Tag: DVDs

New (and classic) DVDs at Te Awe

Gus

Here are the new DVDs we’ve added to the catalogue between August and October, available at our CBD Te Awe branch, and selected other locations, to borrow or reserve.

We have both recent releases of 2023 films and re-releases of some cinema classics, including Avatar, Forrest Gump, and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet.

Triangle of sadness
The portable door
Death in paradise. Series twelve
The passengers of the night
Paris, 13th district
My old school
Armageddon time
Dungeons & dragons. Honor among thieves
65
Creed. III

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Staff Picks: DVDs and Blu-Rays at the Library

Gus

Stumped for something to watch this weekend? Here are some DVDS and Blu-Rays that our library staff have enjoyed watching recently, featuring a range of new arrivals and deep-cut classics from the collection.

Shinji’s Picks

She said – Maria Schrader

The banshees of Inisherin – Martin McDonagh

Both sides of the blade – Claire Denis

The passengers of the night – Mikhael Hers

Triangle of sadness – Ruben Ostlund

Wheel of fortune and fantasy – Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Paris, 13th district – Jacques Audiard

Pearl – Ti West

The velvet queen – Marie Amiguet, Vincent Munier

Accident – Joseph Losey

She SaidThe Banshees of InisherinBoth Sides of the BladeThe Passengers of the NightTriangle of SadnessWheel of Fortune and FantasyParis, 13th DistrictPearlThe Velvet QueenAccident


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Staff Picks: DVDs and Blu-Rays at the Library

Gus

Here are some new, and older, DVDS and Blu-Rays that our Library staff have enjoyed watching recently, including a few Christmas movie picks for your holiday viewing!

Brigid’s Picks:

Christmas unwrapped ; The Christmas setup ; Christmas at Maple Creek ; No time like Christmas ; Christmas lost & found
This DVD is a 5 disc collection of gentle Christmas movies.
They are all very different stories made by a Canadian production company but are set in USA. The 5 DVD’s are all from 2018-2020 so still fairly new. The stories have very diverse characters. The rating is PGR. They are all gentle stories good for binge watching leading up to Christmas.

Inside are the following titles:

Christmas Unwrapped: This is a gentle story of a young journalist Charity, desperately trying to get her big break in Journalism. It comes in the form of having to write the story about a young man in the city who every year becomes the city’s Father Christmas by giving. Covering this story changes Charity’s life. Also stars Cheryl Ladd as the hard-bitten news Editor. This is a lovely gentle story great to watch whilst wrapping presents and decorating trees.

The Christmas Setup: This is a gentle Christmas romance. This is about a corporate lawyer Hugo who goes home for 2 weeks for Christmas to help his mum (Fran Drescher – The Nanny fame) celebrate Christmas and raise funds for the town.

Christmas at Maple Creek: A romance author Diana, goes back to the place of her childhood to help her get over writer’s block and enjoy Christmas there again. Diana finds more there than she bargains for Maple Creek needs her help.

No Time like Christmas: Emma finds her university boyfriend’s watch that she had given him, in a vintage shop just before she heads home to Vermont to celebrate Christmas. Things are not all as she expects.

Christmas Lost and Found: New York city event planner Whitney goes back to Chicago to spend her Christmas with her grandma. Whitney is gifted all the special Christmas ornaments that she collected with her grandma as a child but accidently lost them. Over the next week she must find them.

Dolly Parton’s Christmas of many colors : circle of love
This is a lovely DVD taken from the life of Dolly Parton. Dolly puts in a guest appearance and narrates it. Set in the Tennessee mountains Dolly is growing up with her family in the 1950’s. Dolly has 7 siblings and there is not a lot of money to spare. It is a story about how the children try and find money to help their dad give their mum the one present he has always wanted to – a Wedding ring. Everything goes well until disaster happens. How they cope is part of the lovely movie. Jennifer Nettles plays her mum, Rick Schroder plays her dad and Gerald McRaney plays the Preacher Grandfather. You do not need to like Dolly Parton’s music to enjoy this movie. Great time to enjoy it before the new Dolly movie comes out.

Neil J.s Pick:

Star Trek. IV, The voyage home
So, in the midst of a plethora of new Star Trek series and continued rumours about a Quentin Tarantino directed Star Trek movie, I decided to go back to the eighties in a big way and rewatch Star Trek Four The Voyage Home. The one with the whales where the crew travel back in time to 1986 (which was at that point the present day). It remains fabulous fun, the comic timing gags both visual and, in the script, still land perfectly. The strange thing is it has now become (mostly in a good way) as much about the period in time that it was made, as any future. Eighties styles, attitudes and preoccupations dominate. In a similar fashion to the way the fifties science fiction film Forbidden Planet reflects American society at that point in time.

