Flick Picks 12/17/13: The Lone Ranger, Elysium, Prisoners

New at the library this week on DVD and Blu-ray

ENTERTAINMENT: They call him The Lone Ranger but he actually has a sidekick so maybe he's not so lonely after all! Gore Verbinski, the director of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, brings us a new version of the Lone Ranger tale, complete with explosions, special effects and Johnny Depp as native American partner Tonto. In this version, we learn the origin of The Lone Ranger (played by Armie Hammer) and follow him as he seeks revenge. It's available on DVD and Blu-ray. Meanwhile, the rich aren't like other people...because they live in a massive spaceship! Matt Damon is a man from a ravaged earth who must break into the orbiting satellite in order to cure a fast-moving disease in Elysium, which is available on DVD and Blu-ray. Jodie Foster is trying to keep him from succeeding. Hugh Jackman is a father who takes the law into his own hands when his daughter and her friend go missing in the morally complex Prisoners, available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Another week, another Robert De Niro movie (or so it seems) as he joins Michelle Pfeiffer and Tommy Lee Jones in The Family, a comedy about a mafia boss, his wife and kids, who move to France while under the witness protection program. They soon end up reverting to their old ways. It took a while for the second Percy Jackson movie to be made but Sea of Monsters is finally here. In this adaptation of the popular young adult fantasy series, the son of Poseidon and friends set off after The Golden Fleece and its healing powers. The thriller Ain't Them Bodies Saints is a throwback to some of the smaller, gritty films of the seventies. It stars Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara and Ben Foster in the story of Texas outlaws on the run. The HBO dramatization Muhammed Ali's Greatest Fight takes a look at Ali's attempt to be classified as Conscientious Objector to the Vietnam War and features a great cast that includes Christopher Plummer, Frank Langella and Ed Begley Jr. Some Girl(s) is an adaptation of a Neil LaBute play and features Adam Brody as a writer who drives cross country to meet up with ex-lovers. Our indie pick of the week is Museum Hours which is about two strangers who connect in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Art Museum.

SERIES: We have new seasons of some of our more popular TV series arriving this week, with season 7 of the sly action series Burn Notice, season 4 of the Kentucky cop show Justified and season 3 of the Chicago-based family comedy-drama Shameless.

PERFORMING ARTS: Will The Sound of Music Live! make you forget the Julie Andrews film version? Possibly not, but kudos to Carrie Underwood, Stephen Moyer and the rest of the crew for trying something new by bringing the stage adaptation to television!

DOCUMENTARIES: One Direction is one of the hottest music groups around. Find out what makes them tick while also enjoying concert footage in the Morgan Spurlock directed One Direction: This is Us! For something a little darker, learn more about the concussion crisis in profession sports in the Frontline special League of Denial.

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

Best DVDs of 2013:
Looking for something interesting to watch over the holidays? One of the things that I enjoy most about my job is the ability to bring interesting feature films, foreign films, documentaries, etc. to the community. You might have missed them in the theatre, or they may not have been widely released, but the library is a great chance to find a hidden gem for free or a very low cost. And don't forget that every film that is shown at our Monday at the Movies program is available on DVD as well. I can't guarantee that they'll all be Oscar winners but who knows what kind of pleasant surprise might be awaiting you in some obscure little feature! - Mike

Here are the feature film and documentary (D) and subtitled (S) DVDs that I enjoyed most over the year:
Boy
The Central Park Five (D)
Clear History
Django Unchained
Dredd
The East
Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie (D)
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec (S)
Flight
Game Change
Happy People (D)
Hara-Kiri (S)
Holy Motors (S)
How to Survive a Plague (D)
The Last Gladiators (D)
Last Ride
Looper
The Master
Mel Brooks: Make a Noise (D)
Mud
Nobody Else But You (PouPouPiDou) (S)
Oslo, August 31st (S)
The Other Dream Team (D)
Passion
The Place Beyond the Pines
A Separation (S)
Skyfall
Somebody Up There Likes Me
Sound City (D)
Spring Breakers
Stoker
Teddy Bear (S)
This is the End
The Well-Digger's Daughter (S)
What Maisie Knew

Flick Picks 12/10/13: Despicable Me 2, Fast and Furious 6, Doc Martin series 6

New DVDs and Blu-rays at the library this week!

ENTERTAINMENT: The formerly villainous Gru must leave his comfortable life caring for his three daughters and many minions in order to discover which supervillain has stolen a secret laboratory in Despicable Me 2. Steve Carell returns to voice Gru and Kristen Wiig joins the cast of this fun sequel. We've got it on DVD and Blu-ray. Also this week, the late Paul Walker stars in Fast and Furious 6, which provides nonstop action as the gang (which includes Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and new addition Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) must prevent a superweapon from being stolen. It's available on both DVD and Blu-ray.

