Flick Picks 5/27/14: The Bridge season 1, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries season 2

New on DVD at the Library This Week

ENTERTAINMENT: Colin Firth recruits Cameron Diaz to help steal a valuable statue from Alan Rickman in this comedic remake of the 1966 crime flick Gambit. You may or may not be surprised to hear that it does not all proceed smoothly. The film is also a rarity in that it was scripted but not directed by the Coen Brothers. A coming-of-age film is viewed through a birder's binoculars in A Birder's Guide to Everything, in which a group of teenage friends hunt for a rare bird on the eve of one of their father's remarriage. Ben Kingsley shows up as their birder mentor. Former SNL'er Will Forte made a big impression in Nebraska and he's back in another semi-serious role in Run and Jump. Forte plays a neurologist who becomes involved with a family while studying the father's frustrating recovery from frontal lobe damage.

SERIES: The eagerly anticipated Danish series The Bridge finally arrives, following Danish and Swedish police who must work together to track a killer who has left a single corpse composed of two separate body halves. Another popular Scandinavian thriller arrives this week in the third season of Wallander (not the English language Kenneth Branagh version), which is composed of six episodes featuring Henning Mankell's veteran detective.

We also have imports from Australia in season 2 of the noirish Guy Pearce series Jack Irish and season 2 of the charming Jazz Age Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. The USA (both country and network) is also represented with season 4 of spy thriller Covert Affairs and season 3 of snappy lawyer show Suits.

SUBTITLED: An affluent Budapest architect will go to all lengths to keep her no good son out of prison in the naturalistic thriller Child's Pose.

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

Talking Pictures
Mads Mikkelson gives a powerful performance as a teacher who is wrongfully accused in the Danish drama The Hunt. We will be screening this film, followed by a discussion, as part of our Monday, June 2nd Talking Pictures program. Talking Pictures is hosted by Susan Benjamin and screenings take place in the Hammond Room of the library. All of our film screenings are free and open to everyone.

Experience the Criterion Collection

If you're looking for quality films then the Criterion Collection is a good place to start! The Criterion Collection releases important historical and recent films with restored film transfers, multiple commentaries and myriad bonus materials and range from Oscar winners like the recent Italian import The Great Beauty to classic silent films such as The Passion of Joan of Arc. Most of our Criterion holdings can be found in the Subtitled and Classics sections. Here are some of the must-see Criterion releases:

• Pina is director Wim Wenders' thrilling look at dance choreographer Pina Bausch, presenting some of her most notable works.
• If you enjoy Lena Dunham's tv show Girls then you should definitely check out her early award-winning film Tiny Furniture.
• Monsieur Verdoux is one of Charlie Chaplin's later works, and while it had been hard to see for many years, many people now consider it to be a dark masterpiece.
• Director Jean-Pierre Melville's classic drama about the French Resistance, Army of Shadows, is a must-see.
• Ingmar Bergman is well represented on Criterion, which released a 3-disc version of his Scenes From a Marriage that contains the complete version made for Swedish television.
• The Italian The Leopard looks at a changing Italy and features a marvelous lead performance by Burt Lancaster.
• There are many excellent early Hollywood comedies such as the Preston Sturges classic Unfaithfully Yours , starring Rex Harrison.

Flick Picks 5/20/14: Monuments Men, 3 Days to Kill, Pompeii

New this week on DVD at the library

ENTERTAINMENT: This week's Flick Picks stars George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett and Jean Dujardin...and unbelievably all in the same movie! Monuments Men tells the true story of soldiers in World War II tasked with finding invaluable works of art and returning them to their rightful owners before they are destroyed. Clooney directed the film and we've got it on DVD and Blu-ray. Also this week, Kevin Costner is a spy trying to retire settle down to a quiet, normal family life when he is pulled into one last job in the tense thriller 3 Days to Kill. It was directed by action specialist McG (the Charlie's Angels movies) and produced by Luc Besson.

