Where We Live: Steve Alves’ Western Massachusetts Film Collection
[DVD]
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Filmmaker Steve Alves has been making movies about Franklin County since 1997. These six short documentaries were produced over a period of several years and explore the cultural, economic and natural world from the hyper-local point of view.
Titles: Beneath the River (about the Connecticut) — A Sweet Tradition (maple syrup production), Together in Time (contra dancing) — Everyone’s Business (local entrepreneurs and economic history) — Life After High School (jobs and education) — Talking To The Wall (Big Box sprawl vs. small town Main Street).
If you live here it’s hard not to be fascinated by the lives going on around us, both human and environmental. Steve really gets it, and he’s a fine director too. He is currently working on a new film called Food For Change. Watch for it!
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Documentary, Local history
The Rolling Stones: All 6 Ed Sullivan Shows
[DVD]
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Recently added to the steadily-growing Forbes DVD collection is this wonderful 2 disc set I recently checked out. It has all of the Rolling Stones appearances on the Ed Sullivan show. From black and white to color television shows, the quality is the best I’ve seen so far and to watch the musical performances was a treat. An added feature is being able to select single acts or watch the complete show (vintage commercials included). Seeing early Rolling Stones, Dusty Springfield AND Tom Jones all on one evening’s show was a fun experience for me.
Reviewed by Susana
Tagged: 1960s, Rock music, TV shows
Julie and Romeo
by Jeanne Ray
[Book]
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This light romance turns Romeo and Juliet on its head. Julie is struggling to keep her family’s flower business in Somerville, MA afloat after her husband of 35 years left her (for a younger woman) and moved to Seattle. She runs into her rival, Romeo Cacciamani, at a small business conference. Although he is the other florist in Somerville, and their families have been feuding for years, she finds that not only does she no longer hate him, but they quickly fall in love. In a reversal, it is their children who are against the relationship, and insist on continuing the grudge, even though no one knows why or how it began. Will Julie and Romeo find true love the second time around, or will their children prevail in keeping them apart?
Reviewed by Molly
Tagged: Fiction, Romance
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Film recommendations certainly play a role in a day’s work at the Arts & Music department. It’s often my favorite task to help someone find a film that fits their taste and am always flattered when a patron asks for me to select something that I enjoyed. Recently, the favor was reciprocated. A regular patron suggested, based on our many movie conversations, that I might enjoy the film Kes. He was correct and to continue the dialog, here’s my take:
Kes is a story that I consider the Northern England equivalent of Truffaut’s 400 Blows. Made a decade later, director Ken Loach, who certainly chooses not to glamorize youth or pander to children, creates a nearly bleak portrait of childhood. His central character, Billy Casper, lives in a poor, working class mining community and seems to have his future decided for him at 15 years of age. While not absolutely going for the heavy handed approach, Loach is suggesting flaws in, what he considers, the still existing English class system.
Billy eventually finds an escape from the constant bullying from adult figures (his headmaster, classmates, older brother, gym teacher, etc.) when he notices a nest on a neighbor’s property. He studies the science of training birds and eventually develops trust with a kestrel he appropriately christens “Kes”. His dedication and care earns him the respect from a group of classmates and a caring English teacher (who is possibly the only kind adult in the film).
Kes, which is heartbreaking and desolate feeling at times, is a remarkable work. Loach’s nonjudgmental camera style, the simple and lyrical imagery, the falconry scenes with young Billy’s textbook narration and soft English landscape gives the film a quality not unlike a documentary.
Reviewed by Jason
Tagged: British film, Drama, Falconry, Feature film
The Penny Whistle Book
by Robin Williamson
[Book]
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A couple months ago, I saw The Penny Whistle Book come up to the Arts & Music library and happened to notice that it was penned by the Incredible String Band’s Robin Williamson. He was essentially one half of the group, sharing vocal and songwriting duties with Mike Heron. At this time I also was thinking about the arrangement for a song of my own and was in need to have a flute or whistle type sound for a two note hook in the final chorus (a la “Penny Lane”).
