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MarilynW
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| Posted: May 19 2014 at 11:20am | IP Logged
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I am planning out our summer movie watching. We love watching classics and series - some with the littles and some with just the teenagers. Rootbeer floats, iced lemonade, kettle corn ...I can't wait for June!
Please share your recommendations for good movies/series - both for families and also for teens/adults. Things I have on my list so far:
1. Foyle's War - we LOVE this.
2. Cranford
3. Little Dorrit
4. North and South (Gaskell)
5. David Copperfield
6. Captain's Courageous
7. Good Neigbors (The Good Life in the UK)
8. The Secret Garden
9. Sherlock
10.There be Dragons
....still working on the rest
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Marilyn
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DianaC
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| Posted: May 19 2014 at 1:14pm | IP Logged
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Anne of Green Gables (series of 3 films with Megan Follows as Anne) is our all-time favorite!
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SallyT
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| Posted: May 19 2014 at 2:52pm | IP Logged
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Oh, I love Mr. Foyle!
We're watching the A&E Pride and Prejudice right now (inspired by that "movie better than book" thread!). My older kids have seen it a billion times, but the younger ones had not. Even my 11-year-old son is hooked.
Sally
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MarilynW
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| Posted: May 19 2014 at 3:02pm | IP Logged
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DianaC wrote:
| Anne of Green Gables (series of 3 films with Megan Follows as Anne) is our all-time favorite! |
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Thanks for reminding me of this. DD and I watched these a few years ago and loved them. They would be great for the whole family. I love the audio too.
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Marilyn
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MarilynW
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| Posted: May 19 2014 at 3:12pm | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
Oh, I love Mr. Foyle!
We're watching the A&E Pride and Prejudice right now (inspired by that "movie better than book" thread!). My older kids have seen it a billion times, but the younger ones had not. Even my 11-year-old son is hooked.
Sally |
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Love Mr. Foyle too! I have to say that the Sunflowers episode was very disturbing!
I think the A and E episode of P&P is the best. (theirs is the BBC version right?) Colin Firth is the only Mr. Darcy that I can imagine. We watched it for the hundredth time over Christmas break.
I have to recommend the BBC Bleak House. We watched this over Christmas break too and it was really good. It is very funny as my 4 and 6 year old discuss it quite often - of course none of the neighbors etc have a clue what they are talking about. 4 year old will say something like "if you don't brush your teeth you will have yellow teeth like Mr. Smallweed". 6 year old will say that he is so hot that he is going to "spontaneously combust" like Mr. Crook and both talk about a scary person who looks like Mr. Tulkinghorn!!
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SallyT
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| Posted: May 19 2014 at 3:42pm | IP Logged
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Yes, Colin Firth -- the only Mr. Darcy!
We need to watch Bleak House. I remember when it ran on tv -- my mother was watching it, and I caught bits and pieces at her house, but we didn't have tv, and streaming wasn't so much a thing all those . . . seven? eight?. . . years ago!
We're reading David Copperfield right now, and I have a movie of it somewhere that we haven't seen in a long time. That would be a good one to pull out.
Many Foyle's War episodes are disturbing -- though it is so well done that I'm willing to put up with a good bit of disturbing! I'm trying to remember which one the Sunflowers episode is.
Sally
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: May 19 2014 at 5:27pm | IP Logged
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The sunflowers was from the most recent set witn the POW back story. I hesitate to say more for fear if spoilers.
Horatio Hornblower is one of our favorite series, though they are a bit heavy for my kids yet. Dh will occaisionally put on Fire Ships.
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JennGM
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| Posted: May 19 2014 at 11:35pm | IP Logged
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All Creatures Great and Small
I would need to watch again for complete appropriateness, but the HBO John Adams series is so wonderful.
A few years back we got a set of all the BBC versions of Jane Austen movies.
