Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts

Friday, February 3, 2012

And the Oscars go to ... books!


The 84th annual Academy Awards Ceremony will honor the best films of 2011. It will take place on Sunday, February, 26, 2012 at the Kodak Theatre in the heart of historic Hollywood, California. But the real winners this year are books! Eleven literary adaptations received recognition in major award categories. Six out of the nine best picture nominations are based on books. Cinema depends on literature, on the written word. Woody Allen's original screenplay for "Midnight in Paris" is a love declaration for the literary world of T.S. Eliot, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Don't just see the movies, read the books! Click on the book title for a link to our catalog, the statewide catalog, or worldcat.org.


Moneyball: the Art of Winning an Unfair Game. By Michael Lewis. (This author also wrote the source for the movie Blind Side)

"Explains how Billy Beene, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, is using a new kind of thinking to build a successful and winning baseball team without spending enormous sums of money."



My Week with Marilyn. By Colin Clark.

"Presents the author's diary accounts of the week he, an assistant on the set of the movie "The Prince and the Showgirl," bonded with Marilyn Monroe after she escaped the high-pressure set and toured the English countryside with him."



War Horse. By Michael Morpurgo.


"Joey the horse recalls his experiences growing up on an English farm, his struggle for survival as a cavalry horse during World War I, and his reunion with his beloved master."


Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. By John Le Carré.

"Who is the mole buried within British intelligence, planted by Karla in Moscow years ago? George Smiley is back, in the first novel of The quest for Karla trilogy."




Albert Nobbs: a novella. By George Moore.

"Long out of print, George Moore's classic novella returns just in time for the major motion picture starring Glenn Close as a woman disguised as a man in nineteenth-century Ireland."



Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. By Jonathan Safran Foer.


"Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center attacks, searches the five boroughs of New York City for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind."


The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher. By John Campbell.

"Traces the life of Britain's only female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, from her upbringing in Grantham to her unexpected challenge to Edward Heath for leadership of the Conservative party and her eventual removal from power."
The Descendants. By Kaui Hart Hemmings.

"A descendant of royalty and one of the largest landowners in Hawaii, Matthew King struggles to deal with his out-of-control daughters--ten-year-old Scottie and seventeen-year-old Alex--as well as his comatose wife, whom they are about to remove from life
support."

The Invention of Hugo Cabaret: a novel in words and pictures. By Brian Selznick.

"When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized."



The Help. By Kathryn Stockett.

"In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another."




The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. By Stieg Larsson.

"Forty years after the disappearance of Harriet Vanger from the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family, her octogenarian uncle hires journalist Mikael Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander, an unconventional young hacker, to investigate."














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Saturday, October 22, 2011

Horror and Halloween movies at Hamden Library

It's that time of year again!  Autumn is officially here, and Halloween is right around the corner.  If you can't get out to one of the many Halloween events sponsored in the state and region-- including the "Graveyard Shift Ghost Tours" of the Mark Twain House-- check out some horror or Halloween-themed movies.

No, really.  Come in and check them out from us!  We have over 130 movies to choose from, in a variety of genres.  Slasher or suspense, vampire, werewolf, or family, it's likely we have a movie for your Halloween pleasure.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

The series are coming? The series are coming!


Our YA patrons asked, and Pam and Elise answered! In the next few weeks, look in our YA section for hit CW series "Gossip Girl", "One Tree Hill", "Supernatural", and "The Vampire Diaries", as well as ABC Family series "The Secret Life of the American Teenager".

In the meantime...

If you've already read our Gossip Girl books, you may want to try something from The A-List or The Clique.

If you've already read our Vampire Diaries books, you may want to try something from the Twilight series.

If you're a fan of Supernatural, you may want to try Neil Gaiman's American Gods, or some of our nonfiction books about ghosts, monsters, or urban folklore.

Or ask our reference librarians for other recommendations!

Friday, January 21, 2011

Films On DVD To Watch Before The Oscars

The 83rd annual Oscar nominations will be announced on Tues. Jan 25Th. Here are some 2010 films that are sure to be in the running and available for free here at your library.

