Our New Year's movie marathon went ahead as planned, despite some anxieties in regards to attendance. Still, Dan and I spent the evening watching Some Like It Hot and Easy Rider, being joined by Laura and her boyfriend Tim for Airplane!.


(Left) The tremendously bold Airplane! title screen
(Right) Intended midnight moment: deploying the autopilot
The only trouble of the evening came when Airplane!, which was planned to start at 11:17:10 PM, was accidentally started exactly one minute later, at 11:18:10 PM. It didn't matter anyway, because something went wrong in the timing and calculations that I had done on December 29. We weren't depending on the movie to tell us when we reached midnight because we all had clocks. But the timing of the movie wound up so far off, even taking into account the late start, that I must have made a mistake somewhere along the line. It's one of those things that bothers me enough that I'll probably re-time the movie and do the math again to see where things went awry.



So that's that. Here's hoping everybody had a terrific New Year and a just as nice 2011.

NOTE: This recap was part of a much longer article about designing the New Year's 2011 insignia.

At midnight, January 1, 2011

Millions will watch Dick Clark drop a ball on New York

Instead, we'll be watching people get sick on fish


Last year we celebrated the career of the actor Jack Albertson for our New Year's countdown marathon. This year we're taking that idea a step further and remembering the stars that we lost in 2010. Unfortunately there have been woefully too many and it would be impossible to give them all due credit. For that reason we've selected five to honor as we pass into the new year, with three of them all appearing together in one of our movies.

• Tony Curtis (1925-2010) •
Some Like It Hot (dir. Billy Wilder, 1959)



• Dennis Hopper (1936-2010) •
Easy Rider (dir. Dennis Hopper, 1969)



• Leslie Nielsen (1926-2010), Peter Graves (1926-2010), & Barbara Billingsley (1915-2010) •
Airplane! (dir. Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, & Jerry Zucker, 1980)


Each of these films showcases the work of the late actors who we are honoring and, unintentionally, each of them has been selected for preservation by the National Film Registry as examples of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films." Since being started by the Library of Congress in 1989, 550 films have been chosen for their importance to the American filmmaking heritage. Some Like It Hot was selected in 1989 and Easy Rider in 1998. Airplane!'s entrance into the National Film Registry was announced yesterday, December 28, 2010.

Here's the base schedule if you're interested in showing up:

NEW YEARS 2011 MOVIE SCHEDULE Friday, December 31, 2010 - Saturday, January 1, 2011
Time:	Event:	Length:
6:00:00 – 8:01:17 PM	Some Like It Hot	2h 01m 17s
8:01:17 – 9:10:00 PM	Open time	1h 08m 43s
9:10:00 – 10:45:25 PM	Easy Rider	1h 35m 25s
10:45:25 – 11:17:10 PM	Open time	0h 31m 45s
11:17:10 – 12:45:01 AM	Airplane!	1h 27m 51s

The one thing I have to stress is that this won't be a booze-pounding, raucous affair. It will be a drier, quieter, jive-ier New Years than the other parties out there.

So, y'know, we'll be here if you're interested!

Past New Years: 2008 2009 2010