Flick Picks 5/14/13: Cloud Atlas, Dexter Season 7

New This Week!

ENTERTAINMENT: This week's big release has a name cast (with Tom Hanks and Halle Berry leading the way), not just one but two major directors in Tom Twyker (Run Lola Run) and Lana Wachowski (The Matrix trilogy), and was based on a popular book. Perhaps Cloud Atlas was a little too off-the-wall to pick up a major audience at the theaters - also it's almost three hours long - but now that it's out on DVD and Blu-ray it's a great opportunity for you to give it a try! Hanks plays six characters from the past and future and many other actors portray multiple roles as well in six interwoven stories. It's a unique, fanciful, visually exciting film that may turn out to be right up your alley! Our indie pick this week is Leonie which stars Emily Mortimer in the true story of Leonie Gilmour, an independent woman whose unconventional lifestyle shook up Japan in the early 20th century.

SERIES: How long can Showtime's Dexter continue to hide his "dark passenger"? Will he at least be able to keep it hidden through season 7, which comes out this week? Also, PBS series The Bletchley Circle follows four women who use their World War II code-breaking skills to solve a series of murders in London.

SUBTITLED: The Rabbi's Cat is a French animated film about an Algerian Rabbi's cat that gains the ability to speak after eating a parrot. The movie is a fascinating look at Jewish, Arab and French culture in 1930s Algeria.

DOCUMENTARIES: Joel Grey narrates Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy, a PBS that highlights the contributions that Jewish performers such as Irving Berlin, The Gershwins, Stephen Sondheim and more have made to the Broadway musical. It features performances by Matthew Broderick, Barbra Streisand, Nathan Lane and Zero Mostel as well as interviews with many other greats. If you are a fan of Susan Benjamin's musical theater programs then you will definitely want this DVD. Rock and rollers will want to see Beware of Mr. Baker, a look at the cranky but incredibly talented and groundbreaking Ginger Baker, the former drummer of Cream.

You can find all of our new and upcoming releases in Bibliocommons.

Monday Night at the Movies
We will be screening Gerhard Richter Painting at 1:00 and 7:00 on May 20th at the Women's Library Club, 325 Tudor Court. It's a film that lets your learn about it's subject - German abstract artist Gerhard Richter - as well as explore his creative process. All of our Monday Night at the Movies screenings are free.

Focus on American Schools

The closing of public schools in the Chicago school system has been in the news lately. As your child's school year wraps up why not pick up one of these stimulating looks at various aspects of the American education system?

• Waiting for "Superman" advances the idea of charter schools as the solution to many of the challenges facing failing public school systems.
• The problems of a pressure-filled testing environment leaving kids unprepared for college is the issue addressed in Race to Nowhere.
• Including Samuel focuses on one man's attempt to integrate his cerebral palsy afflicted son into all activities of life including schools.
• The Hobart Shakespeareans tells of an inspiration inner-city Los Angeles teacher whose fifth grade students perform a Shakespeare play every year.
• American Teacher shows us the challenges faced by four teachers in different parts of the country.

Flick Picks 5/7/13; Jack Reacher, Mama, Barrymore

New This Week!

ENTERTAINMENT: Lee Child's ex-military character Jack Reacher arrives on the screen in DVD and Blu-ray format this week in the film of the same name. Tom Cruise portrays the title character who is brought in to investigate what seems like an open-and-shut case involving multiple shootings by a former Army sniper. Robert Duvall co-stars and Werner Herzog is eccentric in the villain role. Also this week, if you enjoy the dark visuals of director Guillermo del Toro's films such as Pan's Labyrinth you might also like the horror Mama, which del Toro produced. It stars Jessica Chastain as a woman who takes in two young girls who are found in the woods after five years of somehow surviving on their own. Finally, our first indie pick this week is Barrymore, with Christopher Plummer bringing his Tony award-winning portrayal of actor John Barrymore to your living room. Another wonderful little movie worth discovering is Starlet, about the relationship between two women - ages 22 and 85 - who live in the San Fernando Valley.

SERIES: We've got the final season of the still hilarious 30 Rock and season four of the set-in-The-Hamptons USA Network doctor series Royal Pains.

