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.

The language of music

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

In 1835, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, “Music is the universal language of mankind.”  In a music review written 55 years later, George Bernard Shaw said, “Though music be a universal language, it is spoken with all sorts of accents.”  Certainly music comes in such a vast variety, and there are types that are easier and more challenging for each of us to listen to.

The big winner at the Grammys recently was Billie Eilish, who won best new artist plus the awards for album, song, record, pop vocal album, and pop solo performance.  I like to stay current on pop music, but I have to admit I don’t understand the 18-year-old’s style, which The Atlantic describes as “whispery goth pop.”  But of course, music has always evolved by pushing the boundaries and becoming incomprehensible to most middle-aged people.  If you’d like to listen to Eilish’s album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? you can borrow it from Cosmos Library, one of the four libraries I order materials for.

Litchfield Library has Father of the Bride by the band Vampire Weekend, the winner of the Grammy for alternative music album.  It was also nominated for best album, losing to Billie Eilish.  This is the second alternative music album award the group has won, after Modern Vampires of the City in 2013.

If country music is more your speed, you can check out Ride Me Back Home, Willie Nelson’s latest album, at Litchfield Library.  Nelson won the Grammy last Sunday for best country solo performance for the song “Ride Me Back Home,” which is on the album.  This is the country music legend’s tenth Grammy win; his first was in 1975.

Another of this year’s awards for country music went to the duo Dan + Shay: best country duo/group performance for the song “Speechless.”  Dassel Library has the CD the song appears on, the self-titled album Dan + Shay, which you can order to have picked up in any public library. 

Over at Dassel Library, you can also check out the soundtrack album for A Star is Born featuring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.  This album won the Grammy for best compilation soundtrack for visual media.  The song “Shallow” from this movie was a huge hit for most of last year. 

Litchfield Library also has new books about music.   Rob Kapilow is a composer, a conductor, and a host of an NPR music program.  His new book Listening for America: Inside the Great American Songbook from Gershwin to Sondheim explores the work of eight musical theater composers: Kern, Porter, Gershwin, Arlen, Berlin, Rodgers, Bernstein, and Sondheim.  He celebrates their songs while also analyzing the issues of race, immigration, sexuality, and cultural appropriation in them that reflect America in the eras in which they were composed.

For a broader look at music and culture over time, pick up the book Music: A Subversive History by Ted Gioia.  The author analyzes 4000 years of Western musical history from the perspective of slaves, revolutionaries, and common people, rather than focusing on the mainstream musicians who were the most successful and recognizable.  Booklist magazine calls it “a sweeping and enthralling account of music as an agency of human change.”

Whether we’re talking about what makes a song exceptional or we’re just singing along for fun, we can enjoy music in a variety of ways.  I hope the things you check out at the library will put a song in your heart.

Outstanding books by Minnesota authors

By Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

The 2018 Minnesota Book Awards were presented on April 21. This was the 30^th annual awards ceremony, which is sponsored by the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library.  These awards celebrate Minnesota authors and illustrators.

This year’s award for children’s literature went to A Different Pond by Bao Phi.  This picture book tells a story from Phi’s childhood.  He would wake up early with his father to fish in a Minneapolis pond before his father went to work, as a way to help feed their family, and his father would tell him about a different pond he used to go to in Vietnam.  “A Different Pond” was also a Caldecott Honor Book this year, and we have it at the Litchfield Library.

The award for genre fiction went to The End of Temperance Dare by Wendy Webb.  This Gothic thriller is set in a former tuberculosis sanatorium, now turned into an artists’ retreat.  The new director is expecting a peaceful change from her old job as a crime reporter, but a sense of impending doom strikes her as soon as she arrives on the grounds, and she begins to suspect that the artists have been gathered there for a sinister purpose.  The Litchfield Library also has a copy of this novel.

