared to recent efforts.

Since I own most ** Mel Gibson’s** stuff, I have a Mel-o-thon once in while. Followed by an Antonio Banderas extravaganza.

**Janeane Garalfalolusupusagus ** and her few contributions to the film world have been watched.

I am pleased to have wondered in the acting of** Joaquin Phoenix ** before anyone else seemingly knew who he was. Same goes for Vince Vaughan.

I haven’t had a film festival lately, so I’m working my way backwards on the life and times of my next husband, **Russell Crowe. ** (Which drives Mr. Ujest to tell me Mr. C is gay at an alarming rate.) (Mel Gibson, who use to be the next Mr. Ujest has been demoted to an alternate in the event Mr. Russel Crowe Ujest is unable to perform his husbandly duties :slight_smile: )

Some times they are planned. Most of the time it is one performance by an actor that really caught my eye and I want to go back and see their first stuff on film and work my way to the present to see how they progress in their craft.

Ever have a film festival?

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In college, we once had a Joe Estevez film festival. We managed to find his phone number on the Internet and invited him to come. He got the message on his machine and actually called us back – a really nice guy, and a hell of a B-movie actor.

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Shirley, I do this all the time. Just last night I had my own little “Tim Burton Directs Johnny Depp (my own future husband)” Marathon, and it was great!

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I have a group of a dozen or so friends that gets together every two or three weeks to look at a movie of my choosing. We’ve been doing this for, let’s see, at least six or seven years. We take the summer off because nobody wants to sit inside while it’s still sunny out, but every fall-winter-spring for the last few years, this has been a solid and regular event.

We long since exhausted the obvious festival/series type choices, so now we watch whatever I think will be interesting. Just last Tuesday, we looked at Angels and Insects. If you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend it for arthouse/literary type viewers.

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Lots of times.

One Halloween I got every version of Dracula I could – just “Dracula”, no sequels. I watched

** Nosferatu
Dracula ** (Bela Lugosi)
Horror of Dracula
Dracula (Jack Palance)
** Dracua** (1970 Jess Franco version with Christopher Lee)
Dracula (PBS Louis Jordan version)

Lugosi wa far and away the best Dracula, the Louis Jordan version was overall the most faithful (but awfully boring at times). For my money the overall best was the firsrt half or so of the 1970 Franco/Lee version.

If you like Peter O’Toole, try watching Becket followed by The Lionin Winter – O’Toole plays Henry II of England at two different ages!
A friend and I once had a “twisted film festival” with films having twist endings –

**Sleuth
The Last ofSheila
Charade
Body Heat
Rough Cut
**

And I’d also recommend Mirage, if you can find it.

Of course, every year since about 1985 I’ve been having the annual Bad Film Festival. I’ll be holding another in a couple of weeks, this year featuring Bad George Pal films. I love Pal, and grew up on his movies. But if you’ve ever seen Doc Savage, Man of Bronze, you know it is severely MST3K-worthy. Somebody even set up a website filled with MST3K-type comments on it.

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Some friends and I did a Wallace and Gromit film night - we printed out tickets and gave them to our guests as invitations, did cheese and crackers etc. Had a great night.

Apart from that, I’ll run through categories of movies or actors, directors, whatever now and then.

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I’ve had an Evil Dead mararthon before. Fun night.

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Years ago, in Berlin, I went to a small movie theater for a John Waters film fest (Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and more I cannot at the minute remember) - started at 8:00PM and ended around 4:00 AM the next morning.
Most fun was the bizarre crowd it attracted - and the contact high in the theater was amazing.

It was the same theater that once had the double feature:
Apocolypse Now and Deer Hunter

I went just to see what manic depressives were standing in line for that fun event.