Oscar-winning movies at the library

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

The Oscars did their thing last week, mostly as expected but with a few surprises.  The Academy’s voters have their preferences for what they celebrate, and any of us might disagree for a wide variety of reasons. (My personal take: Frozen II and Little Women deserved better.) In any case, all of the winners and nominees are well-made movies on some level, and they spark conversations.  Find out what the discussion is about by checking out some of them at your local library.

The Best Actress Oscar went to Renee Zellweger for her performance as Judy Garland in the movie Judy, which is available to check out at the Litchfield Library and 17 other locations in Pioneerland Library System. This is her second Oscar; her first was for Supporting Actress in Cold Mountain.  Reviewers generally said that the movie itself isn’t amazing but Zellweger’s performance is. She plays the beloved entertainer in 1968 as Garland performs a series of sold-out concerts, fights with management, begins a romance with her fifth husband, and struggles with anxiety and health problems.

Brad Pitt snagged a Best Supporting Actor Oscar this year for his performance in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, available on DVD at the Litchfield Library and 22 other libraries in our system.  The film also won the Oscar for production design with its late 1960s setting.  Pitt plays a stuntman and friend to a faded television star who is trying to make it in the film industry.  This Quentin Tarantino movie places fictional people like Pitt’s character next to real-life people like actress Sharon Tate, played by Margot Robbie, and imagines how history could have gone differently.  This was Pitt’s second Oscar but his first for acting; his other Oscar was for producing 12 Years a Slave.

Toy Story 4 won the award for Best Animated Feature, as Toy Story 3 did nine years ago.  The series seemed to have ended with that third movie, but movie reviewers say this is the heartwarming sequel no one knew they needed.  Woody’s new kid Bonnie makes a toy out of a fork, but Forky calls himself “trash” instead of a toy.  This lively, beautifully-animated film addresses issues of finding your purpose and accepting mortality. You can check out Litchfield Library’s copy or borrow one from 21 other libraries.

The award for Best Original Song went to Elton John and Bernie Taupin for “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” from Rocketman. This biopic includes elements of musical fantasy as it dramatizes the highs and lows of Elton John’s life story using his songs, complete with choreographed numbers. The Rocketman DVD is available to check out at Litchfield Library and 18 other locations.

Some of the other winners are available to order through the Pioneerland catalog, even though they haven’t yet made it to the shelf at our local library.  Parasite was this year’s big winner, coming away with Best Picture, Best Director, Best International Feature Film, and Best Original Screenplay.  Bong Joon Ho wrote, directed, and produced this South Korean film about two families that develop a symbiotic (or parasitic) relationship: the wealthy Parks and their modern-day servants, the Kims.  This DVD is currently available in two libraries, but more copies will be coming.

Two more Oscar-winning movies are currently available to order in Pioneerland.  Joaquin Phoenix won Best Actor for his performance in Joker, an origin story for a character familiar from the Batman comics and movies.  The film also won the award for original score.  Ford v Ferrari won the awards for film editing and sound editing, dramatizing the true story of the Ford Motor Company’s quest to develop a race car to take on the Ferrari in automobile racing in 1966.

More of this year’s winners and nominees will become available as they are released on DVD, so check the catalog and the shelves in the coming months for the movies you are curious to see.

One Giant Leap for Mankind

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

On July 20^th, 1969, humans first set foot on the moon.  On this 50^th anniversary of Apollo 11, we celebrate the giant leap that Neil Armstrong helped to make with his one small step. 

Do you remember watching the moon landing on television?  I wasn’t born yet, so I should watch the library’s new DVD, Apollo 11.  It’s a documentary put together from a newly-discovered batch of 65mm raw footage and 11,000 hours of previously uncataloged audio recordings.  Whether you were glued to the live event back in 1969 or you want to see how amazing that occasion really was, this movie can help you find new wonder in this pivotal moment in history.

For a dramatized version of those events, pick up First Man, an award-winning biopic of Neil Armstrong.  Ryan Gosling plays the legendary astronaut in this movie based on the book of the same name by James R. Hansen, which the Litchfield library also has.  The movie and book show the victories and the tragedies of Armstrong’s life.

Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon is a recent book about one step in the Apollo program.  Author Robert Kurson shares the stories of astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders and their families as NASA raced to beat the Soviets to the moon without taking the time to be careful and methodical.  Litchfield Library has this book on audio, but it’s available to order in print from other libraries.

Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon is another take on that step of the space race.  Author Jeffrey Kluger co-wrote the book that the movie Apollo 13 was based on.  In Apollo 8, readers learn about the context of this risky but ultimately inspiring launch: three American astronauts burned to death in a spacecraft the year before, the Cold War intensifying, and a year filled with assassinations and war. 

Hidden Figures is both an award-winning movie and a popular nonfiction book about a group of gifted black female mathematicians who calculated trajectories and other essential numbers for planning space flight.  The book by Margot Lee Shetterly tells the story of four women in the West Computing group at Langley, who helped America get to space over the course of three decades of their careers; naturally it goes into more detail than the movie can. 

If you’re looking to share information about the moon landing with your children, pick up Moon Landings by Shoshana A. Weider or Apollo 11 Launches a New Era by Thomas K. Adamson, two recent nonfiction books in the Litchfield library collection.  The first is an easy reader about the Apollo missions to the moon.  The second is a part of the “Events That Changed America” series; it focuses on the Apollo 11 mission with a timeline and reflection on the significance of the moon landing.

If thinking about the moon landing has got you thinking about the night sky, check out the National Geographic Pocket Guide to the Night Sky of North America by Catherine Herbert Howell.  This manual is a short handbook on viewing the stars, the moon, the planets, comets, meteors, and asteroids, complete with charts.

There’s a plaque on the moon to commemorate that landing 50 years ago.  It says, among other things, “We came in peace for all mankind.”  May that landing inspire us still today. 

Yes, you can check out movies and TV shows at the library!

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

DVDs account for about twenty percent of the materials checked out at the Litchfield Library.  For some people in our community, library DVDs are the only way they watch television.  Other people still are surprised to learn that the library offers DVDs for check out, because they thought we only had books. 

Litchfield Library has about 2700 unique video titles; we don’t have more than one copy of any of them in the local collection.  Pioneerland Library System has almost 50,000 DVDs available to order, although obviously there are many of the same movies and TV shows in different libraries. 

We get new DVDs every month in Litchfield; let me tell you about a few of the newest.

Netflix rebooted the familiar TV show Lost in Space last year.  You may remember the original from the late 1960s, which in turn was based on the 1812 book The Swiss Family Robinson.  There was also a movie in the 1990s, which was apparently awful.  This new version is geared to young teens and older, and it has gotten decent reviews for having great effects and sets, plus some more character development than the original.  If you love the 1965 series for the campiness, you won’t find that here, but it’s still some relatively family-friendly sci fi. 

 The Mustang is a drama based on a real animal therapy program for prison inmates in Nevada.  In fact, three of the actors in the film came from the program.  The movie stars Bruce Dern and Matthias Schoenaerts in a story about a violent convict who gets the chance to participate in training wild mustangs.  One reviewer said it’s an unusual mix of a gritty prison movie blended with an inspiring horse movie, but in general critics love it. 

Did you know there’s a new movie called Virginia Minnesota?  I hadn’t heard anything about it until just recently when it was released on DVD.  This indie film won the award for best Minnesota-made narrative feature at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival, and it has been recognized at other small film festivals around the country.  It’s a comedy-drama about two young women who go on a 24-hour journey together after becoming estranged in childhood.  It might be interesting just to see the Iron Range scenery where it was filmed.

The new documentary Maria by Callas tells the story of opera singer Maria Callas’ life in her own words.  The Greek-American soprano was an international star in the middle of the twentieth century, an extraordinarily talented performer for the ages and a notorious diva.  This sympathetic portrait tries to tell her story as she would have, through interviews and other footage, letters she wrote, unpublished memoirs, home movies, and personal photos, almost none of which has been made public before.  While recognizing that it isn’t a balanced portrayal, reviewers praised this movie as an absorbing new look at a famous person.

Another new documentary is a big hit in our library system right now.  Apollo 11 is put together from archival footage that the public hasn’t seen before, and the director managed to make it crisp and beautiful.  One movie critic after another says that the movie makes audiences awestruck about the moon landing all over again. 

Some of the other new DVDs you can find at the Litchfield library include Captain Marvel, Five Feet Apart, Hotel Mumbai, PBS’s The Mueller Investigation, and My Dinner with Hervé.  If we don’t have a movie or television show, new or old, that you’re looking for, ask library staff for help and we will do our best to borrow it from other libraries in Minnesota.