Linda LeGarde Grover won the award for memoir and creative nonfiction with Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year. Onigamiising is the Ojibwe name for Duluth, “the place of the small portage.”  Grover is an Ojibwe elder and a professor at the University of Minnesota – Duluth.  The essays in this collection originally were published as monthly columns in the Duluth Budgeteer newspaper, and they are reflections on life through the seasons of the year.  Litchfield Library has this memoir.

The novel and short story award went to What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah.  This is a collection of fantastical short stories about the ties between family members, lovers, and friends, and between them and the places they call home.  Arimah has previously won awards for her stories in magazines; this is her first book, and it has also won a number of honors.  The Litchfield Library owns a copy.

The award for poetry went to Heid E. Erdrich for Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media.  Heid is a professor at Augsburg University, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, and the sister of novelist Louise Erdrich.  This is her second book of poetry to win the Minnesota Book Award.  Communication and technology are the themes of this collection, which is on order for the Litchfield Library.

Andrea Swensson is the host of The Local Show on the radio station The Current.  She won this year’s award for Minnesota Nonfiction with Got to Be Something Here: The Rise of the Minneapolis Sound.  This book explores the development of R&B, funk, and soul in the Twin Cities, starting with 1958, the year Prince was born.  This book is available at the Dassel and Glencoe libraries and can be ordered by our patrons.

The other winning books were The End of the Wild by Nicole Helget (middle grade literature), The Exo Project by Andrew DeYoung (young adult literature), and The First and Only Book of Sack: 36 Years of Cartoons for the Star Tribune by Steve Sack (general nonfiction).  Read Minnesotan!

Jan's Hits and Misses 2018

By Jan Pease

Welcome to the annual “Jan’s hits and misses,” where I report on our purchase of  the books that received  major awards  at the Midwinter Conference  of the American Library Association. In 2014 a grassroots campaign for diverse books erupted, and I think it affected the 2018 awards. If you’re interested in reading about this movement, search “We Need Diverse Books" online.
   

Disclaimer alert: I purchase children’s and young adult books for Litchfield, Dassel, Grove City and Cosmos.  There are 32 member libraries in Pioneerland Library Association.  If I order for 4 out of the 32, shouldn’t that make it more likely that Meeker County libraries would have most of these important books?

So, here we go!  The John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding
contribution to children’s literature was given to “Hello, Universe,” by Erin Entrada Kelly.  This is a book with quirky, diverse characters and an exciting plot.  It is one of a handful of books that received 95% 5-star reviews at amazon.com.   Dassel and Grove City have this book, along with seven other Pioneerland Library System libraries.

The Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children was given to “Wolf in the Snow,” illustrated and written by Matthew Cordell.  Litchfield, Dassel, Cosmos and three other PLS libraries own this title. This book is nearly wordless, and it has won many awards.

 

I should mention one of the honor books, “A Different Pond,” written by Bao Phi and illustrated by Thi Bui which, is owned by Litchfield, Dassel, Grove City, Cosmos, and four other PLS libraries.  This book is notable for having been published by Capstone, a Minnesota company.

 

I’m always interested in the Robert F Sibert Informational Book Award for most distinguished informational book for children.  This year the award went to “Twelve Days in May: Freedom Ride 1961,” by Larry Dane Brimner.  None of the PLS libraries purchased this title.

I never know which beginning reader titles will be awarded the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award.  I don’t know how the judges pick one title over another.  The medal was given to “Charlie and Mouse,” by Laurel Snyder.  Grove City and six other PLS libraries purchased this book.  Two books which received the Geisel award, “I See a Cat,” by Paul Meisel, and “King & Kayla and the Case of the Missing Dog Treats,” by Dori Hillestad Butler were not ordered by any PLS libraries. 

One award that might not be as well known outside of library circles is the May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award.  It recognizes an author, critic, librarian, historian or teacher of children’s literature.  The recipient gives a lecture the following year. The 2019 May Hill Arbuthnot lecture will be delivered by Debbie Reese.  

