Tom Hanks Movie Marathon

Sometimes I get the itch to watch a specific actor or specific types of movies over the course of a day. Tom Hanks is one of my favorite male actors and I recently ordered That Thing You Do and Sleepless in Seattle from Amazon because I like the movies. So when they arrived yesterday I started a Tom Hanks movie marathon. Yesterday I watched That Thing You Do, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail and Apollo 13. Today I watched Cast Away and Saving Private Ryan. Tomorrow I will continue my President's Day weekend Tom Hanks movie marathon with A League of the Their Own, The Green Mile and Forrest Gump.

I'm gonna assume you all know who Tom Hanks is and also know how to use IMDB (or at least google) and spare you the details of his life. Instead I'll give you quick blurbs on each of my marathon movies.

That Thing You Do is about the rise and fall of a band in 1964. Due to their first drummer breaking his arm, the guys approach Guy Paterson (played by Tom Everett Scott) to play with them for a gig. Guy decides, without consulting the rest of the band, to speed up the song which was supposed to be a ballad. From that gig, they're approached by a restaurant owner, from their a manager, from a gig set up by the manager they're approached by Play-tone Records (represented by Tom Hanks) and their song "That Thing You Do" races up the Billboard charts. For the rest you'll have to watch the movie!

In Sleepless in Seattle, Tom co-stars with Meg Ryan. Hanks plays a widow who chooses to move with his son from Chicago to Seattle in order to get a fresh start. The movie picks up at the funeral of his wife but they are quickly moved to Seattle and approximately a year and a half after the death. Jonah, Hank's son in the movie, calls a evening talk radio station and manages to get his dad on the phone with Dr Marsha Fieldstone. He spends the time talking about his wife and suddenly he is known as "Sleepless in Seattle". Letters start pouring in from across the country from women willing to help him - most of which he ignores. Annie, Meg Ryan, having caught the show in her car is inexplicably drawn to him and begins researching him (she works for the Baltimore Sun newspaper). Attracted to the romance of An Affair to Remember, she writes a letter suggesting they meet at the top of the Empire State Building on Valentines Day. She throws the letter away before every sending it but her best friend sends it to Seattle for her. By then Sam (Hanks) has started dating someone who Jonah doesn't like. When Annie's letter arrives - Jonah wants to meet her but Sam disagrees. For the rest you'll have to watch the movie!

Hanks and Ryan join together again in You've Got Mail. In this movie, the two have formed an online friendship care of America Online. They purposely reveal no personal information about themselves and talk about lots of random things. Meg Ryan runs a small childrens' book store in New York and Hanks is part of the "and Sons" of Fox and Sons Books - a major bookstore chain. When Fox Books arrives just around the corner from Ryan's shop - Joe Fox (Hanks) and Kathleen Kelly (Ryan) meet each other and seem to instantly dislike each other due to business and competition. Kelly turns to NY152, her online friend, for business advice. He suggest to "go to the mattresses" (The Godfather). Little do they know that NY152 is Joe Fox and Shopgirl is Kathleen Kelly! A fun romantic comedy you should watch to see how offline dislike for each other and online friendship reconcile!

I'll spare you the rest for now as I'm tired and want to read BUT I MAY give you the rest over the rest of the week - especially if I have a particularly slow day and nothing else to blog about. More than likely I'll just do one at the end of each post or something. In case you didn't know - we didn't do much today - we went to the playground for a bit but I haven't uploaded those pictures yet. Which is why you get a play by play on Tom Hanks movies.