Themed Movie Nights

My husband and I share a love of the cinema and television. Our gatherings with friends often centered around a particular movie or show. Here's a look back at some of our events. I'll update this list as I post recipes to various items.

Movies

Lord of the Rings Thanksgiving
I will do a whole post on this as it was documented in pictures. We watched The Hobbit (cartoon) and the LOTR trilogy (extended editions) with a multi-course meal. I have many thoughts and comments about how we executed this so stay tuned for a full post.

Spaghetti Westerns
Django and A Fistful of Dollars. Calzones and meatballs. Calzones are awesome because they can be custom made by each person. The meatballs required an unexpected second batch due to their deliciousness.

Halloween Month
A love of scary/creepy movies turns into a weekly gathering for the month of October.

2013
Rosemary's Baby, Wake in Fright, The Descent, The Devil's Backbone. I think the only themed items were Rosemary Butter Cookies shaped like babies. I planned on making Dirt n' Worms for The Descent but didn't make it to the store. The Devil's Backbone showing was accompanied by drinking Real Ale's Devil's Backbone beer.

2012
The Shining, Cabin in the Woods, Hausu (House, 1977), American Werewolf in London. Unknown if any themed items were made.

Marvel Movie Marathon
We got lazy and went and ate Dim Sum. Then we watched Iron Man 1 & 2, Thor and Captain America (didn't have time for The Hulk). Binge-watching comic book movies makes for a great time. We then went to the Alamo Drafthouse for dinner and The Avengers.

TV Shows

Lost
The show that started it all. I actually started dating my husband after attending Lost nights. Though the ending of the show was disappointing, it was a damn good show to watch as a group. No particular menu here, we would wing it every week. Someone would suggest a main course and others would be accompanying side dishes. Desserts were had in plenty. I really wish I had better documented these as they were a weekly smorgasbord of deliciousness.

Battlestar Galattica
Like Lost, weekly event with food. I think we scaled back financially and meat wise at these events.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Blu Ray release)
Another gathering of friends to watch TNG in a whole new way. Check these out if you have ever liked Star Trek, fully remastered/restored. The amount of work put into these is incredible. Same as above, weekly menu changes. There was ideas about TNG themed desserts including gourmet Jello shots with layers, glitter and fancy colors. I think this idea washed due to experimentations with agar as a Jello substitute proving to be less than desirable. We moved to California before this dream could be fully realized. A Star Trek drinking night is always a good time.



The trick to planning one of these is to decide on something that will appeal to everyone. All of your friends love a particular tv show or genre of movies? Start there. Feeling a particular type of food? Let the food be your guide and look through movie types. We get by with Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime and Netflix. Check out your local video store for other hard-to-get films. Other gatherings we'd spend 30 minutes searching for a movie in our collection. These yielded some interesting picks but it's never my favorite way to pick a movie. Empathize with your guests, if they know the movie ahead of time, they can plan to be there or not. Choosing a movie and being the only hold out or getting bored half-way through can be hard.

Some spur of the moment picks: Hanna (such a good movie, really pushed by my husband and I, was a crowd pleaser), Kick Ass (fun for a group of people), and King of Thorn (interesting though none of use were familiar with the original manga so some internet research had to provide some context).