Flick Picks 11/12/13: Man of Steel, Turbo

New on DVD at the library this week:

ENTERTAINMENT: Mild-mannered reporter by day and superhero when needed, Superman returns in the Zack Snyder-directed Man of Steel, which offers yet another origin story detailing the arrival, early years and first major battle of earth's greatest protector. Henry Cavill dons the cape, Kevin Costner is his wise earth dad, Amy Adams is Lois Lane and Michael Shannon threatens mankind as General Zod. We've got it on DVD and Blu-ray. Turbo is the newest animated film from the creators of Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda and tells the tale of a snail who wants to be the greatest racer in the world. It features the voices of Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Maya Rudolph and many others and we own it on DVD and Blu-ray.

Also this week, Curb Your Enthusiasm's Jeff Garlin wrote, directed and starred in the comedy Dealin' With Idiots, which focuses on the adults surrounding a youth baseball league. It's semi-improvised and also features the talents of Gina Gershon, Bob Odenkirk and Nia Vardalos. Finally, we've got a couple of fun indie picks this week from established independent directors. The always interesting Noah Baumbach, who directed The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding, offers up Frances Ha about a young woman (Greta Gerwig) finding herself in New York City. Pineapple Express director David Gordon Green gives us the offbeat comedy Prince Avalanche featuring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch as men painting traffic lines on a deserted rural highway.

SERIES: How does it all end for the killer who only kills killers? Find out in the final season of Dexter. We've also got a few new series from the BBC this week.The Paradise focuses on a Victorian era shopgirl in Britain's first department store. In Last Tango in Halifax, childhood sweethearts reunite after being apart for 60 years, though their families create challenges in their attempt to be together again. Finally, Silk follows rival barristers attempting to advance in the British legal arena.

SUBTITLED: An Israeli Palestinian doctor with a comfortable life in Tel Aviv finds out that his wife was a suicide bomber in The Attack. Barbara, which won the Best Director award at the Berlin film festival, is a Cold War spy thriller about a woman trying to escape from East Berlin. The leisurely paced, artsy Tabu brings us the story of an elderly Portuguese woman's past in Africa, fifty years earlier.

DOCUMENTARIES: Blackfish is a brutal look at orcas, or "killer whales", in captivity, including one that has taken the lives of several people. On the lighter side, Hava Nagila discusses the history and meaning of the celebrated title song.

PERFORMING ARTS: There's something for Deadheads this week, as Move Me Brightly celebrates what would have been Jerry Garcia's 70th birthday with performances by surviving members of the Grateful Dead and others such as Carlos Santana and members of Phish and the Black Crowes.

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

Monday Night at the Movies
On November 18th we will be screening Stories We Tell at the Woman's Library Club. The film chronicles actor and director Sarah Polley’s quest to determine her biological father. It runs 108 minutes and is free and open to everyone.

Veterans Day Films

Veterans Day has come and gone but we never want to stop honoring those who have served our country. Here are some great films that look at what soldiers have gone through.

• Best Years of Our Lives is the classic Frederic March and Myrna Loy film about three soldiers returning to their small towns following World War II.
• Director Clint Eastwood tells the life stories of the Marines and Naval officer who raised the flag at Iwo Jima in Flags of Our Fathers.
• Saving Private Ryan is Steven Spielberg's classic and intense look at a group of soldiers who must venture behind enemy lines to rescue and bring home a soldier.
• Return features Linda Cardellini as an Iraq War veteran who brings personal demons back home to her husband (Michael Shannon) and small town.
• A soldier whose job it is to inform people when their family is killed in battle faces an ethical dilemma when he becomes romantically involved with a widow in The Messenger.
• In the recent Academy Award winning The Hurt Locker, a soldier charged with disarming bombs comes home only to find that he misses the adrenaline of his military career.

Flick Picks 11/5/13: The Hobbit, White House Down, Grown Ups 2

New on DVD at the library this week!

