Hey all you Culture Vultures out there,

It seems to me that it is the season for lists and nominating favourite books and movies. The ABC recently screened Australia’s Favourite Movies for 2005 which included ‘Fight Club’, ‘Gone with the Wind’ and the ‘Lord of the Rings’ Trilogy. Before that they screened Austrlia’s favourite book(s).

I thought we could list our top 10 films and books for 2005. They don’t have to be released in 2005 as that’s probably too restricting (eg the only adult movies I saw at the cinema this year were ‘Pride and Prejudice’ & “War of the Worlds’ which was a freebie).

There’s been so much discussion on the ‘Introduction’ thread and elsewhere that I thought we could consolidate our cultural discussions here.

So have a think and start listing.

Books
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
I Dared to Call Him Father by Bilquis Sheikh

Movies
Harvey (I own a coppy of this b/w comedy. The kids and I have watched it 3 times this year already)

I’ll be adding more to my list later.

cheers
Angela

Movies:
Serenity
Master & Commander
Dead Poets Society
Schindler’s List
Hero

Books:
The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien)
The Great Divorce (CS Lewis)
Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
Waylander (David Gemmell)
A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K LeGuin)
Dragonsbane (Barbara Hambley)

More to come as I think of them.

Movies

Fight Club
Citizen Kane
Romeo+Juliet
Amadeus
Starship Troopers

Books

Lord of the Rings
I, Claudius
A Fortunate Life
Band of Brothers
The Great Divorce

Here is my top ten lists.

Movies
1. The Last Samurai
2. Ben Hurr
3. LOTR
4. Gladiator
5. Shawshank Redemption
6. Batman Begins
7. Man from Snowy River
8. The Count of Monte Christo (the Jim Caviezel one)
9. Star Wars (Eps III & V)
10. Dances With Wolves

Books
1. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (John Foxe)
2. LOTR (Tolkien)
3. Executive Orders (Clancy)
4. Screwtape Letters (Lewis)
5. The Gandalara Cycles (Garrett & Haydron) unreal Sci-fi series. Though sadly out of print.
6. 100 Steps to being an Ineffective Christian. (One of the funniest books I have ever read)
7. The Riftwar Saga (Raymond E Feist)
8. Betrayed - (Stan Telchin)
9. Twice Pardoned (Morris)
10. In His Steps (Sheldon)

Hey why not do the worst ten as well?
Worst movies ever
1. Alexander (Stone)
2. Ghost (rubbish theology)
3. Dirty Dancing
4. Phar Lap (I was too upset when the horse died. I was about 10 when I saw it. Scarred me for life.) Nah...it was pretty good.
5. Star Wars EP 1 - I am a Star Wars purist, I guess this is why I did not like this movie. That little kid, arrrgggghhhhh. Bad casting, bad dialogue.
6. Dreams come what may (I am not sure of the title, Robin Williams was in it. Woefully bad!)
7. Field of Dreams (rubbish)
8. Point Break (the worst movie ever - being a surfer I found this movie embarrasingly bad) Keanu Reeves acting is so woeful that he makes Patrick Swayze...what ever his name is… look good. But come on! Patrick Swayze casts as a buddhist surfer? After Dirty Dancing, he has lost all cred.
9. King of Kings - I used to love this movie, until the crucifixion scene. Something about it was not quite right. I could not work out it out. BUT then it hit me. The guy who plays Jesus had shaved his armpits!!!
10. Karate Kid III (I love the first two, when I bought it, it has all three on it. My goodness! If you are a Karate Kid fan, never watch the third one. It will haunt you for ever). [Sadly Mr Miyagi died two weeks ago]

Books:
1. Anything by the Watchtower
2. Amway publications
3. Good Morning Holy Spirit - Benny Hinn (Don’t go there!)
4. Pride and Prejudice -Austen (I failed my HSC English exam in 92 because of this book. I love reading, but this was the hardest, most boring, convulted tripe I have ever lwasted my literacy on! I think I seriously shortened my life expectancy by reading this book. Actually this book is my number 1 worst book. I am changing my list!
5. Babywise (Ezzo)
6. Fit to be Tied (Hybels - We were given so many copies of this book by married couples when we were engaged. We kept them, and gave them to other couples when they were engaged. I reckon the ones that people gave us, were given to them also)
7. You need more money - God’s Financial Plan for your life.