Shinji’s Picks:

Memoria
Petite maman
Forgotten we’ll be
The White Lotus. The complete first season
Walk on the wild side
Outrage

Memoria

Petite Maman

Forgotten We'll Be

The White Lotus

Walk on the Wide Side

Outrage

Mark’s Picks:

C.B. Strike. Lethal white
The latest season of the J.K Rowling’s Strike series (written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith) has just debuted in the UK, with an adaption of the 5th novel, Troubled Blood. This DVD, an adaption of the 3rd novel Lethal White, is so far the only season released in NZ. In case you are unfamiliar with the book series, Cormoran Strike (played by Tom Burke) is a permanently dishevelled London based Private Investigator, who seems to exist entirely on pub crisps, Indian takeaways and beer, and is almost perpetually grumpy due to the complexities of his exacting business, his prosthetic leg, and his complicated personal history as the illegitimate son of a famous rock star. Robin Ellacott (played by Holliday Grainger) is a Temp agency receptionist, with a traumatic past and a keen investigative talent who, by the time of this series, has become his business partner. This instalment in the series begins when Billy Knight, a young man with a history of mental illness claims to have witnessed a child’s murder and the burial of the body in the woods some years before and asks Strike to investigate. Despite being set in contemporary London, and being occasionally quite gritty, ‘Strike’ is in a lot of ways an old fashioned show with little digital flash. The long cases essentially involve lots of plodding work, reinterviewing people, research, and conversations, and so are somewhat difficult to condense into the TV format. It’s all carried, really, by the two leads who are both excellent, and one of the most accurate transfers from page to screen of any adaptation. They both seem to perfectly embody the characters in the books, and the series is just as much about their complicated lives and growing personal & professional bonds, as it is about the cases they solve.

Gus’ Picks:

Succession. The complete first season
Succession. The complete second season
Succession. The complete third season

Logan Roy, the aging CEO of the massive media conglomerate Waystar-RoyCo, has a health scare following his announcement that he will delay his abdication from the company. This leads to a succession panic among his children: the troubled golden child Kendall, the manipulative only-daughter Shiv, and pathologically immature Roman. Combining the cinema vérité of The Thick of It with the prestige TV character psychology of The Sopranos, Succession will leaving you reeling for the first couple episodes, as your mind adjusts both to the exorbitant opulence in which the characters live and its deft tonal balancing act of drama and comedy. But after settling into its groove (and experiencing it’s absolute sledgehammer of a first season finale), I’m fully willing to declare that it’s the worthy (ahem) successor to its prestige TV forebears like The Sopranos, Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

Michael Clayton
Set during a massive class action lawsuit of an agricultural giant, unscrupulous ‘bagman’ lawyer Michael Clayton (George Clooney) finds himself embroiled in a corporate conspiracy after his legal wunderkind colleague has a crisis of conscience about his company’s ethics and goes into hiding. The directorial debut of writer Tony Gilroy (Andor), this is top-to-bottom a superbly crafted, dark-but-never-morose legal thriller with a sincere humanity at its core; no wonder it was nominated for almost every major Academy Award (it only won Best Supporting Actress for Tilda Swinton).

Robot & Frank
Set in a near-ish future, the titular Frank is a retired jewel thief who lives alone, until his son buys him a helper robot to assist him with his daily tasks. Frank initially dislikes the robot’s presence, until he realises that the robot can be taught to steal. The robot happily obliges, glad that he has given Frank a task to keep him active, and an unlikely friendship (and crime wave) ensues. A quiet adult drama about ageing and losing touch with family that just happens to be a heist caper with a robot in it, Robot & Frank is an absolute charmer and a criminally slept-on movie overall.

‘Do the Right Thing’ from 3 Spike Lee joints
Do The Right ThingSet in Bed-Stuy and told across one of the hottest days of the year, Do the Right Thing follows the residents of a Brooklyn community as a political firestorm begins to kindle around the local pizza joint. Do the Right Thing is considered Spike Lee’s magnum opus, and I’m inclined to agree; every member of its large ensemble cast has incredible depth and range, the radiant orange lighting really sells the setting of the heat wave, and the themes of racial tension, restorative justice, and economic precarity still haven’t lost their relevance in 2022. A masterpiece all around.