You can find all of our new and upcoming titles in Bibliocommons.

Playoffs on our mind

It's always a special treat when we have multiple Chicago sports teams in the playoffs. The beat up Chicago Bulls have made it to the second round and the Blackhawks are looking strong against the Minnesota Wild. What what is a poor sports lover to do on a night when the playoffs are not on or (heaven forbid) one of the Chicago teams loses? Luckily we've got some excellent basketball and hockey documentaries to help keep you focused on the important stuff.

• More Than a Game follows the Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary high school team that featured five future NBA players, including LeBron James.
• Hoop Dreams is the classic Chicago documentary that follows two high school players as they face challenges in their lives as they try to make it to the pros.
• The inspirational The Heart of the Game focuses on Seattle's Roosevelt High Schools girl's basketball team which faces challenges as it attempts to win a state championship.
• The Other Dream Team tells the story of the Lithuanian basketball team that emerged from Communism and would compete in the 1992 Olympics (with help from the Grateful Dead).
• Learn about the disappearing world of hockey's enforcers in The Last Gladiators, with particular focus on Montreal's Chris Nilan.
• Celebrate the Blackhawks last Stanley cup with Stanley Cup Champions 2009-2010.

Flick Picks 4/30/13: Silver Linings Playbook, The Guilt Trip, History of The Eagles

New This Week!

ENTERTAINMENT: We're now received all of the the major Oscar winners, as Silver Linings Playbook finally arrives on DVD and Blu-ray. Jennifer Lawrence won Best Actress for her role as a depressed woman who becomes involved with the recently diagnosed as bipolar Bradley Cooper. Though advertised as a romantic comedy this movie is emotionally deep, dealing with serious issues related to mental health. Robert De Niro also stars while director David O. Russell also brought us the excellent Three Kings and The Fighter. Also this week, Seth Rogan is the son and Barbra Streisand is the mother in the road-trip comedy The Guilt Trip. This is Streisand's first starring role since 1996 and it's an essentially a vehicle for the two actors, who play characters who discover that they have more in common than they realized. In Broken City, Mark Wahlberg is a disgraced former cop who is hired by the mayor (Russell Crowe) to follow the wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who he believes is cheating on him. Sure enough, Wahlberg soon finds himself in a little too deep.

 

The comedy The Details stars Tobey Maguire and Elizabeth Banks as a married suburban couple who become obsessed with eradicating a family of raccoons that wrecks their beautifully manicured yard. This one disappeared from the theaters quickly so it's a great time to pick it up on DVD! We've also got a couple of fun indie picks this week. David Chase, who created The Sopranos, brings us his first feature film, the coming-of-age music drama Not Fade Away. In Not Fade Away, three friends see the Rolling Stones in on tv in the mid-sixties and decide to form a rock band. It's a loosely based on Chase's adolescent years in New Jersey and co-stars his Sopranos compatriot James Gandolfini. Also this week, the always-enjoyable Colm Meaney stars in Parked, about a man living out of his car who forms a relationship with the carefree 21-year-old who lives in the car next door.

DOCUMENTARIES: One of the best-selling rock bands of all time gets their own DVD set, as History of the Eagles lands at the library. Originally produced for Showtime, this two-part documentary gives us many musical and personal details of the iconic 1970s rock band's history. It also includes a 1977 concert. Wagner & Me explores Stephen Fry's love of Richard Wagner's music, as well as the complexities of feeling this love as a Jew. Also, explore how the Texas State Board of Education is changing public education to fit their cultural and religious views in the chilling The Revisionaries.

SERIES: New from England is the drama The Syndicate, which follows five supermarket employees whose lives are changed after they win big in a lottery pool. Also this week you can finally find out who killed Rosie Larson as season 2 of AMC's The Killing arrives.

You can find all of our upcoming and recently released DVDs and Blu-rays in Bibliocommons.

Movie Rental Gift Cards
Are you looking for that perfect for a movie-loving friend? Why not pick up a movie rental gift card? You get 10 DVD or Blu-ray rentals for $9. For more details please ask at the circulation desk.