The sensible thing to do I thought was to go to check out the book and head to
Downtown Sounds in Northampton and see how much one of these whistles costs… Turns out they’re very cheap (something like $10). I cracked the book open, read the introduction and was making sounds and playing scales right away.
The slim Penny Whistle Book is filled with traditional American and British tunes with accompanying illustrations that reference the era in which the pieces were most likely composed. The sheet music is also perfect for playing instrumental accompaniment like guitar or banjo because chords are placed at the top of the staffs.
The penny whistle is a fun and simple instrument to play. You really don’t need to be able to read musical notation or have special technique in operating a mouthpiece. You just place your fingers on the holes and blow!
Reviewed by Jason
Tagged: Folk music, How to, Music instruction
Old Jews Telling Jokes
by Sam Hoffman ; with Eric Spiegelman
[Audiobook]
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This project started as a website, still going strong at www.oldjewstellingjokes.com. A couple of guys and their dads started rounding up all their “aunts and uncles, wise-cracking attorneys and periodontists,” as the web site says. Each clip is a couple of minutes of one person telling a joke. These are not professional comedians, they are ordinary people from the culture that created the Marx Brothers, the Catskill circuit, and Mel Brooks. Some of the stories have been around a long time, but nearly all of them land between amusing and hilarious on the laugh-o-meter. You’ll find ironic, raunchy, and self-deprecating bits as well as some marvelous timing and delivery. The narrator I could do without. Still, it beats therapy.
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Comedy, Jewish humor
Blood, Bones, & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef
by Gabrielle Hamilton
[Book]
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Hailed as “the best memoir by a chef ever” by Anthony Bourdain, and a NY Times Notable Book in 2010, this unusual memoir follows the life of Gabrielle Hamilton, now chef/owner of Prune in NYC. It is unusual in that Hamilton is such a good writer, and seemingly holds nothing back, allowing us to see the bad and ugly along with the good.
The quality of her writing is partially explained with her MFA from the University of Michigan, an experience she relates in ambivalent terms, “It’s a tired reading style…it attaches more importance to the words than the words themselves — as they’ve been arranged, could possibly sustain, and it gives poets and poetry a bad name. Which is not what I came to graduate school for; I want to forever admire poets.”
The bad and the ugly includes her wayward youth and relationship with her family after her parent’s divorce. How she develops from a lost girl to opening an award-winning restaurant in New York and a marriage with an Italian doctor (and his family), is a compelling story, with lots of detail of the food along the way, that never feels like it bogs down the story.
And here, as a treat to celebrate my last day before continuing on my journey, when we drove to the coast, past fields of shooting asparagus and trees about to burst forth, and we stopped finally at the water’s edge in St. Malo- here are platters of shellfish pulled that very morning from the sea-langouste, langoustines, moules, crevetted, huitres, bigorneaux, coques. These are the pearl-tipped hat pins stuck into a wine bottle cork for pulling to the meats of the sea snails. The tide ran out, and the fishing boats slumped in the mud attached to their slack anchors like leashed dogs sleeping in the yard. The particular smell of sea mud went up our nostrils as we slurped the brine from the shells in front of us, so expertly and neatly arranged on the tiers.
Reviewed by Molly
Tagged: Food, Memoir, Non-fiction
Page One: Inside the New York Times
by Andrew Rossi
[DVD]
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Andrew Rossi’s film Page One explores the role of print media in a rapidly changing technological landscape. The documentary goes inside the Eighth Avenue tower and we watch events unfold and become shaped into articles that eventually get delivered to our doorsteps.
The Internet has redirected the way in which many people seek information and this proves to be a financial threat to the survival of every newspaper. When Julian Assange’s initial YouTube barrage is dropped on the heads of the public, the Times writers not only have to think how to cover the event, they also need to ponder how it affects journalism on the whole. The WikiLeaks organization may upload footage, reach millions of people in a matter or moments and have little accountability in how they present their broadcast. The Times realizes that though they must follow the guidelines of responsible reporting, they still need to compete with this brand of information giving on some level.