And We Never Wanted to Leave....

by Beth Cronk, head librarian

Part of the journey is the end.  Two major science fiction/fantasy series are coming to an end for viewers within a month of each other.  Avengers: Endgame just hit movie theaters, wrapping up Marvel’s Avengers series of movies (but not all of the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) after eleven years. The television series Game of Thrones comes to an end on May 19 with its eighth season.

Readers are still looking forward to the last two books in the Song of Ice and Fire series that Game of Thrones is based on.  Provided George R.R. Martin gets over his writer’s block, there’s still more of that world coming.  And Marvel comic books and graphic novels may never end.

If you feel a sense of loss with these series endings, you’re not alone.  A quick internet search turns up “Empty feeling after finishing a book/series” on the Goodreads website, “Why it’s healthy to cry over TV shows” in Time magazine, and “The 5 stages of grief for the TV show you just finished binge-watching” in Huffpost (some are tongue-in-cheek).  There’s even a name that some people use for this uncomfortable feeling: “post-series depression.” 

Some avid readers I know go through this quite often, whether they read mysteries, historical fiction, or anything that comes in a series – or sometimes just after a long, immersive novel.

The Time article says that we form parasocial, or one-directional, relationships with fictional characters, whether on the page or screen.  Professor Jennifer Barnes is quoted in the February 23, 2017, article as saying, “The interesting thing is that our brains aren’t really built to distinguish between whether a relationship is real or fictional… So these friendships can convey a lot of real-world benefits.”  She also says it’s completely normal to feel upset when a character we’ve come to know dies or when a series comes to an end. 

It may help to turn your attention to another activity for a while (exercise, go out with friends, be creative and make something), to discuss the books or movies or TV show with other fans, or to pick up a new book or DVD. 

While we don’t have an Avengers or Game of Thrones support group here at the library (hmm, there’s a fun thought…), we do have many science fiction and fantasy books and DVDs here to help you find something new.

Mark Lawrence’s trilogy Book of the Ancestor has just come to a conclusion with Holy Sister.  This epic fantasy series tells the story of a young girl, trained by an arcane order of nuns, who grows into a fierce warrior.  One reviewer after another has praised the world building Lawrence did in this series.  The first two books are Red Sister and Grey Sister.  We have all three at the library.

Myke Cole is two novels into his Sacred Throne trilogy. Our library has both: The Armored Saint and The Queen of Crows.  The third will be published this fall.  Another epic fantasy series, this one features Heloise, a young girl who opposes the tyrannical Order after witnessing their slaughter of innocent people.  Although this sounds like a familiar formula, reviews say the author goes in inventive directions.

The Litchfield Library also has these new sci fi/fantasy novels:

• a new novel in the Planetfall series by Emma Newman, Atlas Alone; 
• a new Invisible Library novel by Genevieve Cogman, The Mortal Word; 
• the first novel in the Chronicles of Ghadid series by K.A. Doore, The Perfect Assassin; and 
• the second novel of the Ascendant series by K. Arsenault Rivera, The Phoenix Empress.

In addition, our library always has superhero, fantasy, and science fiction movies.  Some of the newest are Aquaman, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, The Kid Who Would Be King, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and Mary Poppins Returns.

As Mary Poppins would say, “With every job when it’s complete, there is a sense of bittersweet.”  If the magic of a story has worked on you, be glad that it had the power to capture your heart and your imagination.

Thanksgiving Movies at the Library

Library column for 11/21/18

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

“Come, ye thankful people, come, Raise the song of harvest-home; All is safely gathered in, Ere the winter storms begin.”  This Thanksgiving hymn by Henry Alford was written in 1844, but here in rural Minnesota we still understand the importance of bringing in the harvest before winter begins.  My neighbors were working hard at that in the little bit of warm weather we had lately.

The Litchfield Library, along with all Pioneerland libraries, will be closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving.  We’ll be open normal hours the rest of the week.  As you gather with family and friends, or as you have a quiet day at home, perhaps you’d like to have a Thanksgiving movie on hand to watch after you’re done eating turkey.  There are a number of movies in the Litchfield Library collection that have some connection to the holiday.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is the obvious choice if you have children in the house.  Not as good as A Charlie Brown Christmas or It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, this 25-minute TV special from 1973 is still fun.  Charlie Brown has a predicament: what to do when his pushy friend Peppermint Patty invites herself and others to his house for Thanksgiving dinner, even though his family is going to be leaving for his grandmother’s house?  Snoopy saves the day with an assortment of snacks served on the ping-pong table.  To be like Charlie Brown, my family usually eats popcorn, pretzels, toast, and jelly beans on Thanksgiving night, a tradition we started when my kids were little.