ENTERTAINMENT: This week brings us a cornucopia of new movie choices - if you don't check one of these out it must be because your DVD player is broken! To start, Peter Jackson returns to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which offers the adventures of a young Bilbo Baggins as he's swept into a quest to help the dwarves and battle a nasty dragon. If you loved the Lord of the Rings series then you definitely need to get started on The Hobbit trilogy before the second film of the trilogy comes to theaters next month! The film stars Martin Freeman and returns Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Ian Holm and more to their Lord of the Rings roles. We've got it on DVD and Blu-ray. Also this week, police officer Channing Tatum and U.S. President Jamie Foxx must take matters into their own hands when a paramilitary group attacks the title building in White House Down, available on DVD and Blu-ray. Finally, the low-brow comic dream team of Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James and David Spade return to relive their youth in Grown Ups 2.

Other new entertainment releases:

• Parkland takes a behind the scenes look at the events that unfolded on the day that John F. Kennedy was shot and features Zach Efron, Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton and Marcia Gay Harden.
• Amanda Seyfried has received raves for her portrayal of the title character in Lovelace, the story of the woman who either willingly or under coercion portrayed the starring role in the infamous porn film Deep Throat.
• In the comedy-drama Girl Most Likely, Kristen Wiig plays a failed playright forced to move back in with her mother (Annette Bening) after she fakes a suicide attempt. 
• Larry David's Clear History is a made-for-HBO movie about a former marketing director who plots revenge against his former boss (Jon Hamm) who cheated him out of millions. It is a must-see for Curb Your Enthusiasm addicts. 
• The always stylish Brian DePalma also offers up a corporate revenge story with Passion, a remake of the French Love Crime, which focuses on the competition between an advertising executive (Rachel McAdams) and her protege (Noomi Rapace). 
• The coming-of-age film Broken focuses on an 11 year-old English girl who tries to manipulate through various neighborhood dramas. Cillian Murphy and Tim Roth are the big names in this little film. 
• Finally, our indie pick for the week is the surprisingly humorous Computer Chess, which does a fantastic job tackling the early days of technology as it focuses on computer nerds trying to build the ultimate chess machine.

SERIES: Don Draper and the rest of the crew return for season 6 of Mad Men. Also this week, Stephen King brings us the adaptation of his novel about a town trapped under a transparent roof in Under the Dome. The eagerly anticipated second season of the highly regarded French cop thriller Spiral also arrives this week.

SUBTITLED: In 1915, the son of elderly painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir returns home after being wounded in World War I in the impressionistic feeling Renoir. Also, a great Swedish trilogy of tv movies makes its way to the U.S. as the Johan Falk trilogy follows a tough Swedish cop across Europe.

DOCUMENTARY: Deceptive Practice takes a look at magician/actor/raconteur Ricky Jay and includes lots of rare early footage. The HBO documentary An Apology to Elephants shines a light on abuse and poor living conditions in zoos and circuses. Another HBO documentary, Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden, serves as a nice companion to Zero Dark Thirty. Masters of Money is a three part film that lets a BBC economist explain the global economic crisis of 2008 by focusing on the theories of Keynes, Hayek and Marx.

Talking Pictures
Our next Talking Pictures program with Susan Benjamin is the Woody Allen drama Match Point. This film will be screened in the library's Hammond Room on Thursday, November 7th at 1:00 and will be followed by a discussion. All of our movie programs are free and open to everyone.

The best films are on Criterion!