“Dr. Reese is a longtime advocate for native representation and is a former teacher and university professor.  She earned her PhD in Education from the University of Illinois, where she also helped establish the Native American House and American Indian Studies program. Dr. Reese also holds an M.Ed. degree in Library and Information Science from San Jose State University.  She is tribally enrolled at Nambe Owingeh Pueblo in New Mexico. “ (Information from the American Library Association website.)

This award is well deserved.  I read Ms. Reese’s blog at least weekly and appreciate her perspective.

This book buyer has a lot of catching up to do.  We like to have the medal winners available to our  patrons.  I usually go down the list of honor books and include most of them.  Come in and read an award-winning book!

Cuddle up and watch a movie

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Do you go out with your sweetheart to celebrate this holiday, or do you avoid the crowds and stay in?  Or are you single and avoiding the holiday completely?  You can go out to the library first to stock up with DVDs to stay in for the evening.  A number of recent movies we have in the collection might be the entertainment you’re looking for tonight; these are all currently nominated for Oscars.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a funny sci-fi action movie, the sequel to “Guardians of the Galaxy” from 2014.  The team from the first movie, which includes a talking raccoon and a tree-like creature, travels through space as they try to find the identity of Peter Quill’s father.  I would say it doesn’t reach the level of inventive humor that the first movie did, but it’s still entertaining.  Marvel movies rarely disappoint as long as you like superheroes.

Kong: Skull Island is another sci-fi action movie, but with less humor, although it’s still fluff.  This is a King Kong origin story, featuring a team of explorers dropped onto a remote island in the early ‘70s.  The monster-movie plot may be a little silly, but the cinematography is quite beautiful.  The cast is strong, as well, with Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, and John C. Reilly in the group. 

Logan is another superhero film, but the polar opposite of Guardians of the Galaxy.  Part of the X-Men series, it’s very dark and serious.  If you’re looking for fun, this is not your superhero movie.  If you’re looking for excellent writing and acting, it is - as long as you don’t mind that it’s heavy.  People say it’s really a Western, which is a new spin on the superhero genre. 

Dunkirk is one of the big movies of the year, nominated for eight Oscars.  Christopher Nolan, who is known for the Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar, and Inception, wrote and directed the film. This one is about the evacuation of Allied troops from the French city of Dunkirk during World War II.  Because it’s nonlinear and without dialogue for stretches of the movie, it’s not everyone’s idea of a great war film, but it’s art.

Moving away from all the action movies, Victoria and Abdul is a gentle British movie.  Judi Dench stars as an elderly Queen Victoria, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a young Indian clerk named Abdul Karim.  The Queen is feeling restricted in her position, and the alliance the two of them form allows the queen to see the world in a new way.  The friendship apparently really happened, but the movie seems to have taken some artistic license to tell a good story. 

An animated movie for adults, Loving Vincent is a biography of Vincent van Gogh through his paintings.  In this first feature-length film created through oil-painted animation, a young man attempts to deliver van Gogh’s final letter and ends up learning about the artist’s final days.  The paintings and the characters that inhabit them tell the stories. 

I didn’t include any romances, did I?  We have those at the library, too, but we’re not really in an age of great romantic comedies or epic love stories, so you may have to look for something older.  To be honest, my husband and I rarely watch romantic movies together; we just look for something we both enjoy, like sci fi/fantasy or a funny TV series. 

While you’re at the library, take a chance on our Blind Date with a Book display near the front desk.  Each gift-wrapped book has a very brief description on the label, but you don’t see what you get until you check it out.  I hope you’ll find a book or movie to love this month!

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.  

Book award season

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Let’s talk book awards.  This past week brought us book awards big and small, with the Pulitzers and the Minnesota Book Awards, and our library has a number of them available for you to check out.

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  Although this book has gotten great reviews and has been up for other literary awards, not many people have heard of it.  A mixture of thriller and satire, this novel is described as smart and perspective-changing.  The narrator is a Viet Cong secret agent who evacuates with the last of the South Vietnamese flying out of Saigon.  He then continues to spy on a general and others as they start a new life in Los Angeles in the ‘70s. 