Thrills, destruction and romance are the name of the game in Pompeii, in which former slave and current gladiator Kit Harington (of Game of Thrones) must save his love before his town is smothered in lava. Grand Piano is a tense little thriller that received excellent reviews and features Elijah Wood as a stage fright-plagued pianist who is threatened by a sniper during his return to public performance. Elizabeth Olsen might be the hottest actress in film these days and in the adaptation of In Secret, an adaptation of Emile Zola's Therese Raquin, she plays a woman who escapes her dead end life by launching an affair, only to have it all end badly. Jessica Lange also helps fill the screen in this gothic romance.

SERIES: The BBC's post-war drama Call the Midwife returns for a third season.

SUBTITLED: The Jewish Cardinal tells the remarkable true story of Jean-Marie Lustiger who, despite converting to Catholicism at a young age, maintained his Jewish identity, eventually using both of his religious backgrounds when Carmelite nuns decide to build a convent at Auschwitz. Celebrated Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami's set-in-Tokyo Like Someone in Love tells about the interactions between a call girl, her boyfriend, and an elderly professor.

DOCUMENTARIES: After Tiller looks at the few remaining doctors who provide late-term abortions as well as some of the women pursuing these procedures. The history, politics and controversies behind the creation of the new World Trade Center are the focus of the fascinating 16 Acres.

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

Movies for Memorial Day

There are a number of great war films that recognize the sacrifice of the soldier as well as the futility of war. Memorial Day weekend is a great time to take out of these movies and recognize all that the members of our military have done for us.

• Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson work for the Casualty Notification Office of the U.S. Army, and must handle the emotions of distraught spouses while trying to adjust to their own challenges in The Messenger.
• Oliver Stone's Platoon is a look at the common soldier's experience in Vietnam and is based on Stone's own service.
• Elite soldiers join a brutal battle in the streets of Mogadishu in the frantic Black Hawk Down.
• Steven Spielberg tells the story of a group of World War II soldiers tasked with rescuing a sole remaining brother in Saving Private Ryan.
• Beyond the cameo of Glencoe's Metra station, Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers is worth seeing for the story of the six men who raised the flag in the famous photo at The Battle of Iwo Jima.
• Three World War II veterans return to their small towns only to discover that their whole world has changed in The Best Years of Our Lives.
• The realities of the brutality of war in World War I for German soldiers is vividly captured in one of the most famous early anti-war films, All Quiet on the Western Front.
• Stanley Kubrick brings us the of war in Paths of Glory, in which soldiers rebel when asked to participate in an impossible charge.

Flick Picks 5/13/14: Her, Orange is the New Black

New on DVD at the library this week

ENTERTAINMENT: There are many terms that people use to label director Spike Jonze's work in film: visionary, original and genius are a few. Most importantly for a moviegoer, Jonze's films like Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Where the Wild Things Are can be called entertaining. His latest cinematic venture Her stars Joaquin Phoenix as a shy writer who falls in love with his operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). Ultimately, once you get beyond its strange premise the film is a sweet love story. We've got it on DVD and Blu-ray.

SERIES: The made-for-Netflix series Orange is the New Black is loosely based on the women's prison memoir of the same name and has been hailed as one of the most entertaining series in recent years. Also this week we've got season 4 of the rude and crude Danny McBride series Eastbound and Down and season 2 of the adventures of Wyoming sheriff Longmire.

DOCUMENTARIES: Another visionary director, Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), gives us Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?, an animated version of a series of conversations with Noam Chomsky. Animation allows Gondry to help explain some of Chomsky's more complex ideas about the emergence of language. Also this week, in 2009 Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen co-starred in a hit West End production of Waiting for Godot. The candid Theatreland brings us the entire process of this play's creation, from planning to production.

