Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Flick Picks 8/26/14: Blended, The Double, The Normal Heart

What's new on DVD at the Library This Week
ENTERTAINMENT You say that you want more of Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore after watching The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates for the 1000th time? Your wish has come true! In Blended, Sandler and Barrymore play single parents who coincidentally find themselves on the same African safari after a disastrous blind date. Will they find true love? Can their kids coexist without murdering each other? Will comic mayhem ensue? Watch and find out! Next, The Double takes a modern Dostoyevskian look at a downtrodden worker (Jesse Eisenberg) whose charismatic lookalike (also played by Eisenberg) becomes a coworker and begins to take over his life.

HBO's production of The Normal Heart, based on Larry Kramer's 1985 play, features a cast jam-packed with stars like Julia Roberts, Mark Ruffalo, Alfred Molina and Taylor Kitsch as it tells the story of the early years of the AIDS crisis in New York City. It won an Emmy Monday night so it will be in demand! Finally, Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson are a divorced pair who scheme to steal a diamond from the wealthy financier who was responsible for the loss of their retirement nest egg in The Love Punch.

SERIES There are a few new treats for British TV lovers starting with the BBC's new take on everyone's favorite skilled French 17th century fencers in The Musketeers. Also from England is Breathless, a doctor drama set in the early 1960s and season 2 of the P.G. Wodehouse series Blandings.

We've also got a couple of new Italian police shows this week. Donna Detective follows the title character as she leads an investigative squad in Rome while dealing with family issues. Seasons 1 and 2 of Inspector Manara give us a cop who makes a fresh start in a small Tuscan town only to find that an old girlfriend from the police academy is also on the force.

Back on this side of the pond there's not shortage of new series this week as we get season 2 of the modern take on Sherlock Holmes, Elementary, season 3 of the, um, revenge drama Revenge and more zombies with season 4 of The Walking Dead.

SUBTITLED: Based on a book by Jo Nesbo, Jackpot is a darkly comic bloody tale of Christmas tree factory supervisor who wakes up surrounded by a pile of corpses. In Young and Beautiful, acclaimed French director Francois Ozon gives us the portrait of a young woman who becomes a call girl.

DOCUMENTARIES: If you are interested in the people who are leading the push for green energy technology then you will want to check out the Discovery Channel special Earth: The Sequel.

All of our new and upcoming DVDs can be found in Bibliocommons.

2014 Emmy Awards
Monday night brought us another great crop of Emmy winners. Here are the big ones!

American Horror Story (Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie - Jessica Lange; Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie - Kathy Bates)
The Big Bang Theory (Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series - Jim Parsons)
Breaking Bad (Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series - Bryan Cranston; Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series - Anna Gunn; Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series - Aaron Paul; Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series; Outstanding Drama Series)
Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey (Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Series)
The Good Wife (Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series - Julianna Margulies; Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series - Dylan Baker)
JFK (American Experience) (Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special)
Louie (Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series)
Masters of Sex (Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series - Allison Janney)
Modern Family (Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series - Ty Burrell; Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series; Outstanding Comedy Series)
The Normal Heart (Outstanding Television Movie)
Orange is the New Black (Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series - Laverne Cox)
Sherlock (Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie - Benedict Cumberbatch; Outstanding Guest Actor in a Miniseries or Movie - Martin Freeman; Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special)
True Detective (Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series)
Veep (Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series - Julia Louis-Dreyfus)

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Flick Picks 8/19/14: The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Fading Gigolo

New on DVD at the Library This Week
ENTERTAINMENT: The rebooted Spidey returns to face not one, not two, but THREE villains in the blockbuster The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Emma Stone plays the girlfriend while Green Goblin (Dane DeHaas), Electro (Jamie Foxx) and Rhino (Paul Giamatti) threaten to be formidable adversaries for Andrew Garfield's webhead. Will they defeat him? Find out by picking up the DVD or Blu-ray! Next, a rare acting-only turn by Woody Allen is just one of the reasons to see John Turturro's Fading Gigolo. Turturro wrote and directed this film while casting himself as a male prostitute who signs up with Woody Allen's "manager" in an attempt to pay the bills. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton are perfectly cast as a pair of vampire lovers in Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, a stylishly unique take on the supernatural genre.

SERIES: It's a good week to get caught up on some of your favorites as HBO's crime drama Boardwalk Empire hits season 4, while addictive legal drama The Good Wife is up to season 5. The always hilarious and meme-tastic Parks and Recreation is at season 6, Parenthood reaches season 5 and The Mindy Project offers up a sophomore season.