Naomi Watts and Robin Wright are two lifelong friends who become romantically involved with each other's sons in Adore, an adaptation of a Doris Lessing short story. British director Ken Loach returns with The Angels' Share, a charming and uplifting comedy about a petty criminal who becomes a new father and decides to turn over a new leaf. Director Billy Bob Thorton's Jayne Mansfield's Car brings together John Hurt, Kevin Bacon and Robert Duvall in a comedy-drama set in a small Alabama town in 1969, where a death brings together two very different sides of a family. Our indie pick this week is the dark British comedy Sightseers, in which a caravanner must deal with various complications that threaten to send him over the edge as he tries to show his girlfriend the best of Britain.

SERIES: There are lots of Doctors to be found in the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special: The Day of the Doctor. Besides the current and previous Doctor Who, we also get to meet a new Doctor (John Hurt) and revisit many previous incarnations. Plus, there are some Zygons as well! Doc Martin may not have a sonic screwdriver or Tardis but you love him and his idiosyncrasies anyway! Series 6 of Doc Martin arrives this week.

SUBTITLED: Alain Resnais brings us the unique You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, which brings a fantastic class of French theatrical actors to the reading of a playwright's will. A video of a performance of Eurydice with a group of young actors is revealed, prompting the older actors to again step into the roles. Theatre lovers will eat this one up.

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

Monday Night at the Movies
Our next Monday Night at the Movies program is This is Martin Bonner, a quiet film that follows its title character in Reno, Nevada, where he has relocated to start a new life as a counselor for newly released prisoners. The film will be screened at 1:00 and 7:00 on Monday, December 16th at the Glencoe Woman's Club, 325 Tudor Ct. All of our movie programs are free and open to anyone.

Holiday Videos are Available!

Our holiday videos are now available on a cart in front of our subtitled video section! All of our holiday videos circulate for 1 week. Some highlights? Various versions of A Christmas Carol, Bill Murray's hilarious Scrooged, the classic Miracle on 34th Street, the raunchy Bad Santa and of course, It's a Wonderful Life. All of our holiday DVDs can be found here.

Also, if you're looking for a great gift, please consider a library movie rental gift card, which will give you 10 movies rentals for only $9!!! Truly a gift that all ages can appreciate!

Flick Picks 12/3/13: The Wolverine, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Smurfs 2

New on DVD and Blu-ray at the library

ENTERTAINMENT: Hugh Jackman dons the adamantium yet again for The Wolverine, which takes the X-Man of the title to Japan where he must protect the daughter of a man whose life he once saved. The Asian setting for the film makes it a unique addition to the seemingly endless stream of superhero flicks while talented director James Mangold keeps the action moving. Also this week, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is the latest young adult book to hit the big screen, telling the story of half-angels in modern day New York who must protect our world from being overrun by demons. If you are seeing little blue men it's probably not because you haven't recovered from your Thanksgiving celebration but rather the family's screening of Smurfs 2, in which Neil Patrick Harris must fly to Paris to rescue our kidnapped heroes! Finally, this week's indie pick is Drinking Buddies, a low-key comedy-drama set in a Chicago brewery where four friends (Olivia Wilde, Ron Livingston, Anna Kendrick and Jake Johnson) try to figure out just exactly what they mean to each other.

DOCUMENTARIES: You probably haven't heard of Freda Kelly but she was the secretary for and friend of the Beatles, and in Good Ol' Freda she tells her story. Sir Nicholas Winton, an Englishman who rescued 669 Jewish Czech and Slovak children, is profiled in Nicky's Family.

SUBTITLED: A Canadian obstetrician living in Jerusalem and working in a Palestian refuge camp tries to build bridges between the two in Inch'Allah. The erotic Italian psychological thriller The Future tells the story of two boys who attempt to rob a former Mr. Universe (Rutger Hauer) by enlisting the help of a seductive young woman.

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

Food on DVD

Peggy Wolff's talk about her book Fried Walleye and Cherry Pie: Midwestern Writers on Food takes place Thursday night at 7:30 and it may leave you inspired. Luckily we are here to help with these great food related DVDs!

• Julia Child may no longer be with us but her legacy lives on in great books and videos, such as Julia Child's French Classics.
• The cooking series The Essential Pepin features entire episodes with Jacques Pepin focusing on a particular type of food.
• People of all sizes will enjoy the British Two Fat Ladies series.
• If you're in a hurry then you might need 30 Minute Meals With Rachael Ray.
• Filmed in the test kitchens of Cook's Illustrated magazine, America's Test Kitchen is a PBS series that will make you drool.
• For something a little different, how about How to Cook Your Life, a cooking class from a Zen master?

