New and Featured DVDs for 12/17/13:

Come and check out these and some of the other new DVDs and materials (or at least new to us) added to our library collection…

FICTION:

Flight

War Horse

Midnight In Paris

The Ice Storm

Creature From The Black Lagoon

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Cloud Atlas

Sherlock, season 2

Howl’s Moving Castle

Pain & Gain

The Neverending Story

The Stepford Wives

Oblivion

Certified Copy

Now You See Me

The Squid And The Whale

Django Unchained

Ted

The Flowers Of War

The Shining

Tangled

The Black Hole

It

Take Shelter

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

Side Effects

Rango

Downton Abbey, season 3

Godzilla

Hereafter

The Dark Knight Rises

The Rock

My Fair Lady

Tiny Furniture

Identity Thief

NON-FICTION:

Afraid Of The Dark

The Creation Of The Computer

Stories We Tell

Thomas Jefferson

Jesse James

Brain Games

Jesus Camp

Latino Americans

Houdini

Herod’s Lost Tomb

Bob Dylan: No Direction Home

Yoga For Beginners With Desi Bartlett

Yoga For Weight Loss

Dance Off The Inches: Hip Hop Party

10 Minute Solution: Fat Blasting Dance Mix

Secrets Of Body Language

The Science Of Sex Appeal

What Will The Future Be Like?

The Fabric Of The Cosmos

The Medal Of Honor: The Stories Of Our Nation’s Most Celebrated Heroes

Wyatt Earp

Wanted: Billy The Kid, Dead Or Alive

Guns: The Evolution Of Firearms

Art & Copy

Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth

Bully

A Place At The Table

Mythbusters, Collection 2

American Teacher

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Please note that DVDs could be checked out between the time they end up on the blog and when you come to check them out. If you don’t see the items you’re looking for then please come up to the front desk and we’ll put your name on the reserve list for when the item returns.

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Previous New/Featured DVDs:

10/31/13.

10/24/13.

10/05/12.

06/28/12.

Previous New/Featured books:

11/12/2013.

10/25/13.

10/23/13.

10/21/13.

Reading material for 04/23/12.

Some reading material from around the internet:

RIP Dick Clark.

RIP Jonathan Frid, the original Barnabas Collins.

RIP Levon Helm, of The Band.

The next generation of Super Mario Bros.

A resignation letter set to the tune of Don McLean’s “American Pie.”

Don’t forget: Julian Assange has a TV show now.

The dangerous of the unknown that come with fast food.

NBA player’s girlfriend banned from sitting courtside.

Who is the Navy man lost at sea in the mysterious portrait at the Pentagon?

Did the Pulitzers snub fiction this year?

Could book publishing suffer the same fate as the comic book industry?

The most notorious literary party animals.

William Shakespeare and Vladimir Nakokov.

Paul De Filippo on Madeleine L’Engle.

David Foster Wallace on David Lynch.

10 beautiful literary box sets.

The animated version of James Thurber’s “The Unicorn In The Garden.”

from here.

Tupac Shakur is a hologram now, and other celebrities return from the dead, via technology.

Star Wars, as written by William Shakespeare.

The Onion AV Club interviews Brad Bird and Joss Whedon.

Nathan Fillion sets an expiration date on SPOILERS.

The lineup at Cannes this year.

Relationship secrets from sci fi and fantasy.

The story behind Fraiser‘s “Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs.”

Rare behind the scenes photos from Star Wars.

The science/history of treating depression.

The right way to sharpen a knife.

Virtual reality window shopping.

The woes of a first time home buyer.

Good workouts for the body that’s slightly past its prime.

Is it a myth that soda will dissolve your teeth?

from here.

The surreal graffiti left behind in an abandoned village in Belgium.

What does truth serum really reveal?

Bio-armor.

Why some people get angry when they get drunk.

The satire of Caligula.

How a shipwreck can two ways.

Is James Cameron looking to get into asteroid mining?

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Previous online reading material:

04/16/12.