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St. Ann
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| Posted: May 20 2014 at 2:18am | IP Logged
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We really loved the John Adams series, too. There is only one little scene in the series that I would skip over while watching with the family. It is later in the series when Mrs. Adams arrives in Paris to visit her husband after a long separation. Lets just say, they were VERY HAPPY to meet again  This very short scene would be very disturbing for my girls.
Have you all watched the old Andy Griffith show with Aunt Bea and little Opey....??? We laugh so much watching them.
We have a boxed DVD set of Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Tales from the Green Valley... We really enjoy them, although I wish they could go into more detail in the subjects they touch on, like the kitchen work or gardening during the specific periods... but it is a series and it really just whets your appetite to find out more. For the whole family!
I was looking for "Foley's War" online, but can only view series 7 and 8. It would be nice to start with the beginning if I do start with it... Some of you have mentioned a disturbing factor to it. Is it psychologically creepy disturbing? are there very evil situations? I am just wondering if it is for me?
For example, I do not like watching Criminal Minds, although I really like the characters of the investigators... just too creepy!
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: May 20 2014 at 6:17am | IP Logged
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No. I've not seen Crminal Minds, but Foyle's War is not as psychologically creepy as other police dramas I have seen. It is a little darker, or rather, more realistic than Poirot, but it is not one that constantly draws you into the criminal mind. It is Foyle's mind you see most, and he is a good, integral man, unlike some dramas that show you the heavily flawed, conflicted lawman. It does happen during war, so there is that element. I love the main characters so much!!! When it does get gritty, it doesn't lesve you there.
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Lindsay
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[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: May 20 2014 at 6:37am | IP Logged
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All the seasons of Foyle's War are available on Amazon Prime for streaming. .i think you may have misspelled it?
It is also available on Acorn TV. We have a subscription there (I got it last year before the price went up, but it is still reasonable). It is all British shows with some Australian and Canadian.
I like Murdoch Mysteries except for one episode about abortion. It is like a Victorian CSI, so if you are squeamish about medical dramas (like dh ) you might not care for it, but it is mostly light hearted with enjoyable charachters.
My husband and sons LOVE Time Team. They are archaeologists traveling around Britain looking for Roman ruins and such. It is a lot of fun and educstional to boot.
I also enjoyed the very light detective show Pie in the Sky. The policeman opens a restaurant but his boss won't let him retire, so he runs his restaurant and solves crimes--most not involving murder, so it is not gruesome at all.
There are also several PG Wodehouse series s silsble there right now: Jeeves and Wooster, Blandings, and one more? Can't remember.
They also rotate through many of the British costume dramas and histories. They have most of the Poirot series, which I enjoy, and will be showing the newest and last series as it airs, so you can see it before it gets to PBS.
That reminds me of another show I like, Call the Midwife. I skipped the one abortion episode after my sister warned me, but mostly, it is wholly delightful. The birth scenes, however, are quite realistic, so it might disturb some sensitive viewers. There is no sex, violence, or langusge, though.
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Lindsay
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SallyT
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| Posted: May 20 2014 at 7:46am | IP Logged
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We love Jeeves and Wooster here as well. That's good for the whole family.
I would characterize Foyle's War as *intense* -- it's wartime, and bad things are going on, both from the side of the enemy (German spies infiltrating England, etc) *and* from the "home" side (corruption in the war office, higher-ups refusing to pursue justice against criminals whose actions happen to serve the greater war effort in some way).
Foyle's character is pitted mainly against the latter -- he wants justice done, regardless of how utilitarian it might be to ignore people's wrongdoings. So he's viewed as a troublemaker by those in the police hierarchy and government ministries who have run across him.
The show is pretty unblinking about the evil people are capable of, and about what violence against the human body can look like. Scenes don't dwell on graphic images of death, but they're at least fleetingly there. But there's no ambiguity about what side the central characters are on, and they're so complex and appealing that I feel I could watch them for the rest of my life.
eta: This next paragraph contains a major spoiler about one episode. Feel free not to read it!