The Pulitzer for history went to Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T.J. Stiles.  This biography digs into who George Armstrong Custer was as a person, intense and full of contradictions.  The author focuses on how Custer lived on a frontier in a sense of the time period, uncomfortably navigating the major changes in society that came in the middle of the nineteenth century.  Expect to have your ideas about Custer challenged if you read this one.

The Minnesota Book Award for general nonfiction was awarded to No House to Call My Home: Love, Family, and Other Transgressions by Ryan Berg.  Berg was a caseworker in a group home for homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) teens in New York.  Twenty to forty percent of homeless teens in the United States are LGBTQ, mostly because of family conflict and often because their parents have forced them out of the house.  Berg attempts to find patterns in the stories of the kids he worked with, trying to figure out what would help them build healthy relationships and successful lives once they aged out of the foster care system.

Erin Hart’s The Grave Soul won the Minnesota Book Award for genre fiction.  This is the 23^rd book in her Jane Lawless mysteries series, which has been going since 1989.  Jane is a (fictional) Minneapolis restaurateur and private investigator.  In this installment, Jane is hired by a man who wonders if his girlfriend’s recurring nightmare about her mother being murdered is true, even though it doesn’t agree with her family’s account of how she died. 

The Minnesota Book Award for memoir and creative nonfiction went to Karen Babine for Water and What We Know: Following the Roots of a Northern Life.  Babine’s essays explore how the land affects the people who live on it, and how water is a part of human stories.

Minnesota Modern: Architecture and Life at Midcentury by Larry Millett won the Minnesota award given by the Minnesota Book Awards.  How’s that for enough uses of the name of our state?  Millett is known for books on Minnesota architecture, such as Lost Twin Cities and Once There Were Castles, as well as a series of novels about Sherlock Holmes in Minnesota.  “Minnesota Modern” explores houses and public buildings that were built between 1945 and the mid-1960s. 

The Litchfield Library has copies of all of these books, as well as There’s Something I Want You to Do by Charles Baxter, the winner of the Minnesota Book Award in the novel and short story category, and Red: A Crayon’s Story by Michael Hall, the winner in children’s literature.  Other Pulitzer Prize and Minnesota Book Award winners are available to order in our catalog.  Enjoy some of the best writing our nation and our state have to offer.

This year's best

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

The lists of the best books of 2015 have been coming out this month.  I love to compare the lists to our library’s collection, and this year we seem to have most of them.  I think it’s especially important to notice those books that are included on more than one list, because it’s all so subjective.  Following are some of the books that have made more than one best-of-2015 list that we have in the Litchfield Library collection.

The novel Did You Ever Have a Family was included on Library Journal’s and Amazon’s lists of the best books of the year.  This is the first novel from author Bill Clegg, although he has published two memoirs previously.   This book about a horrible family tragedy on the day of a wedding, and the aftermath, was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and widely praised.  It was also criticized by a few reviewers.  It appears that whether you appreciate the book depends on whether you want much of a plot, and whether you find the writing style profound or clichéd.  It is certainly a very dark and sad novel about loss. 

Between the World and Me is a memoir by Ta-Nehisi Coates, written as a letter to his teenage son.  It was included on at least four major lists of this year’s best, and it won the National Book Award for nonfiction.  It has also been a number one bestseller and in demand in our library system.  Coates writes about what it means to be black in America.  He addresses the legacy of slavery, tells stories about his growing-up years, and shares the development of his opinion that race is an artificial construct. Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff has been chosen by Amazon as its book of the year.  It was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction, and it is on other lists of the best of 2015.  This novel is a complex portrait of a marriage gone wrong, told by both parties.  The pair are glamorous, talented, and passionately in love, but not everything is as it appears. 

Erik Larson’s newest book is Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania.  It has been included on a couple of the major best-of lists this year, which is no surprise for a book by Larson, the bestselling author of The Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts.  This one is narrative nonfiction like the other two, telling a piece of history like a dramatic story instead of like a textbook.  You probably remember that the Lusitania was a passenger ship sunk by the Germans during World War I, but you probably don’t know the story like it is told in this book. 

