Warrior, quite true.... but that is sortof splitting hairs here. The films are commonly referenced as a trilogy.

alright...thanks alot!

Er, Les Miserables, the one with Liam Neeson, while not explicit (there's no sex scenes), does have nudity in one bit. It's very quick and I almost missed it (i.e. I didn't really see anything), but it's there. (If I hadn't known that Fantine was a prostitute, I wouldn't have necessarily picked up on it in the movie, since nothing actually happens along that line.) Other than that though, it's clean. No bad words that I remember, though the whole drama of it is rather intense and there is some violence.

Of course, I would always recommend the actual Broadway show first but that actually has more objectionable content than the movie so if you're someone who's turned off by some cursing and a scene of drunkenness and debauchery than I guess you'd stay clear.

And yes, the LOTR isn't a trilogy. It was one big story that Tolkien's publishers made him split up into three books. And there are three movies for the same reason. It would simply be too long any other way.

P.S."Brooklyn!"

I watched A Tale of Two Cities the other night, a really old version of it. As I said awhile ago, most of the old movies I've watched recently have been very pathetic, so I was pleasantly surprised. The acting wasn't all good - the girl especially over-acted, every emotion had to show her with her eyes and mouth wide open, gasping. It's so much more subtle and real nowadays.
Anyway. I cried in the end, of course, and Sydney, though a little too nice, was amazing.

I watched the original alien last night. I tried really hard to take it seriously but it was not scary and all I could do was laugh.

Ah, but did you go into the movie fresh, watch it in a dark room, at night and alone? That's the way to do it. Also, it's obviously going to seem a little fake nowadays but for it's time it was incredibly freaky. By the way it's not pure horror, it's more sci-fi/horror.

I do not know how someone can watch Alien, especially this clip and not be at least a little alarmed when things happen as they do. The tension is thick and the atmosphere is dark so the viewer is not sure which way the threat is or is coming from, only that it is near. And that makes the viewer paranoid and more susceptible to a little jump or two.

Speaking of old movies, I've been converting old family favourites from VHS to DVD where possible, not just at work, where it is vital, but in my home collection as well. There is no sense in having movies, sound recordings etc if you no longer have the equipment to play them on. I don't know what I am going to do about the 1988 cartoon version of LWW I still have, and, even if they are available, getting DVD copies from Amazon isn't an option due to the area coding.

One old movie I did manage to get hold of was Playing Beatie Bow. This movie, based on a novel by Ruth Park, who died a year or two ago, is still a most enjoyable film of old and new Sydney Town, between 1873 and 1973. It is all the better to watch now that I've actually been to visit UK's Orkneys so can now recognise some of the movie references. It is fascinating to watch this movie, with its time travelling romantic storyline and also realise just how far Sydney did progress in a century or two.

Looking for Alibrandi and the Delinquents are another two Australian movie classics still available on DVD. Has anyone ever heard of a film called Jedda? This is not only one of the first films ever screened in colour, but it also used native Aboriginal actors for the parts, quite an achievement in 1955 when it was first released.

At the moment I am after DVD copies of the two Flying High movies (they still are funny) and also the two Gremlins movies.

Too true, Shadowlander!

Wagga, I saw Jedda in high school for Media Studies quite a few years ago (maybe 10?) so I can't remember much. I thought it was good but I'm not particularly fond of many Australian movies. They're either very depressing or really crude comedies or just very 'same-y'.
I've read Playing Beatie Bow, I've read it twice (the book was a class text for Year 7 and also later on, in Year 9). We also watched the movie to contrast it with the book. I remember that we had to get parental permission to see it despite the PG rating but to be fair, much of the story was set in a brothel at the turn of the century. I have to admit I didn't care for either the book or the movie (love time-travel stories, the rest - not so much) but the book was well-written and historically interesting.

I've read Playing Beatie Bow, I've read it twice (the book was a class text for Year 7 and also later on, in Year 9). We also watched the movie to contrast it with the book. I remember that we had to get parental permission to see it despite the PG rating but to be fair, much of the story was set in a brothel at the turn of the century.

