Library Video of the Week, February 13, 2012.

Nat Turner: A troublesome property.  Producers, Frank Christopher, Kenneth S. Greenberg; Director, Charles Burnett; writers, Charles Burnett, Frank Christopher and Kenneth S. Greenberg.  Library Call Number: E444.T87N38 2002.

        Nat Turner was a Virginia slave, who led a fight for freedom in 1831 that became known as the Southampton Insurrection. Learning to read at a young age, Turner was convinced God had chosen him to kill the white people around him and free their slaves.  A solar eclipse seemed to be a Divine omen to Turner; he enjoined four of his trusted friends to come with him and when another atmospheric disturbance occurred shortly thereafter, he began a rampage that spread from the plantation of his master into the countryside; he led between 100 and 200 slaves on a march through Virginia, killing over 60 whites in a county where slaves far outnumbered their owners.  Hoping to free enough slaves to establish a foothold in the countryside, Turner’s force was finally overwhelmed by white militias, though he himself hid from them for months afterward. In the reprisals, hundreds of slaves--men women and children--were killed and the Virginia Legislature later made it illegal to teach slaves to read and write.  This was one of the beginning conflicts that would culminate in the American Civil War thirty years later.  Look for this Video in the 5th floor History Collection.

Library Video of the Week, February 6, 2012.

Boycott, starring Jeffrey Wright, Terrence Howard, and Carmen Ejogo . Directed by Clark Johnson. 2001.  Library Call Number: PN1995.9.N4 B69 2001

          What became one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights Era is recreated here, with Jeffrey Wright superbly playing an obscure Baptist minister in 1955 Montgomery Alabama, who takes up the cause of equal rights. When a small, middle-aged black woman named Rosa Parks (played by Iris Little-Thomas ) is directed by the bus driver to give her seat to a white man and refuses, she is arrested.  The minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, is named to head what becomes known as the Montgomery Bus boycott.  African-Americans, who at that time were ¾ of the passengers, refused to board city buses leading to a financial meltdown of the city’s transit system.  In response, White Citizen’s Councils firebombed black churches and the houses of King and Reverend Ralph Abernathy.

          Boycott  faithfully recreates these events, which began in Montgomery and became a national cause. Wright is stellar as the charismatic King, capturing his tones and the power of his voice, while demonstrating his fear and vulnerability.

Browsing Area Book of the Week, February 6, 2012.

Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890’s to the present by Deborah Willis. Library Call Number: TR680.W53 2009.

            From the jacket: As a student in the 1970s, Deborah Willis came to the realization that images of black beauty, female and male, simply did not exist in the larger culture. Determined to redress this imbalance, Willis examined everything from vintage ladies' journals to black newspapers, and started what would become a lifelong quest. With more than two hundred arresting images, many previously unpublished, Posing Beauty recovers a world many never knew existed. Historical subjects such as Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker illuminate the past; Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali take us to the civil rights era; Denzel Washington, Lil' Kim, and Michelle Obama celebrate the present. Featuring the works of more than one hundred photographers, including Carl van Vechten, Eve Arnold, Lee Friedlander, and Carrie Mae Weems, Willis's book not only celebrates the lives of the famous but also captures the barber shop, the bodybuilding contest, and prom night. Posing Beauty challenges our most fundamental assumptions about what it means to be “beautiful.”

Browsing Area Book of the Week, January 30, 2012.

Horoscopes for the Dead: poems  by Billy Collins.

Library Call Number: PS3553.O47478H67 2011.

The 2001-03  United States Poet Laureate, Collins writes seemingly simple verse, that somehow remains enigmatic.  The Publisher’s Weekly Review states:  

 Collins's gently ironic, gently elegiac work…has slowly constructed a pitch-perfect purgatory, and this death-themed ninth collection seems to want to make it as literal as possible: it opens as the speaker stands "before the joined grave of my parents" and asks, "What do you think of my new glasses?" In a poem titled "Hell," the speaker has "a feeling that is much worse/ than shopping for a mattress in a mall,/ of greater duration without question,/ and there is no random pitchforking here,/ no licking flames to fear,/ only this cavernous store with its maze of bedding." …despite the prosaic settings and everyday language, Collins is after the big questions: of life, death, and how to live. But the world is not of his making, and his is a temperament oddly suited to a world where "the correct answer" to questions like why the stars appear as they do, strike "not like a bolt of lightning/ but more like a heavy bolt of cloth.”

Library Video of the Week, January 30, 2012.

Over the Hedge, A DreamWorks animation directed by Tim Johnson and Karey Kirkpatrick.  With the voices of: Bruce Willis, Gary Shandling, Wanda Sykes, Nick Nolte, Allison Janney and Steve Carrell, among others. 2006.

Library call number: PN1995.5.A5O93 2006.
          A clever, very funny movie from the creators of Shrek.  When a crew of forest animals awaken from hibernation, they not only find a new subdivision right next to their forest, they discover RJ, the raccoon, waiting for them.  He’s anxious to show them the huge amount of food humans throw away that’s sitting in trash cans just across the hedge.  The sometime leader of the animal crew, Verne the tortoise, wants nothing to do with the humans, after a bad experience with two boys, but RJ tempts the rest into bad behavior. What they don’t know is, RJ ate a bear’s entire stock of food and only has two weeks to replace it—or become a bear lunch himself.  Throw in a manic guard dog and a crazy animal control officer and it’s obvious the animals are in way over their heads.

Library Video of the Week, January 23, 2012

Kingdom of War, parts 1 and 2, starring Sarunyu Wongkrachang and Sorapong Chatree, directed by Chatreechalerm Yukol. 2006. (Thai with English subtitles.)  Library Call Number: PN1995.9.F67K56 2011.                                            

     One of the few movies out of Thailand to make a splash, Kingdom of War is a grand epic biopic about King Naresuan, who won Siamese independence from Burma in the 16^th century.  With vivid color, breathtaking cityscapes and large battle re-enactments, Kingdom of War requires some patience in Part 1, as it provides background on the intricate and devious politics of the times. With the region divided into dozens of small kingdoms, each ruler is trying to topple their Burmese conqueror and establish their own empire.  When King Bayinnaung overcomes the Siamese kingdom of Ayudtthaya, he takes the nine year-old Prince Naresuan as hostage, insuring his father’s kingdom remains loyal. The King sends the boy to live and study with a Buddhist monk, where the Prince learns martial arts and politics in equal measure.  Naresuan befriends two orphans living with the monk, who eventually become his Princess and his general, while making an enemy of the King’s sons.  Part 2 begins with the death of Bayinnaung, the succession of his son, who hasn’t forgotten or forgiven Naresuan and sends him to enforce the Burmese sovereignty over a mountain kingdom in revolt, while laying an ambush.  When Naresuan escapes, he prepares his first epic battle with the Burmese.

Browsing Area Book of the Week, January 23, 2012



Pacific Air: how fearless flyboys, peerless aircraft and fast flattops conquered the skies in the war with Japan by David Sears.

 Library Call Number: D773.S43 2011.

        David Sears brings to life the air war in the Pacific, through the stories not only of the combat pilots, but of the engineers in America responsible for designing the wartime aircraft at Grumman. Alternating his narration of how F4F Wildcats fared against the Mitsubishi Zero with the evolution of Grumman designs on the home front that led to the F6F Hellcat, Sears provides the reader with an understanding of how designs improve during war.  From the Battle of the Coral Sea to the Battle of the Marianas, Grumman planes were in the forefront of the fighting and the memories of the pilots provide a great deal of drama and insight into the vast theater of the Pacific War.