Recommendations of good non-animated "family" films for two parents and a 3-year-old?

meh wrote:

I understand that. My point is that for SOME kids, their ability to
handle the darker material, and more mature themes, gets ahead of their
reading ability, so reading it TO them -- or having books on tapes --
works well for them.

I understand your point. But you might want to keep in mind that the OP was
writing about reading LOTR to her 8-year-old. I think 8 is on the young side
for LOTR -- whether or not it's read aloud -- but folks are welcome to differ
with me.

beeswing

"Elizabeth Gardner" wrote in message
...
In article ,
(beeswing) wrote:

H Schinske wrote:

I just came back from Harry Potter, and I didn't think the dementors
were
*nearly* as bad as I had expected them to be. (Note: I am a certified
wimp
about scary movies, and found the end of the first HP pretty frightful,
having totally forgotten some of the stuff from the book and therefore
having some horrid surprises. I also took a long while to get used to
Nazgul
and orc scenes when watching the LOTR movies.)

I did put my hands over my eyes a few times, but more for the werewolf.

Nonterrifying dementors? How good of a movie can it be?

Seriously, though, thanks. It's good to know that they aren't *too* bad.
My
kid
is completely fearless, but I still feel a little protective (as one can
probably tell from my other recent posts!).

beeswing

I thought it was a _great_ movie. Much more cinematic than either of
the first two, and much less "let's cram in as much of the book as we
can." But a lot of the horror of the dementors is interior, which is
hard to convey in a movie. They did a reasonably good job, but I agree,
it wasn't as scary as in the book.

My biggest problem with the third movie was that while they included enough
to make the movie interesting, they removed a lot of the plot development
essential to understanding later books in the series. And, as a result,
either the next movies are going to just have things happening for no
reason, or they're going to have to backtrack and explain later. I'm rather
dreading the necessary cutting in order to make Goblet of Fire and Order of
the Phoenix reasonable movies, given the length of the texts.

H Schinske wrote:
wrote:
The Hobbit, IMO, isn't the best read-aloud. I'm not sure why, it
just doesn't seem well-suited. Perhaps because the action is
already pretty slow, amidst a lot of description, that to slow it
down more by reading aloud seems like too much.

I agree, and have posted about this before. I think Tolkien really
could have used a good edit job on _The Hobbit_ (and I *don't* mean
that it needed shortening -- it needed rearranging to help the
problem with the pace and so on). Too late now, I suppose. It's
still a marvelous story anyway.

Hmmm, my first exposure to _The Hobbit_ (and Tolkein) was when my mother
read it to us on a cross-country car trip when I was about 8yo. I don't
recall thinking it was slow or boring and, in fact, I actually made her stop
reading it when Bilbo got to Smaug's den because I thought it was too scary.
--
Be well, Barbara
Mom to Sin (Vernon, 2), Misery (Aurora, 4), and the Rising Son (Julian, 6)