Showing posts with label Videos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Videos. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Browsing Area Books for June 3013--New Sci-Fi

 
Dragon’s Time by Anne & Todd McCafferey.  Call Number: PS3563.A255D755 2011.
Another chapter in the iconic Dragonriders series.  In this book the planet Pern is in desperate straits.  The deadly Thread is falling, a life-form that feeds on anything organic and falls through space from an erratic planetoid above.  Able to breathe fire, Dragons can burn Thread before it touches ground, but a plague has killed many of the dragons and their riders are desperately attempting anything they can think of to save their planet.  One possibility is to use the dragons’ abilities to teleport back in time, but mixing the past and future can lead to…consequences.

Fourth Wall by Walter Jon Williams. Call Number: PS3573.I456213F68 2012.
Mixing the near future with bits of surreal humor and suspense, Williams tells the story of Sean Makin, a washed-up child actor desperate for work, who gets a call from the famous Dagmar Shaw.  Dagmar’s made millions in alternative reality video games and now she wants to make a movie, with Sean as the star.  The only hitch is people seem to die around her.  And the movie may be a little something more than Sean knows.

  Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reyonlds. Call Number:PR6068.E95B58 2012.
            One hundred and fifty years from now, the Akinya business empire is worried.  The matriarch, Grandmother Eunice Akinya, has died while exploring the solar system and she’s left something awkward behind on the moon.  Her grandson doesn’t want to leave his biological research of elephants, but the family needs him to keep a lid on whatever Eunice left, so he’s sent to contain the damage.  Unfortunately the effects are a lot more extensive than the family guessed and the results could tear civilization apart.


Caliban’s War by James S.A. Corey.  Call Number: PS3603.O73428C35 2012.
            Second book in the Expanse Trilogy, sees war break out between Mars and Earth, as a Martian outpost on Ganymede is slaughtered by one invincible super soldier.  James Holden, the idealistic Captain of the space ship Rocinante, finds his crew out of a job until a scientist from Ganymede asks them to return to the war-torn moon and help him find his child.  Holden has no way of knowing that the bioengineered soldier responsible for starting the war was only the first glimpse of an alien invasion beyond any expectations, even those of the evil corporations seeking to control it.  A powerhouse novel.

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

What you were watching in 2012

Top 25 Feature Films checked out in 2012

1)    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: part 2
 
2)    Tangled 
     (Disney's take on the Rapunzel fairy tale.)
3)    Dr. Seuss' Horton hears a Who! 
4)    Captain America: the first avenger
5)    Despicable me 
6)    The Help 
    (The movie version of the bestselling novel)
7)    Aladdin 
8)    Cars 2 
9)    Descendants 
     (George Clooney as a man who must decide the fate of his family legacy)
 
11) Hercules 
12) Lilo & Stitch 
13) Pirates of the Caribbean, on stranger tides 
14) Sherlock Holmes 
      (Robert Downey does Sherlock in a whole new manner) 
15) Sin City 
16) Up 
17) Babe 
18) Chocolat 
19) Ella enchanted 
20) Ides of March 
21) Inception 
      (A crazy kind of heist movie, where the crew steals memories and thoughts)
22) Iron Man 2 
23) Lion king  
24) Little mermaid 
25) Memoirs of a geisha 
 
 
 
 
Top 10 documentaries/non-fiction films checked out in 2012
1)    Killing us softly 4: advertising's image of women, a Media Education Foundation production.
2)    Understanding learning disabilities: how difficult can this be?
3)    Narrative therapy over time [presented by] American Psychological Association.
4)    Internal family systems therapy produced by Governors State University.
5)    Race: the power of an illusion produced by California Newsreel; in association with the Independent Television Service.
6)    Cave of forgotten dreams, written and directed by Werner Herzog.
     (Herzog shows us the oldest paintings known to man.)
7)    Techniques of play therapy: a clinical demonstration.
8)    What's race got to do with it?   Written, directed and produced by Jean Cheng.
9)    Color of fear, produced & directed by Lee Mun Wah.
10) Fish!  Catch the energy, release the potential, a film by Charthouse Learning.