Films added to the National Film Registry for Preservation

In December, 2013, the Library of Congress inducted 25 films into the National Film Registry to preserve for future generations based upon cultural, historical, or cinematic significance.

You can rest easy that these favorites were added:

Mary Poppins





Right Stuff

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Check out the list and see if  some of your other favorites are included and reserve them from the library!
SH
 

 

What books are next to be seen at the movies?

With 5 of the 9 films nominated for an Oscar based upon books,

what books will be featured next at the movies?

Monuments Men:  allied heroes, Nazi thieves and the greatest treasure hunt in history by Robert Edsel and Brett Witter (February 7)

Vampire Academy by Rachel Mead (February 14)

Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin (February 14)

Divergent by Veronica Roth  (March)

Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo (April)

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon (May)

Make your book (or audio) request now so you will be ready for your night at the movies!  SH

Earth Day--April 22

Celebrate Earth Day 2013 (April 22) by stopping by the 2nd floor

display table and picking up a book, book on CD, or DVD.

The display is entitled Oh What a Beautiful World and features topics on geology, geography, gardening, early humans, animals, environment, energy, AND even some fiction focusing on these topics...or at least with related words in the title.

Some titles you might enjoy are:

Books
Adventures in Tornado Alley:  The Storm Chasers
The Neandertal Enigma
K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
Global Climate Change: The Book of Essential Knowledge
Dust:  A History of the Small & the Invisible
The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes

Book on CD
Silent Sea
World Without End
Global Warming:  Global Threat
Terminal Freeze
Journey to the Center of the Earth

DVD
HumanPlanet: The Complete Series
Ape to Man
Ascent of Man
The Jacques Cousteau Odyssey (6 vols)
Dirt: The Movie

Stop by the display and find what else is waiting for you....

SH

Classic foreign film on DVD

Many of our classic films on VHS have now been replaced on DVD format. Come in and browse this new collection of older titles.  A sampling:

 

Which are your favorites? Any suggestions for purchase? We would love to hear from you!

-DB 

Excitement Mounts for The Help--The Movie

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is to adults what Harry Potter is to the younger set. Although it was originally published on February 10, 2011, it still maintains a place on the Bestseller lists. It's theme involving black maids and an aspiring journalist in 1960s Mississippi have lead individuals and book clubs alike into great discussions. Everyone who read it spread the word on to others that it was a must read.

If you haven't had a chance to enjoy it yet, borrow it from the library today before The Help--the movie arrives on August 10. On that date you will be able to watch well-known actresses bring the characters to life: Emma Stone as Skeeter (the young journalist) Viola Davis as Abilene (Maid #1) Octavia Spenser as Minnie Academy award winning actresses are Sissy Spacek, Cicely Tyson, and Mary Steenburgen also play a part.

You have been warned. Get ready for The Help--The Movie mania! SH

Best Picture--Academy Awards

Ready for Sunday when the 2011 Oscar for Best Picture will be announced? Which of the nominated films do you think should win OR do you have a favorite that was not nominated?

Let us know by sending back a comment, and, if you would like, why you would vote for your choice.

2011 Nominations for Best Picture

127 Hours

Black Swan

The Fighter

Inception

The Kids are all Right

The King's Speech

The Social Network

Toy Story 3

True Grit

Winter's Bone

Library of Congress National Film Registry

The Library of Congress Librarian names 25 films to the National Film Registry reflecting genres from American History. This year the films represent years from 1891 (yes, I mean 1891)--Newark Athlete--to 1996--Study of a River. The Registry currently numbers 550 films.

The films that are considered may be nominated each year by the public. Nominate your favorite film for the 2011 Registry, keeping in mind that it must be at least 10 years old and “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” (from LOC website) No more than 50 titles may be nominated per individual.

A documentary, These Amazing Shadows, revealing the importance of the National Film Registry and how these selections are made will premiere at the Sundance Festival in January, 2011. Stay tuned for reviews on this.

Click on the link below to read more about each of the 25 films listed. Many of these may be requested through the library catalog.

