Flick Picks 3/25/14: The Wolf of Wall Street, The Great Beauty

New on DVD at the Library This Week

ENTERTAINMENT: Another Oscar-nominated film rolls out this week as Martin Scorcese's exhilerating The Wolf of Wall Street hits our shelves on DVD and Blu-ray. This film, based on Jordan Belfort's memoir, features Leonardo DiCaprio as Belfort, who ran a corrupt investment firm in the 1990s. Jonah Hill, Kyle Chandler and the surging Matthew McConaughey are also among the cast. Also this week, Vince Vaughn delivers us the comedy Delivery Man, based on the Canadian hit Starbuck about a man who fathers 533 surrogate children.

SUBTITLED: The first Italian film to win an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film since 1999 is The Great Beauty, a gorgeous look at a journalist as he journeys through Rome, reflecting on his life.

SERIES: There are two new subtitled series worth checking out this week. Based on a Henning Mankell novel, Kennedy's Brain follows a Swedish archaeologist as she tries to find out what really happened to her son who supposedly committed suicide. The Spider follows a crime writer in post-Nazi-occupied Denmark as he tries to get to the bottom of an organized crime ring. Also this week, season two of the Julia Louis-Dreyfus political comedy Veep and a 6th season of David Duchovny's Californication arrive.

DOCUMENTARIES: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes a journalist (and viewers) around his country in Israel: The Royal Tour, a PBS documentary.

All of our new and upcoming DVDs are available in Bibliocommons.

YA Movie Marathon
We will be hosting an epic film screening for 6th to 12th graders on March 31st from 1:30 to 7:30. We'll start with Warm Bodies, followed by The Way Way Back at 3:30 and Gravity at 6:00. Popcorn will be on hand for all showings. Kids can show up for their favorite movie or stay for all three! All of the movies are rated PG-13

Get Mad With Basketball on DVD!

March Madness is on and you probably need something to watch in-between games. Make it a DVD about basketball and you're sure to be pleased!

• Gene Hackman leads his little town's basketball team to victory in the classic sports film Hoosiers. 
• Texas Western University's coach starts the best players that he can find and it ends up being the first NCAA all-black lineup in Glory Road.
• Coach Carter features Samuel L. Jackson as the title character, who teaches his high school basketball team that there's more to life than sports.
• Hoop Dreams is the classic documentary about two Chicago high school basketball players pursuing a big season and a future as a professional.
• A professional basketball floater learns about what life is really like in Iran when he gets picked up by an Iranian team in the recent documentary The Iran Job. 
• More Than a Game follows Akron's St.Vincent-St. Mary's high school team, which featured five future NBA-ers, including LeBron James.