By Jan Pease
How do you ring in the New Year? My husband and I are really not fun people. We don’t enjoy parties, our drink of choice is diet soda, and our idea of a decadent snack is potato chips with dip. However, we usually have a New Year’s Eve movie marathon, sometimes ending long after midnight.
My personal favorite long evening is to watch all five hours of the BBC version of “Pride and Prejudice.” Unfortunately, the Litchfield library doesn’t own a copy of this, but you could request it from another library in time for a rockin’ Regency New Year’s Eve. Another favorite movie marathon is to watch the entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, extended versions, back to back, for about 11 ½ hours. Dave and I did it, once, ordering pizza in the middle, and drinking too many diet sodas. The resulting hangover was impressive, considering that no alcohol was involved.
The Litchfield library collection has many movies and television series from the BBC, which would provide many hours of dramatic British entertainment. “ Downton Abbey” is an extremely popular BBC miniseries. If you watch it all at once, it will take just over 6 hours. The complete first season of “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” takes only about 7 ½ hours to watch. If you prefer to try an Adam Dalgliesh marathon, check out “Devices and Desires” and “Cover Her Face.” If you watch both miniseries back to back, it will take about 11 hours. The “Henry James Collection” provides a little more than 14 hours of drama. Episodes of “Poirot” and “Miss Marple” are also very popular, and it would be quite easy to have a British Mystery Marathon.
The library owns all 8 movies in the “Harry Potter” series. If you’re up to it, you could watch them all in a little more than 19 ½ hours. The library owns all of the “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” trilogy, the original Swedish films, which would take about 7 ½ hours to watch. You can watch them in English or Swedish. The library also owns the “Underworld” trilogy, which only takes about 5 ½ hours to watch.
With a bit of interlibrary loaning, you could watch all of the “Star Wars” movies. The six movies would take about 13 ½ hours. The previously mentioned “Lord of the Rings” trilogy is not available in its entirety at Litchfield, but other libraries can fill in the gap left by our missing “Two Towers” dvd.
American TV series might provide the best marathon potential. For example, to watch all of the 14 episodes of “Firefly” takes nearly 11 ½ hours. The entire series of “Moonlight” takes about 11 ½ hours to view. If you’re nostalgic for animated action, watch the entire season of “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.” It would only take about 16 hours. The library copies of the four seasons of “Burn Notice” are nearly always in use. If you were able to check out all 4 seasons at once, you would have a total of 45 hours of action to watch. That, perhaps, might be too much of a good thing.
Remember that the library will be closed on January 2nd for the holiday. That leaves us with plenty of time for a mega movie marathon, thanks to Litchfield Public Library. See you there!