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

Monday at the Movies
We will be screening Cutie and the Boxer on Monday, May 19 at 1:00 pm. Cutie and the Boxer is about an 80-year-old "boxing" painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife and de facto assistant, Noriko who seeks her own recognition through her "Cutie" illustrations, which depict their chaotic 40-year marriage. This film captures two lives united by a dedication to art-making for a touching meditation on the eternal themes of love and sacrifice. The movie is 82 minutes and is rated R. It will screen at the Glencoe Woman's Club at 325 Tudor Court and is free of cost and open to everybody.

Teacher Appreciation Week

Last week was Teacher Appreciation Week and while you've probably already shown your child's teacher how much you appreciate what they do you might want to take a look at one of our documentaries showing the challenges facing educational systems in America and elsewhere.

• American Teacher follows four teachers and looks at the challenges that they face as they try to decide whether to continue in the profession.
• The director of An Inconvenient Truth offers up another controversial film with Waiting for "Superman", which offers up challenges to teachers' unions and lauds charter schools.
• The stresses that children must face in today's schools while facing standardized testing are the focus of Race to Nowhere.
• The Lottery looks at four lower income New York families who have entered their children into a competitive lottery for admission to a charter school, the results of which could dramatically improve their lives.
• The French To Be and to Have gives us a unique and touching look at a one-room schoolhouse in rural France.

Flick Picks 5/6/04: The Veronica Mars Movie, The Art of the Steal

New on DVD at the Library This Week

ENTERTAINMENT: The fans were begging for more Veronica Mars and now they've got it! Kristin Bell's modern-day Nancy Drew made the move from the TV to the big screen in 2014 thanks to a Kickstarter campaign that raised nearly $6 million from eager devotees. Fortunately, The Veronica Mars Movie also serves as an excellent introduction for new fans, as it returns young sleuth Veronica to her high school reunion where she must help her former boyfriend Logan to extract himself from a murder charge. If you feel the need to get caught up on the TV series on which the movie was based we also have it as part of our collection. Also this week, Kurt Russell, Matt Dillon and Terence Stamp team up in the fun and funny caper flick The Art of the Steal, in which Russell plays a motorcyclist/thief who is brought back in for one last job. Things go wrong.

SERIES: Republic of Doyle is a new lightweight crime show based in seaside Newfoundland that features a rule-breaking detective and his ex-cop father.

SUBTITLED: Simon and the Oaks is the moving drama about the relationship between two families - one working class and one wealthy and Jewish - in Germany during and after World War II. Also, originally screened as a German miniseries, Generation War brings together five young friends who are forced to deal with the consequences of Hitler's ascendance in different ways.

DOCUMENTARIES: British historian Simon Schama gives us the epic five episode Story of the Jews, originally shown on PBS. If you are looking for an adrenaline-filled but very real film, you should try Burn, which follows Detroit firefighters as they face their daily pressures in a city that is going through difficult times. It wasn't so long ago that our ancestors were swimming around with gills, and Your Inner Fish is a fascinating look at what we've inherited from our piscine progenitors. Finally, this week we've got an American Masters look at sculptor Alexander Calder.

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

Mom in Movies

Mother's Day is coming up (you did remember, didn't you?) Here are some vivid portrayals of mothers in film, some of whom may not exactly win any "mother of the year" awards.

• In Terminator 2 Sarah Connor must fight to keep her son alive, which is a good thing for all of us since he will eventually save humanity.
• Next time you face difficulties with your child remember that you could be giving birth to the devil's progeny, as in Rosemary's Baby.
• Mother-daughter relationships are explored as are race and class issues in the classic Douglas Sirk melodrama Imitation of Life.
• Norman Bates is both the protected kid and the (spoiler alert!) overprotective mother in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
• Are there any more troubling childhood memories that seeing Bambi's mother die? Yeah, we didn't think so.
• You'd need telekinetic powers to deal with a mother like Stephen King's Carrie's (here in its 2013 remake).
• The Manchurian Candidate features perhaps the ultimate controlling mother-son relationship between Angela Lansbury and Frank Sinatra.
• The powerful Korean import Mother brings us a mom who gives up everything to find out who framed her son for murder.