H is for Hawk is a book that blends memoir and nature writing in a way that has reviewers lavishing praise on it, calling it “breathtaking,” “captivating,” and “dazzling.”  It has been included on a number of those year-end lists of the best books.  British author Helen MacDonald lost her father suddenly and turned to her love of falconry to deal with her grief.  She decided to train a dangerous type of bird, a goshawk, using The Once and Future King author T.H. White’s book The Goshawk to guide her.   National Geographic says it is “one of the most riveting encounters between a human being and an animal ever written.” 

When you’re trying to find something wonderful among the hundreds of thousands of traditional print books published each year (not counting self-published and e-books), these best-books lists can be a helpful way of finding something of quality.  So many books, so little time!

The new golden age of television

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Many people say we’re in a new golden age of television.  While this era is characterized by darker adult themes instead of the chipper, family-friendly offerings of the original golden age of the ‘50s, the quality of the writing, acting, and production values are very high.  This new burst of creativity is partly due to the wide variety of ways television shows are distributed.  Beyond broadcast and cable, there’s Netflix, Amazon, other streaming services, web-based series, and DVDs.  Television shows can now appeal to just a segment of the population and still be successful, because there are so many outlets. 

Because people can often watch at a time they choose, people tend to treat TV series like novels now.  If you’re dying of suspense because of how an episode ends, you can keep going, if you’re watching on DVD or a streaming service.  We call it “binge-watching,” but is it really different than not being able to put a book down, chapter after chapter? 

Our library offers many television shows on DVD, something that is especially valued by our rural residents who can’t get cable, high-speed internet, or sometimes even a strong broadcast television signal.  Besides, subscribing to every available television service would be awfully expensive.

One TV miniseries available at our library is HBO’s Olive Kitteridge, which is based on Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name.  The book is really a collection of related short stories about a small town in Maine, tied together by retired teacher Olive.  My book club at the library read this within the last couple of years and found plenty to talk about in this quietly profound book.

In the miniseries, Olive is played by Frances McDormand.  She just won the Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a limited series or movie.  Her co-stars Richard Jenkins and Bill Murray also won Emmys for lead actor and supporting actor, respectively, and the show won the Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries, as well as the awards for directing and writing. 

The Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series went to HBO’s Game of Thrones. This fantasy series is based on George R.R. Martin’s book series A Song of Ice and Fire.  Peter Dinklage won the supporting actor Emmy for playing Tyrion Lannister, and the show won the awards for writing and directing, among many others.  Unfortunately, the season that just won the awards won’t be available on DVD until March!  The library does have seasons one through four.

The release date for season four of Veep on DVD has not even been announced yet. Our library does have seasons one through three.  The fourth season just won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series, yet another win for HBO.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus won the lead actress Emmy for playing President Selina Meyer, Tony Hale won the supporting actor Emmy, and the show won the award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series.

Uzo Aduba won her second Emmy for playing Crazy Eyes on Orange is the New Black, a Netflix original series based on Piper Kerman’s memoir of the same name.  This time the series competed in the dramatic series category instead of comedy due to a change in Emmy rules.  The library has seasons one and two, but season three is not yet available on DVD.

The library also has the Emmy-winning TV movie Bessie and nonfiction series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, as well as the documentary Citizenfour, which won an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. 

As the sun starts going down a little earlier, bring home an interesting series or movie and enjoy the character development and complicated storylines that characterize the best of today’s television.  

Have some Mandatory Fun and Let It Go: Grammy winners at the library

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Another Grammy Awards program has come and gone, with as much craziness as ever.  I’m not here to talk about Kanye’s rudeness or Annie Lennox’s powerful performance, although those were among the few moments I actually watched.  I’d like to tell you about the Grammy-winning music you can check out at the library.

