@col-klink 

I have the 1935 film of A Tale of Two Cities on DVD. It is one of the best film adaptations of Dickens’ books. 🙂

I rewatched Mr. Holland’s Opus tonight. It was one of the better movies of the 1990’s.  I really liked the story of the high school music teacher trying to get his students to appreciate music. Richard Dreyfus was excellent as Mr. Holland, the music teacher. I highly recommend the film for its fine acting and wonderful music. 🙂

I wondered if anyone here has watched the God’s Not Dead movies.  Watching the four films I have found them to be quite interesting. They deal with many topics such as atheism, terminal cancer, separation of church and state.  I think they they are quite well made and have some good acting.  The views expressed are mostly of conservative Christianity.  They are quite thoughtful without being overly preachy.  Although some people may think that the films try too hard to convert people to Christianity I think they are expressions of believers’ faith, which is a good thing.  I find them well worth watching.

Is it OK to talk about upcoming movies on this thread? They just dropped the first trailer for the upcoming movie adaptation of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. I love that book! I made a YouTube video sharing my thoughts on the trailer. If you don't want to watch the whole thing and listen to my irritating voice, here's a summary. I don't love everything about how they're adapting the material, but I don't hate the whole thing either and I'm keeping an open mind.

I'm trying to convince my siblings I need to watch The Patriot, but they said I watched it last year and I should wait longer before watching it again. This being the week of the 4th has me seriously wanting to watch it again and I can't get anyone on my side.

I haven't been watching much tv in the couple months and very few movies, but last weekend the parents and I watched His Kind of Woman (1951) starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell. Vincent Price was in it too and played an actor, he was hilarious. Now I kind of want to watch Laura, he's not funny in it, but watching this one reminded me I haven't seen Laura for a few years. 

SnowAngel

Do the people here still watch The Wizard of Oz? I watched it again last night after having seen it so many times, but I never tire of it.  It was made back in 1939, but the limited technology back then does not make any difference in how much one enjoys the film. I loved the original book by L. Frank Baum too.  I would recommend reading the paperback with all of the original color illustrations by W. W. Denslow if you can find it.  The book offers a longer story, although I think today more people have watched the film.

I got to see an early screening of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and I loved it! You may remember, as a fan of the book, I had some concerns with how it looked like they were adapting it from the marketing. But these concerns largely evaporated while I was watching the actual film. 

(BTW, I'm going to write this post for the benefit of people who have read the book because I'm too lazy to summarize the story for those who haven't right now. ) 

While the 1986 made-for-TV movie, written by Barbara Robinson herself, was technically closer to the spirit of the book, it had subpar acting from the younger actors. The 2024 movie, by contrast, has some of the best acting from kids I have ever seen! (I will say the makeup people for 1986 movie did a better job of making the Herdmans look dirty.) The adult actors are all great too. And it's not like the movie is miles away from the spirit of the book. Many of the funniest moments come directly from it yet they still made me laugh out loud even as I could see them coming. (There are also some great funny lines that are original.) 

As someone who considers Dallas Jenkins's hit show The Chosen to be fine but overhyped, I was surprised by how much I loved his directing for this movie. I'm not someone who cries over books or films, no matter how greatly they move me, but this film's emotional finale brought me as close to tears as any ever has. 

Come December, I'll probably have a blog post reviewing the movie and discussing how it adapts the books in more detail. Bottom line: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is wonderful. Go see it.

If old movies were shown again in theaters would you go to see them?  I would kind of like to see The Wizard of Oz, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Sound of Music in a theater even though I own the films on DVD and Blu-ray.  There is something about the theater experience that a small television screen cannot replicate. I would even be willing to pay to see the three Walden Narnia movies again on the large screen, and I own those on Blu-ray too.  Most people can’t afford the sound system that a theater has, and the larger than life picture really offers something that most people don’t have.  People who love old films would enjoy seeing them just as they were originally made. 🙂

@narnian78 Oh, definitely. Sometimes older movies do get a revival for significant anniversaries. The first movie I can remember seeing in the cinema in my life was Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty, which I now know was actually made in 1959, but this must have been a 25th anniversary re-screening, given how little I know I was at the time. I'd never seen anything on such a big screen before and I was absolutely enthralled!

My dad, in turn, remembers seeing The Wizard of Oz on the big screen when he was a little boy and being terrified by the cyclone and Miss Gulch turning into the Wicked Witch outside Dorothy's window. That film was made in 1939, so I'm guessing it was a 10th anniversary revival, since Dad was born in 1946.