Joshua
This list is highly subjective and does not neccessarily represent the views and opinons of other Sydney Anglicans and/or those of SydneyAnglicans.net. Any correlation with others opinions is purely coincidental. Any offense caused by this list is entirely unintended is soley posted to enhance and/or aggrandize cultural discourse and promote good tastes

Favourite books (I never seem to finish any these days, particularly Christian ones, since I think I should keep until I will concentrate on them properly!):

A Solitaire Mystery - Jostein Gaarder
1984 - George Orwell
Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God - John Piper
The Grace and Truth Paradox - Randy Alcorn
One World - Lonely Planet
Lonely Planets (generally!) :D

Too many choices… :s

Favourite movies:

That Thing You Do!
Ten Things I Hate About You
Bend it Like Beckham
Hotel Rwanda
Love Actually
Snow Falling on Cedars

[quote author="Hannah Gordon"]
1984 - George Orwell

Oooh, I forgot to mention that one. Yes, 1984 ought to be on my list too.

Movies

1 Napoleon Dynamite

2 Twelve Monkeys

3 The Big Lebowski

4 Brazil

5 Austin Powers 1

Books

1 Atonement by Ian McEwan

2 Knowing God by J I Packer

3 Out of the Silent Planet by C S Lewis

4 The Silver Chair by C S Lewis

5 A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Books
1. Pale Fire (Nabokov)
2. Lolita (Nabokov)
3. Paradise Lost (Milton)
4. Another B....... Night in Suck City (Flynn)
5. The Journey to Selfhood Kierkegaard and Hegel (Taylor)

Movies
1. Life Aquatic
2. Control Room
3. Year of the Horse
4. Danny Deckchair
5. Napoleon Dynamite

I’m not a prude, but Luke maybe you should turn the phpBB word filter on…

Nah everyone whinged back in the day so I turned it off! :)

I think Christopher has taken care of whatever was the problem, so thanks for that!

Cheers guys!

Books;
Lord of the Rings
The entire Thomas Covenant Series
The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul (Douglas Adams)
The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism (Louise Bouyer)
Night Watch (Terry Pratchett)
Frogs into Princes (Bandler and Grinder)
A Book of Five Rings (Miyamoto Musashi)
The Gospel of John
Ecclesiastes
Dune

Movies
Iron and Silk
Aliens
Being There (A Peter Seller movie I haven’t seen for yonks)
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
We were Soldiers
The Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa)

worst movies;
hmmm
There was a recent version of the Count Of Monte Christo I found incredibly dull
Damnation Alley (an appalling movie from a great book by Zelazny)
Dune (The 70’s version)
Van Helsing

I’ll name some more as I work it out.

I was beginning to think I was a miniature, M$oftie clone of Owen, but now he has confirmed that I am not. I thought the 70’s version of Dune was (is!) great.

How can you not like it, it has music by Toto! And Patrick Stewart! Well, he’s in it… he didn’t do the music, except for a little bit.

Started reading Thomas Covenant again this morning. Almost up to the distasteful bit.

Although OWen, you do seem to like a lot of the same things as me. I thought Night Watch was great. Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul was great (go Thor!), LOTR was great. I’ve been wanting to read 5 Rings but I hadn’t found it anywhere (not that I’d been looking too hard, just heard great things about it).

And Aliens was waaaay cool (I finally saw Alien two years ago, not so great. 4 was pathetic, and I haven’t seen 3 or vs. Predator (Was sticking to even numbered sequels...)).

Hey IT
follow this link!
http://www.samurai.com/5rings/
I have a hard copy as well.
It’s a brilliant book, if a bit obsure when you aren’t familiar with sword arts I suspect.

Thanks for that, I’ll check it out.

Movies:

Falling Down
Fight Club
American Beauty
Aliens
A Very Long Engagement
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Anchor Man
Hero

(hmmm...lots of “A"s there...)

Books:
Biggles and the Cruise of the Condor
Lord of the Rings
[Anything at all written by by John Wyndham]
Empyrion
No Compromise (biography of Kieth Green)
God’s Smuggler
The Boys in the Island

Might add more later.