I will say that my least favorite episode was the one in which a German spy masquerades as a Catholic priest. It's not awful -- actually, in most ways it's interesting and well done -- but there is some fodder for Catholic eye-rollage (oh, yeah, the the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrance would just be . . . sitting there . . . on the altar, all the time, with nobody adoring it, because we all know Catholic churches always have those silly things hanging around, and that's how you the viewer know that they are Catholic churches . . . ). After watching it, I went to bed thinking, "All those people who went to that guy for Confession . . . and apparently he celebrated Masses . . . and it was all invalid . . . " I'm sure that of all the conundrums that episode presented, *that* one probably wasn't something the producers envisioned people chewing over.
I've only watched through Series 7 -- the first post-war one, that ends with Foyle going to America. Haven't seen 8 yet. I'm hoping at some point it will be free on Amazon Prime, or I'll have room in the budget to get it. I own most of the others. I would absolutely let my teenager watch it . . . not so much my pre-teens. My husband and I usually wait until everyone's in bed, and then treat ourselves.
On another note --
My pre-teens love old tv series. We adore Andy Griffith, and lately they've been into Green Acres, which they found free on Hulu. My brother and I grew up watching reruns of Leave It to Beaver, which is also hilarious . . . I need to slot that into our viewing.
I haven't seen all that All Creatures Great and Small series, though my parents watched it religiously when it was first on. We have listened to the first book on audio (narrated by the actor who plays Herriot in the series), and while it's wonderful, I had forgotten just how . . . profane . . . a lot of the characters' language is. I read those books at about ten, and I guess blipped right over it, or didn't remember it. We did listen to the whole thing, and loved it, but it was an occasion for some conversation about how otherwise good people can thoughtlessly say and do things that they shouldn't, and that hearing someone else break the Second Commandment is not the same thing as having permission to do so yourself. Everyone seemed to get the memo pretty clearly. I don't know whether the dialogue in the tv series is faithful to the original in that way, but it would be worth a preview. The veterinary details otherwise are pretty much what my son who works for a large-animal vet comes home talking about anyway . . .
A friend of mine who does frequent movie nights with her family recommends The Quiet Man -- she says they watch it over and over. I don't think I've ever seen it, so I'm putting it on my list for the summer. There's also a movie called The Reluctant Saint, which I haven't seen, but which is such a favorite of hers that I keep thinking we should watch it (and then I forget about it).
Sally
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St. Ann
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Sally, The Quiet Man is a great movie for the whole family! John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara are a great team. If I remember correctly it is set in the early 20th century Ireland - great characters!
Yes, in All Creatures Great and Small, language is sometimes troublesome, but they speak so quickly, that the girls don't always catch it. The dialogue is often witty, charming, flippant and at times slightly offensive, but never so much to turn us off of it. We have watched the first few seasons and now it is the beginning of WW2. A new seriousness enters...
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SallyT
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My 11-year-old can recite verbatim (minus any profanities, fortunately) every trick Tristan plays on James . . . the picture of these three bachelor guys living together, with the inevitable frictions between the two Farnon brothers, is amusing.
It's been a while since we last listened to it, but just the other day this same son was reliving the one scene in which James is able to turn the tables on Tristan: they've spent all day trying to return a cow's prolapsed uterus to its proper place inside the cow, and that night James is able to convince Tristan over the phone that he's the farmer calling to say that it's prolapsed again, and they have to go back and fix it. My son performed this entire scene in character, without once indicating that he knew the name of the organ in question, or why it would be outside the cow, or what it was for. He just knew that something big was out of place, that putting it back had involved backbreaking toil, and that finally James had been able to get one over on Tristan, which was the really important thing.
Yes, I'm definitely putting The Quiet Man on our list!
Sally
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4Real Forums : Tea and Conversation
Topic: Summer Movie/Series Watching