Staff members are also profiled and followed around through the course of pitching and working on articles. We go inside meetings and presentations, too. David Carr, arguably the star of this film, is seen laying down the law in a meeting with Vice personnel, seeing his elderly father and giving a presentation on technology and media. Carr and many of the staff on screen, discuss the role of technology and Twitter and other social media.
Though the advertising and subscriptions that power the New York Times are at all time lows, the paper continues to move forward. Page One documents this tense, transitional period and shows the organization working on the fly to stay in the business.
Reviewed by Jason
Tagged: Documentary, Journalism, Technology
Snuff
by Terry Pratchett
[Book]
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One Terry Pratchett Discworld novel is much like another, and I mean that as a compliment, the way I would about the Marx Brothers or P.G. Wodehouse. Pratchett is reliably funny, satirical, detailed, and quick, coming at you from all sides (including footnotes). In Discworld there are no sacred cows, and in this latest installment cows feature prominently since streetwise city detective Sam Vimes has been lured by his formidable wife to her country estate on vacation.
Pretty soon the deceptively sleepy village reveals there’s more than manure to meet the eye, and Vimes is entangled in crimes and secrets that rival his usual pastimes in the metropolis.
Start anywhere; you won’t regret it.
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Fantasy, Fiction, Humor
Talking heads Chronology
[DVD]
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An official retrospective DVD compilation of rare footage and performances from throughout the Talking Heads illustrious career. The footage spans chronologically from mic tests and rough 1976 black and white footage of the band in NYC to television and festival performances during the height of their fame in the early 80’s. As the quality of the footage improves, the band becomes tighter and more assured, adding members until it culminates in the art-house funk monster period of Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues. This development and gradual expansion of the band in style and number mirrors the sequences of Stop Making Sense, the bands epic masterpiece concert film, but also allows a rare live glimpse of the late 70’s Heads whose angular tightly structured charm was just as innovative for its time as their later afro-cuban funk explorations. Talking Heads fans have waited for years without any significant “archived material” from the band and few releases outside of greatest hits compilations, and this release provides the perfect companion to Jonathan Demme’s 1983 concert film. The DVD is bound within a book with some great photographs of the band and extensive liner notes by Lester Bangs, who lets loose with his usual unrestrained hyperbolic blurt.
Reviewed by Dylan
Tagged: Documentary, Live recordings, Rock music
I’m a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away
by Bill Bryson
[Book]
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A collection of articles originally written for a weekly British magazine chronicles Bryson’s humorous reintroduction to life in America: “The intricacies of modern American life still often leave me muddled.” From dental floss hotlines, to cupholders, to the abundance of trees in New Hampshire, Bryson entertains us with his laugh-out-loud writing.
Reviewed by Molly
Tagged: Humor, Non-fiction, Travel
Krazy Kat: the Comic Art of George Herriman
[Book, Graphic Novel]
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Krazy Kat was a remarkable and hugely influential daily comic. Found in newspapers around the country for over 30 years, from 1913 and 1944, it would influence comics greats such as Charles M. Schulz, Will Eisner, and Bill Watterson. Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman provides an overview of the life and works of Krazy Kat creator George Herriman, and includes a large collection of beautifully reproduced daily and Sunday Krazy Kat strips.
Herriman’s astonishing Sunday Krazy Kats are reason to pick up this book alone. Giant, free form, brightly colored affairs, unconstrained by the rigid panels of today’s strips, it is the surreal landscapes and innovative design of the Sunday strips for which Herriman is best know, and with good reason. (Fans of Calvin and Hobbes will immediately recognize the influence of these strips on Bill Waterson’s Spaceman Spiff strips.)
Krazy Kat is not particularly funny, but I love reading it. Krazy Kat is dreamlike and poetic, a little bit difficult, and very much worth your while. Full of characters and images you will not forget, this is a bit of comics history you should definitely check out.
Reviewed by Ben
Tagged: Comics, Non-fiction
