Enjoy all the great things about Thanksgiving: visiting with family and friends, watching parades and fooball games and, of course, the traditional turkey dinner. If looking for a few film suggestions, the library has several with the Thanksgiving theme.

Desperate Crossing: the untold story of the Mayflower is the story of how the Pilgrims came to live and prosper in an unfimilian land. The film begins with their self-imposed exile in Holland, the perilous crossing of the Atlantic, to their first year in the new world.

Pieces of April Katie Holmes stars as the wayward daughter who invites her estranged and dysfunctional suburban Pennsylvania family to her apartmentin New York City for Thanksgiving dinner

Hannah and Her Sisters stars Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Michael Caine and takes a look at three sisters and the relationship they have with one another, and with the men in their lives.

Books into Movies




If you want a good film turn to a good book for inspiration. Over the next few months some wonderful books will appear as films. Invictus, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, is based on the book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation. The Blind Side based on the book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis stars Sandra Bullock and Quinton Aaron tells the story of a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home taken in by a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a post-apocalyptic story of a father and son as they struggle to survive. Up In the Air, book written by Walter Kirn, film starring George Clooney, follows a traveler's quest to reach 5 million frequest flier miles. The Lovely Bones, book by Alice Sebold, stars Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz, is a story about a murdered girl who watches over her family from heaven, and Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Kingsley recreate Dennis LeHane's Shutter Island about life in a psychiatric hospital in the 50s.






Read the book ..... see the film.

Despite the glorious weather this weekend, I was able to see two films: one I really liked, the other was entertaining, but both were thought provoking. An Education, set in suburban London in the 1960s, explores a young girl's choice between the world of books and the world of glamous evenings and social affairs. How easily we can be swayed ! The cast is wonderful especially Carey Mulligan as Jenny, Peter Sarsgaart as David, and Alfred Molina as Jenny's father.


The second film The Men Who Stare at Goats is a quirky dark satire starring George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey and Ewan McGregor. Based on a true story by Ron Ronson about the New Earth Army, a covert operation that turned Army soldiers into Jedi warriors trained to use paranormal and psychic powers to disarm the enemy. First envisioned during the Vietnam War, the story is told through flashbacks as the young newspaper reporter follows one of the resurrected Jedi to Iraq where they discover another New Wave Army. The cast handles the script written by Nick Hornby with easy and great fun.

Let me know what you think. But if you can't get to see them in the theaters, they will be available at the library as soon as they are on DVD.


The library's collection is growing with classics and new releases. Recently, I saw The Visitor and Bottle Shock and can recommend both.

The Visitor, starring Richard Jenkins, is a story about a disillusioned Connecticut economics professor and how his life is transformed when he finds a young couple living in his vacant apartment in New York City.


Bottle Shock chronicles the efforts of a small American winery that bested the exalted French wines of the time and sent the wine industry into a tizzy - putting California wines on the map for the first time in 1976. Told through the lives of father and son who sacrificed everything to realize their dream of creating the perfect hand-crafted chardonnay

Not many films to choose from this weekend except Michael Jackson's This Is It, but I'm waiting a bit to see that one. November will be a good month with the heart wrenching film Precious based on the novel Push by Sapphire and the new George Clooney film The Men Who Stare at Ghosts being released November 6th.

Also my November DVD list is ready and will be available at the
Avon Free Public Library or on line this week.





One film you should reserve is Away We Go starring John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Jeff Daniels, Maggie Gyllenhaal. A couple, expecting their first child, travel around the U.S. in hopes of finding a perfect place to start their family. Along the way, they have misadventures and find fresh connections with an assortment of relatives and old friends who just might help them discover "home" on their own terms for the first time.