Flick Picks 4/29/14: Labor Day, Mr. Selfridge Season 2

New on DVD at the Library This Week:

ENTERTAINMENT: Jason Reitman, whose resume includes Juno, Up in the Air and Young Adult, is back with Labor Day, a film centered around the relationship between a reclusive single mother (Kate Winslet) and an escaped convict (Josh Brolin). It's both a thriller and a heartwarming romance as Winslet and her 13-year-old son must figure out whether Brolin's presence is a benefit or a threat. Geoffrey Rush leads the cast of the Hitchcockian The Best Offer which is about a solitary antiques dealer who becomes involved with a mysterious young woman. Our indie pick this week is the gritty British import The Selfish Giant, about two impoverished young friends who become increasingly involved with scrap metal theft, despite the dangers that they face.

SERIES: Jeremy Piven returns to the role of the department store owner of the title in season 2 of Mr. Selfridge.

SUBTITLED: A fantastic performance by its lead actress (and a 99% Rotten Tomatoes rating) make the Chilean drama Gloria a must-see. It's a sweet yet honest look at a middle-aged divorcee who enters into a romance with an older man. Also this week, a Laotian boy builds a rocket for a competition in order to prove that he's not cursed in The Rocket.

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

Talking Pictures
We will be screening 42, the Jackie Robinson story, on Thursday, May 1 at 1:00 as part of our Talking Pictures series of films and discussions. The film stars Chadwick Boseman and Harrison Ford and runs 128 minutes. The film will be shown in the library's Hammond Room. All of our film screenings are free and open to everyone!

Earth Day

Did you celebrate Earth Day last week? Earth Day always serves as a great reminder of the ways that we can change our habits to protect the planet. Here are some DVDs to help motivate you into lessening your impact!

• The David Attenborough series Planet Earth set a new standard for impossible footage filmed in remote locations.
• We hear about the oceans rising but The Island President shows us the Maldives, where residents are being forced to potentially vacate their homeland because of water levels.
• The oceans are rising but fresh water may become harder to find, as Last Call at the Oasis explains.
• What does "progress" mean for our society's future? That's the question that Surviving Progress poses to many experts.
• You may be familiar with the controversial practice of using fracking to get natural gas out of the ground. Gasland takes a look at whether fracking is safe and environmentally friendly.
• The End of the Line explorer how modern fishing practices are potentially going to cause large-scale fish extinctions.
• It turns out that our country's food supply is controlled by a few corporations, and Food, Inc. looks at what this means for consumers and farm workers.
• Both sides of the wind power debate are covered in Windfall, which shows what happens when a rural town is turned over to a wind developer.

Flick Picks 4/22/14: The Invisible Woman

New on DVD at the Library This Week

The Easter holiday means a very slow week for new releases. The good news is that this gives you more time to catch up on DVDs that you might have missed! Here's what's coming out this week:

Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas and Felicity Jones star in The Invisible Woman, based on Charles Dickens' love affair with the much younger actress Ellen Ternan. Fiennes performs double-duty by also directing this somber period drama.

The documentary The Trials of Muhammad Ali focuses on Ali's attempt to overturn a five year prison sentence after he converted to Islam and refused to serve in Vietnam.

You can find all of our new and upcoming DVDs on Bibliocommons.

Holocaust Remembrance Day
Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah, begins the evening of Sunday the 27th and we have a number of moving documentaries to help us bear witness to the Holocaust's atrocities.

• The Last Flight of Petr Ginz relates the story of a Czechoslovak boy who died in a concentration camp at age 14, leaving behind a diary and many works of art and fiction.
• Friends and family recall Anne Frank in Anne Frank Remembered, which also includes vintage footage and and photos.
• A Film Unfinished focuses on Nazi-made footage of the Warsaw Ghetto, much of which was staged for the outside world.
• Like the well-known Oskar Schindler, Nicholas Winton saved the life of many children during World War II, and the film Nicky's Family brings his name to light.
• The French film Shoah features hours of interviews with survivors, prison guards and local residents and workers.
• Hitler's Children takes a look at the descendants of some of Hitler's top associates and asks how they can deal with their past.