Inception
Despicable Me
Exit through the Gift Shop
How To Train Your Dragon
I Am Love
Restrepo
Social Network
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Kids Are Alright
The Secret In Their Eyes
The Town
Toy Story 3
Winter's Bone


What was your favorite film this year?

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Great Movies From The Attic


"Fatso", directed by Anne Bancroft, 1980, starring Dom Deluise, Ron Carey, and Anne Bancroft.

"Festival", a 1967 music documentary about the 63, 64, and 1965 Newport Folk Festivals. Produced and directed by Murray Lerner.

The original "Day the Earth Stood Still" from 1951 directed by Robert Wise.

"Evil under the Sun" directed by Guy Hamilton based on a novel by Agatha Christie music by Cole Porter, screenplay by Anthony Schaffer starring Peter Ustinov James Mason Roddy McDowell Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith.

"Panic in the Streets" directed by Eli Kazan released in 1950, starring Richard Widmark and Jack Palance.

What do these films have in common? They are all DVDs in the Miller Library collection in the section marked classic/hidden gems. When we think of classic films we usually think black-and-white, old, maybe even stuffy. Films that are hidden are like old photos stuck in the attic, they have a musty odor, best viewed in dim light, nostalgic. Nothing farther from the truth can be said about these films.

I chose these at random and because I am familiar with them. Each are wonderful. You can take my word. One way or another I have been involved professionally with movies for almost thirty years. From running a small movie-house to suggesting films to patrons at a video store, I have researched and ingested film most of my life. I'd like to pass some of this on to you in this blog. If you disagree with me let me know. I love to talk film.

Back to the movies:

"Fatso" has a very offensive title and a sweet, real, Italian/New York core. This was the only film (that I know of) directed by Anne Bancoft, the wife of Mel Brooks, star of over fify films such as "The Elephant Man", "The Graduate", and "The Miracle Worker". She was born 1931 Anna Maria Italiano, in the Bronx, New York. She knew the neighborhood and people. This is a true to life romantic slice of life comedy with "heavy" issues. Sorry about that.

"Festival" is for all current and would be fans of the 60's folk and pop scene. This is great fun. It is a historical record of the time when American folk music made the transition to the top of the charts, with live performances by artists such as: Joan Baez; Bob Dylan; Peter,Paul and Mary; and Donovan, along with Judy Collins and Pete Seeger and more. Look for the reaction when Bob Dylan goes electric on "Maggie's Farm". Sorry it's in glorious black and white.

As a SciFy movie fan I endured The new Keannu Reeves led "Day the Earth Stood Still". I never really could see his attractiveness to women but I guess that's OK and I must say he did the best he could with what he had but Michael Rennie was and will be Klaatu, the inter-steller visitor who brings Gort, the policeman to end all policemen to earth. Robert Wise, the director of such immortal American films as West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Haunting and The Setup with the help of Patricia Neal and Sam Jaffe, and composer Bernard Herrmann (Hitchcock's favorite), great visual effects for 1951 and finally great writing, won a Golden Globe for "Best Film Promoting International Understanding" If you have not seen it, see it.

Guy Hamilton directed four early James Bond films and was assistant director on The African Queen. Here he adapts Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot mystery with a great cast, especially a wonderfully hammy Peter Ustinov, beautiful wardrobes and wonderful Mediterranean scenery off the coast of Spain. What's not to love? By the way the writer Anthony Shaffer (also the writer of "Sleuth") is the identical twin of Peter Shaffer, writer of Amadeus. Nature or nuture?

And finally Elia Kazan's "Panic In the Streets" with Richard Widmark, as a good guy. Imdb's plot snopsis says, "A doctor and a policeman in New Orleans have only 48 hours to locate a killer infected with pneumonic plague." Jack Palance plays the killer. While I was watching it with headphones one day, my brother walking through the room said, "Even without the sound he puts a chill up my spine." Leave the sound on. This is a great thriller, suspence, action noir that you can watch with the family and not worry about the language or sex. I guess raw language and sexual realism have their place in some films but sometime all I care about is a good plot, good acting and writing. Is that too much to ask?