Sorcha, for the movie, you'll have to settle for Antonio Banderas and Omar Sharif. *g* (13th Warrior. It wasn't half bad.) BTW, you reminded me of one of my favorite essays: "In Defense of Rubbish" by Peter Dickenson. He points out the value of the stuff kids read/watch that has little or no obvious value to an adult (he used football comics as an example, today he'd probably include trading cards and Japanimation). What you call garbage for the mind, he called roughage of the mind. I find that it's better for my mental health to nibble my way along the smorgasbord than to limit myself to the stuff that's "good for me", and I suspect most of us are that way.
I remember listening to a discussion that was aired during an intermission of the Metropolitan opera radio broadcast. The question came before the panel of opera lovers/experts as to whether they listened to anything else. Every one of them did. One man said that opera was wonderful, but for pure relaxation, you couldn't beat Herb Alpert. (shows how long ago it was)

Nancy King, Jim Dale's reading of Goblet of Fire won a Grammy last night. Greyeyes, I can't imagine anything much more horrible than an attempt to make a movie out of Pullman's trilogy, except perhaps to do it to anything by Garner. (shudder)