Films Selected to the 2010 National Film Registry

1. Airplane (1980)
2. All the President’s Men (1976)
3. The Bargain (1914)
4. Cry of Jazz (1959)
5. Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967)
6. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
7. The Exorcist (1973)
8. The Front Page (1931)
9. Grey Gardens (1976)
10. I Am Joaquin (1969)
11. It’s a Gift (1934)
12. Let There Be Light (1946)
13. Lonesome (1928)
14. Make Way For Tomorrow (1937)
15. Malcolm X (1992)
16. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
17. Newark Athlete (1891)
18. Our Lady of the Sphere (1969)
19. The Pink Panther (1964)
20. Preservation of the Sign Language (1913)
21. Saturday Night Fever (1977)
22. Study of a River (1996)
23. Tarantella (1940)
24. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)
25. A Trip Down Market Street (1906)

SH

Enrich your viewing experience with new documentaries

A Walk to Beautiful-A look at the lives of three Ethiopian women, rejected by their husbands and ostracized by their communities, who leave home in search of seeking treatment for obstetric fistula. The program follows them walking for hours on their journey to transportation to a special hospital in Addis Ababa where they find solace for the first time in years, and stays with them as their lives begin to change.
The Cats of Mirikitani - Eighty-year-old Jimmy Mirikitani survived the trauma of WWII internment camps, Hiroshima, and homelessness by creating art. But when 9/11 threatens his life on the New York City streets and a local filmmaker brings him to her home, the two embark on a journey to confront Jimmy's painful past. An intimate exploration of the lingering wounds of war and the healing power of community and art.


King Corn : You Are What You Eat-
Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, college buddies Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa, to find out how the modest corn kernel conquered America. With the help of real farmers, powerful fertilizer, government aid, and genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hidden truths about America's modern food system
Surfwise -A look at the life of legendary Malibu surfer Dorian 'Doc' Paskowitz, a successful doctor who dropped out of normal society in the '60s and raised nine kids in a motor home, where he home-schooled them about life, love, sex and surfing.
Up the Yangtze-
In China, it is simply known as "The River." But the Yangtze--and all of the life that surrounds it--is undergoing a truly astonishing transformation wrought by the largest hydroelectric project in history, the Three Gorges Dam. Canadian documentary filmmaker Yung Chang returns to the gorgeous, now-disappearing landscape of his grandfather's youth to trace the surreal life of a "farewell cruise" that traverses the gargantuan waterway.

Singularly moving and cinematically breathtaking, Up the Yangtze gives a human dimension to the wrenching changes facing not only an increasingly globalized China, but the world at large.

Nadia Boulanger - Mademoiselle-
Nadia Boulanger (1887-1997), universally called 'Mademoiselle' by her students, was easily the best-known teacher of composition in the last century. The list of her students from America includes, among many others, Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, Roy Harris and Leonard Bernstein. This documentary is the first film ever made by Bruno Monsaingeon, a former musician who has gone on to become a leading classical music documentarian. It was shot in the 1960s and early 1970s in grainy black & white and only average sound, when Boulanger was in her late 80s and still fearsomely in command of her abilities. This film remains one of the most important documents concerning this fabled teacher. She is seen at one of her fabled 'Wednesdays', a composition lesson held weekly in her apartment for almost six decades and attended by anyone who would come. In this particular session she talks illuminatingly with students about a small portion of Schumann's 'Davidsbündertanze.' The incredibly talented prodigy, the Bulgarian pianist-composer Emile Naumoff, demonstrates at the piano; he looks to be no older than perhaps ten or twelve. Boulanger's comments are terse, penetrating and forceful.

Interweaved with the 'Wednesday' material are interview clips with Monsaingeon -- expanded in his later book 'Mademoiselle: Conversations with Nadia Boulanger' -- and, added in the late 1970s, Monsaingeon interview footage with Leonard Bernstein (in French) and the noted conductor/composer Igor Markevitch. An extra is a complete performance by the ORTF Philharmonic, with Markevitch on the podium, of Mozart's Symphony No. 38, 'Prague'.

There is an extensive booklet note by Monsaingeon in which he details how the documentary came about and how he revised it some years later. (For reasons of rights, he had to drop its opening segment in which he showed a scene from the Ali McGraw/Ryan O'Neal film, 'Love Story', where McGraw's character says that she is 'going to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger' without offering an explanation as to who Boulanger was, evidence that Boulanger's name was well enough known that a mass audience didn't more than mention of her name.) There is also a reprint of a touching letter from Bernstein to Monsaingeon recounting his last visit with Mademoiselle just before her death.

The focus of this documentary is musical entirely. There is no attempt to convey biographical details about Boulanger, in keeping with Mademoiselle's wishes. This makes this relatively short documentary all the more densely packed with relevant examples of her style and philosophy of teaching.

Man on Wire -
A look at the high-wire walk made by Philippe Petit in 1974 between the World Trade Center's Twin Towers in New York City, and how it is still considered one of history's most artistic crimes.





DB