Are you familiar with The Criterion Collection of films? Criterion takes some of the best classic, foreign and new films and offers pristine transfers as well as fascinating commentaries and informative booklets. The library has a large collection of Criterion films and they're almost always worth checking out! Here are a few titles:

• Jack Benny's peak as a film star was To Be Or Not To Be (later remade by Mel Brooks) which is both hilarious and subversive as it takes on the Nazis in the early years of World War II. Also be sure to check out director Ernst Lubitsch's Design for Living and Trouble in Paradise.
• If you enjoy the show Girls then you'll want to watch Tiny Furniture, Lena Dunham's feature film debut.
• Filmed in 1953, Tokyo Story is the timeless story of elderly parents visiting their children who live a very different lifestyle.
• The Ruling Class is the bizarre and hilarious story of a man (played by Peter O'Toole) who believes that he's god, only to be "cured" to become convinced that he is Jack the Ripper.
• Pina is Wim Wenders' creative and colorful look at modern dance original Pina Bausch.
• Reconnect with indie filmmaking pioneer John Cassavetes' classics Faces and A Woman Under the Influence.
• Before Robert Redford was trapped on a boat he was an Olympic skiing hopeful in 1969's Downhill Racer.

Flick Picks 10/28/13: Monsters University, R.I.P.D., Byzantium

New on DVD at the library this week

ENTERTAINMENT: If you left Monsters, Inc. wishing that you had more of the backstory about the lead characters Mike and Sulley then you'll definitely want to enroll in Monsters University. This Pixar-made prequel to the 2001 blockbuster brings back the voices of Billy Crystal and John Goodman as it tells the story of how the leads moved from being rivals to friends while enrolled in enrolled in the prestigious title college. Also this week, Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds are undead police officers who must spoil the dastardly plot of a villain determined to bring the dead back to life in R.I.P.D. A third supernatural tale this week is Byzantium, in which Interview With the Vampire director Neil Jordan returns to the subject of the undead and tells the tale of a mother and daughter pair of vampires who are just trying to get by in a world filled with mortals. This stylish film features Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan and Jonny Lee Miller.

SERIES: Christopher Guest's funny new semi-improvised HBO series Family Tree stars Chris O'Dowd as a young man investigating his family history. For something a little darker, the BBC cop drama Line of Duty follows an officer in an anti-corruption unit as he investigates an award-winning detective.

SUBTITLED: Jean Reno and Melanie Laurent star in Le Rafle, about the infamous Paris raid of 1942 that sent 13,000 Jews to concentration camps.

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

SPOOOOOKY Halloween DVDs!

You never really need an excuse to watch a scary movie. Nonetheless, Halloween is always a great inspiration to turn off the lights and tune in to some ghosts, goblins and ghouls. We have an excellent collection of classic and new horror flicks to raise your hair!

Classic horror: Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Psycho, The Exorcist, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Invisible Man, Rosemary's Baby, The Bad Seed, The Stepford Wives, Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Bloodsuckers: Fright Night, Dark Shadows, Let Me In, The Twilight Saga, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Spirits: The Woman in Black, Ghostbusters, The Sixth Sense, Evil Dead, Mama, Sinister, Insidious

Brain Eaters: World War Z, Warm Bodies, Zombieland, 28 Days Later

Slashers: The Silence of the Lambs, Scre4m, The Purge

All of the Above: Cabin in the Woods

For the Kids: Monster House, The Haunted Mansion, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Casper, ParaNorman, Wiggly Halloween, Hotel Transylvania

Flick Picks 10/21/13: Before Midnight, The Conjuring, The Internship

New on DVD at the library this week

ENTERTAINMENT: Richard Linklater continues the tale of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), the couple who first met in Vienna, later reunited in Paris and, after the events of the second film, remained a couple and had twin girls together. Before Midnight, which takes the couple to a friend's house in Greece, once again follows the two as they try to deal with the struggles of family and love. Some people have called the Before Sunrise / Before Sunset / Before Midnight trilogy one of the best film trilogies of all time. The Conjuring was both a surprise box office hit and a well reviewed horror film, coming just in time for Halloween! Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson and Ron Livingston star in this spooky tale of paranormal investigators trying to figure out why a farmhouse is haunted.

