Below is a list of some of the videos and audiobooks that were pre-ordered before we closed and delivered since. They haven’t been catalogued or processed yet, but perhaps knowing the titles will whet your interest in borrowing them when we eventually reopen.
The Red Lotus by Chris Bohjalian, audiobook on CD
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Blu-ray and DVD
1917, the WWI epic filmed in “a single shot”, DVD
Little Women, Greta Gerwig’s adaptation was considered to be one of the best movies of 2019, DVD
Jumanji: The Next Level, DVD
Richard Jewell, Clint Eastwood’s latest, about the 1996 Olympics bombing, DVD
In Safe Hands, DVD
Asako I & II, DVD
Clemency, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, DVD
College Behind Bars, documentary from Ken Burns’s team about the Bard Prison Initiative, which allows people to take college courses while in prison, DVD
Two documentaries that were nominated for Academy Awards earlier this year, For Sama and The Cave, are about women in Syria during the civil war. DVDs
Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, DVD
Cunningham, documentary about the dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham, DVD
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, documentary that aired on PBS American Masters earlier this year (Lee Konitz, who played on the recordings that came to be known as Birth of the Cool, died April 15 of the coronavirus)
Speaking of Miles Davis, he did the music for Elevator to the Gallows. Not a new film (1958), but we will be the only Minerva library to have a copy of it and the only library in Maine with the most recent Criterion edition. DVD
Recently released on Criterion is Leave Her to Heaven, a 1945 film that is difficult for me to put my finger on. Based on a book by Ben Ames Williams, it takes place in an imaginary Maine town and Bar Harbor. It’s a “women’s film” cum film noir, but it was shot in bold Sirk-esque Technicolor (Douglas Sirk remade three of director John M. Stahl’s earlier films). DVD
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), a very good film starring the Kirk Douglas, who recently died at age 103. I don’t know why more libraries don’t have this one. Blu-ray
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