Blog Post
Bob Newhart, 'American Master'
by amy
Legendary comedian Bob Newhart has been selected as a subject for the PBS American Masters series in a program that will air Wednesday night. At 75, Newhart is still performing regularly and appearing in films (most recently, Elf). Check out some of his other work, notably, his trademark one-sided telephone skit in Hell Is For Heroes. Check out other American Master subjects in the Library's collection.
Blog Post
RIP Ret. General William Westmoreland
by amy
The death Monday of retired General William G. Westmoreland closes yet another chapter in the controversial Vietnam era of American history. Check out these three award-winning documentaries that touch on different facets of that period's military history, politics and personal loss: Fog of War, Regret to Inform and Hearts and Minds.
Blog Post
Here Come the ABC's
by amy
A host of animators and puppeteers illustrate the wonderfully wacky Here Come the ABC's, a recent children's DVD (also on CD) from the band They Might Be Giants. Highlights include the psychedelic "Pictures of Pandas Painting", "C is for Conifer," and "The Alphabet Lost and Found." TMBG, purveyors of whimsical experimental pop, celebrated their 20-year anniversary in 2002 with the release of their first children's CD, No!
Blog Post
Remaking Gene Wilder
by amy
Poor Gene Wilder: Two of his films, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) and The Producers (1968), are getting remade this year. First, Johnny Depp stars as Wonka in the upcoming Tim Burton film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which Burton is careful to claim is not a remake--but we know better), then Matthew Broderick takes on Leo Bloom in the upcoming film version of The Producers.
Fortunately, we'll always have Wilder's inimitable Dr. Frankenstein ("it's pronounced Fronkensteen!") in Young Frankenstein, and as for Wilder's performance as Willy Wonka--particularly his rendition of "Pure Imagination"--well, as Astaire says to Rogers, "They can't take that away from me...."
Blog Post
Triplets of Belleville
by amy
As this year's Tour de France heats up, check out the The Triplets of Belleville, the 2003 animated film about a bicyclist kidnapped from the Tour, a film Roger Ebert calls "creepy, eccentric, eerie, flaky, freaky, funky, grotesque, inscrutable, kinky, kooky, magical, oddball, spooky, uncanny, uncouth and unearthly....It's one of those movies where you keep banging your fist against your head to stop yourself from using the word 'meets,' as in Monsieur Hulot meets Tim Burton, or the Marquis de Sade meets Lance Armstrong."
Blog Post
Ingmar Bergman turns 87
by amy
Just when you thought it was safe to back to the movies, Ingmar Bergman, the great Swedish film director (Wild Strawberries, left, Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal) is back with a new film (actually it was shot years ago, but never mind) Saraband, a sort of follow-up to his 1972 Scenes From a Marriage.
Today Salon.com considers the relevance of the soon-to-be (on Thursday) 87-year old director...
"The new art-house audience has been nurtured on a pop-culture smorgasbord of music videos, '70s and '80s sitcoms, horror movies and mock-serious cartoons....Bergman's demanding and often painful dramas -- stemming, as they do, from Strindberg, Sartre and the A-bomb, from the 20th century's existential and spiritual crisis -- are now dreaded as much as respected."
Meanwhile, TIME magazine reviewer, Richard Corliss, an unapologetic Bergman fan, talks with Saraband star, Liv Ullman, about her life with Bergman.
Blog Post
The Murder of Emmett Till
by amy
It's been 50 years since the brutal murder of Emmett Louis Till, a fourteen-year-old black Chicago youth who was slain in Money, Mississippi, in 1955. On July 14, the Library will hold a screening and discussion of the PBS American Experience documentary The Murder of Emmett Till. More library materials on Emmett Till.
Blog Post
New from PBS
by amy
Check out one of PBS' most popular current titles, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, a documentary by Ken Burns (Civil War) about the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World.
Visit the PBS website for more information.
Blog Post
New from the Criterion Collection
by amy
Some of the best suspense sequences in cinema history are featured in Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1952 film Wages of Fear, starring Yves Montand. In this recent addition to the Library's Criterion Collection, four desperate men attempt a suicidal mission to transport two truck-loads of nitro-glycerine 300 miles down a hazardous road in South America.
Other recently added Criterion titles include Touchez Pas Au Grisbi and Casque D'Or">Casque">Casque D'Or.