At Litchfield we have just two of the Grammy-winning albums, plus a movie.  Did you know they award a Grammy for best music film?  This year it went to 20 Feet from Stardom, a movie about backup singers.  It won the Oscar for best documentary last year.

One of the Grammy-winning albums at Litchfield is Mandatory Fun by Weird Al Yankovic, which won Best Comedy Album.  Weird Al was in top form again this year, with parodies of “Royals,” “Fancy,” and other big hits that were so much better when he mocked them.  In fact, even if you despise the song “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke, the parody “Word Crimes” by Weird Al is a highly entertaining grammar lesson, especially if you’re frustrated by the spelling and grammar you see online. 

The other Grammy-winning album in the Litchfield collection is the soundtrack from the movie Frozen.  It won awards for the best compilation soundtrack for visual media and for best song written for visual media, “Let It Go.”  If you haven’t heard that song, you’ve been living in a cave for the past year. 

The deluxe version of the soundtrack that our library owns includes songs that were written for the movie and recorded as demos by the songwriters, but that were discarded when the storyline changed.  Did you know there was going to be a prophecy about a ruler with a frozen heart, and that Elsa was going to be the bad guy? 

For some reason, most of the CDs I ordered that went on to win Grammys were for the Grove City library’s collection this year.  You can visit Grove City to check out Sam Smith’s In the Lonely Hour, or you can order it and pick it up at the Litchfield library.  This album won the Grammy for best pop vocal album, Sam Smith won the award for best new artist, and the song “Stay with Me” won Record of the Year and Song of the Year.  The young British singer-songwriter has a retro sound that has gotten him compared with Adele. 

Grove City also has the Beck album Morning Phase.  This album won awards for Best Rock Album and Album of the Year.  Beck is an experimental singer-songwriter who has been around for a couple of decades without ever becoming really mainstream, although he has had a hit or two and has won Grammy awards in the past.  Reviewers have described the album as a cohesive work of atmospheric folk-rock. 

The winner of the award for best traditional pop vocal album was Cheek to Cheek, a collaboration between Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga.  Grove City has this album, as well.  The pair may seem like an odd one, but they sang “The Lady is a Tramp” together on one of Tony’s previous albums, and the result was fantastic.  She has the pipes to sing the old standards, and the two get along well.  The album includes Cole Porter and Irving Berlin standards that could appeal to any generation.

Even more Grammy-winning CDs are available to order from libraries in our system.  Remember that it is illegal to download borrowed CDs to your computer, iPod, or phone.  But if you borrow a music CD from the library, you can find out if you like it enough to buy the songs for yourself.  Look for Litchfield’s music CDs next to the audiobooks and movies and Grove City's near the audiobooks and inspirational paperbacks.

And the Oscar goes to…

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

And the Oscar goes to…  Well, we don’t know yet, but the nominations are out.  So many of the Oscar contenders get released at the end of the year, and then we don’t have them available for you to check out while everyone’s talking about them.  But we do have several of the nominees that came out earlier in 2014.  Look for these in our library.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is nominated for best picture, cinematography, costume design, directing, film editing, makeup and hairstyling, musical score, production design, and original screenplay.  Ralph Fiennes stars as a concierge at a famous hotel in a fictional European country between the world wars.  The story involves the theft of a famous painting and the battle for a family fortune.  Director Wes Anderson has his followers, and it sounds like this dark comedy is as quirky and visually stylish as his work normally is.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 is a well-loved sequel nominated for best animated feature film.  Hiccup and his dragon Toothless explore new places and discover a hidden den of new dragons and a mysterious Dragon Rider.  People of all ages have enjoyed this exciting and emotional film.

Ida is a Polish film nominated for best cinematography as well as best foreign language film.  This movie tells the story of an orphan raised in a convent who is sent to meet her only living relative before she takes her vows to become a nun. She learns family secrets from the time of the Holocaust. This black and white film is set in the ‘60s.