Intended for a bit older audience than Charlie Brown, Pieces of April is a 2003 movie about a free-spirited 21-year-old attempting to make Thanksgiving dinner for her estranged family.  Her parents, siblings, and grandma drive to New York City from suburban Pennsylvania while April discovers her oven doesn’t work, and she turns to her eccentric neighbors for help.  Katie Holmes stars in this comedy about family dysfunction; critics say it’s endearing, if a little edgy.

Holiday Inn is one of those 1940s classics: Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, and music by Irving Berlin.  A couple of friends who have left show business run an inn that is open only on holidays – a perfect vehicle for a movie full of holiday-themed musical numbers.  There is a Thanksgiving holiday in the movie, and the Christmas scenes include the song “White Christmas,” so you can start to get in that holiday spirit, as well.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop isn’t a favorite of movie critics, but you might get some laughs out of it anyway.  Kevin James stars in a story about a New Jersey security guard who defends a mall from a group of organized criminals who take shoppers hostage on Black Friday.

Do you watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thanksgiving morning?  The movie Miracle on 34th Street begins with the parade, where the actor playing Santa is discovered to be drunk and is switched with a very popular replacement.  The replacement is then hired to work as Santa in the store, but things take a turn when he claims to be the real Santa Claus.  The 1947 version, starring Maureen O’Hara and Natalie Wood, won three Oscars.

I am thankful for all of the library users and supporters in our area who help make our library a hub of the community. I wish you and yours a peaceful and bountiful Thanksgiving Day. 

DVDs for the Dog Days of Summer

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

I hope you’ve been out enjoying this lovely summer weather.  It’s bound to get hot again, though, and sometimes it’s nice to lie around indoors and watch a movie or a TV series.  The Litchfield library has a number of new DVDs for you to check out in the dog days of August.

Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert was aired on NBC on Easter Sunday, and now it’s on DVD.  It has been nominated for thirteen Emmy awards.  This was a live, concert-like version of the musical, with an enthusiastic audience that helped add to the show’s theme of celebrity.  Brandon Victor Dixon gave an exceptional performance as Judas, showing his stage prowess in both acting and singing. Sara Bareilles was also outstanding as Mary Magdalene.  John Legend’s acting disappointed some viewers, but the pop singer certainly sang it well.  If you like musicals but can’t stand to watch the dated 1973 movie version (I've tried - I just can't), I’d encourage you to try watching this one.  My daughters and I greatly enjoyed it, and now I listen to the soundtrack regularly.

The Magicians is a fantasy television show based on the book series by Lev Grossman.  It airs on Syfy.  Our library just added the third season, but you can start at the beginning since we have all three.  The concept is as if Hogwarts from the Harry Potter books were a college, with all of the rowdy behavior that can go along with that.  Quentin is an ordinary grad student who is a lifelong fan of a series of books that bear a strong resemblance to the Chronicles of Narnia, and when he is accepted to the secret, magical Brakebills University, he discovers how real (and dangerous) those books are.  Despite the echoes of Narnia and Harry Potter, this is definitely a show for adults who don’t mind an edgy story.

Ready Player One is the movie adaptation of the sci fi novel by Ernest Cline.  In the near future, the world is a bleak place, so people spend much of their time in the virtual world called the OASIS.  When the creator of OASIS dies, he leaves behind clues to a puzzle, and the person who solves it will inherit his fortune and control of the OASIS.  Poverty-stricken orphan Wade attempts to beat the corporate forces also trying for the prize, while he connects with others in the virtual world.  When I watched this movie, I was afraid at the beginning that it was only going to be about playing video games, which I don’t do.  But the plot is broader and more entertaining than that, although the movie is as fast-paced and visually-busy as a video game. 

Chappaquiddick is a new movie about an infamous event in the life of Ted Kennedy: the drowning of political strategist Mary Jo Kopechne that happened when Kennedy drove off a bridge in 1969.  Based on accounts documented in the investigation of Kopechne’s death, the movie examines not only the events but the people involved.  Critics mostly liked it as a character study and a look at how powerful people influence public opinion.