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson bring the laughs in The Internship, which follows the two as they try to prove that they are not too old to succeed in the digital workplace of Google. The touching The Way, Way Back follows an unhappy 14-year old who bonds with the owner of a nearby waterpark. A fantastic cast of Steve Carell, Maya Rudolph, Toni Collette, Sam Rockwell and Amanda Peet make this a can't miss comedy. If you enjoy the Four Weddings and a Funeral brand of British romantic comedy then you'll want to take home I Give it a Year, which features Rose Byrne and Rafe Spall as a married couple approaching their one year anniversary. Simon Baker, Anna Faris, Stephen Merchant and Minnie Driver round out the cast. Finally, fans of Drive won't want to miss the similarly ultraviolent neon-lit Only God Forgives which reunites director Nicolas Winding Refn with Ryan Gosling, while bringing Kristin Scott Thomas along for the story of a man trying to avenge his brother's murder in Bangkok.

SUBTITLED: The mysterious The Wall shows us a woman who must survive when the sudden appearance of a wall locks her in the Austrian countryside, cutting her off from the rest of civilization.

DOCUMENTARIES: With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, it seems like an opportune time for The Waiting Room, which shows how an Oakland, California hospital deals with an influx of largely uninsured patients. Leviathan is as much of an experience as it is a documentary, as it takes you aboard an enormous New England commercial fishing vessel. It's beautifully filmed even as it captures the harshness of this life.

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

Nutrition and diet DVDs

Did you catch Jeanne Nolan's talk on Tuesday night about her life in organic gardening? If you found it inspiring you should know that we have many great videos about the food that you choose to put in your body!

• Explore the benefits of a vegetarian diet with Forks Over Knives.
• One man changes his diet and his life in Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.
• In Super Size Me, director Morgan Spurlock eats only McDonalds for a month and observes the effect that it has on his body.
• If you or someone you know have food allergies then you should check out I'm Not Nuts, which sheds a light on causes and coping strategies.
• Food Inc. takes a look at the small number of companies that control the food supplies in the U.S.
• Do you drink a lot of bottled water? Tapped just might make you think twice as it follows water from ocean to bottle.

Flick Picks 10/14/13: Pacific Rim, The Heat

New on DVD at the Library This Week

ENTERTAINMENT: If giant monsters fighting massive robots isn't your idea of entertainment, then Pacific Rim is probably not for you! On the other hand, those of you who realize that it's the BEST form of entertainment will want to watch this epic visual treat on the largest screen possible. Sci-fi stylist Guillermo del Toro brings us the story of robot jockeys (including Charlie Hunnam) fighting to keep our world safe from invaders. We've got it on DVD and Blu-ray. Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy are also fighting bad guys in The Heat. The director of Bridesmaids brings us a buddy cop flick in which two mismatched police officers must work together to bring down a drug lord. It's also available in both DVD and Blu-ray. Finally, fans of previous collaborations of actor Steve Coogan and director Michael Winterbottom (which include Tristram Shandy and The Trip) will definitely want to check out The Look of Love, about Paul Raymond who opened the UK's first strip club in 1958.

SERIES: Gillian Anderson is back on tv in the BBC crime drama The Fall, in which she plays a British detective hunting a serial killer in Belfast. History Channel's first scripted series Vikings follows the head of a Norse clan who rises to King.

SUBTITLED: Fans of the movie Captain Phillips won't want to miss the similarly themed A Hijacking, about a Danish ship taken over by Somali pirates. The brilliant Luc Besson colorfully adapts a popular French adventure comic about an adventurous young woman in early 20th century Paris in the fun live action Adele Blanc-Sec. Finally, the gorgeously animated The Painting resembles art more than cartoons in the parable of the artist and his various creations. It's a French animated film that can be enjoyed by the entire family.

DOCUMENTARIES: Tom Selleck is the narrator of North America, a beautifully shot look at the continent on which we live. Jeremy Scahill adapts his book to bring us the movie Dirty Wars, which investigates the U.S. involvement in covert wars. Anglophiles will want to take a look at Julien Temple's London: The Modern Babylon, that shows the combination of historical factors that have created the exciting and diverse London that we know.

PERFORMING ARTS: The big green guy is back and now he sings in Shrek: The Musical, the Broadway adaptation of the popular film.

