Tag: movies

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Recommendations staff favorites

Lots of Love

by Public Service Associate Juliana

I was fourteen years old and obsessed with Kurt Cobain. His song, “Heart-Shaped Box”, inspired me to dump my Valentine candy into a bag and use the empty heart-shaped box for safekeeping. Shiny red, about the size of a dinner plate, it was perfect for love notes, by which I mean literally notes of “Things I Love.”

As a teenager, I kept my eye out for lovely things, jotting them down on scrap paper to store in my heart-shaped box. A kid skipping up the sidewalk at the beginning of the school day. The underwater kiss scene in Romeo and Juliet. The end of art class when we cleaned our paintbrushes, colors swirling down the sink. 

I try to think of that box often, to be on the lookout for (more) things to love. It’s not hard when you work at a library – the fiction stacks, poetry collections, movies, CDs and soundtracks are chock-full of things to love. Films like This Beautiful Fantastic, The Photograph, Only Lovers Left Alive. Sufjan Stevens’ song, “The Mystery of Love”, featured in Call Me by Your Name, is so full of love you will weep. If it’s aching love you’re after, Jane Campion’s understated romantic drama, Bright Star, will surely deliver.

I personally like to linger over those perfect last lines of Nicole Krauss’ The History of Love: “He fell in love. It was his life.” 

Come by and ask us what we’ve fallen in love with lately. We have plenty of recommendations.

  • Romeo and Juliet dir. by Baz Luhrmann (1996) | dvd
  • This Beautiful Fantastic written & dir. by Simon Aboud (2017) |dvd
  • The Photograph written & dir. by Stella Meghie (2020) | dvd
  • Only Lovers Left Alive written & dir. by Jim Jarmusch (2014) |dvd
  • Call Me by Your Name dir. by Luca Guadagnino (2018)| dvd / soundtrack
  • Bright Star written & dir. by Jane Campion (2009) | dvd
  • The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (2005) | book
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staff favorites

Staff Favorites 2023!

Revel in the beauty of the All Staff “Reply All” email! I started an email thread asking for lists of favorite materials published in 2023. Collected below you will find a selection of standouts. There is so much variety here, truly something for everyone. Maybe you’ll feel inspired to try a new title or new author. Maybe this is the encouragement you need to read outside your typical genre! Have fun:) Read something you’ve heard lots about or nothing about. As a staff, we read a lot of fiction — psychological, gothic, horror, historical, romance, thriller. We read a lot in general — memoir, essays, picture books, and manga. You’ll also find our favorite movies, television, and music.

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Booklists Recommendations

Don’t Panic!

by Public Service Associate Hannah

September is National Preparedness Month — a time to prepare for natural and man-made disasters and emergencies. As a library user*, this PSA gets me thinking of all the thrilling apocalypse-type plot lines and thought-provoking stories on our shelves. But Hannah, you say, very real water, fire, and wind cause devastation every day. Where’s the entertainment in that?! Well, without making light of very real situations, think of these books and movies like you would visiting a haunted house or riding a roller coaster. A part of you is scared, and in my case screaming regret, while another part of you knows this is a manageable way to experience hardship and fear in a safe environment. Studies have even shown natural disaster films might teach us to take climate emergencies more seriously while providing tips for how to act in similar circumstances. Plus, it’s cathartic and rewarding to root for a protagonist as they seek shelter and find hope. 

Now set your solar flashlight out to charge as we dive into my disaster book and movie recommendations.

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Recommendations

International Cat Day

by Public Service Associate Autumn

In late 2015, several news outlets, including USA Today, announced scientists had determined that if housecats were larger, they would kill and eat their human companions. A nice, snappy headline, but strictly speaking not true. The actual study1 does not say that our beloved kitties are just waiting for their moment to strike. It just says that personality-wise, a cat is a cat, whether they’re hunting the laser you point for them or stalking prey across the African Savannah. This was probably obvious to anyone who has seen photos of jaguars, tigers or pumas sitting in cardboard boxes. Or this lion sitting in a wheelbarrow.  I should acknowledge here that I am not an ailurophile (a lover of cats). I have dogs. However, August 8th is International Cat Day, and we here at the library do not want to make our individual cat overlords unhappy by not acknowledging it. 

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Recommendations

Host a Spectacular Movie Night with Help from Your Library

by Public Service Associate Juliana

Image from Walt Disney Studios

Are you looking for a fun way to get together with family and friends? A movie night might be the ticket. Keep it simple with pizza, popcorn and candy, or create a menu based on your movie choice. You and your guests might enjoy it so much that you plan to do it on a regular basis.

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Recommendations

Books Becoming TV and Movies

by Public Service Associate Luke

Adapting books into movies and television is no new situation. Some of the greatest directors of all time have used the written form for story inspiration, such as Steven Spielberg adapting Jaws and the near entirety of Stanley Kubrick’s filmography. Sometimes the adaptation falls short, and others are changed with such near perfection they become cultural media juggernauts on their own, such as Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Television shows are also no stranger to creating new versions of novels, which has given us The Handmaid’s Tale, Daisy Jones and the Six, The Old Man, and so much more. It is almost difficult in this IP-driven media landscape to find a current movie or TV series that does not have some form of inception from literature.

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Recommendations staff favorites

Best of 2022: Movies

by Public Services Associate Luke

There were plenty of new releases and great films that came to theatres or found their home on the various streaming platforms, but I will be discussing a few of what I think are some of the best this year.

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Recommendations staff favorites

Let’s Get in the Holiday Spirit!

by Public Service Associate Juliana

I visited my sister in mid November and she already had the Christmas music playing. She said if she starts listening early enough she actually gets to enjoy holiday music. If she waits until after Thanksgiving, it’s December already, and there’s so much running around in December that the music just gets lost.

That same week, with the idea of starting early in order to savor, I began to collect lists and stories from staff of our favorite holiday films and traditions that surround them. The responses flooded in.  

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Programs Recommendations

Vampires In the Library!!

by Public Service Associate Juliana

//image still from official trailer, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

I was never a vampire reader, no Dracula, The Queen of the Damned, or Salem’s Lot. My preferred medium for vampire lore has always been film. With that said, I have always been drawn to movies based on books. Interview with the Vampire based on the Anne Rice novel and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust based on the novels written by Hideyuki Kikuchi, are two of my favorites. I recall staying home sick from school in the early 2000s watching Vampire Hunter D for the umpteenth time. I paused on a favorite scene and decided to draw the still, copying exactly what I saw on the screen. When I wrote about the experience in the journal I had to keep for art class, my teacher commented that I had “experienced the healing power of art.” I’ve returned to this thought many times throughout my life, the idea that art can heal. And now with that connective tissue, I forever equate vampire movies as a kind of magic medicine.

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Recommendations

Favorite Foreign Films

by Public Service Associate Luke

When Bong Joon-Ho, the Korean director, was accepting his Best Picture award for Parasite, he stated that the win would hopefully show audiences that they could get over the “one-inch barrier of subtitles” and have their worlds opened to entirely new stories and creative insight. Admittedly, I once had to overcome this hurdle myself, but ever since I began exploring foreign films, I have found some of my favorite movies. I learned how samurai movies created the “lone wolf” trope that American westerns popularized. I discovered darkly psychological thrillers that inspired the likes of Fincher, and I experienced the original martial arts movies that Tarantino has since emulated. Going international for your film viewing leads to some artistic, beautifully crafted, and deeply philosophical movies, with some of my personal favorites listed in this blog.

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