You’ve never read the Chronicles of Narnia? For shame!

When you do read them, I highly suggest you read them in publication order; not in the “chronological” order that today’s publishers are using. There are several reasons for this:

1. Prince Caspian (the second book published) is subtitled “The Return to Narnia”. In the chronological order, this book appears fourth (and why would the book use that subtitle when we had already been to Narnia three times?).
2. The Magician’s Nephew (the sixth book published, first chronologically) makes some references to things presented in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (LWW). Reading about these things out of context will have no meaning, until you read LWW. The surprise you’ll have of saying “Oh yeah, I remember that now” is exciting indeed.
3. A Horse and His Boy appears third in the chronological order, and fifth in the published order. Placing it third breaks the continuity of the story arc between LWW and Prince Caspian (the two books are fairly well connected).

A child once asked C.S. Lewis which order he preferred, and he answered that he liked the chronological order. But I think he was wrong on this point (most likely in his efforts to be kind to the child). Lewis never intended to write more than one book (he said so himself), so the chronology of the series was never something he was overly concerned with.

All that being said, here is the publication order (and the order which I recommend you read them). The set of books my family has is fairly old, and is presented in this order. I believe you can find collections in this order on eBay (I’ve seen them there before).

1. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
2. Prince Caspian
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4. The Silver Chair
5. A Horse and His Boy
6. The Magician’s Nephew
7. The Last Battle (this one is somewhat of an uncomfortable read, but has a fantastic ending)

I guarantee that you will enjoy these books. I re-read them about a year ago, and could hardly put them down. There were some nights that I would read five or six chapters in one sitting!

Here’s a great family-friendly video you’ll probably like. It’s entitled “The Chronic of Narnia” and was apparently a short presented on a recent episode of Saturday Night Live.

http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=zLElfJ9YCh0

I agree partly with Jonah...whoever that is.  You should have at the very least read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  But you know my opinions on reading, so we’ll skip all that.  I’m gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe movie.  It wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be.  It was very plasticy to me and you could see, all too obviously, where it was stitched together (it being the digital and non-digital footage).  I think maybe the pacing was too slow for me.  I mean, two hours and twenty minutes seems a little long to me.  But as someone who goes to the movies basically once a week on average and sees three movies a week on average, I’d say it’s a solid B+ with leanings toward the A- range.  It certainly wasn’t as good as Harry Potter (you should read those too), but then it’s a different kind of story.  Just my two cents.

I haven’t seen King Kong yet as I haven’t been willing to make the time commitment.  In addition, I was conflicted on my impressions of the movie based on the trailers from the beginning.  The more trailers I saw, the less I seemed to be interested in the movie.  Peter (not Jackson) says it’s worth seeing, so I’ll probably see it next week sometime.  But a 5-day weekend opening of 50 million isn’t really all that super of an opening for a movie with such high expectations.  But alas, we’ve seen worse before.

Just friends was certainly quality and you’ve hit it right on the mark I believe.  A definite 4/5 given what it’s supposed to do.  Plus, who doesn’t like Ryan Reynolds?  Idiots and Nazis...that’s who.  And Amy Smart...totally hot.

Jonah’s wrong about that SNL video...it’s entitled “Lazy Sunday”.  And that’s easily the best thing to come from SNL in a long ass time.  I’m glad they hired the Lonely Island guys.

The Harry Potter books are also on my list, but at this point I figure I’ll wait until the last one comes out (number six of seven just came out, right?) and read them all at the same time.  And then I’ll be able to get them all with the same style of cover art too.  I’ve seen there is a Narnia compilation for just twenty bucks in paperback, but given the length of the Harry Potter books I don’t think I can expect something similar..

I’ve never really understood how the amount of money a movie makes on its opening weekend is a predictor of how good the movie is.  How successful, yes.  But movies don’t have to be successful to be good (take anything with Vin Diesel as an example).  All opening weekend tells me is how good the advertising was (and, probably to a much lesser extent, how well the critics reviewed it).

The Harry Potter books rock so hard it’s not even funny.  The seventh one should come out next year hopefully if she gets on it.

Aside from the fact that “good” is basically a personal rating that people give a movie, I think that the goodnocity of a film is partly ingrained in the figure of how successful it was at the box office.  More people tend to go see good movies than bad ones (Revenge of the Sith notwithstanding).  I don’t know that marketing is as big a factor as it might at first seem.  I think a lot of people go see movies because their friends or people who’s movie opinions they respect tell them about a movie.  So, the chances of a movie that does well at the box office being good are greater than if the movie hasn’t done so hot in the box office.  This obviously isn’t true the other direction though, as you can have great movies that few people go see.  So based on reviews, opinions of others, and box office numbers, you can kind of gage how good the movie will be (obviously this is measurement is subjective to the viewer).

Yes, but you’re reframing the argument.  I was discussing opening weekend box office numbers.  Which are not based on word of mouth.  Maybe you know someone who saw it on opening night, and so you decide to see it that weekend.  But I think that’s hardly the most significant factor (especially for normal movies that open on Friday).  How well a movie is doing in its third weekend is probably a significantly better predictor of how good it is (although I admit I haven’t seen any numbers on this).

I’d argue that movie reviews are word of mouth whether they come from your friend or from Joe Bob McMovieReviewPants on one of the internets.  And the percentage a film gets on RT, for example, makes a lot more of a difference to me in deciding whether to go see it opening weekend than seeing a trailer of a bunch of white guys in airplanes shooting at a gigantic black gorilla...I wonder what all that’s about?  But I digress.

I think the pre-opening reviews have a lot to do with how well the movie does opening weekend despite the amount of marketing.  Take Aeon Flux for example.  There were no reviews before the movie came out because they didn’t let anyone see it before it opened (always a bad sign).  It did terribly in it’s opening weekend despite having a whole donkey load of marketing.

I can’t believe there wasn’t any mention of the five minute long dinosaur pile-up in King Kong.  That was hilarious!  What about Kiran Shah getting ARROWED at the end of Narnia?  Phenomenal!

You should make an effort to go see Brokeback Mountain, assuming it’s playing somewhere in NC.