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

Monday Night at the Movies
Our next Monday Night at the Movies is What Maisie Knew, which stars Julianne Moore and Alexander Skarsgard in the modern adaptation of the Henry James novel about a divorce as seen through the eyes of a six-year-old. The film will screen at 1:00 and 7:00 on Monday, October 21st at the Woman's Library Club (325 Tudor Ct.) Our Monday Night at the Movies films are free and are open to everyone.

Videos on Islam

We are almost at the end of the 4-day festival Eid al-Adha, which is one of the most important holidays from the Islamic calendar. Would you like to learn more about the world's second most popular religion? We can help!

• Islam, Empire of Faith is a PBS program that provides an overview of the history of the religion.
• Frontline's Muslims looks more specifically at what it means to be a Muslim in the 21st century.
• The National Geographic show Inside the Koran focuses on the religion's religious text.
• Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World looks at 1400 years of Muslim arts, crafts and architecture.
• Based on an autobiographical graphic novel, the animated Persepolis shows what it was like to grow up a woman in an Iran run by Islamic fundamentalists.

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!

Flick Picks 9/30/13: This is The End, The Croods, The Frozen Ground

New on DVD this week at your library!

ENTERTAINMENT: Some of Hollywood's funniest young stars portray themselves as the apocalypse arrives in This is The End. Funnyman Seth Rogan co-wrote, co-directed and co-stars in this raunchy, star-studded comedic look at what happens when self-indulgent Hollywood actors are faced with the end of civilization as they know it. James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson and Danny McBride are the leads and there are cameos from Michael Cera, Emma Watson, Paul Rudd, Channing Tatum and more. Also this month, you might have missed the Nicholas Cage and John Cusack mystery The Frozen Ground when it was in the theaters so now you can get caught up! It's based on the true story of an Alaskan state trooper who tries to track a serial killer. Finally, kids will want to meet The Croods, a Stone Age family that is forced to explore the world after its cave is destroyed. Nicholas Cage's voice stars in this one, along with those of Emma Stone, Catherine Keener and Ryan Reynolds.

SERIES: Guy Pearce comes to the small screen in the Australian import Jack Irish, in which he plays an alcoholic criminal lawyer turned private investigator following his wife's murder. We've got the second of the classic Doctor Who specials The Doctors Revisited 5-8, which features a documentary about the second quartet of Doctors as well as a representative episode from each one. This week also brings us season 8 of How I Met Your Mother, season 4 of Glee and season 2 of New Girl.

DOCUMENTARIES: If you're interested in an overview of the evolution of the environmental movement you'll want to see A Fierce Green Fire, which is narrated by Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and Ashley Judd.

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

Talking Pictures
Susan Benjamin returns to host Talking Pictures on Monday, October 7th when we will be showing Parental Guidance, starring Billy Crystal and Bette Midler. Talking Pictures features are screened in the Hammond Room of the library at 1:00 and are free and open to everyone.

TV for a Government Shutdown

We're now in the midst of a government shutdown which may inspire you to want to see more of the comedy, back-stabbing and intrigue that happens behind Washington DC's locked doors. The following series are all great looks at politics, U.S. and elsewhere

• Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Vice President Selina Meyer in Veep, as she tries to negotiate politics and deal with a crazy staff.
• Another Emmy winner - Kevin Spacey - stars in House of Cards, which follows the political manipulations of a vengeful Congressman. It is based on the BBC series of the same name.
• President Bartlett in The West Wing probably could have averted a government shutdown with an appeal to the American people's conscience.
• The UK government has its own craziness as the darkly comic The Thick of It (later adapted into the feature film In the Loop) shows.
• No Job for a Lady was a sitcom about the misadventures of a newly elected female British Prime Minister.
• A much darker look at UK politics is the miniseries The Politician's Wife, in which a woman tries to end her husband's political career after discovering his affair.
• One of the best political dramas around - Borgen - comes from Denmark and revolves around their fictional first female Prime Minister.