04/09/12.

04/02/12.

03/26/12.

03/12/12.

More reading material.

Some reading material from around the internet:

John Titor, the man who told the internet that he had come from the future.

An archivist explains how to access veteran’s records.

The food we eat might control our genes.

The secret of Madame Tussaud’s success.

The strategies of a preschool teacher.

The 20 best video games of 2011.

Prince Phillip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth, is in the hospital with heart problems.

Where celebrities fall in the Uncanny Valley.

On Wikipedia, cultural patrimony, and historiography.

FX is developing a 1980s spy drama.

Kermit The Frog is a terrible boyfriend.

HBO canceling Bored To Death, Hung, and How To Make It In America, and is renewing Enlightened.

When it comes to the new Mission: Impossible movie, how tall is everyone?

Roger Ebert’s top films of 2011.

Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO show finally has a name: The Newsroom.

The 8 minute trailer for David Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Steve Jobs to be awarded a posthumous Grammy.

The golden age of divorced women on TV.

from here.

The new datacenters and their architects.

NASA builds six-foot crossbow to harpoon comets.

The retreat of the Arctic sea releases deadly greenhouse gas.

Girl thought to be swept away by tsunami is found alive 7 years later.

Putting scientists on Mars in permanent colonies.

Urban legends about urban development.

Look at these amazing pictures from space.

The most common place on Earth for meteorites to crash? Antarctica.

National security expert warns of Asian space race.

The case for enhancing people.

by Tom Gauld, from here.

Watch a nice little video clip about the Dalkey Archive Press.

What literature owes the Bible.

Classic novels reinvented with genderswitching.

A review of Stephen King’s 11/22/63.

The secret history of secondhand books.

Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson were both born in the month of December.

How much do books cost these days?

Ridiculous origins for 7 everyday words.

James Ellroy hates everything.

from here.

The physics of how cats drink.

The number of homeless children is currently the highest ever in American history.

The year in political cartoons.

Make sense of the Middle Ages.

Ten plotlines you’ll find over and over again in science fiction.

A very nice looking fake house.

Are you the only one?

Reading material.

Here’s some reading material from around the internet…

The world’s first mug shots.

6 ridiculous history myths (that you probably think are true).

15 bizarre green inventions.

Did they really discover the Higgs Boson?

Also: 3 things the Higgs Boson can teach you about physics.

TIME magazine’s person of the year: The protestor.

The 100 most popular baby names of 2011.

Are art and architecture converging?

The New York Times on text messaging.

Should copyright be allowed to override free speech rights?

Some complaints about the Kindle Fire.

from here.

Penguin halts e-book sales to libraries.

Speaking of which, check out this blog which reviews one Penguin book a week.

Gift ideas for the book lover who’s read everything.

Anew short story by the author of 1Q84, Haruki Murakami: “Town Of Cats.”

Stereotyping you by your favorite books of 2011.

The most beautiful literary mystery in Edinburgh.

The overlooked sci-fi of 2011.

Some of the year’s best reading for both Adults and Young Adults.

The best e-book and audiobooks of 2011?

A brief guide to fictional languages in literature.

by Daniel Clowes, from here.

Recent passings:

Christopher Hitchens, author and journalist.

George Whitman, owner of Shakespeare & Co.

Steve Jobs, inventor and businessman and pioneer.

Joe Simon, cook book legend and co-creator of Captain America.

Jerry Robinson, comic book legend and creator of Batman villain The Joker.

Joseph M. Chamberlain, pioneer of planetarium shows.

Kim Jong Il, North Korean leader.

Anne McCaffrey, science fiction author.

Betty Ford, former First Lady.

Joe Frazier, boxer and heavyweight champion.

John Barry, conductor and film composer.

Andy Rooney, journalist and commentator.

Peter Falk, actor and TV’s Columbo!

Russell Hoban, author of Riddley Walker.

Rest in peace all.

from here.

The Guardian reviews the David Fincher version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

The best TV shows of the year and some of the best TV episodes of 2011.