Another film I'm aware of that's getting a revival (and full restoration, as they often do with pre-digital-age films) is the 1978 animation of Watership Down, for its 45th anniversary next year. I loved that film as a child (quite gruesome though it is in places) — the book, which I read when I was 8, is one of my greatest childhood favourites after Lewis and Tolkien — and so I want to see if it will be shown anywhere near me.

There are also independent cinemas that specialise in showing classic films on the big screen — when I was in my teens, we lived near one in Melbourne, the Astor Theatre in St Kilda. Dad took me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey there, which is one of his favourite films and he's seen it over 15 times, including in cinemas whenever he can, as a TV screen just doesn't do it justice. I'm not nearly as much into sci-fi as Dad is and I wouldn't go out of my way to see that particular movie again, but it was definitely very impressive! (And HAL 9000 has got to be one of the most chilling villains ever — "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that...") 

@courtenay 

How great it is to live near a theater that shows old classic movies!  There is a theater in the next town from where I live which was built only a few years ago which is quite nice, but to my knowledge it has not shown anything old.  I think it would probably show a Narnia film that was made for a regular theater.  There are two other movie theaters in my area, and two more old theaters which have been converted into auditoriums or something else more modern.  If you live in a small town your choices in movies to view are somewhat limited.  I usually won’t travel over five or ten miles to see a film unless I really want to see the film or if someone offers to take me. 

Posted by: @narnian78

@courtenay 

How great it is to live near a theater that shows old classic movies!

Oh, I don't any more — that was back in 1998-2000.   I'm not a huge movie buff myself, but we did see some good ones there (and it was a spectacular 1920s or '30s Art Deco style theatre, too). 

@courtenay 

Do the theaters where you live have more than one screen?   Many of them here in the U. S. have at least four or more screens, and one of them near where I live has seven of them. Many years ago the two theaters in the next town each had only one screen. The newest theater in town even has an escalator, something which they never had years ago.  I guess the words theater and cinema are interchangeable, although here the word theater is used more often for the building in which the films are shown.  I think the word is spelled theatre in Canada and the UK. But it doesn’t matter that much which spelling is used or what you call it as long as people understand what you mean. 🙂

@narnian78 In Britain and Australia, at least, a "theatre" (that's how we spell it, as you say) tends to mean a building with a stage for live performances, whereas a "cinema" is always a place where movies are shown. (I gather it comes from the same root word as "kinetic", referring to movement, as in moving pictures.)

Sometimes you find a venue that does both, especially in country towns — there's one like that in the nearest larger town to my home town in Australia. That has one large auditorium with a stage and a movie screen above it (which is covered up when there's a live play being performed). Whereas a lot of venues that are exclusively a cinema do have multiple screens. Another larger town near us has a 4-screen cinema (that was built some time during my childhood, I think when I was in my teens).

Bigger cinemas in the cities, or in major shopping centres, can have 10 or more screens and they show lots of films simultaneously throughout the day. The large shopping centre near where I used to live in Kent, east of London, has a cinema with 17 screens. Now I live close to Manchester and there's an even bigger shopping centre (the Trafford Centre) with a 20-screen cinema! I haven't been to that one, though, as I don't watch films that often and there haven't been any recent ones that I desperately felt the need to see on the big screen. Of course, if it turns out to be true that Greta Gerwig's first Narnia film will have a cinematic release, I will definitely line up to see that!!  

@courtenay 

Thanks for describing the movie theaters (or cinemas) in your area.  I always wondered what they were like in other countries. The place where they show movies always has something magical about it.  I am especially intrigued with old theaters. There are two of them in the next town from where I live, which were converted into auditoriums, but they still look like theaters. They each had only one screen when they showed movies decades ago.  I went to a marionette puppet show in one of them about twenty years ago.  I am glad that both of the buildings are still standing. One of them is owned by the college I graduated from and is still kept in great condition. 🙂

@narnian78 There's an old Art Deco cinema in my home town here in Cheshire, called the Rex — I haven't actually been to see a film there, though, because as I said, there haven't been any current ones in the past couple of years that I've really wanted to see on the big screen. But it looks lovely and I do keep an eye out for what's on there! They only show current releases, though, unlike the Astor back in Melbourne that I mentioned (similar era and decor).

(Funnily enough, with what I said about the difference between "cinema" and "theatre", the Astor was always officially called The Astor Theatre, even though it was — and presumably still is — entirely a cinema, with no stage for live productions. Possibly "theatre" was used for both kinds of venues when it was built. We do understand the term "movie theatre" in Australia and the UK, of course, but it isn't used much — I think it would be seen as an Americanism. )