DVDs on a Train

The recent Glencoe Historical Society program on Glencoe's interurban trains got us thinking - did you ever consider how many great movies there are that take place on a train? They seem to be the ideal setting for mystery, film noir and more! Check out this list for some great train rides on DVD!

• Strangers on a Train is the classic Alfred Hitchcock story of two men who meet on a train and agree to swap murders. The Lady Vanishes is an early Hitchcock gem, this time in a story of espionage on an European train.
• Nazi spies pursue a Czech scientist and his daughter in the Swiss Alps in 1940's Night Train to Munich. This film feels very similar to The Lady Vanishes as it was written by the same pair of writers.
• The 1974 tale adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express has an all-star cast of Albert Finney (as Hercule Poirot), Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, John Gielgud and many more.
• Though perhaps not as quaint as the above films, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is certainly just as atmospheric, as it tells the story of a subway train held hostage. It stars Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw and was later remade with Denzel Washington and John Travolta.
• Many people consider From Russia With Love to be one of the best Bond films and it's hard to find fault with its exhilarating climax on the Orient Express.
• Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Limited stars Adrian Brody, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman as three brothers exploring family relationships as they travel through India.

Flick Picks 4/23/13: Gangster Squad, Promised Land, Central Park Five

New This Week!

ENTERTAINMENT:  Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling are members of The Gangster Squad, a post-World War II group of L.A. cops intent on bringing down crime lord Sean Penn. If you've enjoyed some of the more recent noirish takes on the crime film - think L.A. Confidential - then you'll want to take this one home. Also this week, the usage of the fracking technique to remove natural gas from the ground is explored in Gus Van Sant's Promised Land. The film stars Matt Damon as the natural gas company representative trying to convince members of a Pennsylvania town (including The Office's John Krasinski) to allow them to drill. Damon and Krasinski also wrote the script, from a short story by Dave Eggers and we've got it on DVD and Blu-ray.

We've got a new adaptation of Wuthering Heights that changes the original story radically by making Heathcliff an escaped slave who becomes involved with farmer's daughter Catherine. Finally, our indie pick this week is the late 1970's set Any Day Now, featuring a powerful performance by Alan Cumming as half of a gay couple fighting to adopt a child with Down's syndrome.

SERIES: The BBC series Mr. Selfridge stars Jeremy Piven as the founder of the Selfridges department stores, where London consumers were able to shop in luxury.

DOCUMENTARIES: Ken Burns' newest documentary might be shorter than many of his other films but it's no less ambitious. The Central Park Five tells in detail the story of the five teenagers who were wrongly convicted of raping and beating a New York City jogger in Central Park in 1989. It's also a portrait of New York in the 1980s as well as the ways that the media failed in its coverage of the crime.

All of our new and forthcoming releases can be found on Bibliocommons.

Talking Pictures
Susan Benjamin's next Talking Pictures program is Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, and will be shown in the Hammond Room at the library on Thursday, April 25th. It stars Ewan McGregor as the British fisheries expert who tries to bring fishing to the desert at the request of a sheikh. The film is followed by a discussion.

Earth Week DVDs

Earth Day takes place on April 22nd every year and the surrounding week has been designated as Earth Week. We've got many great documentaries that will help you take better care of your planet!

• If you're looking for more information on the fracking process addressed in Promised Land give Gasland a shot. In Gasland, the director tries to track down the facts about fracking after discovering that his house is on top of a massive natural gas reservoir.
• The Last Mountain covers the battle between the Appalachian community that wants to blow up a mountain for the coal within and others who wish to preserve the mountain for a wind farm.
• No Impact Man follows a family that attempts to live for a year without many modern conveniences, including electricity, television and toilet paper!
• The Earth Liberation Front is a radical and controversial group that the FBI labels a terrorist organization, and If A Tree Falls tells their story.
• The title of the movie Dirt! tells it all - it's a documentary about the organic matter to which we will someday return.
• Tapped takes a look at the big business of bottled water.
• If you haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth - the filmed version of Al Gore's global warming lecture - then Earth Week is the perfect time to give it a try (or to revisit it)!