Other new DVDs  you can check out at the Litchfield library include Final Portrait, a Geoffrey Rush movie about a portrait artist in the ‘60s, Civilizations, a PBS documentary series about the history of art, Wes Anderson’s  stop-motion animated Isle of Dogs about a group of quarantined dogs, and the popular religious film, Paul, Apostle of Christ.  

Find a New Perspective with Documentaries

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

For the past couple of years, we’ve shelved the nonfiction DVDs with the nonfiction books at the Litchfield Library.  It was partly because of shelf space and partly an experiment to see if it would work better for people to find both books and DVDs about a subject together on the shelf. 

In that time, we’ve learned that most people who like to watch documentaries have said they’d rather browse those DVDs in one spot.   So I cleared some shelf space, and you can now find the adult nonfiction DVDs at the end of the last nonfiction shelf, within view of the rest of the DVD collection. 

The children’s DVDs are still on the kids’ side of the library, even some nature documentaries, so don’t forget to check over there for things like Disneynature movies.  We also display the newest DVDs of all types on the first shelf of the main DVD section, so new documentaries are featured there, too.

And there are some new documentaries at the library to check out!  We have the Oscar-nominated movie Last Men in Aleppo on order.  It will be released on DVD this week.  This documentary follows three men in the internationally-recognized White Helmets, an organization of ordinary citizens who function as volunteer first responders in the Syrian civil war.  Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their selfless efforts, these civilians carry out search-and-rescue operations to save as many lives as they can.  With footage of the war in Syria, this film puts human faces on a conflict that’s difficult for many of us to grasp. 

Another new DVD we will be receiving soon is called Reclaiming Life: Faith, Hope, and Suicide Loss.  Produced by Christian publishing house Paraclete Press, this video aims to offer hope to people who have lost loved ones to suicide.  Kay Warren, the co-founder of Saddleback Church with her husband Rick, is one of the featured speakers on the DVD; their 27-year-old son committed suicide in 2013.  The other speakers are author and Roman Catholic priest Ronald Rolheiser, and Marjorie Antus, a writer and mental illness advocate who lost her teenage daughter to suicide in 1995. 

The Oscar-nominated documentary Abacus: Small Enough toJail is available now.  A small financial institution called Abacus was the only U.S. bank to face criminal charges from the 2008 mortgage crisis.  The Chinese immigrant Sung family owned Abacus Federal Savings in Chinatown in New York.  They didn’t deal in subprime mortgages or mortgage-backed securities, the things that got large banks and the economy in trouble.  They had a loan officer who did some illegal things with mortgages that were hard for others to notice because he spoke an unusual dialect and his customers often made cash transactions; when the managers turned him in, they were indicted.   Drawing parallels to It’s a Wonderful Life, the bank founder’s favorite movie, reviewers say this film is far more interesting to watch than you might guess - and that it will make you root for a bank.

Do you enjoy watching cat videos?  A step up from that is the sweet documentary Kedi, a Turkish film about the stray cats of Istanbul.  In this city, cats have always been somewhere between domesticated and feral, wandering as they choose into the lives of people.  If you look at the cast list of this movie, it’s nothing but eight cats.

If you’d like to learn a little something while you watch TV, take a look at the library’s nonfiction DVD section – now easier to browse than ever. 

New Sandford novel tops the library's "bestseller" list for 2017

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

What have your neighbors been reading?  In 2017, customers in Pioneerland Library System really liked their thrillers, especially books by John Sandford, John Grisham and James Patterson.  They also checked out some of the most popular nonfiction books in the country.  Beyond books, they sought out kids’ movies, plus some mobile technology.

The most popular book in our library system in the past year was Golden Prey by John Sandford.  Sandford, whose real name is John Camp, is an Iowa native who worked for the Pioneer Press from 1978 to 1990.  Minnesotans have counted him as one of our own ever since, even though he currently lives in New Mexico and Wisconsin.  Golden Prey is the 27^th book in the bestselling Prey series, featuring law enforcement officer Lucas Davenport.

The rest of the top ten fiction titles are If Not for You by Debbie Macomber, Camino Island by John Grisham, One Perfect Lie by Lisa Scottoline, 16^th Seduction by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro, Escape Clause by John Sandford, A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, The Whistler by John Grisham, The Black Book by James Patterson and David Ellis, and Night School by Lee Child.  That’s two appearances each by Sandford, Grisham, and Patterson!

The most popular nonfiction book in our library system was Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance.  This book about a rural family in poverty has been a bestseller nationwide for the past year and a half.  Many people say it’s an important book to read to understand the crisis among white working class Americans.