Maleficent tells the villian’s side of the story for Sleeping Beauty, much like Wicked does for The Wizard of Oz.  Angelina Jolie plays the title character, who was a good person until she was betrayed and became bent on revenge.  Critics have praised Jolie’s performance, as well as the look of the film... if not much else.  It is nominated for best costume design.

Finding Vivian Maier is nominated for best documentary feature.  Maier was a mysterious nanny who is now considered one of the greatest street photographers of the 20^th century.  Her work of over 100,000 photographs was discovered after her death.  This film explores her life and her art.

Guardians of the Galaxy is nominated for makeup and hairstyling as well as visual effects.  Some critics have said that it would have been nice if the larger number of slots for best picture nominees would allow for critically-acclaimed popular movies like this one to be included.  Instead the Academy still likes to stick with typically Oscar-ish movies in the big categories and keep the fun ones in the technical categories.  This one is a crowd-pleaser.

Another very popular movie to be nominated is The Lego Movie.  However, it was only nominated for best original song.  It was expected to be a contender to win the award for best animated feature, and it isn’t even nominated in that category.  It’s a great movie to watch with the whole family, however, and you will be singing the song “Everything is Awesome” once you’re done watching it.

Our library also has Begin Again, nominated for best song; Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, nominated for visual effects; and X-Men: Days of Future Past, also nominated for visual effects.

If you’d like to see the movies that are being celebrated this year and decide for yourself which you think are best, stop in to check out one from this list.  We will be adding more of the nominees when they become available on DVD.

New video arrivals for summer

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Now that summer is starting, will you have more or less time for watching movies?  That probably depends on whether you do a lot of outside activities in the summer and whether the school year takes up your time.  If summer means more leisure time for you, stop in to the library to check out some of our new movies and television shows.

The third season of Call the Midwife is a new arrival expected any day now.  This popular BBC series is based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth.  She was a young midwife in the 1950s in a London convent which helped poor pregnant women.  We have seasons one and two in now.

I wondered why the movie About Time was so popular.  I found out that it’s from the creator of Love Actually, Notting Hill, and Four Weddings and a Funeral.  Love Actually has a particularly enthusiastic following.  If you’ve enjoyed these other British romantic comedies, you are likely to enjoy About Time.  In this one, the main character can travel through time.  Reviewers say that it has its faults, but that it is sweet, with themes of family, love, and loss.

American Hustle was nominated for ten Oscars but didn’t manage to win one.  It did win Golden Globes for best comedy or musical and best performances by Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence.  The movie is about the Abscam sting by the FBI in the late 1970s.  Critics loved it for its humor and characters.

A family movie, at least for older kids, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is the second installment of the movies based on Tolkien’s book.  We have the first, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as well.  The movie is full of constant action, sometimes preposterous but still entertaining.    Usually movie adaptations leave out so much from a book, but the Hobbit movies add extra material, since three movies are based on one short book.  My kids love these movies.  I would rather they’d been made into one great movie instead of three.

The classic TV comedy Gilligan’s Island is constantly getting checked out by young and old at our library.  I realized that we only have seasons one and two, so I recently ordered the third and final season.  Did you know that Gilligan’s Island only ran for three seasons?

 Little House on the Prairie is being re-released on DVD and Blu-Ray for the 40^th anniversary of the television show.  We have season one already, and season two is on its way.  I expect that we’ll continue to add seasons as they’re released on DVD.  I loved this show as a kid, but I would say the books are far better.  Isn’t that usually the way it goes?

Saving Mr. Banks tells the story of the Disney adaptation of P.L. Travers’ novel Mary Poppins.  Travers, played by Emma Thompson, resisted having Walt Disney, played by Tom Hanks, turn her beloved creation into a cheerful family film.  The movie swings between fun and very serious moments, as flashbacks show Travers’ difficult childhood.  You may be inspired to watch Mary Poppins afterward.

Other new arrivals at our library include August: Osage County, The Broken Circle Breakdown, and Enough Said.  Even if you find the newest DVDs checked out when you stop in, you can put a hold on them to get them another day, and we have a large selection of other movies and TV shows to choose from.