Flick Picks 4/16/13: Django Unchained, Spies of Warsaw, Women in Love

New This Week!

ENTERTAINMENT: Quentin Tarantino takes on slavery and the Old West in his controversial Django Unchained. Former slave Jamie Foxx joins with bounty hunter Christoph Waltz to rescue his wife and take on evil plantation owner Leonardo DiCaprio. Like most Tarantino films it's profane, violent and often funny. We've got it on DVD and Blu-ray. A bit on the milder side is the animated kid's flick A Monster in Paris. Filled with wonderful songs it tells the story of a giant singing flea and the police commissioner determined to rid the title city of the creature.

We've also got some indie picks for the week starting with Future Weather, a Sundance Film Festival entry that sensitively tells the story of a nature-loving teenage girl in southern Illinois who is abandoned by her mother. It stars Lili Taylor as the girl's teacher and Amy Madigan as her tough-as-nails grandmother. Also worth viewing is In Another Country, starring the wonderful French actress Isabelle Huppert in an English-language role. This is a fun comedy in which Huppert plays three very different women who visit a South Korean resort town.

SERIES: There a number of must-see miniseries arrivals from the BBC this week. Spies of Warsaw stars former Doctor Who David Tennant in an adaptation of the David Furst spy novel about the years leading up to World War II. Rosamund Pike and Rachael Stirling are the leads in the newest version of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love, about two sisters and their passionate relationships with two men. Get caught up on the early works of Lincoln's Daniel Day-Lewis by picking up the five episode tv movie My Brother Jonathan about two very different brothers who, despite their differences, maintain a lifelong friendship.

DOCUMENTARY: Ethel is the HBO movie about the life of the remarkable Ethel Kennedy. It includes interviews with many Kennedys and other people who know her well as well as Ethel's first extended interview in 20 years. PBS brings us Makers: The Women Who Make America, which tells the story of some of the most successful and trailblazing women of the last 60 years.

SUBTITLED: A Bottle in the Gaza Sea is about a new Israeli immigrant who begins a relationship with a Palestinian woman after she finds his bottle containing his hopeful message of peace between Israel and Palestine.

Find all of our new and upcoming releases in Bibliocommons.

Taxing DVDs

April 15th is finally here and once you're done grumbling about the money you are sending to the IRS you should consider taking out one of the excellent films that have been produced about the world of business and high finance. They will make you forget your own tax issues, though you might find your blood pressure rising anyway.

• Inside Job, which won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary, tells the story of the 2008 global financial crisis.
• Revisit the Enron scandal with Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and recall how executives wrecked the company while pocketing over a billion dollars.
• Maxed Out explores the debt and easy credit problem in America.
• Floored is a fun documentary about several Chicago floor traders whose livelihoods are being threatened by increased use of computers.
• Provocateur Michael Moore takes on unbridled American capitalism in Capitalism: A Love Story.
• We've also got a few Suze Orman videos for when you feel like taking control of your own finances!

Flick Picks 4/9/13: Hyde Park on Hudson, Boss Season 2

New This Week!

ENTERTAINMENT: The mercurial Bill Murray goes in an unexpected direction this week with Hyde Park on Hudson, in which he portrays Franklin D. Roosevelt, hosting the King and Queen of England on his New York estate on the eve of World War II. This romantic and humorous film also stars Laura Linney as FDR's cousin and confidante Daisy Suckley. Also this week, there's a great team-up of William Hurt and Isabelle Rossellini in the romantic comedy Late Bloomers, in which they play a long-married couple who try to come to grips with the fact that they are getting older. If you're looking for a quirky comedy/horror/science fiction hybrid then you might enjoy John Dies at the End. Paul Giamatti stars and director Don Coscarelli brought us the cult hit Bubba Ho-Tep a decade ago, so expect a similar sensibility.

SERIES: Season 2 of the set-in-Chicago Kelsey Grammer drama Boss comes to DVD this week.

SUBTITLED: Set in the slums of Buenos Aires, White Elephant tells the story of a priest whose faith is tested as drug-related violence grows. It stars Ricardo Darin who was magnetic in The Secret in Their Eyes.