Flick Picks 11/26/13: Red 2, Jobs, final season of Breaking Bad

New at the library on DVD this week

ENTERTAINMENT: Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren and Brian Cox are once again forced to leave the bingo parlor and reenter the espionage game in order to find a lost nuclear bomb and save humanity in Red 2. Mary-Louise Parker, Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta Jones are along for the ride and John Malkovich is his usual eccentric self in this made-to-please sequel to the 2010 hit. Expect plenty of action, a little romance and many jokes about growing old. Also this week, Ashton Kuchter dons the black turtleneck in Jobs, a look at what made Steve Jobs tick as he changed the world with the Apple computer.

SERIES: The explosive ending of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman's adventures as drug dealers arrives this week as we reach the final season of Breaking Bad. Also up is season 6 of Murdoch Mysteries.

SUBTITLED: An actress comes out of rehab and tries to reconnect with her family and her audience while also dealing with her personal demons in the Danish Applause.

DOCUMENTARIES: The rock doc Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, focuses on Alex Chilton's influential and formerly obscure rock band.

All of our new and upcoming DVD releases are available on Bibliocommons.

Talking Pictures
On Wednesday, December 4th at 1:00 we will be screening the film Love, Actually in our Hammond Room. A conversation with Susan Benjamin will follow. All of our Talking Pictures programs are free and open to everyone.

Thanksgiving DVDs

It's time to give thanks for family, friends, health and videos! If you're looking for a film for Thanksgiving then you've come to the right place. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is always a hit with the kids and brings back some great memories for parents. If you're struggling with ideas for what to cook then you'll want to pick up Jacques Pepin's Thanksgiving Celebration. Did you know that The Last Waltz - Martin Scorcese's film of The Band's final concert - was filmed on Thanksgiving Day? The classic Woody Allen film Hannah and her Sisters begins and ends at the Thanksgiving table. Some other movies with key Thanksgiving scenes? Pieces of April, Funny People and The Blind Side!

Flick Picks 11/19/13: 2 Guns, The World's End, We're the Millers, Planes

New This Week at the Library on DVD
ENTERTAINMENT: Denzel Washington has one and Mark Wahlberg has one, and when we put them together we get 2 Guns! Washington and Wahlberg play an undercover DEA agent and a Naval Intelligence officer who are thrown together while on the trail of a Mexican drug pusher played by Edward James Olmos. Expect to see a lot more than two guns by the end of this buddy thriller. We've got it on DVD and Blu-ray. Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and director Edgar Wright team up again to finish what is being referred to as The Cornetto Trilogy, the first two films of which were the hilarious Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The third in the loosely connected series -The World's End - follows five old friends as they attempt to recreate a pub crawl from their youth.

Also this week, former SNLer Jason Sudekis is a small time drug dealer who must put together a fake family (including stripper Jennifer Aniston as his wife) and escape to Mexico after upsetting his supplier in We're the Millers. The studio that brought us Cars decides to stretch its wings and offer up another animated talking vehicle vehicle with Planes. Dane Cook, Stacy Keach and Teri Hatcher are just a few of the human stars offering up their voices. Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza plays a young overachiever who decides to experience life before she goes to college in the raunchy and explicit comedy The To Do List. Michael Cera is a young American travelling through Chile who meets up with a free spirited young woman while searching for a rare hallucinogenic cactus in the rambling comedy Crystal Fairy.

SERIES: The first made-for-Netflix series Lilyhammer finally arrives on DVD. This darkly comic show features The Sopranos' Steven Van Zandt as a (surprise!) mobster who goes into hiding in Norway. Also this week, the residents of New Orleans returns for a third season of Treme.

FOREIGN: Hannah Arendt is set during the 1961 Adolf Eichmann trials (which produced Arendt's "banality of evil" concept) and superbly captures the brilliant mind of philosopher Arendt. Audrey Tautou's title character in Therese wants to escape her boring marriage in this beautiful historical drama set in southwest France.

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

John F. Kennedy on Video

Friday is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and there has been no shortage of coverage in the news as of late. The library also has a number of videos to help you remember Kennedy and his place in American history.

• Take a look back to the early days of JFK's administration as Jackie Kennedy leads you on A Tour of the White House.
• The PBS American Experience program The Presidents looks at the history and legacy of the Kennedys in politics.
• The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings focuses on the Kennedys and the Irish-Catholics in America.
• The History Channel's The Kennedys is a dramatization of their lives and scandals and stars Greg Kinnear as JFK.
• Parkland is the recent feature film starring Zac Efron and Billy Bob Thornton about the chaotic events following JFK's assassination.

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.