Yes I admit that owning all three movies, Looking for Alibrandi, The delinquents and Playing Beatie Bow was a legacy from past school curriculums and HSC endeavours. But to say that Playing Beatie Bow was mostly set in a brothel is to say that Lord of the Rings was only about the siege of Gondor. The Rocks area to the west of Circular Quay, at the harbour end of George Street, was the original settlement of Sydney, and was a dangerous area during the 1800's. The extended action scene when Abbie escaped from the Bow family, only to be captured into the brothel, was to show just how dangerous and rat ridden the Suez Canal, in particular, was at that time.

Seeing the Movie depiction of even that brothel scene is to understand why the people in the area were prone to getting diseases like typhoid, and tuberculosis, to demonstrate how the Rocks staged Australia's only outbreak of 'The Black Plague', to give Judah his chance to rescue Abbie, and to also show that Abbie could do a bit to aid her own escape, in contrast to the dying girl who was supposed to stop her trying to escape.

I liked Abbie's peep at Beatie Bow's school, and her fierce determination to learn not just the deportment and curtseying Beatie got at that school, but also 'proper school subjects', including Latin, which by the 1960's was already considered a useless subject by my technologically hip generation. I also liked the juxtaposition of modern Sydney, complete with Opera House and its older, Pre-Harbour bridge looks as Sydney Town as it was then.

With any luck the students here who read the book and studied the movie might also get a school excursion to the Rocks to see where this movie was set. They might see the Garrison Church, the oldest in Australia as well as Sydney Observatory, another old landmark, which still fulfils its original purpose. The street called 'Suez Canal', though much cleaned up, is still there today. In Stormness, in the Orkneys, which was where the Bows came from, we saw a similarly steep, narrow alleyway, as incongruously called Khyber Pass.

Jedda first was released about 1955. It was a classic film which was much admired at the time for its courage in showing how important it was to understand and appreciate Aboriginal culture.

So, I just saw Sherlock Holmes the other day for the first time. And I gotta say, it was amazing! I thought the score, and Robert Downey Jr. were particularly brilliant.

I want to see that, Gildor - was there any objectionable stuff in it? The sequel looks so cool too.

I know this wasn't directed at me, but....

Sherlock Holmes has only mild PG-13 content in it. Plenty of knock 'em over the head action (some in slo-mo), mild cursing, it's heavily hinted at that Sherlock and Irena had a "thing" going on. Also, there is one scene where

Spoiler

Sherlock goes to see Irena and while he is there, she changes into a skimpy outfit and drugs him. Holmes wakes up naked and in handcuffs... it's the scene they showed in the trailers.

Hope all that helped, Ela!

@Cor Wow, thanks for summing that up! I really wasn't quite sure how to respond to it.... XD

@Ela Just listen to Cor.

I watched a truly awful movie a couple days ago. It was called C Me Dance and I watched it because I thought it was a dance movie.

It's a Christian movie about a high school age ballerina. She finds out that she has leukemia and will not live for more than a few months. She feels that her one goal before dying is to lead her best friend to Christ. The movie then gets into some supernatural themes with the devil trying to stop her from doing God's work on earth before she dies.

The plot was interesting ... kind of. The acting was simply awful, plain and simple. This is the worst acting I have ever seen in a film. It looked like the kind of acting you would find in a school project.

The main character, Sheri, is played by Christina DeMarco. It was hard to believe the movie in part because Sheri is supposed to be a high school age girl. Some things that are said (her dad saying that there's so many things Sheri wants to do before she dies, like drive a car) make it sound like she is 14 or 15 years old. Also, how she acts in the final scene (daddy, daddy, please let me open just one gift) is what a 12 or 13 year old would do. Yet, the actress looks like she's in her mid-to-late 20s. It was extremely distracting and very weird to see a 20-something year old acting like a 12 year old.

There were more clichéd lines then I care to count including "open your heart", "I don't want these feelings but I can't get away from them", "I don't understand, I will though", "I see the way you two look at each other, you can't stop these feelings", "when you looked at me, I saw God", and "all-right so we have a plan".

The dancing was the only part of the movie that I liked and there wasn't near enough of it. The only reason I sat through the whole thing was to see the dancing and I was disappointed that there wasn't more. There were only two dance scenes of a decent length (three if you count the scene during the credits which was very hard to see because of the lighting) and I expected more. With a title like that, I expect it to be about dancing and it really wasn't at all. The dancing was more of a sub-plot.

All-in-all: not worth your time.