Superman I, Superman II, Superman III, and Superman VI: The Quest for Peace from The Superman motion picture anthology : 1978-2006 Despite being a fan of Superman, I’d never actually gone back and watched the original Christopher Reeve movies. While they are definitely mired in 70s/80s cheesiness, the films work on the innate sincerity of the character, and I was delighted throughout the whole quadrilogy. The acting is all top-notch across the board as well, especially Reeve as Superman and Clark Kent (two very distinctive performances that he pivots between expertly), Margot Kidder as cynical reporter Lois Lane, who makes easy work of being won over by Superman’s inherent charm and goodness, and Gene Hackman gives appropriate maniacal bravado to Superman’s criminal nemesis Lex Luthor.

Emerson’s Picks:


Hotere coverHotere
A documentary where Ralph Hotere (an NZ artist) quietly works, and his friends talk. Merata makes Hotere’s art feel mysterious while keeping the tone relaxing and convivial. The intense jazzy editing and quotes are cool.

Sione’s wedding
Immensely comforting movie. Funny scenes, great soundtrack, and the 2000s Auckland setting is beautiful.

Kikujiro
A gruff old man takes a young boy to see his mother. Deadpan and slow but also had me laughing a whole lot. Summer is the best season and I like when people in movies get along for no reason.

Kath’s Reviews: Film and Television

Kath

Kia ora!  I’m Kath, one of the branch librarians and I’m an avid film and television viewer.  I’m regularly diving deep into the excellent DVD collection we have in Wellington City Libraries, as well as content from Beamafilm and Kanopy — the two streaming platforms available to Wellington City Library customers.

In this new series of posts, I’m hoping to share some of the gems I come across each month with Pōneke film and television enthusiasts! Some of the excellent viewing I’ve seen recently include:

Belfast (2022) DVD

The DVD cover for the film Belfast written and directed by Kenneth BranaghActor, writer, director Kenneth Branagh’s biopic of his boyhood in Belfast in the 1960’s during The Troubles.  Shot almost entirely in black and white, except for a few tiny colour highlights, Belfast is Branagh’s love letter to the city of Belfast. Starring newcomer Jude Hill as Branagh (nicknamed Buddy by his family), the supporting ensemble is a feast of British talent – Judi Dench, Ciaran Hinds, Jamie Dornan, Catriona Balfe to name a few.  It is a charming film, highlighting the difficulty faced by many people of Belfast at the time, who loved their home city but could not avoid the troubles growing around them.

Best bit: during the credits Branagh himself returns to the streets of Belfast.  Well worth sticking around to watch.

Bob’s Burgers, the Complete First Season (2011) DVD 

With the new Bob’s Burgers: The Movie hitting streaming services, I thought it was worth going back to revisit one of my favourite animated series.  I had forgotten how funny it was right from the first series and that the character development has been great all the way through.  Created by Loren Bouchard, Bob’s Burger’s is an animated sitcom about the Belcher family.  Dad Bob (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin), Mum Linda (John Roberts), eldest daughter and butt enthusiast Tina (Dan Mintz), Casio enthusiast middle child Gene (Eugene Mirman) and the real brains of the family, little sister Louise (Kristen Schaal) make up the core cast of characters, but there are many fun repeat characters voiced by the likes of Kevin Kline, Megan Mullally, Sarah Silverman, Ken Jeong and more.  Well worth diving back into even if you’ve watched them before.

Best bit: so hard to choose.  I swing wildly as to which character is my favourite at any given time.

True Grit (2010) DVD

DVD cover for 2010 version of True GritThe Coen Brother’s remake of the John Wayne classic, True Grit stars Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross, Jeff Bridges as Reuben Cogburn, Matt Damon as Texas Ranger Le Boeuf and Josh Brolin as the villain they’re pursuing, Tom Chaney.  In this clever Western, fast thinking and talking Mattie, aged 14, hires crusty bounty hunter Rooster Cogburn to track down the man who killed her father, (Chaney).  Accompanied reluctantly by Le Boeuf who has little respect for either Rooster or Mattie, the trio face adventures, adversity and the need to work together to get their man.  Steinfeld shows her brilliance as an actress at an early age alongside the long established talents of the men in the cast.

Best bit: I love the scene when Mattie is “negotiating” the price of her father’s horse and ponies.  Or Mattie’s first meeting with Le Boeuf in the boarding house.  Of course there is also the immortal Rooster Cogburn line “Fill your hand you son of a b****!” at the climax of the film.  Don’t make me choose a best bit!