SUBTITLED: The Empty Hours brings us the 17-year-old manager of a small Mexican motel who becomes intimately involved with one of its customers who spends her time waiting for a lover.

DOCUMENTARIES: The slow-paced but hypnotizing Manakamana follows a series of rides in a cable car over a Nepalese jungle, focusing on both the landscape and the passengers.

All of our new and upcoming DVDs can be found in Bibliocommons.

The Legacies of Two Greats
The loss of Robin Williams last week was shocking and offers us a chance to assess a career in which he was able to do what very few comic actors are able to do, by transitioning into becoming a successful dramatic actor. Lauren Bacall's death was perhaps not as shocking and also lets us look back at the stunning quality of work that she produced.

Robin Williams
  • Perhaps Williams's greatest dramatic role, Good Will Hunting features him as the professor who encourages Matt Damon's working class characters to succeed.
  • You'd have to be a fool to fall for Robin Williams as an elderly housekeeper but as a comedy, Mrs. Doubtfire delivers the goods.
  • Williams and Nathan Lane are the gay couple who must play it straight for a wedding in The Birdcage.
  • Aladdin shows just how important voice casting can be, as Williams makes the genie his own creation.
  • Jumanji is crazy fun for the whole family, offering Williams where he belongs - in the center of chaos.
  • Williams made a number of thrillers including The Night Listener, in which he plays a radio talk show host who begins to question the identity of one of his callers.
  • The recent The Butler offers up some interesting stung casting in Williams as Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Lauren Bacall
  • Bacall will always be associated with Humphrey Bogart, to whom she was married for more than 10 years. To Have and Have Not, an adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel, was their first pairing. Bacall was 19 and Bogie was 44.
  • The Raymond Chandler adaptation The Big Sleep followed and was actually pulled from post-production so that new scenes with Bacall and Bogie could be added, as their chemistry was so visible.
  • Dark Passage and Key Largo were their third and fourth collaborations and are also worth seeing.
  • Oil company geologist Rock Hudson is secretly in love with Bacall, who happens to be married to his brother, in the melodrama Written on the Wind.
  • Bacall enters into a difficult relationship with jazz musician Kirk Douglas in Young Man With a Horn.
  • If you're interested in seeing Bacall do comedy, try Designing Woman, in which she marries sportswriter Gregory Peck.
  • Also worth checking out is Bacall's 2005 memoir By Myself and Then Some

Monday, August 11, 2014

Flick Picks 8/12/14: Muppets Most Wanted, The Railway Man, Locke, Hateship Loveship

New on DVD at the Library This Week
ENTERTAINMENT: Continuing their massive comeback, America's favorite movie star puppets find themselves embroiled in an international crime caper in Muppets Most Wanted. Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey and Ray Liotta take second billing behind Kermit, Miss Piggy and the rest of the team. Based on the lead character's autobiography, The Railway Man tells the story of a man imprisoned and tortured by the Japanese during World War II. Years later, he and his lover (Nicole Kidman) discover that the lead tormenter is still alive and set out to confront him. The intense Locke is literally a one-man show that follows Tom Hardy during a single car ride during which he attempts to make potentially life-changing decisions about work and family.

Based on the appropriately named book by Irvine Welsh, Filth's James McAvoy portrays a corrupt, drug-addicted policeman who sets his colleagues against each other in order to pursue his own ambitions. Kristen Wiig takes a different kind of role in the drama Hateship Loveship, in which she plays a shy woman who is hired by Nick Nolte as a housekeeper. The household's granddaughter attempts to manipulate their relationship with unforeseen conequences. Fans of picturesque British soaps such as Downton Abbey won't want to miss Summer in February, about lovers in a pre-war art colony on England's coast. Finally, Felicity Jones is an exchange student who moves stays (and becomes romantically involved) with Guy Pearce in Breathe In.

SERIES: James Spader's new series The Blacklist arrives this week and it's a good one. Spader is a criminal on the FBI's Most Wanted list who turns himself in in order to partner with a profiler on terrorist cases.

DOCUMENTARIES: Dancing in Jaffa introduces us to a ballroom dancing instructor who moves back to the city of his birth in order to teach Palestinian-Israeli and Jewish-Israeli students his art.

