Flick Picks 8/27/13: The Great Gatsby, Epic

New DVDs and Blu-rays at the Library This Week
Early warning: Season 2 of Homeland comes out in two weeks. There are already lots of holds on it so please get your hold on it asap!

ENTERTAINMENT: Director Baz Luhrmann brings his unique touch to The Great Gatsby, a colorful adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Tobey Maguire is Nick Carraway, a writer who befriends Leonardo DiCaprio's Jay Gatsby in 1920s New York. If you are looking for a straightforward presentation of the novel then you will be shocked since this film's whirling, music-filled sensibility is more akin to Luhrmann's previous takes on Romeo and Juliet and his Moulin Rouge. We've got it on DVD and Blu-ray. Also this week, the kids (and anyone else who loves a fun animated fantasy) will want to check out Epic, the story of a teenage girl who gets transported to a magical forest where she must band together with a crew of creatures to save the world. Our indie pick this week Mira Nair's adaptation of Mohsin Hamid's popular novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Kiefer Sutherland, Kate Hudson and Liev Schreiber star in the story of the attempt to find out how a young Pakistani professor could have become involved in a kidnapping plot in post-9/11 America.

SERIES: This week you've got a choice between the charming ladies and gentlemen of Seattle Grace Hospital in Grey's Anatomy (season 9), the rotting denizens of The Walking Dead (season 3), or the brilliant minds of the modern Sherlock Holmes mystery series Elementary.

DOCUMENTARIES: Fans of the iconic Bergdorf Goodman department store won't want to miss Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's, which interviews designers and fans while allowing us to get a rare look behind the scenes.

SUBTITLED: The true story of Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 101-day trip across the Pacific Ocean on a raft is dramatized in the exciting Norwegian import Kon-Tiki.

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

Back to School
Now that the kids are out of the house you can celebrate with one of these entertaining flicks about our children and their educational system!

• It's always worth having a reunion with John Hughes! All the cliques bond for a day in the The Breakfast Club while Molly Ringwald experiences high school angst and ends up at Glencoe Union Church in Sixteen Candles. And let Ferris Bueller's Day Off serve as a warning for when your kids declare themselves to be sick!
• Though filmed in Highland Park, Glencoe was the setting for Joel Goodson's den of iniquity in Risky Business.
• Far away from the North Shore, Friday Night Lights follows a small-town Texas high school football team.
• Your chills will be multiplyin' as you hang with Grease's Sandy and Danny.
• If kids think that they've got it tough then show them a town where dancing is outlawed in either the original or remake of Footloose.
• Maggie Smith is the teacher in 1930s Scotland who teacher her students about life in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.