Roger Ebert gives Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol 3 1/2 stars. I’ve seen the movie myself and would agree, it’s definitely worth a viewing. It’s a very fun movie, but if you’re going to see it in the theater then do yourself a favor and see it right: in IMAX. Trust me, it’ll be worth it.

First look at some official images from the new version of The Great Gatsby.

The top 15 “unseen” characters on TV.

The teaser for the upcoming second season of Game Of Thrones. Winter is coming!

The Spielberg Face.

Good news for Agatha Christie fans: The final Hercule Poirot movies starring David Suchet have finally been commissioned.

Speaking of Agatha Christie and mysteries: Did she have Alzheimer’s?

The 26 best movies of 2011?

Watch 1978’s infamous Star Wars Holiday Special in its entirety.

A nice tribute to the movies of this year:

When looking at some of the links listed here, please don’t forget that: We have several of the Hercule Poirot movies on DVD, including the ones starring David Suchet, as well as Murder On The Orient Express which stars Albert Finney and Death On The Nile which stars Peter Ustinov. Also, we have books on knitting and selecting baby names and we have books talking about awesome people. We have Mission: Impossible movies on DVD and we have graphic novels and comic books featuring Batman and his nemesis, the Joker. And of course we have The Dark Knight on DVD, featuring Heath Ledger’s iconic reinvention of the role. We can offer you e-books and audiobooks, we have Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, and we have several of the James Bond movies on DVD, for which John Barry arranged and composed the memorable theme for.

by Mathieu Belanger, one of the pictures of the year, from here.

More amazing pictures from this year.

Beautiful pictures of Saturn.

4,000 pages of Isaac Newton’s personal notebooks are now available to view online.

An x-ray of a two-headed snake.

Clint Eastwood’s family will star in a reality show.

The 25 most beautiful college libraries in the world.

How knitting behind bars transformed Maryland convicts.

Awesome people hanging out together.

Don’t forget that NORAD will help you track Santa!

New and Featured Books: Lisbeth Salander.

The American film version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, based on Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander/Millennium novels, is due to be released this Tuesday, December 20, and it’s easily one of the most anticipated movies of this year, let alone this holiday season. The film, directed by David Fincher, and starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, has a lot of hype and good buzz surrounding it, as well as a lot to live up as far as expectations.

The novels by Larsson have been among our most requested items this past year (and the year before), but I wanted to remind you as well that we also have the novels in audio format and that we also have the two original Swedish film adaptations of the books, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. To me, the first of the Swedish movies is okay, but just okay, and the second one, The Girl Who Played With Fire, is somewhat less than “just okay,” but for a lot of us, they’ve been decent holdovers while we waited for the new film version of the story.

Normally I wouldn’t hype the remake of a film, but I will happily make an exception here just because I didn’t think the original Swedish movie was a good adaptation at all, let alone a particularly great movie. I’d actually say that just the trailer that you see above for Fincher’s film was more successful on both counts than the original movie version. But maybe I’m biased in that I really like David Fincher’s work, as well as Daniel Craig, wwhom I didn’t use to like, but who won me over with his portrayal of James Bond and some of the other films he’s done in the past few years.

And Rooney Mara (who was in Fincher’s The Social Network as well as the remake of Nightmare On Elm Street) looks extremely promising in the very unique role of hacker heroine Lisbeth Salander.

Interesting side note: The stars of the original Swedish movies, Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace, both have movies out this week as well. Rapace is in Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows (and will appear in Ridley Scott’s upcoming Alien pseudo-prequel Prometheus) and Nyqvist is the villain in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

Larsson’s novels are hardly high art but if you haven’t read them yet, now is a good time to start for a good mystery/thrill ride.

And if you get a chance to see it, let us know what you think of the new movie.

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Please note that books could be checked out between the time they end up on the blog and when you come to check them out. If you don’t see the items you’re looking for then please come up to the front desk and we’ll put your name on the reserve list for when the item returns.