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

Monday Night at the Movies
DUE TO THE DEMOLITION OF THE WOMEN'S LIBRARY CLUB BUILDING, ALL MONDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES FILMS WILL NOW SCREEN IN THE HAMMOND ROOM OF THE LIBRARY. Finding Vivian Maier, which we will screen on Monday, August 18th at 1:00 and 7:00,  is a portrait of the long-time nanny whose posthumous reputation continues to move her towards consideration among the best American street photographers of the 20th century. "More connect-the-dots detective thriller than traditional doc, John Maloof and Charlie Siskel's revelatory riddle of a film unmasks a brilliant photographer who hid in plain sight for decades." - Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly. The film runs 84 minutes and is not rated.

Quirky Lives, Interesting Documentaries
Some of our favorite documentaries focus on fascinating, quirky people who you may have not heard of. Give one of these a shot and you may find that truth is stranger (and sometimes more interesting) than fiction!
  • The Queen of Versailles looks at the changes that a billionaire family must go through following the popping of the real estate bubble.
  • A man builds a miniature World War II town and is accepted into the world of artists in Marwencol.
  • Stanley Kubrick's The Shining has spawned all kinds of crazy theories. Learn about a number of them in Room 237.
  • I'm Carolyn Parker tells the story of a woman who was the last to leave her Hurricane Katrina-threatened New Orleans neighborhood, as well as the first to return.
  • If you're not familiar with eccentric Cream drummer Ginger Baker, Beware of Mr. Baker takes a look at his career and inspired lunacy.
  • Errol Morris's Tabloid tells the strange story of the crazy world of a woman who pursued her man around the world and became a newspaper headline.
  • Learn about five bizarre homes and the people who inhabit them in Home Movie.
  • The Woodmans looks at artist Francesca's Woodman's whose photographs live on despite her tragic young death.
  • The various denizens of Southern California's Salton Sea are the profile of the dreamlike Bombay Beach.


Monday, August 4, 2014

Flick Picks 8/5/14: Divergent, Need for Speed

New This Week on DVD at the Library
ENTERTAINMENT: A futuristic Chicago is the setting for the film version of Veronica Roth sci-fi novel Divergent. In Divergent, newcomer Shailene Woodley portrays a young woman who discovers that she doesn't belong to any of the factions that the human race is divided into. This ends up being an issue when she finds that she is being targeted for assassination. What is it about her uniqueness that makes her so dangerous? Find out by taking out the DVD or Blu-ray! Kate Winslet costars and The Illusionist and Limitless director Neil Burger is at the helm. Also this week, Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul gets a starring role in the video game adaptation Need for Speed. Paul plays a street racer who drives in a cross country race in a quest for revenge. Lots of cars move fast and get smashed.

SERIES: Season two of the charming Last Tango in Halifax, which follows the relationship between two elderly widowers, arrives this week. Also out are season five of wacky Community and season seven of David Duchovny's Californication

SUBTITLED: Two competitive actor pals bicker while trying to launch a production of The Misanthrope in the French comedy Bicycling With Moliere.

All of our new and upcoming DVDs can be found in Bibliocommons.

Movies on the Green
The hit Lego Movie is the next and final film in the Movies on the Green series. The film will screen at dusk on Friday, August 8th on Wyman Green. In case of inclement weather, the movie will move into the Council Chambers at Village Hall.

Israel and Palestine
The relationship between Israelis and Palestinians has been the subject of many enjoyable and moving films. Take a look at some of these movies which attempt to explore the complexity of the situation and the humanity of those involved.
  • Based on a true story, The Lemon Tree explores the relationship between a Palestinian woman and an Israeli defense minister who moves next door and insists that the woman's lemon grove be destroyed in the name of security.
  • A Palestinian woman refuses to believe that war is the answer and slips a message of peace into a bottle that is retrieved by a recent immigrant to Israel in A Bottle in the Gaza Sea.
  • The thoughts of two young Palestinian suicide bombers are explored in Paradise Now.
  • Strangers follows a love affair between an Israeli man and Palestinian woman who meet in Berlin.
  • An Israeli-Palestinian finds out that his wife was a suicide bomber in The Attack.
  • Inch'allah follows a Canadian doctor who lives in Jerusalem and works in Ramallah.
  • Ajami is a religiously mixed community in Tel Aviv and the film of the same name follows various characters who attempt to coexist.