DOCUMENTARIES: Orchestra of Exiles explores how European Jews who were fired from orchestras following Hitler's rise to power were able to form their own ensemble in Palestine. Also available is the American Masters profile of one of our greatest living writers, Philip Roth Unmasked.

Check Bibliocommons for all of our new and upcoming releases.

Monday Night at the Movies
On April 15th at 1:00 and 7:00 we'll be showing The Flat at the Women's Library Club, 325 Tudor Ct., as part of our Monday Night at the Movies program. At age 98, director Arnon Goldfinger's grandmother passed away, leaving him the task of clearing out the Tel Aviv flat that she and her husband shared for decades since immigrating from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Sifting through a dense mountain of photos, letters, files, and objects, Goldfinger begins to uncover clues that seem to point to a greater mystery and soon a complicated family history unfolds before his camera. All Monday Night at the Movies films are free.

The Holocaust on Film

Monday, April 8th was Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. Along with The Flat - next week's Monday Night at the Movies program - we own many moving documentaries on DVD.

• Similar to The Flat, Watermarks tells the story of a woman's swim team that was shut down during Hitler's reign.
• Interviews and rare footage help bring Anne Frank to life in Anne Frank Remembered.
• The Academy Award winner The Last Days was produced by Steven Spielberg and focuses on five Hungarian Holocaust survivors.
• Elie Wiesel Goes Home follows the great writer to the village where he was born as well as the two concentration camps where he was imprisoned.
• Berga: Soldiers of Another War is the mostly unknown story of American prisoners of war who were sent off to a concentration camp to suffer a similar fate to the Jews in the camp.
• Into the Arms of Strangers tells the story of the Kindertransport, which rescued 10,000 children from Germany and placed them in British foster homes.
• In Paper Clips, children in a rural Tennessee school try to grasp the magnitude of the Holocaust by collecting 6 million paper clips.

Flick Picks 4/2/13: The Impossible, Hemingway and Gellhorn, The Bible

New This Week!

ENTERTAINMENT It's a quiet week for theatrical feature films but there is one very good one available. The Impossible is based on a true story of a family's nightmare during the tsunami that hit Thailand in 2004.  Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor star as parents who experience both terror and kindness in one the planet's worst natural catastrophes in recent history. Watts was nominated for an Academy Award and newcomer Tom Holland is also excellent as their son. Also this week, Hemingway and Gellhorn is the much anticipated HBO movie about journalist Martha Gellhorn and her husband Ernest Hemingway. It features Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman as the title characters.

SERIES: You've read the book - now see the miniseries! The Bible is the hit 10-part tv movie brought to us by The History Channel. The Australian-import Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries is set in 1920's Melbourne and features a "thoroughly modern" female detective. Finally, if you enjoy droll British comedy you'll want to watch Dirk Gently, the BBC series based on the Douglas Adams book.

DOCUMENTARY: Hitler's Children tracks the descendants of many high-ranking Nazis and shows how they have dealt with their infamous last names and tainted family histories.

Space is the Place for DVDs

Naturally, you and your family will have lots of questions about the universe after attending our Astronomy for Everyone program on Thursday, April 4th at 7:00 pm. We have many DVDs available to help your scratch your knowledge itch!

• Wonders of the Universe and Wonders of the Solar System, with Brian Cox, are two must-see BBC series that use amazing computer graphics to tell the story of Earth and its surroundings.
• The Fabric of the Cosmos is hosted by physicist Brian Greene and explores space, time and the very nature of reality.
• Cosmos is the classic Carl Sagan series that inspired many young future astronomers.
• The Chilean Nostalgia for the Light combines politics, astronomy and archaeology as it tells the story of Chile's Atacama Desert, where you can find massive radio telescopes listening in on the universe.
• Hubble, originally produced for IMAX theaters, is a breathtaking look at the Hubble Telescope and the universe that it explores.
• Of course no DVD is complete without space travel documentaries and we have a few excellent ones including For All Mankind, In the Shadow of the Moon and Moonshot, all of which focus on various aspects of the Apollo program.