Monday, December 17, 2012

Flick Picks 12/17

New This Week!
ENTERTAINMENT: Just in time for winter break there are LOTS of new films being released this week. Clint Eastwood directs and stars in Trouble With the Curve, in which he plays a major league pitching scout who is starting to lose his vision. Amy Adams plays his daughter who is reluctantly brought in to help her father while Justin Timberlake plays his protege. We have this on DVD and Blu-ray.

The well-reviewed Richard Gere comeback vehicle Arbitrage also arrives this week. Gere plays a hedge-fund manager whose financial empire is threatened, driving him to desperate methods to protect his fortune and family, including his wife Susan Sarandon. It's available on DVD and Blu-ray. Also, the audience favorite bike messenger thriller Premium Rush, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who is truly proving himself to be one of our best young actors) comes out this week on DVD and Blu-ray. The big budget Total Recall, starring Colin Farrell in the Arnold Schwarzenegger role, comes to DVD and Blu-ray this week as well.

There are a couple of family friendly films arriving this week. The latest installment in the hit Diary of a Wimpy Kid series comes to town this week, as Dog Days' Greg Heffley tries to survive summer. Meanwhile, teen (and adult!) Glee fans will want to watch the Anna Kendrick vehicle Pitch Perfect, a PG-13 musical comedy about a college a capella group.

There are also a number of films coming out this week that you might have missed at the theaters. Sleepwalk With Me stars comedian and NPR celebrity Mike Birbiglia in a series of vignettes based on his comedy material. It won the Sundance Film Festival audience award. Spike Lee returns with a controversial look at growing up in Brooklyn called Red Hook Summer. Academy Award winning director William Freidkin and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Tracy Letts team up with the ultra-violent Killer Joe in which Matthew McConaughey plays a Texas cop who is hired by a father and son in a small town to murder the mother. Finally, Liberal Arts is a love story starring the wonderful Elizabeth Olsen as a college student who falls for an older man whose life peaked when he attended her university 15 years earlier.

SERIES: Season 1 of Showtime's House of Lies is the newest must-see series that you'll want to place a hold on asap. It's a dark comedy starring Don Cheadle and Kristen Bell as management consultants who will do anything for their clients. The second season of Showtime's Shameless, the raucous Chicago-set William Macy comedy about a poor family trying to survive, is released this week as well. The fifth season of David Duchovny's Californication has also arrived.

SUBTITLED: If you are a fan of Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring then you'll want to see The Well-Digger's Daughter. Daniel Auteuil, who starred in the earlier films, directs and stars in a remake of Marcel Pagnol's 1941 film of the same name, and it was Pagnol's source material that Florette and Manon were based upon.

All of our new releases and upcoming are always available through Bibliocommons!

Mike's Films You Might Have Missed
Damsels in Distress
One of the most pleasurable aspects of my job is picking out little Hollywood, foreign and documentary films that you might have missed in the theaters and bringing them to your attention. Take a chance on a film that you might not have heard of and you might find a real gem. In the case of subtitled and documentary films it doesn't cost a dime! Also, please ask at the reference, reader's advisory and circulation desks because chances are that somebody has seen the films that you are curious about.

So spend this vacation enjoying your home and your family and most importantly, watching lots of great DVDs! Here are some of my favorite DVDs from the year (ignoring blockbusters and concentrating on smaller entertainment, subtitled and documentary films):

Entertainment:
The Hunter
Subtitled:
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