My Neighbour Totoro (2005) DVD

DVD cover of the English edition of My Neighbour TotoroFirstly, if you have never watched any of the Studio Ghibli films, now is the time to rectify that.  My Neighbour Totoro is as good a place to start as any!  My Neighbour Totoro is the story of Satsuki and Mei, two girls who move to the countryside to be closer to their ailing mother.  They soon encounter the forest sprites known as Totoros and go off on magical adventures.  Mei gets lost and her big sister Satsuki enlists the help of the Totoro to find her.

Best bit: Satsuki and Mei waiting in the rain at the bus stop for their father is so evocative that you can almost feel the raindrops.  It’s also the scene where we first meet the iconic CatBus!

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Staff Picks: Movies at the Library

Mark

Here are some new, and older movies, that our library cinephiles have enjoyed watching recently.

Gus’ Picks:


The worst person in the world
Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s latest film which follows four years in the life of Julie, a woman on the verge of her thirties trying to figure out herself, her career, her passions, and her love life. Told episodically in acts, the film is one of the best attempts I’ve seen at articulating that particular Millennial desire to be remarkable in your time, how being anything less makes you feel like the titular ‘worst person in the world’, and the malaise that soon sets in from both the disappointment on never succeeding and the relief of never committing. Heartwarming, hilarious, and not a little profound.

The Matrix Resurrections
I always thought ‘The Matrix’ was the one series that actually deserved a modern reboot; like the ‘red pill’, it’s easier to swallow a concept like the Matrix in a world that has been moulded even more by computers and algorithms than ever before. The question is, what do you say with that idea today? What, for better or worse, has the Matrix, both the film and the concept, done to our culture? Does it still have a place in the era of Twitter and virtual reality? Fortunately, Lana Wachowski (now directing solo without her sister, Lily) has been stewing on those questions, and delivers a sequel that both expertly updates the concept and puts it in context of its own legacy. Don’t go in expecting it to reinvent cinema like the first one, just remember to keep your mind open to the possibilities. Some ideas are just too good to stay dead.

Dune
Denis Villeneuve takes a crack at the ‘unadaptable’ space epic that defined science fiction for decades, and he proves more than up to the task. While definitely feeling like a ‘Part 1’, Dune’s scope, worldbuilding, creature design, and cinematography are second-to-none, and the epic, mesmerising score by Hans Zimmer is the perfect compliment. On a personal note, I think this is the best realisation of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide line “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t”.

The courier
Based on the true story of Greville Wynne, a British businessman who gets roped into smuggling secrets out of Russia on behalf of the CIA and MI:6. A solid Cold War thriller, and a reminder that Benedict Cumberbatch is actually a really great actor when he’s not being stunt-cast (see also: Patrick Melrose).

First cow
In 1820s Oregon, a humble cook from Maryland and a worldly immigrant from China meet through happenstance and become fast friends, eventually setting up a business selling ‘oily cakes’ to the hungry trappers and settlers in their neck of the woods. However, the only way they can get the milk for their cakes is to steal it from the only cow around, which happens to be owned by the richest man in the territory. The first half is about two guys in 1820s start-up culture, while the second half is the sweetest, gentlest heist movie you’ll ever see. Perfect for a rainy weekend or a quiet night in.

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It’s just Chinatown Jake: Film Noir movies from our DVD collection

Mark

via GIPHY

Following the end of World War Two, French publishing house Gallimard started publishing translations of American crime novels through its Série noire imprint: including authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and David Goodis. The following year, French critic Nino Frank wrote the earliest essays identifying a new departure in American film making, the ‘Film Noir’- though the term itself did not come into ‘official’ use until the publication of Raymond Borde & Etienne Chaumeton’s study ‘Panarama du film noir americain’ in 1955, and wasn’t widely adopted in America until the 1970’s. According to Borde and Chaumeton, the ‘Noir’ cycle officially begins with John Houston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941) and ends with Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) – though the style can be traced back as far as Fritz Lang’s M (1931), and forward to films like Memento (2000).

Characterised by fear, mistrust, bleakness, paranoia, fatalism, disillusionment, existential plots and confessional voiceovers, they provided a distinctly pessimistic view of post-war America. However, while the view was American, the ‘feel’ was distinctly European with shadowy expressionistic lighting, stark and skewered camera angles, jarring editing and deep shadows. Due to this style, the best Noirs are in Black and White – with key European directors such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Jacques Tourneur. Noir protagonists were typically anti-heroes: crooked cops, down and out private eyes, war veterans, petty criminals, gamblers and killers; while the women were often unloving, mysterious, duplicitous and manipulative – but always gorgeous.