The other books in the nonfiction top ten were Sundown at Sunrise by Marty Seifert, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, The Magnolia Story by Chip and Joanna Gaines, Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, Killing the Rising Sun by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman, Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, and The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown.  Three of these have been made into movies in the past year or so, which always makes people more interested in the books.

It’s a little funny to say, since we’re talking about libraries, but some movies have been even more popular than these books.  It helps that movies can only go out for a week, compared to two or four weeks at a time for books; it allows them to be checked out more times in a year.  The most popular item to check out in Pioneerland libraries (other than an unusual one I’ll explain more about later) was the movie Trolls.  Featuring the ugly troll dolls that kids all had in the ‘70s, this animated adventure appeals to the whole family. 

The other movies that beat out the top books were The Secret Life of Pets, Hidden Figures, Moana, Sing, The Girl on theTrain, and A Dog’s Purpose.  Everything on this list is either an animated family film or a movie based on a book.

And the number one item to check out in Pioneerland last year?  Technology.  The laptops and iPads that can be checked out for use inside the libraries were our “top sellers.”  At Litchfield, the laptops are much more popular than the iPad we have available to check out, but in some libraries customers really like the iPads.  It makes sense that these devices could have the highest checkout numbers of all, since multiple people can check these out in one day, using them for an hour or two before returning them.   

If you want to see if you like the things your neighbors are interested in, stop at the library to check out or order any of these popular items.

Big, beguiling, epic movies popular at the library

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

DVDs are extremely popular at the library.  In September, 861 DVDs were checked out at the Litchfield library, which amounts to roughly twenty percent of the items checked out that month.  We carry a mixture of popular movies, art films, classics, documentaries, television series, and children’s DVDs.  Every month there are new additions.

The Beguiled is a new drama based on the novel by Thomas Cullinan.  A 1971 movie by the same name, starring Clint Eastwood, was also based on this novel.  The 2017 version was directed by Sofia Coppola and stars Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, and Kirsten Dunst.  A wounded Union soldier is taken in by the headmistress of an all-girls school in Virginia, where he romances each of the women with unexpected consequences.  Reviewers say it’s quite different from the Clint Eastwood version, with a restrained approach to the tension.  Coppola won the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival for this film.

Also starring Nicole Kidman, the HBO miniseries Big Little Lies won eight Emmy awards last month including Outstanding Limited Series.  The miniseries is based on the bestselling novel by Australian author Liane Moriarty.  Three mothers of first graders with seemingly perfect lives all have secrets, and when someone dies at a school event, was it an accident or murder?  This darkly comic drama also stars Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, and Alexander Skarsgård.

The Big Sick was an unexpected hit this year.  Pakistani-American comedian Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily V. Gordon turned the true story of their romance into the script for this romantic comedy, and Nanjiani stars.  Kumail and Emily fall in love but he won’t commit because his very traditional family wouldn’t approve.  Then Emily falls seriously ill and is put into a medically-induced coma, and Kumail has to deal with Emily’s parents, played by Ray Romano and Holly Hunter, whom he has never met.  Audiences loved this for being a fresh take on a rom-com, both funny and heartwarming. 

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is an animated film based on the tremendously popular book series by Dav Pilkey.  Two prank-loving best friends hypnotize their angry principal and make him believe he’s Captain Underpants, an enthusiastic and dimwitted superhero they’ve created.  The twelve-book series began in 1997 and concluded in 2015, and kids have continued to be enthusiastic about reading the silly, potty-humor-filled stories.  Kevin Hart stars as George, one of the young friends.  Reviewers say parents will be as entertained by this one as the kids are.

The indie film Certain Women tells three stories of women in rural Montana, played by Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, and Kristen Stewart.  One is a lawyer who deals with sexism and a hostage situation.  The second is a wife and mother planning her dream home without the support of her family.  And the third is a new teacher of evening classes for adults who befriends a ranch hand.  This is a very quiet, subtle movie about ordinary lives.

Other recent additions include the Disney Channel movies Descendants and Descendants 2, the drama A Ghost Story, the Sam Elliott comedy The Hero, and the Oprah/HBO movie The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  If you’re interested in some of these, stop in to check the new-DVD section of the library, or place a hold through the library’s online catalog.  

Family movies for summer vacation

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

The big push in libraries in the summertime is the summer reading program for kids.  We really want kids to keep reading regularly over the summer so that they don’t lose ground by the time school starts in the fall.  But we know that families also like to relax in front of the TV together sometimes on these hot summer days.  Our library has some recent DVD additions that your family may want to check out.

Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast is a beautiful reimagining of their animated classic.  Emma Watson and Dan Stevens star as Belle and her beast, with extensive CGI animation making the enchanted household objects come alive.  New songs are included along with the original songs from the 1991 version, but this isn’t a film adaptation of the stage musical, which is also based on the animated movie.  My daughters and I loved this movie so much more than we expected to, but we also know people who didn’t really like it.  See for yourself by checking it out from the library, but be warned that it’s in high demand.

Dark Horse is a Welsh documentary that the website Common Sense Media recommends for families and that Rotten Tomatoes gives a 97% positive rating.  It’s an inspiring true story of a group of poor workers in a small town in Wales who pooled their money to breed and train a racehorse, entering a world usually open only to the wealthy and high-class.  It’s an old-fashioned tale of beating the odds, especially appealing for horse lovers, but really a general crowd-pleaser. 

The Eagle Huntress is another documentary that can give people of all ages a glimpse at another part of the world.  The film follows a 13-year-old girl in Mongolia as she trains to become the first female eagle hunter in twelve generations of her family.  If you enjoy falconry or girl-power stories, this highly-rated movie may be for you.  Daisy Ridley (Rey in the new Star Wars series) narrates.

 Planet Earth II is the new sequel to the BBC documentary made in 2006.  This also has Common Sense Media’s stamp of approval for families, and an amazing 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating.  Drone technology plus improvements in cameras in the years since the original have made the visuals even more stunning.  The DVD set includes six episodes covering different types of habitat, with an overall focus on environmentalism.

 Fuller House is the sequel to the ‘80s-‘90s sitcom Full House.  It’s a Netflix show, but we have it on DVD.   Almost the entire cast came back to reprise their roles, with DJ Tanner-Fuller now raising her kids in her childhood home with the help of two hapless female roommates.  Heavy on nostalgia, the thirteen-episode season is recommended for ages ten and up.

I’m looking forward to watching The Lego Batman Movie once it lands on the shelf at the Litchfield Library, but it’s been too popular to sit there yet.  This is a sequel to “The Lego Movie,” which was very fun and extremely popular with all ages.  Batman as played by Will Arnett was a strong supporting character in that first movie, and he stars in this new one, learning that he needs to work with others if he’s going to save Gotham City. 

Whether you want to go more educational or more toward pure entertainment, these movies can appeal to the whole family.  Litchfield Library has over 2000 DVDs available to check out, and many more are available to order from other libraries. Enjoy a free movie night by stopping at the library!

Chris Pine, cartoons, and true stories: Oscar nominated movies at the library

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Movie awards season gets people intrigued about some of the new movies available at the library.  Most often the top contenders come out at the end of the year as Oscar bait, so of course there are always quite a few that we don’t have yet.  Following are movies up for this year’s Academy Awards that you can check out now at the library.

Hell or High Water is a Western thriller set in Texas.  Chris Pine and Jeff Bridges star in this movie about brothers that get involved in a series of thefts in a desperate attempt to save their family farm from foreclosure.  Besides being up for a best picture Oscar, this film has nominations for original screenplay and editing, as well as a best supporting actor nomination for Bridges. 

Viggo Mortensen is nominated for best actor for the movie Captain Fantastic.  The title might make you guess it’s a superhero movie, but it is not.  Mortensen plays a devoted father who has been raising his six children in isolation in the woods, dedicating himself to turning them into extraordinary adults.  But when a tragedy happens, they are forced to leave the forest and interact with the outside world, which causes him to question what it means to be a parent. 

Florence Foster Jenkins is based on the true story of a New York heiress who believed she had a beautiful singing voice, when in reality she was terrible.  Her husband was determined to protect her from the truth, even when she staged a huge concert at Carnegie Hall in her pursuit of becoming a great opera singer.  Meryl Streep is nominated for a best actress Oscar for playing Florence, and the film is also nominated for best costume design.

Kubo and the Two Strings is nominated for best animated feature film.  Kubo is a young boy living a peaceful life in a seaside village until a spirit from the past comes after him.  To survive, Kubo must find a magical suit of armor once worn by his late father, a legendary samurai.  A cast including Charlize Theron, Ralph Fiennes, Matthew McConaughey, and George Takei voice the characters.