Flick Picks 4/15/14: Philomena, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

New on DVD at the Library This Week:

ENTERTAINMENT: One of the sleeper hits of the year is the must-see drama Philomena, based on the true story of a British mother who gave her son up for adoption (after signing an agreement that she wouldn't try to track him down) and later decided to discover his whereabouts. The film stars Judi Dench as the title character and the fantastic Steve Coogan is the reporter from the BBC who helps her out. Director Stephen Frears, whose steady hands held the camera for The Queen, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Dirty Pretty Things and many more, directs this one. We've got it on DVD and Blu-ray. Also this week, Ben Stiller offers up his take on the The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, in which his daydreams start to take his life's center stage. Stiller stars and directs and Kristen Wiig, Patton Oswalt and Shirley MacLaine try to bring him back to reality.

Anglophiles have some great options this week with some new British imports. Mike Newell, the director of Four Weddings and a Funeral, offers up a new take on Dickens' classic Great Expectations, with Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter leading up a talented cast. Murder on the Home Front is a mystery in which an early forensic scientist investigates murders taking place during the London Blitz of 1940. Also from the BBC, The Making of a Lady is an adaptation of a novel by The Secret Garden's Frances Hodgson Burnett about a woman who begins to fear for her life when her husband's relatives begin acting strangely towards her.

SERIES: There are two new releases from the UK, as we welcome seasons 2 of the World War II codebreaker drama The Bletchley Circle and the Victorian-age detective thriller Ripper Street.

SUBTITLED: A Touch of Sin is a drama based on four stories in contemporary China, in which economic change drives four different characters in disparate parts to violence.

DOCUMENTARIES: The fascinating The End of Time takes us to places around the world where we can witness destruction and rebirth and in doing so makes us reconsider our perception of time.

You can find all of our new and upcoming DVDs on Bibliocommons.

Monday at the Movies
Our next Monday at the Movies screening is the film Wadjda, the first full-length feature shot in Saudi Arabia and the first ever by a female Saudi director. It's the story of a young girl living in a suburb of Riyadh determined to raise enough money to buy a bike in a society that sees bicycles as dangerous to a girl's virtue. The film will be shown on Monday, April 21 at 1:00 and 7:00 at the Glencoe Woman's Club at 325 Tudor Ct. It is 98 minutes long and rated PG. All of our screenings are free and open to everybody.

Live Music on DVD

Ravinia has announced its outdoor season and surely you need something to tide you over until you can enjoy live music outside in the Highland Park breezes. We've got music of all genres to keep your toes tapping until summer arrives.

• He's plays a doctor on TV but in the real world he's got a successful musical career going. Enjoy Hugh Laurie and band as they play Live on the Queen Mary.
• Jerry Garcia's 70th birthday is celebrated by former bandmates and special guests such as Carlos Santana and Mike Gordon from Phish in Move Me Brightly.
• Love for Levon, another tribute to a deceased musician (Levon Helm from The Band), has Gregg Allman, Roger Waters, John Mayer, John Prine and many more musical all-stars offering up their takes on many Band classics.
• Paul McCartney is still playing marathon live shows but Rockshow brings you Wings at their 1970s performing peak
• If you think Adele is impressive on record then you should check her out live as well! Live at the Royal Albert Hall brings her voice to center stage.
• Neil Young's Bridge School Concerts never fail to entertain as they bring together rockers such as Bruce Springsteen, Brian Wilson and R.E.M. to play for charity.
• Harry Connick Jr. offers up his New Orleans-influenced repertoire in New York with In Concert on Broadway.