While the style dropped out of favour after the late 1950’s, its elements were present in several standout films of the 1960’s from The Manchurian Candidate (1962) to Point Blank (1967). It made a resurgence in the 1970’s, and an even stronger one in the 1990’s. Films from this period on are referred to as ‘Neo-Noir’ and, while some are merely an affected stylism, enough original ‘Noir’ runs through them to satisfy purists.

The Maltese falcon
John Huston’s classic adaptation of Dasheill Hammett’s hard-boiled novel (using large chunks of the novels dialogue) with Bogart as Hammett’s definitive private eye, the cynical Sam Spade. When Bogart’s partner is murdered while tailing someone at the request of a beautiful client he sets out to find the killer, even though he was sleeping with his partners wife. His investigations drag him into a byzantine plot that sees him pitted against a sinister fat man (Sydney Greenstreet), an effete European (Peter Lorre), a doped up gunman (Elisha Cook Jr.), and his client (Mary Astor) a treacherous women whose loyalties turn on a dime – all of whom are after a mysterious black statuette in the shape of a bird, and rumoured to be encrusted with gold and jewels…

Double indemnity
Director Billy Wilder and writer Raymond Chandler adapted James M. Cain’s novel into one of the best early Noirs. Smooth insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) meets femme-fatale Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) when he calls to renew her husband’s automobile insurance. Sparks fly and together they scheme to murder her husband and collect a large insurance payoff using the ‘double indemnity’ clause in his life insurance. Narrated by MacMurray to his Claims Investigator boss Barton Keyes (Edward G Robinson) in a flashback, the story is still holds tension right until the last reel, and is full of Chandler’s snappy dialogue.

Laura
Darryl F Zanuck, founder of 20th Century Fox once declared that Gene Tierney was ‘unquestionably the most beautiful woman in movie history’, and ‘Laura’, based on the Vera Caspary novel, more than shows why. Dana Andrews plays a tough Homicide Detective who falls in love with the portrait of career girl/murder victim Laura Hunt (Tierney). But when Laura suddenly returns alive, he has to figure out who the dead girl is, who shot her, and more importantly, if Laura was the intended victim. Full of great lines, Otto Preminger directs this stylish murder/mystery with a great supporting cast that includes Clifton Webb as an acid-tongued journalist who was Laura’s mentor, & Vincent Price as her vacuously charming playboy boyfriend. The DVD also comes with two biographies; one on the tragic life of actress Tierney, and the other on the career of Vincent Price as one of cinemas most versatile villains.

Gilda
One of the most cynical Noirs, Charles Vidor’s Gilda stars Glenn Ford as Johnny Farrell, a down on his luck gambler in wartime Buenos Aires. Rescued from a fight by mysterious casino owner Ballin Mundson (George Macready), he is recruited to work in his illegal casino where he soon rises to be Mundson’s ‘right hand man’. All is well until Mundson goes on a business trip and returns with beautiful new bride Gilda (Rita Hayworth), a woman from Johnny’s past. Unaware of their previous relationship he assigns Johnny to keep an eye on Gilda, and their mutual dislike produces some of the most scathing dialogue committed to film. Factor in the bizarre romantic triangle that ensues, the mysterious Tungsten (a rare metal) cartel Mundson heads, the Germans who want to control it, the evocative setting, and Hayworth’s famous ‘striptease’ to ‘Put the blame on Mame’ and you have a classic piece of Noir.

Out of the past
Robert Mitchum is Jeff Bailey the owner of a small garage and living an idyllic life in small town California… until his past catches up with him in the form of ruthless gangster Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) and his girlfriend Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer). Jacques Tourneur’s brilliantly realised Noir is one of the best examples of the genre. Flashbacks within flashbacks reveal Mitchum’s past as Private Eye Jeff Markham hired by Douglas to retrieve his wayward girlfriend Grier, and the $40,000 of his money she ran off with. He manages to track her to Mexico, but that’s just the beginning of his ensnarement with the nasty pair. Mitchum is at his laconic best as Markham, conveying the characters desperation with the most economic of gestures, and the beautiful Greer is nothing short of brilliant as the remorseless femme fatale. Tourneur’s camerawork and use of light and shadow convey an inky darkness to even the most sunlit scene. The film was adapted by Daniel Mainwaring (using the pseudonym Geoffrey Homes) from his own 1946 novel ‘Build My Gallows High’, and is one of those instances where the film improves on the book, though that may have been due to the uncredited dialogue revisions by Frank Fenton, a B-movie writer whose best known credit was John Ford’s Wings of Eagles.

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