Also nominated for best animated feature, Zootopia tells the story of the first bunny cop in a city of anthropomorphic animals.  The tougher animals don’t take Officer Judy Hopps seriously, but she befriends a scam-artist fox in order to solve a case that involves top levels of Zootopia’s government.  This cast includes Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, and Idris Elba. 

A Man Called Ove is nominated for best foreign language film.  Based on the bestselling book by the same name, this Swedish film features a grumpy old man who spends his time enforcing neighborhood rules, visiting his wife’s grave, and giving up on life until a young family moves in next door.  This movie is also nominated for the makeup and hairstyling award. 

Also nominated for makeup and hairstyling is Star Trek:Beyond.  Following the rebooted adventures of Captain Kirk as played by Chris Pine, this movie finds the crew of the starship Enterprise exploring uncharted space and finding a new enemy that endangers the Federation.  I thought that the best scene of this movie involved some “classical” music as a weapon.

Among other nominated movies the Litchfield library currently offers are Suicide Squad, the DC Comics antihero movie; Hail, Caesar!, the Coen brothers send-up of the golden era of Hollywood, starring George Clooney; Sully, the Tom Hanks movie about the “Miracle on the Hudson” jet landing; Disney’s live-action The Jungle Book; and the offbeat dystopian film The Lobster. 

My favorite Oscar-nominated movie this year is Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.  I’m sure many of you will enjoy that movie and others coming out on DVD later this year when we add them to the library’s collection.  

Cool movies for hot days

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

If the hot weather is sapping your energy, check out some of Litchfield Library’s new DVDs for some entertainment while you take it easy.  Some of the ones I’ll tell you about are new releases, and some are just new to our library’s collection.

This summer has brought Independence Day: Resurgence and a reboot of Ghostbusters to theaters.  We have recently gotten the original Ghostbusters and Independence Day on DVD at our library.  Rotten Tomatoes is a website that pulls together published reviews from many, many critics and gives movies a rating based on the percentage of positive reviews.  The original Independence Day from 1996 has about a 60% positive rating, while the new sequel is at only about 30%. I thoroughly enjoyed Independence Day back when it was in the theaters, but when I watched it again with my kids recently, it didn’t seem as wonderful.  My girls saw it as an inferior variation on the Star Wars story, an opinion I can agree with.  I haven’t watched the new one.

The original Ghostbusters from 1984 has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 97%, which is impressive. Based on a viewing at my house, I suspect kids today don’t see it as positively as we did back in the ‘80s.  However, adult fans still enjoy it.  The new version in theaters has about a 70% positive rating.  I’m looking forward to watching it at some point, and the library will get it once it’s on DVD.

The new movie Race has about a 60% positive rating from Rotten Tomatoes.  It tells the story of Jesse Owens’ path to the Olympics in Nazi Germany and his record-breaking accomplishments there.  I wanted to watch it especially because of the character Rudy’s enthusiasm for Jesse Owens in the novel The Book Thief.  I really didn’t know enough about Owens, and I enjoyed learning his story through an inspiring movie.  Some of the movie’s subplots are fairly weak, but the main storyline is interesting, and Stephan James is good as Owens. It’s a straightforward historical biography, and many people enjoy those, as I do.

The library now has all of the seasons of the television comedy Parks and Recreation.  The creator and star Amy Poehler won a Golden Globe for her performance on the show, and the series has been nominated for Emmys many times.  I wondered what all of the fuss was about, so my husband and I started watching it recently. It is wacky, but once we got used to the humor we’ve enjoyed it.  I’d read that the first season isn’t the best but it’s short, so stick with it; I think that’s a good assessment.  Nick Offerman and Chris Pratt are especially funny as part of a group involved with city government. 

I’ve been hearing good things about Zootopia, the new animated Disney movie.  Rotten Tomatoes agrees with what I’ve heard; the approval rating is a whopping 98%.  The movie is a mystery featuring a rabbit who’s a rookie cop and a fox who’s a con artist; they dress and act like humans.  Reviewers say it appeals to kids and adults on different levels, with smart writing and a good message about being who you want to be, not what others expect you to be. 

Some of our other new DVDs include 10 Cloverfield Lane, 45 Years, The Divergent Series: Allegiant, Eddie the Eagle, Hail,Caesar!, and Hello, My Name is Doris.  If there’s a movie or television series you’re looking for that we don’t have, most of the time we can order it from somewhere in Minnesota.  Let us know if you need some help.