Star Crossed Lovers Night

Tonight is all about experiencing the true romance and painful loss of five different story arcs featuring some of the screens most intriguing star crossed lovers. Major themes that play throughout the marathon are crime, war, rift between two families, suicide, loss of a loved one due to natural causes and going back in time to retell a classic love story to make the other person remember what matters most at such an old age. We have on the menu for this evening:

Batman: The Mask of the Phantasm 1993, Casablanca 1942, Romeo and Juliet 1996, A Walk to Remember 2002, and The Notebook 2005

Five different kinds of films but with five different story arcs of star crossed lovers who meet upon an act of fate but all relationships end in tragedy or at a great cost. In the case of Batman: The Mask of the Phantasm, Bruce Wayne meets Andrea Beaumont and form a romance that ends up becoming Bruce's first true love. Through flashbacks in the style of Citizen Kane and a breakup and reunion that screams Casablanca, he finds his way back to Andrea while at the same time battling an enemy closer to himself along with the Joker brilliantly voiced by Mark Hamil

l. The next film Casablanca continues the trend of a burning romance that ends and begins again but is ultimately ruined by the increasing global conflict of World War ll. This time Humprey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman reunite as former lovers in Africa during the war but face unusual circumstances due to the growing presence of the Nazis. The stakes are upped in Casablanca from where Mask of the Phantasm ends, whereas crime ended the relationship between Bruce and Andrea, war interrupts the romance between the lovers in Casablanca. The next film Romeo and Juliet 1996 with Claire Danes and Leonardo Dicaprio introduces the story arc of a rift between both lovers families that takes place in modern day setting with Shakespearean dialogue. The two young teenagers form a hot romance that gets so intense that they make the ultimate sacrifice to be together, since the families refuse to accept truth in the end. A Walk To Remember introduces the concept of two young teen lovers who are united in the mist of the others religious preference within her family. The Notebook ends the marathon essentially the way it began with an old couple reading about the story of two young lovers of different social classes who end up breaking up and reuniting later in life, while also appearing to have more in common with the older couple as the story goes on. This is a powerful marathon in the sense that it's about reflecting on how much one person can have an impact on the other, and how lives change when the other person isn't around or what happens if they do return unexpectedly.