Flick Picks 10/7/13: Hangover Part III, Much Ado About Nothing, After Earth

New on DVD at the Library This Week

ENTERTAINMENT: This week, one of the most important and provocative movies of all time comes to DVD...oh, who are we kidding? The Hangover Part III continues the misadventures of the Wolfpack as they return to Las Vegas, the scene of the first Hangover movie. The team gets involved with gangsters and giraffes and see the return of Mr. Chow, who wreaks his own particular havoc. Director Todd Phillips once again directs and Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha all return to provide us with the usual dose of uneasy laughs. We've got it on DVD and Blu-ray. There's a slightly classier alternative this week, as Avengers director Joss Whedon brings us a modern adaptation of William Shakepeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Filmed in under two weeks in black and white, Whedon gives us a great young cast of Nathan Fillion, Alexis Denisof, Clark Gregg and Amy Acker in the tale of a pair of battling young lovers.

After Earth was publicized as a Will Smith film but it's pretty much his son Jaden's show, as the kid must survive a hostile planet in order to rescue both his father and himself. M. Night Shyamalan directs. Can you imagine a world in which there is very little crime excepting one night a year, when violence is encouraged? This is the premise of The Purge, which stars Ethan Hawke as the head of a family that makes the mistake of letting an injured man into their secure compound on the wrong night. For something a little lighter, Greg Kinnear plays a divorced novelist, Jennifer Connelly is his ex-wife and Kristen Bell is the neighbor offering him encouragement in the romantic comedy Stuck in Love. Finally, Salman Rushdie wrote the script for the adaptation of his novel Midnight's Children about two Indian kids who are switched at birth.

SERIES: A second season of American Horror Story is upon us just in time for Halloween, and while it has an entirely different setting and plot from the first season, a number of actors - including Jessica Lange - return. If you like your spooky series with an English accent then check out Secret of Crickley Hall, in which a family moves into a haunted house that is somehow connected to their missing son. We've also got new seasons of Bones (season 8), White Collar (season 4) and The Middle (season 3).

SUBTITLED: Aliyah is about a French drug dealer who becomes in touch with his Jewish roots as he tries to get his life together and emigrate to Israel.

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

Modernized Shakespeare

This week's release of Much Ado About Nothing brings us a new adaptation of a classic Shakespeare play in a modern setting. Should this whet your appetite for the Bard, we have many other Shakespeare-based films in modern and surprising settings!

• One of the more obscure Shakespeare works, Coriolanus, was set in ancient Rome but has been moved to modern times by director Ralph Fiennes.
• A Midsummer Night's Dream's setting has been shifted to 19th Century Italy in the 1999 Kevin Kline and Michelle Pfeiffer adaptation.
• Baz Luhrmann gives us his contemporary flashy take on Romeo and Juliet, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as the tragic lovers.
• Hamlet gets a modern touch (his castle has security cameras!) in the David Tennant and Patrick Stewart made-for-BBC version.
• Get your kids started young on Shakespeare with...The Lion King??? Sure enough, this animated classic was based on Hamlet!
• Ran is director Akira Kurosawa's classic version of King Lear set in feudal Japan.
• We also have no shortage of Shakespeare filmed in more traditional ways!