h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think I may have been a nabber...

I believe that I mentioned Stormbreaker first on this thread, therefore I have first dibs on Mr Lewis... I'll pass him over when I'm done

but I'm afraid we've had him in the dungeon for quite a while now - at least since Love & Crocodiles

did we already mention Johnny English here?

Swiss Family Robinson. Most modern films I find inferior.

This one.

FB

was totally confuzzled by that, FB, 'till I saw the other thread.

Swallows & Amazons anyone?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091059/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

I may have mentioned this back in this thread somewhere. Flight of the Navigator. Was a favourite of my kids' back in the 80s. It might have dated - we still have it somewhere on VHS.

What exactly is live action? Does it just mean people doing stuff themselves instead of CGI/motion capture?

people instead of cartoons I guessed.

That Knight's Tale was pretty good (as long as you don't mind seeing Paul Bettany's naked bottom - which I don't) and is definitely worth watching if you like a bit of to while away the time.

It's interesting I couldn't think of any recent ones, until FB mentioned the Muppets the most recent one I could think of was Night at the Museum 2 and that was 4 years ago.

The Knight's Tale is one of our favourite family films

There's all the Narnia ones. And does Enchanted count? It's mostly live-action ...

Mol

I've re-read the thread. There seems either to be a serious lack of this kind of film recently, or all of us who posted before have children who have grown out of that kind of thing.

How about the Back to the Future films? the Gruesome Twosome love those.

Tintin was surely great for kids, but was mo-cap.

Depends what you mean by 'recent'. I would class anything this millennium as recent, given that you look as far back as the Wizard of Oz in 1939 for absolutely brilliant non-animated family entertainment.
I seem to have posted in this thread before, but I have no memory of what has been mentioned, so I'll just mention Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit for now.

>> Swallows & Amazons anyone? <<

They made a movie of that?

I gotta see that!

I was given a copy of the book as a child of 8
and finally got around to reading it last month,
60 years later.

~jwf~

Swallows and Amazons are inspiring in that, even back in the 30s, Ransome was writing books where the underling came out on top. Can't remember the exact details, but it was Pete(?), the youngest of the Coot Club, Titty, the youngest *girl* in "We didn't mean to go to sea" who saved the day. That always impressed me. Subconsciously as a child, and then consciously when I grew older and thought about it.

Just watched "Super 8" last night. Genuine live people running and getting scared. That would have been a great film to watch with the kids when they were about 10-11 - I shall recommend it to them now they're adults themselves. Have since realised that the plot was holey as a sieve, but it was a lovely film.

the film was old when I was a lass, I think.

I reviewed Winter Holiday on goodreads and was approached by a lady writing her PhD about attitudes to childhood freedoms as compared between books like S&A and modern ones (can you imagine today's being allowed to roam as freely as those children back then? Open fires, sailing, knives, etc)

The film was lovely, but the language (and those freedoms) baffled the Gruesomes and they weren't keen.

>> can you imagine today's being allowed to roam as freely as
those children back then? Open fires, sailing, knives, etc <<

That's why the book was such a joy to me this past winter!
It spoke to me of my own youthful adventures if beyond my own
woodsman and sailing skills which were more of an existential Tom
Sawyer variety and inclined to be more lawless and dangerous.

(I read it because I had also just read Treasure Island in
the original form for the first time and was wondering what
else I might have missed, what other inspirational role models
I had failed to embrace as a yoof.)

I was of course surprised at the lack of gender bias and
the lengths to which their adventures seemed to outstrip
modern expectations but in general it spoke to me of a time
when 'kids' were much freer to explore life, the uni and
everything.

Their overlaying need to organise, re-name and reshape their
whirled to suit their own fantasies was hopeful and comforting in
that some rule of law and sense of order was inherent in their
culture in an instinctive way. In that, it is a very 'British' book
and a much more pleasant scenario than Lord of the Flies which
I did read as a teenager and found very pessimistic even as it
shaped my alpaca-lipped approach to the new atomic whirled.

Must say I am very glad I kept the book all these years and
to have saved those 'memories' for my old age.

~jwf~

I must admit that for some of the parenting decisions I've had to make over the years I've tried to use the Swallows' dad as my role model: better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown.

I also re-read Treasure Island as a result of reading the first two S&A books. In fact, it's time I read the next in the series (Coot Club - I know Mol's here and she'll approve of that)

My ancient copy of S&A is a very special 'cheap edition'
published in 1953, the year that Ransome was awarded
his CBE.

The paper dustcover boasts in several places that
this was 'the cheapest edition' ever made available
and was an altruistic attempt by the publishers to
provide 'cheap' (what we call cost effective today)
access to great literature for the masses. Obviously
this was an attempt to revive sales of a 1937 book
on the basis of the 1953 honours.

Even then it was a 16 year old book with nostalgic
and dated values of pre-war sentiments. It had me
wondering how many young men and women who
might have served in WW2 had been inspired by it.

In the 60 years I have carried it with me in every
move, I had never looked at it closely enough to be
aware of that before.

There is some irony in that it was an 8th birthday gift
from my 'rich' uncle and the first of his many even
richer wives.




~jwf~